As we mentioned in the previous post, Eric Case works on Developer Relations at Google, he has also worked on the Blogger team for several years as well. We majorly love Blogger-it’s super customizable, videobloggable and FREE! We have been touting Blogger since day one on Freevlog.org, because it’s easy for beginners to just pick up and go. We all know that in the last two years Wordpress and Six Apart have grown a bunch while Blogger seemingly remained stagnant. Finally Blogger fans can rejoice as Blogger gets a supreme overhaul with the inclusion of labels (catagories), the template editor of our dreams, instant publishing (no more spinny thing) and a streamlined dashboard.
Many of us die hard users have been skeptical of Blogger Beta (when I switch over will my blog get messed up?!) and nervous because of the many many outages and errors that have been happening recently. This is why we were so excited to have the chance to sit down with Eric and get the details on what is going down at Blogger Beta. Enjoy!
[tags]ericcase, google, blogger, blogger beta, sanfrancisco, ryanishungry[/tags]
This was great – I’m at work right now and… I… think I might take the leap. Or “migrate”
I hope this goes smoothly.
Do you know if you have a massively altered blog-template if their new drag-and-drop layout will get along… or am I about to really screw my design up.
Hi Mike,
No, migrating your blog won’t mess up your template – you can keep your current template as long as you like, as Layouts-mode is optional in the beta. (if you wish to use Layouts for your current template though, you’ll need to port it by hand; here’s the Blogger Help section that explains more about Layouts: http://help.blogger.com/bin/topic.py?topic=9084 )
Thanks!
-Eric
I really enjoy bieng on blog side on google because very much more than what i know before you will find any site that can something and still pay you either.
Hi Ryanne, Jay and Eric,
This was a really great video.
It’s The Long Tail of Blogspot videos.
You wouldn’t see this covered on the nightly news.
I made a new blog with blogger beta, but haven’t moved over my existing blogs because I thought that there would be a problem with my custom template.
Now I’ll look into it some more.
Thanks eric for doing the video and following the comments here!
–Steve
http://offonatangent.blogspot.com
I want to know why Blogger Beta doesn’t allow e-mail publishing with images. So that MobBlogs can be created without the trouble of Mobile Blogger or the fact that you have to be in the US. It would be so great to allow people to contribute to a public blog if e-mail publishing included image inclusion.
This is a very cool thing. I’ve been playing with my blog for hours at work. It’s really awesome to be able to store my pictures on it and be able to look at other peoples blogs.
Interesting video; I must have been in the first migratory wave as I have been enjoying Beta for a couple of months now. Works great!
Sounds great hearing the explanation of what Blogger Beta is.
Sweet! I’m setting mine up now!
-Rick (mr. trendi)
hey i really enjoyed your blog even on this small screened psp!
kinda cool huh? lol
Great to hear about Blogger Beta at strength.
The Beta is definately better than the previous blogger, but templates are 100x more complex with all these “widget” things. The code looks messier and it looks harder to make even a basic template.
I can do CSS + XHTML just fine, but I think this new template system will be too complex for 95% of users.
Thanks for visiting my blog, and for pointing us here. we got really fed up when beta was doing crazy things last weekend. We also find the template is less flexible than the old one. Labels are useful but haven’t worked out how to reduce the font size – or prevent them displaying.
Thanks
Kevin the Collie
not bad for a dog, eh?
Thanks Eric – I’ll check it out. I’ll have to wait to switch though… I have too many sites
I moved to the beta version some time ago and I think it’s so much better than the old blogger.
How ’bout a story about Eric Case’s former Spanish teacher in Marietta, OH and her reaction when she signed in to update her blog and saw “Enrique” Case’s sweet and smiling face right there on the screen in front of her?
Way to go, Eric!!!!!!!!!!
Sra. W.
I am disappointed with Blogger Beta although I appreciate that I may be the problem.
My reason is that I recently joined ‘The Methoblog.’ Unfortunately not only does my place in Blogroll seem to have a different page rather than front page
BUT
My new posts do not get individually posted to the up to date new posts of the bloggers but I seem to dominate the whole thing with loads of mine appearing – only they tend to one (it varies which) of the older ones.
Not surprisingly this drives the others mad and yesterday I had to be withdrawn from this site. I am back but the problem is there again. So I am in a situation where this needs to be resolved or the only way I can remain is to move to Typepad or some other domain.
The people producing “The Methoblog” reckon that this problem only really exists with Blogger Beta users!
So tell me, do I stay or do I go as ‘The Clash’ would put it?
A Little History:
I initially used blogger to document a 3-day 250 mile bike ride “on the fly”. I have my own website (currently undergoing renovation) and I set up a subsite for the bike ride [http://www.martinator.com/bikenj]. My host provider supplied a Blog application (Coronto) that sufficed for the time up to the ride, but I wanted to see if I could post photos and comments on the fly. The blog app didn’t do that.
Fortunately, I worked something out where I could email photos up to flickr, have them auto posted to Blogger, which would then FTP the blog to my host where I included it on my bike Page. I had reasons for uploading to Flickr and not straight to blogger.
So anyway, that worked out really well.
Recently, I got the blog itch again. So I decided to just use blogger and not deal with my hosts blog app.
Being a web designer/developer (stress the latter) I wanted to customize my Minima template. I customized the crap out of it, adding styles, custom bullets, and date dependant messaging/images/backgrounds/styles.
Cool.
But when I switched over to Beta, all that went away. Good thing Blogger had the foresite to let me revert. I reverted back. But I still wanted to use some of the new features (widgets) on beta. so I created a blog (test new template [http://martin8rtemplatetest.blogspot.com/]) and I did all my customization and experimentation there.
Then when I was satisfied with that, I migrated my main blog [martin8r.blogspot.com] all I had to do was incorporate the modifications from my test bed. a bit of manual labor, but worth while.
So in short: I recommend creating a new blog in beta and test it out before migrating all you other blogs over to it.
i like the beta… so smooth and much easier to use. thanks to blogger team. more power!!!
Hello,
I suggest a function on the Blog, I call “Revert IT”. Let’s say my trip finished, and the blog won’t receive more stories. But I want to keep it for the future.
The revert function would invert all the posts, so the first post would go first, and so on, so for a reader that wants to follow the whole blog, it’s easier than going from bottom to the top.
Tks !
Hi Eric, thanks for making that video. It answered a lot of questions. I’m curious why the migrate feature tells me my blog cannot be moved though. Is it just not time yet?
Damn, that Eric Case is HOT!
Does anyone else think he looks like Jason Kottke?
HI, i moved to new version and recieved a confirmation e-mail. I used my google account but I can’t add new images to my old post. Everytime I tried to add images from Photobucket, Only the letters shows up. What seems to be the problem?
thanks
how do i put stuff on my blog??
so, is ‘beta’ ready for primetime and should i go ahead and switch? or is this something that is going to happen automatically in the next month or so.
If i have multiple team members and I change to the new version, will it be apparent to the users how to update to get a gmail account (not sure they have gmail accounts)?
P.S. I stopped by Google on my road trip about a week ago to thank you guys for making such an awesome product, security told me no visits. lol. Thanks anyway!
My family has a blogger site and we love it. Due to the satisfaction site I had on my families site I thought it would be great to create another site for my soccer teams. i caoch college soccer and have taken videos of random stuff during the season including interviews and highlight videos. I am discouraged though because as I get more in to this I find that I can’t make a video longer than 5-7 minutes on any of the video blog sites such as youtube. I am wondering if there is a possibiliey of going beyond 20 minutes of video anywhere on the net. I saw what was titled ” the longest video in you tube history.” But am stumped as to have such a lengthy video…hopefully with a little better quality. Any assistance would be appreciated.
Thank you!
Great interview. Hearing from the people behind the tools really strengthens my persective of the organization. And I’m digging the red background and screenshot effects.
Thanks for the video. I have not switched to beta blogger yet. I am just worried that all of my posts will disappear. That happened to some of the early adopters. But you did not really touch on that issue. I assume it has been resolved but it would have been nice to hear.
Posting videos;
Two questions. Is there a code or area for blogger beta, to post videos and what file types are allowed?
I thought there were tutorials for this but have not been able to find them nor any info for video on blogger beta on a google search.
2. The template tutorials tell you to press a tab that is not there for editing.
I am very familiar with web building but not blogging Can anyone help?
thank you
great spokesperson you have there in ERIC CASE.
your written instructions are far better than most web-writing out there…but add eric’c clear speaking style and you have a winner!
i’d vote for him.
p.
this is my first blog but i already have plans for more; thanks for the helpful start).
I’m in dire need of your help…i made 3 blogs and i cannot retrieve them…i didn’t jot down neither email addresses nor the login/pw info…(i know i should have now!)…i would sign into the blogger-beta…now that’s no longer available and its been awhile since i’ve last logged in…i forgot everything…please help!