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December 21, 2006

New Blogger Out of Beta

Michael Arrington

63 comments »

The new Blogger beta product, open to a limited number of users in August, is now live for all users.

The key changes include the addition of tags, which Google has always called “labels,” and an option to create a private blog. You can also now sign into your blogger account using your Google credentials, and Google has made editing the template and posts significantly more user friendly.

None of these changes put Blogger ahead of its primary competitors. For example, SixApart’s Comet product allows not only for private blogs, but privacy setting can also be changed for each post. but it is a sign of hope for Blogger users who’ve been stuck with last generation software for years.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 21st, 2006 at 1:13 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  1. Davide Salerno

    December 21st, 2006 at 4:27 am

  2. TechCrunch Japanese アーカイブ » Bloggerの新バージョン、ベータを脱する

    December 21st, 2006 at 10:12 am

  3. Trump, Ms. USA, Halle Berry and More - Gossip, Gadgets and Sexy links for 2006-12-22 at

    December 21st, 2006 at 10:47 pm

  4. Blogger out of beta - now more suitable for use in schools? at teaching.mrbelshaw.co.uk

    December 22nd, 2006 at 11:17 am

Comments

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  1. Raj

    December 21st, 2006 at 1:26 am

    Mike,

    Wrong link to SA’s Comet aka Vox.

  2. Michael Arrington

    December 21st, 2006 at 1:39 am

    thanks. fixed.

  3. David Krug

    December 21st, 2006 at 1:44 am

    This tastes like day old stale bread. And I thought I was reporting on it late.

  4. Skoop

    December 21st, 2006 at 2:04 am

    Sounds like Krug has penis envy

  5. Nathan

    December 21st, 2006 at 2:04 am

    On our website, http://www.Famipix.com, which was launched earlier this year, we ONLY allow private sharing of photos.

    On Famipix.com you can only share photos and videos with your own circle of family and friends. Our growth target is 100 million photos by the end of 2007.

  6. S.Z.

    December 21st, 2006 at 2:12 am

    I still don’t like the UI.

    Tech Tutorials: http://www.hotcoding.com

  7. David Krug

    December 21st, 2006 at 2:17 am

    Penis envy. Jeez what would I do with mine if I had his?

  8. Swifty

    December 21st, 2006 at 2:38 am

    It’s depressing that I STILL can’t shift to the new version of Blogger with my current one. It’s a big blog, they say. :(

  9. Andy

    December 21st, 2006 at 2:39 am

    I see few if any similarities with Vox, but a ton with WordPress.com:

    http://system13.org/2006/12/21.....dpresscom/

  10. Chris

    December 21st, 2006 at 3:24 am

    I have finally done the switching.
    I love the “labeling” function which was not offered in non-beta version.

    Another job well done, Blogger, cheers

  11. David Krug

    December 21st, 2006 at 3:35 am

    I totally agree with Andy. Seems very copycatish.

  12. Mike Watson

    December 21st, 2006 at 3:41 am

    We will be looking at a new blogging product soon.

    What’s Hot Today.com

  13. Martin Ringlein

    December 21st, 2006 at 3:42 am

    Am I the only one upset that Blogger is taking away the ability to publish the blog on their site? Now, it appears you have to use blogspot — not being able to host the blog yourself.

    I’ve needed a reason to get off the blogger platform and move to wordpress — I guess this is that push.

  14. Rajeev

    December 21st, 2006 at 3:55 am

    Any improvement is only welcome. If real changes are to be demanded by bloggers then I think that would be conceded only if subscription model is used. Any free service apert from Linux can not be perfect.

    http://www.tekno-world.blogspot.com

  15. eoecho | Greg Magnus

    December 21st, 2006 at 4:26 am

    It is a welcomed upgrade, but a little late for so many blogger sites that already withered on the vine due to lack of resources.

  16. Ben H

    December 21st, 2006 at 5:27 am

    I’m still with Blogger just for FTP publishing..!!

  17. Stephen Paul Weber

    December 21st, 2006 at 5:29 am

    The new Blogger was ready to come out of BETA. It has loads of new features (our heads are still spinning catching up!) and the hacker community is just now getting to the all-for-new mode, where we’ve almost stopped supporting the old Blogger. Once everyone has moved over, it will make things easier and we can start clamoring for new features again ;)

  18. Craig

    December 21st, 2006 at 5:49 am

    I was very dissapointed that they call this the new blogger. Nothing exciting just a bunch of hype. I feel the same way about Googles page creator.. very weak offering from such a big company.

  19. Lisa

    December 21st, 2006 at 6:27 am

    the addition of tags and labeling is going to be helpful and is a welcome change.

  20. Sam Davyson

    December 21st, 2006 at 6:45 am

    Google do not *always* call tags “labels”.

    Blogger: labels.
    Bookmarks: labels.
    Docs & Spreadsheets: tags.
    Gmail: labels.
    Picasa Web Albums: tags.
    Reader: tags.
    Video: tags.

  21. S.decampou

    December 21st, 2006 at 6:48 am

    Blogger sucks. I can’t publish anything since early Nov., no support, nada.

  22. Jack L. Umber

    December 21st, 2006 at 7:40 am

    Well, I run a joke blog over there (The Manliest Blog in the World), and I recently made the switch. I like a lot of the features that they include, especially the much-needed live update option. Having to republish the entire site every time I made a change seemed so… so… HTML…

    I honestly only have LiveJournal and GreaterJournal to compare to, so I found the publishing tools to be far greater than any other site I’ve thus compared. I like that I can make a post and then delay it until I’m ready for it to be seen. It makes writing jokes that are topical or seasonal that need to be held off for a bit much easier to write, since I can come up with the ideas and store them on the dashboard, rather than have to save them to a word document and hope I remember they exist when the time comes.

    Over-all, I find it to be a very handy feature. The only reason I haven’t swapped over my personal blog is because all my friends still cling to their LiveJournals (often keeping both an LJ and a MySpace profile, and I patently refuse to join MySpace). That I and I pre-paid a year… what? I like extra user icons…

  23. Jack L. Umber

    December 21st, 2006 at 7:41 am

    Er, edited the link under my name… I don’t often link it by memory, usually I copy-and-paste it from my browser’s window.

  24. Mike Panic

    December 21st, 2006 at 7:47 am

    I have been bi-passing the option to go to the Beta version of blogger for my site, http://www.ilikecheapstuff.com - but the addition of tags and the fact that it is now out of Beta may make me migrate it this weekend. With more then 9,000 posts and growing daily, tags are all but needed for a blog the size of mine.

    Has anyone seen a downsides to the new admin interface of Blogger?

  25. Jason Falls

    December 21st, 2006 at 7:53 am

    Just so you know, if you have an old Blogger account, you may not be able to blog for a while. I host my son’s blog there and tried to update it last night. The click through “learn more” stuff said “some” accounts were moved over to the new version, others will be added soon. Sure hope soon means this week … er year … er whatever.

    One little hiccup in what I think is an overall good upgrade. I manage a couple others using a different log in that I moved to beta and I like the new functionality and dashboard. Not sure if it’s worth the trouble yet, but I’m sure the Google minds will make it worth my while at some point.

  26. Mike Panic

    December 21st, 2006 at 7:59 am

    Jason, I was able to publish to my blog this morning without any isses, logging into the “old blogger” link. I was given the option to switch to Beta several times over the last few months but never did, I’m not a huge fan of Beta software.

  27. Andy Atkinson

    December 21st, 2006 at 8:09 am

    Blogger still lags Wordpress.com in the features department Wordpress.com has supported private blogs, privacy per post, and a ton of other features since its launch over a year ago, with a much richer UI on the backend (not to mention much better IMO themes). They are upgrading servers and I found them to be faster than Blogger when I was switching, plus their staff is responsive and active. They offer an easy “Import from Blogger” to pull in your posts and comments (does Blogger offer that?) for anyone considering switching.

    Wordpress.com is more flexible for “pay” features too since they allow you to add your own custom domain for just 10 bucks per year, or customize the CSS for 15 (or you could install Wordpress yourself). About the only reason I’d recommend Blogger over Wordpress as a free blogging solution would be because Blogger permits AdSense and other JavaScript the a specific user may want. However in that case, I’d recommend purchasing hosting with an inexpensive host like Bluehost, and skipping over the free blog world entirely.

    http://paininthetech.com/should_i_pay_to_blog

  28. mrshl

    December 21st, 2006 at 8:18 am

    Two big things for me put Blogger ahead of Wordpress (hosted):

    1) FREE multiple author blogs.

    2) They’re not afraid to let you use Javascript.

    Vox (Comet) looks great but allows for almost NO customizations or widgets. And forget using Bloglines or Delicious to manage your blogroll. Wordpress is less flexible here too, because they don’t allow the use of javascript (or didn’t the last time I checked).

    I don’t think there’s a better 100% free option than Blogger, and the new features make it that much easier to access flexibility that other sites don’t give you.

    I’m not saying Blogger’s the best. There are lots of great pay options. But if you don’t want to spend a dime, that’s the way to go.

  29. JHSA

    December 21st, 2006 at 8:29 am

    what i hate most, is that if you try to add a picture, it goes to the top of the post, and as the post edit field is small, it takes a lot of drag & drop to move it to where you like it.

  30. The Web Conferencing Blog

    December 21st, 2006 at 9:17 am

    I still have an account with Blogger but have found Typepad.com so much more user friendly. The ability to add widgets quickly and easily is another key benefit.

    I’m not sure these new enhancements will create a competitive advantage for Blogger but it will at least keep the existing users happy for the time being.

    http://davidchao.typepad.com

  31. Jason Falls

    December 21st, 2006 at 9:49 am

    Mike: Yours is one of the lucky ones I guess. Again, I was able to do it on one set of blogs I manage under a different log in. My son’s for some reason is in cue or something to be converted.

    Andy: I’m a Wordpress user and perfer it over Blogger. Still use both though because different blogs need more or less customization and tinkering depending upon the intent/audience.

    I’ll report back whenever they move my son’s blog over so I can use it again. Hopefully it won’t take long.

  32. Alain

    December 21st, 2006 at 9:50 am

    but still no trace of any new templates like they promised…

  33. Joey

    December 21st, 2006 at 9:50 am

    Vox.com is simply blowing Wordpress.com and Blogger out of the water for PERSONAL blogging… I don’t see much comparison anymore. Vox’s privacy features combined with social networking, media sharing, movoxing, and simple integration with flickr/youtube/amazon/photobucket is simply too strong of an offering to pass up.

    However, for PROFESSIONAL blogging then I host my own Wordpress over anything else today.

  34. alfred chew

    December 21st, 2006 at 10:16 am

    I find it better than the old one. More user friendly but there is room for improvement.

  35. Fashion Industry Ceo

    December 21st, 2006 at 11:25 am

    I never really liked blogger!from my experiences with it.

  36. George

    December 21st, 2006 at 11:55 am

    When I first started my E-Commerce blog, I kicked it off with Blogger and switched to Blogger Beta after about two weeks - and regretted it ever since. For one, finding new templates was ridiculously difficult (I spent about a day in vain looking for a 3-column template that I could easily installed without editing half the code), the ability to move elements around the screen was not as effective as I had hoped (and recent template changes made it impossible for me to edit the template myself due to my fairly limited understanding of the code). By and large, transition to Blogger Beta was what convinced me to finally registere my own domain and run a blog there - powered by Wordpress, of course!

  37. Skoop

    December 21st, 2006 at 12:15 pm

    Can’t we somehow just shut Arrington down?

  38. lemon obrien

    December 21st, 2006 at 1:52 pm

    i like blogger, and want to use it; but their is no way to set up blogger so i can make money with my blog; and, i don’t want to write anything just for the hell of it; cause, i know most people won’t read it.

  39. Will

    December 21st, 2006 at 1:54 pm

    I started with beta blogger but have run into serious limits in just a month, from template inflexibility to the lack of a “post at time” feature.

  40. Um

    December 21st, 2006 at 2:46 pm

    Is anyone getting errors when hitting blogger today?

  41. The Alpha Project

    December 21st, 2006 at 5:04 pm

    I was fortunate to get my blog rolling from the ground up starting in Beta. I think that Google’s vision is to make it more scalable with 3rd party coding. There are sites that have already started to hack in some great stuff into Blogger Beta like:

    Han’s Blog
    Hoctro’s Blog
    hackosphere
    blogger university

    May not be the best of what’s available but there’s definitely room for good stuff.

  42. geomark

    December 21st, 2006 at 5:58 pm

    Post #13 said they took away the ability to publish to your own server, can now only host on blogspot. Is that true? Did that happen with the new Blogger?

  43. Mike Panic

    December 21st, 2006 at 7:26 pm

    Jason,

    I was able to publish to my blog several times throughout the day w/out an issue.

    Post #41 geomark - I have my own domain name and my own hosting for my blogger powered blog (click my name to see) and have had zero problems publishing today.

    I started with blogger because it was super easy to setup, was hosted on its own and I could get started. I think for a good majority of personal bloggers, it works well. My blog is commercial and I agree, not as flexable as I’d like it in regards to customizing things and incorerating ads and adsense, but I’ve been very happy with my results thus far. Any move to another blogging platform is going to be a huge leap for me, the site is just over a year old and contains well over 9,000 posts, so it will need to be some seriously good reasons to move, as I am extremely fast at using blogger.

  44. Wes

    December 21st, 2006 at 7:36 pm

    I will be visiting some of the new blogger to see if the user experience has improved from last time.

  45. Ronald Lewis

    December 21st, 2006 at 8:54 pm

    I migrated my blogs and podcasts to Blogger Beta a few weeks ago. However, what I discovered letter was appalling — it appends “default.html” to the URLs!!! This is BAD news for blogs claimed on Technorati, etc.

    To understand the impact of this, you can read more about it here:

    http://www.ronaldlewis.com/blo.....-beta.html

    As you’ll note from the above entry, I’ve made several attempts to make Google aware of this — via the Blogger forum, submitting this to digg, etc., but so far — no one gives a damn, and they SHOULD!

  46. Ronald Lewis

    December 21st, 2006 at 8:55 pm

    Apologies for the useless post … but that’s “later” … not “letter”. These 16-24 hour days of chasing online opportunity are a killer.

  47. Emory

    December 21st, 2006 at 9:03 pm

    I was surprised to hear that Blogger was out of beta because some of my older url’s turned out to be broken after switching to the new Blogger. “nopub” shows in the path. I just have a few posts, but I imagine that prolific bloggers would pretty upset about this.

  48. Avatar

    December 21st, 2006 at 11:23 pm

    Let me introduce myself, i am Avatar and i run Bloggeratto which is a Blog 100% dedicated to cover everything that can relate to Blogger and what i call The Bloggerosphere that is the network of people that still belive in the main atractive Blogger has that is freedom in the way someone can code Blogger to go beyond what it has, The Bleet (Blogger elite) is the groups of blogger hackers that are very determined to fill up for the shortcomings of platform, and together we think we can take it to the next level to match what wordpress has.

    This new blogger sports a new template languague and carries out the best Data API around in all the Blog platforms, and from those alongwith persona hosted apps is the way we want to make it better.

    Blogger is changing for good i recognize it 100%, even if some see me as one of the most critical element in it, that is because i want it to be better.

    On the new Blogger i can say that if you want and have a some patience, you only need to look over my blog and find all the extremely help full hacks, mods, methods, and tutorails along everything in the web that is blogger related,which include services, and articles.

    now, this don´t means that the new blogger don´t need working out, and some of those points can be read here

    passing all those points one thing remains, Blogger is still the biggest dedicated Blogging Platform, and that makes it harder not to note, and just for that is worthy of your consideration, because if Blogger didn´t had existed, the Blogosphere as we knoe it now, would not exist.

    Thank you very much.

    -A

  49. Avatar

    December 21st, 2006 at 11:26 pm

    jeeze, sorry for the typos mike, i wrote it too fast..

  50. geomark

    December 21st, 2006 at 11:37 pm

    I guess I’m in the same camp as Mike Panic. Blogger’s not the greatest, but was easy to get started and I’ve kept adding to it, approaching 1,000 posts on my blog. I have other blogs at wordpress.com and also on my own server using word press. But I don’t want to move my Blogger blog and also don’t want to switch to the new Blogger after reading some of the issues people have discovered.

    OT, that Snap thingy is kind of annoying.

  51. David Mackey

    December 23rd, 2006 at 4:10 pm

    Blogger does seem a little behind the times. I personally prefer Xanga for a hosted service and use CommunityServer for my personal blog. I’m hoping that OpenID or some similar technology will become widespread so we can see interaction between most major social networking sites and allow self-hosted sites such as mine the ability to comment on those sites. Its so annoying having a different login at each site.

  52. pittfall

    December 23rd, 2006 at 7:11 pm

    I have posted about blogger beta and waiting for the chance to convert my blog over. I have considered wordpress, but the idea of possibly loosing my readers and links (especially because I have no 301 control) has bothered me. Unfortunately, I still cannot convert my blog to the new platform. I am not quite sure why or how my blog hasn’t gotten through now that “everyone can switch.”

    Does anyone have any insight?

    Here is the screenshot when attempting to switch.

  53. Jason Falls

    December 24th, 2006 at 1:24 pm

    As it turned out, Blogger moved my site over on Friday night/Saturday morning. Got access back, but still couldn’t publish. Have contacted their support folks. Apparently they’ve had some minor glitches with the transition of the blogs that weren’t moved over by their owners. Mine just happened to be one of them.

    And –my two cents– VOX is nice, but doesn’t allow you any freedom with customization of themes, etc. I explored it for a couple of days and just found it extremely limited to what even Blogger could do. Maybe I didn’t get deep enough in it, but I didn’t like it much at all.

  54. Stephen Paul Weber

    January 12th, 2007 at 11:52 am

    “Blogger does seem a little behind the times. I personally prefer Xanga for a hosted service…”

    They’re even more behind the times…

  55. fed up in blogland

    January 14th, 2007 at 12:15 pm

    Beta Blogger Sucks

    join the revolution

    http://betabloggersucks.blogspot.com/

  56. Sad gurl

    January 24th, 2007 at 2:09 am

    May i convert my blog to the old blog, please?

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  58. Arthur

    February 15th, 2007 at 8:33 pm

    The best advantage of blogger is that it is indexed very fast by Google! Blogger is just fine to me. :) I agree, Vox has lots of personalization but sucks in terms of customization. I hate that google adsense which can’t be removed. lol

  59. Jackie R.

    February 27th, 2007 at 11:13 pm

    It will be better if blogger can roll out more pre-ready templates and also make it much more easier for beginners to tweak the current templates. I am quite sick of the few current templates because I see them everywhere!

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