Blogspot: What people should know before starting a Blogger's blog

It always amazes me how easy it is to start a blogpost and how Blogger invites every citizen of the world to have a blog without giving any previous information of the problems ahead.

Such demand makes spam-blogs proliferate, they steal content of blogs just to pretend they are bloggers and put the advertisements at the pages, and give false hopes of an easy way to make money through blogs.

Some people only start a blog thinking that it will easily become a source of extra-income and get frustrated not only because it doesn't happen but also because they realize that they have no skills to blog.

Others start because having a Google account grants a blog, but, lose the account means "goodbye blog!".

More blogs, more problems and those who are working for years receive the same help of a beginner that has four posts. The work of four years can be deleted the same way as the work of someone who created a blogspot last Monday.

In both cases no help will be provided when something serious happens what can be checked just by visiting any page of the Blogger's help forum: bloggers are treated with harsh words when in trouble and answers are not given to the vast majority of the requests for help.

I read this post at The Real Blogger Status:

"The discussion about Blogger account and blog access recovery, and authentication requirements, never ends. It is not at all a simple issue. Occasionally, we see the extreme cases, and the frustration."

I had both my blogs shut last April, "unusual activity detected" and it was a terrible experience.

I did recover both, it costed me numerous visits to the help forum and blogs of those who work helping bloggers, but I learned that it is very hard to receive any kind of help from Blogger.

Why they keep asking people to start a blog is a mystery for me and I believe that as the blogosphere is new and it will take time and work to make people understand that blog is a big universe and there are blogs of many kinds maybe more attention should be focused on educating people to respect bloggers, some people still don't see even journalistic bloggers as serious.

Creating a way that facilitates finding good content that are being created by many bloggers is necessary.

It would also be great if those who are blogging for a certain period of time could have their work protected of being easily deleted.

If you are considering starting a blog pay attention to all information you give, make backups weekly and welcome to the bloggerhood.

How to upload .gif animated to blogspot

At "Settings" go to the "Basic" tag and check "Updated editor" when an image .gif animated (those images that moves) is being uploaded.

If the "Old Editor is checked the image will freeze in only one picture and will not work.

It is easy as that and still it took me years to solve it. I hope it helps.

Make comments easier in Blogspot

Many bloggers don't use the pop-up option for comments and I'm not sure if it is their choice or it's because they didn't notice that the default "full page" form can be changed.

When I click at comment and I'm linked to the full page comments I feel disappointed for some reasons.

The most important is that the "captcha" verification appears after clicking "Publish comment" and maybe people don't notice it and leave the comment but it is not saved.

Changing to the pop-up window requires four clicks at blogspot:

Click "Settings" & "Comments" & "check the "pop-up window" & "Save" - look at the picture and you'll see it very clear.

I truly believe this is the most friendly way to set the comments since the visitor can see the whole page and click at "Leave comment" again.

Many times I didn't go back to the main page of the blog and it must happen to many visitors.

Give pop-up window a chance.

Update 11/07/2011:

It's only possible to change this way using the old version of Bloggers as Ken Foster noticed. He switched back to the old version to make the change.

How to remove the borders of pictures at Blogger

Sometimes taking the borders of the images creates a very interesting atmosphere and it is very easy to get rid of them. At the "edit html" add the code style="border:none;""display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" You must do it before writing or adding other images at the post otherwise you can lose the edition of the whole post. It took a while to figure out why I was not doing it correctly. You can find at this blog done by Peter Enviroment lots of answers for some Blogger problems. Have a great week!