Switching to New Blogger
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Blogger just gave me my invitation to switch over to the New Blogger so most of this weekend will be spent making my template. I’m mostly looking forward to using my custom domain name http://www.blogbloke.com, but so far I’m disappointed with my experiment that’s yielded undesirable results.
I will be adding my (insightful 
comments to this post as I proceed down this journey so come back and check it out.
Filed under: blog bloke, instabloke, blog, blogging, new blogger
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Well, good luck, Bloke. Someone as blog-savvy as you shouldn’t have any problems. I had some issues with the new blogger until I understood how to use the widgets. Now that I know, it’s really tons more user friendly.
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I’ll be needing more than luck Gem. I’m in widget hell right now and I might be calling on you for help, so keep the phone handy
I’m very quickly discovering all of the limitations with widgets, and the little buggers will only let me drag page elements to where they want them to go.
Trying to edit the HTML directly is also proving to be annoying. My template is a little complicated with a lot of fussy details, and in some cases it won’t let me write code the way that I’m used to.
For example, it doesn’t like blog search items that I use as categories for my top menu. What’s that all about huh?
Sigh, it’s back to the drawing board again. Ain’t we having fun?
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It sure would be nice if they gave us a few undo levels in the edit HTML section. Not that I’m complaining of course.
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Ok, now I know why I couldn’t drag an element over to the post area. The long and short of it is you can’t drag an element out of its section.
So I had to add this code which was missing in the ’section class’ area for posts: ” showaddelement=’yes’ “.
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I really miss working from a blog editor instead of in the Blogger dashboard. The edit window is too small and it lacks features such as undo, html shortcuts, etc.
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Hey Bloke, here are 2 things you might want to consider.
1.) Do not work in the little editor window. Select All, copy and paste into your favorite text editor, then copy back. I have always worked this way and it makes it a lot easier. I get a quicker backup and the benefit of my favorite editor, TextPad.
2.) If you want a widget in a area that it will not drag/drop, just move the whole line from one area to another. Here is an example (http://www.phourd.com which is just a test site for me), I wanted the Feeds in the body area above the post area, not in the sidebar. I just moved each line to where I wanted it in the HTML editor.
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Expanding Widgets not required for this or most things.
Not sure why the editor issue is a problem. I have programmed for 20 years using an external editor, always gives me a flexible method and a live backup.
IMHO, and I know what that is worth, lol…..
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I’m just a whiner, or hadn’t you figured that out yet old time old timer.
The editor is an issue for me because until Blogger went beta, I could download my template with just one click of the mouse in w.bloggar.
But now it’s four steps: Right-click, select all, copy and paste into another application.
Crikey, my fingers are bleeding!
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I wasn’t able to spend as much time as I wanted this weekend (in fact I have to take my daughter out tobbogganing as I speak).
But at least it is half done and I think I know what I’m doing now. The main page is ready and now I just have to do the post page which is significantly different with lots of fiddling to do.
I’m not in any hurry anyhow because my experiment with Custom Domains is so far a dismal failure.
It ain’t working yet and I don’t know if it is GoDaddy’s fault or Blogger. Of course when I called GoDaddy they blamed it on Blogger. Calling Blogger was a waste of time because they refuse to take support calls (even when I was picking up the long distance tab). And of course there’s no point emailing Blogger because they will just take several days to just refer me to a useless help file that I’ve already read and doesn’t help.
That’s probably my biggest gripe with Blogger. Their support is a joke, but wadda ya want for nothing. Fiddly-dee indeed.
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Wish you the best of luck, just went through the same and am quite happy right now!
Craig
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Thanks Craig. My dot.com still isn’t working. Are you using GoDaddy?
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Network Solutions is what I am using, what happens when you do an NS Lookup on your dot.com? I got:
server: park9.secureserver.net
email: [email protected]
Doesn’t look like your CNAME changes took place.
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Craig, I’m getting conflicting information about this. Did you:
1. Use Google Apps to set this up?
2. Add to the A Host DNS?
3. And/or add to the CNAME Alias?
I got it working but only with the www prefix. But I did so many things it’s hard to know what works and what doesn’t.
I also have another idea how to do it but it would be so much easier if we could talk directly. Can you email me your tel no.? We could also try GoogleTalk but my microphone has gone wonky. Thanks.
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My register is Network Solutions and what I did was simply configure the CNAMES as my blogs run on a subdomain (craig.cmehil.com) and for the WWW.cmehil.com and cmehil.com I configured a web forwarding through the registar with domain masking. My setup of course is quite a bit simpler than yours as I had no need of the Custom Domain on the www or the domain itself.
So now I have GAFYD for cmehil.com and all the personal start pages, page builder, email, calendar the whole works and it’s all working quite nicely. One or two small glitches with other Google services not related but I’m working at it…
I left a message with contact info on MyBlogLog for you.
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Thanks Craig. I don’t see your message yet.
Can you clarify if you are using FTP or Blogspot for hosting? Do you have any pics of your setup? Thanks.
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Still not got my message? Hmmm strange….
I’m using the Custom Domain - I should have a blog up (http://craig.cmehil.com) showing how I switched and explaining in more detail you can also find my contact info and all there on the site - be happy to do a online conference and share my desktop and walk you through what I did.
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