1.2.4.1 Blogging by e-mail
You need not go to blogger.com every time you have something interesting to write. You can just e-mail our post, and blogger will automatically publish it. To enable this feature, visit the “Email” link under the Settings tab. The Mail-to-Blogger Address is the address to which you need to send your e-mail posts for the blog to be updated. The BlogSend Address is the email ID where Blogger will send a copy of the post to, each time the blog is updated.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication/Rich Site Summary) is a system by which Web sites can inform their Readers when the site is updated. Through this system a site can create a small file, called a Feed, containing information about the updated content. Readers can use Feed Readers to subscribe to the RSS system of the Web site. Feed readers access the site’s feed available at a particular URL, and display the content to readers who can remain informed of site changes—without visiting the site. Most feeds offer only a small part of the updated content, acting as an appetizer for the reader to visit the site to read all the content.
Blogger supports the RSS system, which is enabled by default. You can control the feed settings or disable it from the Site Feed link under the Settings tab. The site feed URL displayed on the page is the URL that feed readers need to be directed to to access your blog’s feeds. Under the Descriptions heading, you can choose to send entire blog posts to subscribers, or just a small part to whet their interest so that they visit your blog and read the rest. Akin to the user’s signature in an e-mail, an Article Footer is additional text appended to the content in the RSS feed. If you desire to insert an Article Footer, it can be done in the adjoining text box.
Blogger also allows you to add an Adsense (discussed elsewhere) text ad as an Article Footer.
A Blog can become a common ground for members of a team or organisation to collectively record their views. Take the Blogger blog for instance (http://buzz.blogger.com/). A unified blog frees the reader and other team members from the need to visit the individual blogs of each team member to know what they’ve been thinking.
You can add team members under the Members link in the Settings tab. The names of the team members show up under the Contributors title on the blog. A post has its contributor’s name associated with it. Members need to have individual Blogger IDs to be able to participate, since each member has to log in using his ID. Ordinary members cannot alter blog settings or modify other member’s blogs—administrators (Admins) can. So before according that status to a member, be sure you know what you are doing. Ordinary members can be promoted to Admins from the same page.
One of the advantages of online journals is that the writer is freed from the worry of keeping track of his earlier posts. A prolific blogger, had he been using pen and paper, would be quickly burdened with the need to find storage space for the stacks of journals, and once stored, retrieving would be another bother. For blogs, this is a non-issue. Earlier entries can be periodically archived, so unwanted clutter can be avoided on the blog page. At the same time, they can be easily accessed.
Under the Archiving link in the Settings tab, you can choose the frequency with which this archiving occurs. Entries that are archived are visible under the Archives link on the blog.
Under the same link, you can also decide whether to allocate one page per post. Doing this allocates a URL to each blog entry. Compared to having many blog entries on a single page, the one page-per-post layout allows readers to go directly to a specific post without scrolling through an entire page of posts trying to find the one they want to look at. The flip side is that there will be a lot of clicking to be done if someone wants to read through a week of posts. It is recommended you use the one-page-per-post layout if your posts tend to be about a page in length; if you only jot a few lines in most of your posts, it is better to avoid this layout.
Readers of your blog would like to be able to air their views on it— they might agree or disagree with what you’ve expressed, or they might just want to offer words of appreciation. The Comments link grants the ability to manage readers’ comments. If you would like what others have to say about your thoughts to appear on your blog, you can choose to Show, otherwise, hide them. Under the “Who Can Comment?” title, you can decide whether all readers should be given the power to comment, or whether it should be restricted to registered members of the blog.
If you’d like to be informed whenever a comment is added to your blog, you can enter the e-mail ID you’d prefer the alerts to be sent to in the Comment Notification Address field. To avoid irresponsible comments or spam turning up on your blog, it is best to enable Comment Moderation. This way, every time a reader who is not a member of the blog adds a comment, you are informed by e-mail, and the comment doesn’t show up on the blog unless you choose so.
The popularity of your blog can be determined by the number of other sites linking to it: say someone with a blog of his own reads your blog and likes what you have said, and offers a link to your blog on his. This would be called a back-link. Enabling back-links will reveal the number of other sites that have linked to your post.
Word Verification is a feature that can prevent the use of software programs to enter comments, mostly spam, to your blog. Word Verification uses an image containing a series of digits or letters as a part of the commenting process. Since only human beings can decipher the content of the image, such commenting programs can be blocked. Enabling Word Verification is recommended.
You can choose to host the blog you create at Blogger.com at some other host besides blogspot.com. Blogger allows you to configure the service so that every time you click on the Publish button at blogger.com, the blog on the other host gets updated. The server settings are included under the Publishing link.
Weblogs is a blog indexing service that keeps updated information about all blogs. Someone tracking blogs—newly-created or newly-updated blogs—can find the latest information at Weblogs.com. Blogger can be configured to notify Weblogs every time your blog is updated. This way, your blog will figure in the recently-updated blogs list at Weblogs.com.
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