Blogger is a blog-publishing service that allows multi-user blogs with
time-stamped entries. It was developed by Pyra
Labs, which was bought by Google in 2003. Generally, the blogs are
hosted by Google at a subdomain of blogspot.com.
Blogs can also be hosted in the registered custom domain of the blogger (like
www.example.com).[4] A user can have up to 100 blogs per account.
Up
until May 1, 2010, Blogger allowed users to publish blogs on other hosts, via FTP. All such blogs had (or still
have) to be moved to Google's own servers, with domains other than blogspot.com
allowed via custom URLs.[6] Unlike WordPress.com,
Blogger allows its users to use their own domain free of charge, while
WordPress.com charges around $13 to use a custom domain.[7]Blogger
cannot be installed on a web server. One has to use DNS facilities to redirect
a custom URL to a blogspot domain.
History
On August 23, 1999, Blogger was launched by Pyra Labs. As one of the earliest dedicated
blog-publishing tools, it is credited for helping popularize the format. In
February 2003, Pyra Labs was acquired by Google under undisclosed terms. The acquisition allowed premium
features (for which Pyra had charged) to become free. In October 2004, Pyra
Labs' co-founder, Evan Williams, left Google. In 2004, Google purchased Picasa; it integrated Picasa and its photo sharing
utility Hello into Blogger, allowing
users to post photos to their blogs.
On May 9, 2004, Blogger introduced a major redesign, adding
features such as web standards-compliant templates, individual archive pages for posts,
comments, and posting by email. On August 14, 2006, Blogger launched its latest
version in beta, codenamed
"Invader", alongside the gold release. This migrated users to Google
servers and had some new features, including interface language in French,
Italian, German and Spanish.[9] In December 2006, this new version of Blogger was taken out of
beta. By May 2007, Blogger had completely moved over to Google-operated
servers. Blogger was ranked 16 on the list of top 50 domains in terms of number
of unique visitors in 2007.
On February 24, 2015, Blogger announced that as of late March it
will no longer allow its users to post sexually explicit content, unless the
nudity offers "substantial public benefit," for example in
"artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific contexts."[11] On February 28, 2015, accounting for severe
backlash from long-term bloggers, Blogger reversed its decision on banning
sexual content, going back to the previous policy that allowed explicit images
and videos if the blog was marked as "adult".
Redesign
As part of the Blogger redesign in 2006, all blogs associated
with a user's Google Account were migrated to Google servers. Blogger claims
that the service is now more reliable because of the quality of the servers.[13]
Along with the migration to Google servers, several new features were introduced,
including label organization, a drag-and-drop template editing interface, reading permissions (to create private
blogs) and new Web feed options. Furthermore,
blogs are updated dynamically, as opposed to rewriting HTML files.
In a version of the service called Blogger in Draft,[14] new features are tested before being released
to all users. New features are discussed in the service's official blog.[15] In September 2009, Google introduced new
features into Blogger as part of its tenth-anniversary celebration. The
features included a new interface for post editing, improved image handling, Raw HTML Conversion, and other Google Docs-based implementations, including:
·
Adding location to
posts via geotagging.
·
Post time-stamping at
publication, not at original creation.
·
Vertical re-sizing of
the post editor. The size is saved in a per-user, per-blog preference.
·
Link editing in
compose mode.
·
Full Safari 3 support and fidelity on both Windows and macOS.
·
New Preview dialog
that shows posts in a width and font size approximating what is seen in the
published view.
·
Placeholder image for
tags so that embeds are movable in compose mode.
·
New toolbar with
Google aesthetics, faster loading time, and "undo" and
"redo" buttons, also added the full justification button, a
strike-through button, and an expanded color palette.
In 2010, Blogger introduced new templates and redesigned its
website. The new post editor was criticized for being less reliable than its
predecessor.[16]
Available languages
As of late 2016, Blogger is available in these languages:
Afrikaans, Amharic, Arabic, Basque, Bengali, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Hong
Kong), Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish,
Dutch, English (United Kingdom), English (United States), Estonian, Filipino,
Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian,
Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian,
Malay, Malayalam, Marathi, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil),
Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish
(Latin America), Spanish (Spain), Swahili, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai,
Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese, and Zulu.
Country-specific blogger addresses
Starting in February 2013, Blogger began integrating user blogs
with multiple country-specific URLs. For example,
exampleuserblogname.blogspot.com would be automatically redirected to
exampleuserblogname.blogspot.ca in Canada, exampleuserblogname.blogspot.co.uk in
the United Kingdom. Blogger explained that by doing this they could manage the
blog content more locally so if there was any objectionable material that
violated a particular country's laws they could remove and block access to that
blog for that country through the assigned ccTLD while retaining access through other ccTLD addresses and the
default Blogspot.com URL. However it should be noted that if a blog using a
country-specific URL was removed it is still technically possible to access the
blog through Google's No Country Redirect override by entering the URL using
the regular Blogspot.com address and adding /ncr after the .com.[17]
These redirects have privacy implications for anonymous users:
those who share a link to a Blogger site obtained from their web browser's
address bar may inadvertently reveal which country they are currently in –
unless they fool (e.g. using a VPN service located in
another country) or override the country detection, or manually edit the link
to refer to blogspot.com before sharing it.
Available designs
Blogger allows its users to choose from various templates and
then customize them. Users may also choose to create their own templates using CSS. The new design template, known as
"Dynamic View", was introduced on 31 August 2011[18] with Dynamic Views being introduced on 27
September 2011.[19] It is built with AJAX, HTML5, and CSS3. The time for loading
is 40 percent shorter than traditional templates, and allows user to present
blog in seven different ways: classic, flipcard, magazine, mosaic, sidebar,
snapshot, and timeslide. Readers still have the option to choose preferable
views when the blog owner has set a default view.[20] Some of the widgets (e.g., Labels, Profile,
Link List, Subscription Links, Followers and Blog Archive etc.) are available
for Dynamic Views; other templates are chosen by the blogger.
In April 2013, Blogger updated its HTML template editor that has
some improvements to make it easy for the users to edit the blog's source code.
The editor was updated with syntax highlight, number line and jump-to-widget
button for ease of editing the code.
For over half a year dynamic views users were suffering from a bug causing custom CSS and page navigation often
not to load properly. This happened because a JavaScript routine rendered the page before it was loaded. A blogger user
fixed the template and published the fix.
Integration
·
The Google Toolbar has a feature called "BlogThis!"
which allows toolbar users with Blogger accounts to post links directly to
their blogs.
·
"Blogger for
Word" is an add-in for Microsoft Word which allows users to save a Microsoft Word document directly to
a Blogger blog, as well as edit their posts both on- and offline. As of January
2007, Google says "Blogger for Word is not currently compatible with the
new version of Blogger", and they state no decision has been made about
supporting it with the new Blogger. However, Microsoft Office 2007 adds native support for a variety of blogging systems, including
Blogger.
·
Blogger supports
Google's AdSense service as a way of
generating revenue from running a blog.
·
Blogger also started
integration with Amazon Associates in December
2009, as a service to generate revenue.[23] It was not publicly announced, but by September 2011 it appeared
that all integration options had been removed and that the partnership had
ended.
·
Windows Live Writer, a standalone app of the Windows Live suite, publishes directly to Blogger.
·
Blogger can be optionally
integrated with Google+.
·
Google+ comments can
be integrated with blogger comments.
·
The Campaigns tab in
Blogger dashboard links to Adwords making it easier to create ads.
Blogger on mobile devices
Blogger has launched mobile applications for users with mobile
devices. Users can post and edit blogs, and also share photos and links on
Blogger through their mobile devices. Not only advanced mobile devices, such as
smartphones, are being considered, since users can also post blogs via
traditional cell phones by SMS and MMS.
The major two mobile operating systems that Blogger focuses on are Android and iOS.Blogger allow users
to edit blogs anywhere through the app and either publish the blogs or save
them as drafts. Quick navigation from posts and drafts is accessible from a
list. Users can attach photos by taking a picture with a Blogger app or
selecting pictures from their photo galleries. Sharing current locations on
posts is also possible by tabbing My Location bar and adding locations. Users
can also share photos and links directly to Blogger.
Blogger also provides dynamic mobile views for the blogging compatibility
with mobile devices and smartphones. They enhance the readability accuracy on
these smart devices, but editing a blog on the blogger app remains an open
issue for the users.
Limitations
Blogger has the following limitations on content storage and
bandwidth, per user account:[31]
·
Blog
description – 500 characters max; Hyper Text Markup
Language markup not supported
·
Number
of blogs – 100 blogs per
account
·
Number
of labels – 5,000 unique labels
per blog (an increase from the original 2,000), 20 unique labels per post (with
at most 200 characters)
·
Number
of pictures – Ordinarily, Up to 1
GB of total storage, shared with Picasa Web. If you've upgraded to Google+, your photos will be stored in Google Photos, where you have 15GB of storage space shared with Gmail and Drive. However, if one has signed up for Google+ account, images less
than 16 megapixels (4920 x 3264)[32] would not be counted to this storage limit. For users not signed
up for Google+, 800 x 800 pixels and below images would not be included in this
storage space.
·
Number
of posts – There is no limit on
the number of posts one can have in one blog. However, only 50 posts can be
published per day before a user is required to go through a check process.
·
Size
of pages – Individual pages
(the main page of a blog or archive pages) are limited to 1 MB
·
Size
of pictures – If posted via
Blogger Mobile, limited 250 KB per picture; posted pictures are scaled to 1600px
·
Number
of Pages – There is no limit on
the number of pages you can have on one blog
·
Team
members (those who can write
to a blog) – 100 invitations per blog
·
Favicon – Any square image
less than 100KB
·
Account
Suspension: If your site violating
any terms of service, your site will be suspended by Blogger without any
notice. Sometimes repeated violation may cause your whole Google account to be
suspended.[34]
On February 18, 2010, Blogger introduced "auto-pagination", which limited
the number of posts that could be displayed on each page, often causing the
number of posts on the main page to be less than that specified by the user and
leading to a hostile response from some users.
Private blogs are limited to only 100 members.
Support
The official support channel is the Blogger Product Forum. This online discussion forum, delivered using
Google Groups, serves Blogger users of varying experience, and receives some
monitoring from Google staff. "Top contributors" are
community-members nominated by the Google staff who enjoy additional privileges
including managing discussions and direct access to Google staff. There is
likely to be a top contributor or other knowledgeable person reading the forum
almost all the time.
A number of people, including some top contributors, run
personal blogs where they offer advice and post information about common
problems.
StackExchange's Web Applications forum has a tag for "blogger",
which is used for questions about various blogging platforms, including
Blogger.
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