Blogger.com unveils new beta version

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1. Vlad
   

   August 14th, 2006 at 3:48 pm

   Wordpress is still better!

2. Faisal
   

   August 14th, 2006 at 3:57 pm

   Marshall,

   The link for the beta is wrong , you need to correct it.

   ..

3. Ethan
   

   August 14th, 2006 at 4:02 pm

   I loved blogger back in the day - I still love it…even though I’ve grown way beyond it and turned to WordPress (I heart Wordpress). Its good to see an substantial update of Blogger. As for the whole drag and drop functionality, its not an innovative feature as is quoted above. While I’m sure there are others, I first noticed a drag and drop functional template for WordPress when I ran across Kiwi (http://no.oneslistening.com/kiwi). Hot on the heels of Kiwi, we now have Canvas (http://www.freshpursuits.com/canvas/).

4. Marshall Kirkpatrick
   

   August 14th, 2006 at 4:04 pm

   Thanks. And yes, Vlad, Wordpress is still better if that’s what you’re looking for - I agree. But for fast, free and easy - blogger fills an important niche.

5. Peter
   

   August 14th, 2006 at 4:07 pm

   I refuse to believe that blogger.com has anything to do with Google. This blogger.com product is by far the worst product/service that exists on the net today. It has always been and continues to be notoriously buggy and underperforming. The site randomly goes down, it turns all your posts into drafts (today), it gives the little spinner ‘waiting forever’ page that rarely ever comes back. It’s just an atrocious product from top to bottom.

   How the entire technical staff hasn’t been fired 5 times over by now is really just a complete mystery to me. Who at blogger.com knows a bigwig at Google.com?

   Seriously, a usability upgrade? Does that mean it will start working on occasion? I remember - shoot - so many times - reading http://atrios.blogspot.com/ - about every other day he’d be like, “bloggered again” -> meaning, he once again got ‘effed in the a’, as Cartman would say, by blogger.com.

   You can paint a turd gold…

6. Faisal
   

   August 14th, 2006 at 4:17 pm

   I agree Peter , its different from the rest of Google products.

   Its worst since its not as good and stable as the rest of the products, and:

   Its better in term of look and feel , its the only Google products that looks really good , i remember it was awarded for its design , we obviously know why.. it was not designed by Google in the first place.

7. Marshall Kirkpatrick
   

   August 14th, 2006 at 4:26 pm

   Gmail is unavailable once or twice every week and I still love it.

8. Keith L. Dick
   

   August 14th, 2006 at 4:29 pm

   As with all BETA’s I tend to let others test ‘em then wait till the final release… Saves me alot of headaches… hehe

9. Blog The Internet
   

   August 14th, 2006 at 4:44 pm

   I am sure wordpress will still be better… however, I am still curious to see how it will all pan out.

10. Cody Mays
    

    August 14th, 2006 at 5:07 pm

    It will be interesting to see if blogging goes a bit more public after blogger gets integraded into your google account. I’m pretty sure blogging would be huge if there was a blogger/myspace mashup.

    Anyway, blogger is a great product for people who don’t have hosting as well. It is becoming easy to create web pages without paying for a thing now-a-days. All you need is a flickr/zooomr account and a free blog.

    ~Cody
    http://www.threadbound.com

11. Dare Obasanjo
    

    August 14th, 2006 at 5:40 pm

    >Drag and drop layout. That’s downright innovative

    I assume this is sarcasm since MSN Spaces had this when it shipped almost two years ago.

12. Search Engines WeB
    

    August 14th, 2006 at 5:52 pm

    This feature is quite interesting - controlling WHO can read your blog.

    This will be like a private Extranet - where people will just share info exclusively among an invited group.

    http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=42673

13. Yellek
    

    August 14th, 2006 at 5:55 pm

    Still no trackback support mentioned. It surprises me that this isn’t one of the features that they are adding. No trackbacks and a lack of categories or tags was the reason I ditched blogger and went to Wordpress. It looks like they only fixed it 50%.

14. ginchy
    

    August 14th, 2006 at 6:13 pm

    I agree that blogs should be accessible by anyone. What we need is a new word for referring to a private blog. I propose the term “plog”, because I think it sound funny.

    If people are really uptight about keeping their blogs private, they might want to look into this new innovation I was reading about. How it works is, users sort of draw text by hand onto sheets of paper that are bound between protective covers. The device is called a “diary”, or possibly “dairy”, I forget which. Anyway, they’re supposedly impossible to hack without physical access, and useless for comment spamming. Seems just crazy enough to work.

15. Mike
    

    August 14th, 2006 at 6:13 pm

    I’m fascinated by the post from Peter. I’m a huge fan of Google as a search engine and as a coprorate citizen, but it’s just ridiculous to think that they can’t produce or support buggy software.

    Google is staffed by a bunch of humans, and like every other large enterprise they have to prioritize their resources. 95% of Google’s energy goes into building, protecting, and expanding their core business (as well it should). As the organization gets bigger and bigger, more and more of their non-core products are likely to appear buggier and buggier.

    Google may be one of the great technology companies in the world (I believe they are), but they are not going to solve all of our software service needs and we should not be shocked when they fail.

    For examples of this, see every great company ever.

16. Jonathan Mendez
    

    August 14th, 2006 at 7:36 pm

    Wonder what took them so long to get around to this….

17. blake robinson
    

    August 14th, 2006 at 8:26 pm

    I’ve been playing around with Vox.com a bit lately. They offer a relatively nice feature set and I’d argue the site has some potential. Probably the most notable goings on there are the seamless integrations of various forms of media into users’ blogs. Sure there are more robust options out there, but I suspect Vox is going to make a significant impact amongst basic bloggers. The integration of Blogger into Google Accounts is quite appealing to me, however.

18. Dmitry
    

    August 14th, 2006 at 9:44 pm

    adding a JavaScript now is a hack. So any movement in this direction is always good

19. qureyoon
    

    August 14th, 2006 at 10:30 pm

    well, it’s no doubt that maybe google is neglecting blogger a little bit but with all the blogger server down, bloggers cant logged in, some missing their template, i’ve experienced this too, and almost all bloggers do i think so this must be up to somethin ! dontcha think ?

    and there it is, a better blogger for all of us

    blogger back then still have the potential to be more powerfull, as of wordpress, and others, can you think of an improvement on them ? guess not
    i’ll have to admit that sometimes i decided to move on to wordpress but i believe that google will not leave blogger

    so we all have our opinion, let’s not say which one is better
    just enjoy the new blogger ^^

    hehehe….

20. Paddy Tan
    

    August 14th, 2006 at 10:40 pm

    Hope that after this beta version, it will be a more stable and less problematic blogger.com

21. xiaolang
    

    August 15th, 2006 at 12:17 am

    The new Blogger version will be available as invitation-only for the moment. “The Blogger in beta program is going to start out small, so only a low percentage of people who log in to Blogger will see the option to switch over. If you’re one of them, you’ll see a blue box in the sidebar of your dashboard highlighting the new Blogger in beta.”
    If you want to test the new Blogger by creating a new blog you can do that at beta.blogger.com. Here’s a test blog created with the new platform and a tour that shows the new features.
    I must say it’s much faster to publish posts and upload pictures. Blogger also looks much better and it’s more responsive. Although the advantages of the dynamic pages are obvious, it will be interesting to see if they will handle the traffic the same as the static pages. There’s one area where I don’t see improvements: the comment form is still on a separate page. All in all, the much expected Blogger update is one of the biggest Google news of the year.
    (新的Blogger版本暂时只有受到邀请的人可以使用。“Blogger的beta项目计划小规模的开始，所以只有很少比例的用户在登陆Blogger的时候会发现转换到新版本的选项。如果你是其中之一，你会在控制台边条处看到一个蓝色的按钮，高亮的显示the new Blogger in beta。”如果你希望尝试新版的Blogger，可以在beta.blogger.com创建新的blog。这里有使用新的平台所创建test blog，另外itour会展示这些新的特性。
    我必须要说发布贴子和上传图片的速度大大加快。Blogger业看起来更好更多互动。虽然动态页面的好处是很明显的，但是我们还要看他们是否能像静态页面那样处理好数据流量。也有一些地方我并没有看到改进：评论表格仍然放置在一个独立的页面。总之，万众期待的Blogger升级是Google今年最大的新闻。)

    总体看来,这次BETA的出现是Google正式入主Blogger的开始
    Blogger的各种功能也更加完善和美观

    Blogger, come on! Google,come on!

22. Anshul
    

    August 15th, 2006 at 12:19 am

    Blogger really needed this update. Users were migrating to wordpress.com and typepad. The integration of google accounts with blogger will definitely make blogger more attractive and easier to use.

23. Mike Abundo
    

    August 15th, 2006 at 12:40 am

    I want domain mapping.

24. Sean at Prompt
    

    August 15th, 2006 at 12:40 am

    Blogger’s not perfect, but I’ve always found it adequate for my needs. It’s not the most fully featured blogging tool, but it’s easy to use and quick to setup, even using fairly sophisticated customised templates. The publishing does hang occasionally, but I can’t say I’ve experienced many other problems with it. Private blogs have been offered previously by etribes in the UK, and possibly by others too.

25. Jasper
    

    August 15th, 2006 at 1:11 am

    Outstanding, new features. The previous method of template editing was tiresome, even for an experienced web designer. This may explain why there was a recurrence of the previously experienced error “001 java.io.IOException: No space left on deviceblog”. For more of a discussion on that, see this entry.

26. Amit Agarwal
    

    August 15th, 2006 at 2:09 am

    “…Blogger.com will now publish individual posts to the Blogspot servers, instead of republishing the entire blog after each post..”

    I am not sure if it was ever required to republish the entire blog after each post. It was only done when you changed any of the blogger settings or the template design.

    Looks like Blogger has now removed the manual republishing option and it will be done automatically at the server side. I just hope there’s no waiting period.

27. Blong
    

    August 15th, 2006 at 7:02 am

    “Many people say that private blogs are counter intuitive and that anything you post online should be understood as being for public consumption..” I’m curious about the many people, and their reasons for saying this.

    Thanks.

28. Peter
    

    August 15th, 2006 at 8:14 am

    And they STILL don’t show an RSS button on their pages. Sure, they have RSS. It’s just hidden (and don’t tell me everyone can deal with autodiscovery - they can’t).

    It’s as if blogger doesn’t *want* people to subscribe to their feeds.

    And also, the RSS2.0 doesn’t have enclosures, which is the one reason to use RSS2.0. This is 2006!

29. Keith
    

    August 15th, 2006 at 8:33 am

    Nice piece of news. Would be looking forward to test it out myself.

30. Kayt Sukel
    

    August 15th, 2006 at 9:46 am

    This is nothing new. Multiply has had these same privacy and tagging features for years.

31. subcorpus
    

    August 15th, 2006 at 1:24 pm

    gmail down once or twice a week … ??
    me don’t think so …
    i’m in asia … and it has never been down since i signed up …
    which was pretty early … hehe …
    dunno why it down for u guys …

32. Master Gunner
    

    August 15th, 2006 at 2:12 pm

    I was contemplating moving to Wordpress or Typepad, recently. The only reason I wanted to possibly move was the ability to tag (categorize) posts.

    Is this Karma?

    (also, I read somewhere that current user-customized templates wouldn’t be compatible with the “new” Blogger… does that mean I would have to re-do mine from scratch?)

33. mahalie
    

    August 15th, 2006 at 2:25 pm

    I doubt Blogger (Googger? Bloggle?) is trying to compete with Wordpress. I’m a Wordpress user, however, I’ve set up Blogger blogs for some non-tech savvy clients because it’s so easy for them to use and I don’t have to upgrade it on thier servers (of course, this was before WordPress.com).

    The dynamic pages will be a huge performance upgrade but I have to admit, I liked that everything used to be written to html files. *ducks* Oh yes, it was great for search engine rankings, making your site seem more like a big resource and less like just another blog (if you chose the FTP publish option as opposed to name.blogspot.com).

    One other point, I think that private blogs, whether some people are ‘against’ the idea or not, is the next logical step. As I said on a related post: All the loud mouths (like me) that want to shout their business to the world are already blogging - those left that don’t have blogs are either uninterested, intimidated by the technology or are concerned about privacy. Way to read your target audience Google!

34. Catherine Bronte
    

    August 15th, 2006 at 4:52 pm

    I’m ready for a change. I can see that it’s already starting to happen because sometimes, when I want to hit the “next blog” button, it’s been moved over to the left of the menu bar on some people’s blogs.

35. Tony Rocksas
    

    August 15th, 2006 at 10:48 pm

    hola que tal, en este blog que arme para pruebas, pueden ver como hay entradas clasificadas por temas.

    subí a flickr capturas de pantalla, con anotaciones explicando las novedades.

36. Zak
    

    August 16th, 2006 at 12:23 am

    How do you think it rates vs. Wordpress?

37. mightyman
    

    August 16th, 2006 at 8:30 am

    I don’t use the blog much, but it was a pain to position things. I welcome this change. This will make it so much easier to do layout changes.

38. Avatar
    

    August 16th, 2006 at 3:56 pm

    What made Blogger to always be at the level is the Blogger Hacking Scene.

    Pure and Simple.

    If you want to read some thought on this i have two posts on this:

    http://bloggeratto.blogspot.co.....-beta.html

    And more thoughts on why the beta

    http://bloggeratto.blogspot.co.....-beta.html

39. Silk Willow
    

    August 16th, 2006 at 10:18 pm

    Just the last week I had customized my template and loaded it with add-ons. My understanding is now I will need to do it all over again after I convert to the new templates. I need to do this conversion in order to make use of the newer features such as the tags/categories. I’m not looking forward to it.

40. RC of strangeculture
    

    August 17th, 2006 at 9:01 pm

    Sweet, sounds great…can’t wait. Sometimes blogger drives me CRAZY.

    –RC of strangeculture.blogspot.com

41. 杜罗华
    

    August 19th, 2006 at 6:42 pm

    To me,it is a good news because I am a Google fan!

42. dreamflow
    

    August 20th, 2006 at 9:33 pm

    How to add Categories to your sidebar using Blogger Beta:
    http://basangpanaginip.blogspo.....debar.html

43. Manny Hernandez
    

    August 20th, 2006 at 11:27 pm

    I am excited to read about this! Tags are long overdue and hopefully stability will also result from the upgrade… I hope!

44. Manny Hernandez
    

    August 21st, 2006 at 12:06 am

    Just tried it… my two cents:
    http://manuelhp42.blogspot.com.....nally.html

45. Joe H
    

    August 21st, 2006 at 8:21 am

    If we can easily change fonts and colors in the template, that would be great.
    I was disappointed to find out that blogger’s “wysiwyg editing” only applied to posting. It’s tough to do template work.

    Two things I’m dying to find out:

    Will the new Blogger work with Pheedo?

    Do youtube vids upload the same way– will the existing youtube feeds in my current blog move over to new beta blogger when I upgrade?

46. Dorkydad
    

    August 21st, 2006 at 1:56 pm

    Now if Blogger can only get their act together…. I’ve been unable to access, modify, or update my blog in over a week, despite repeated attempts to communicate with them here.

47. kashi
    

    August 28th, 2006 at 8:51 am

    ya its gr8 as u nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

48. randy johnson
    

    September 21st, 2006 at 1:49 pm

    Blogger comment feeds is good.

49. chen bo
    

    October 24th, 2006 at 5:02 am

    I still cannot update to Beta version.
    And, to experience the Beta, it seems that I have to register a new blog. That’s not nice.

50. Xplorer
    

    January 1st, 2007 at 9:09 am

    Check my blog

51. surya
    

    January 26th, 2007 at 9:35 am

    very fantastic job for home internet user. and benificial for those user who use blogger.com.