eARNING TRICK: Managing posts

Showing posts with label Managing posts. Show all posts

How to change the author for a published blog-post

This article explains how to change the author of a post that has already been published in Blogger. <div style="clear: both;"></div> <h2><a name="more"></a>Blogger posts and changing post-authors</h2><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiArpLSoGx7DhfzPX7Q5LswdrBhKT1nNxIKzflUiVwTlKv6Byzz34fdkn2b2iQTL6Uq8QvhnCir1Ijm64Pe3KV9x7SEx9YzeTJSrrQbUs60IG3TM6dyV3xPmad7pPoKpMmBXJoXXNwk2ehB/s333/editing-author-of-existing-blogger-posts.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiArpLSoGx7DhfzPX7Q5LswdrBhKT1nNxIKzflUiVwTlKv6Byzz34fdkn2b2iQTL6Uq8QvhnCir1Ijm64Pe3KV9x7SEx9YzeTJSrrQbUs60IG3TM6dyV3xPmad7pPoKpMmBXJoXXNwk2ehB/s200/editing-author-of-existing-blogger-posts.png" width="250" /></a></div>When you Publish a post in Blogger, a number of features are set up for the post, as well as the contents.  These include: <ul><li>The URL / web-addresss where the post can be found</li><li>The post date/time when it was published</li><li>The post-author (which is <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2012/09/post-author-is-now-first-person-to-save.html">now set the first time that the post is Saved</a>, ie even before it is published.)</li><li>The labels that apply to it.</li></ul> Some of these can be changed by <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2012/01/editing-published-posts-in-blogger.html">editing the published post</a>. But there are some features that cannot be altered after they are set. In particular, Author is not changed even if a different <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/10/understanding-google-accounts.html">Google account</a> is used to edit the post - or if the original author has their <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2011/12/making-someone-author-on-your-blog.html">permission to write to the blog</a> removed. This can lead to interesting situations on multi-author blogs, especially when one writer leaves the team and perhaps even deletes their Google account.   Because of this, some blog owners choose to not show the "Posted-by"field (set on the Layout > Blog Posts edit > "Posted by" option). But even if post-author is not displayed on the blog, it is useful for administrator to know who exactly posted each post. That said, when someone asks how to change the posted-by (ie author) value, the simple, and correct, answer is "You can't." But there is a way to make it look like the author has been changed, so that only the most eagle-eyed readers will be able to tell the difference. <h2>How to change the author of an existing blog-post</h2>In short, you need to make a new post with the same contents, and then use a custom-redirect so that anyone who tries to look at the old post (eg by following a link to it) is automatically taken to the new post. <h3>Follow these steps:</h3>You need to take note of several values during this procedure, which are used later on. It may good to open a text-editor (eg Notepad) before you start. 1   Look at the URL of the existing post, and note the part that is from the single-slash after your blog's name,  For example in <blockquote class="tr_bq">http://www.Example.blogspot.com/2012/06/my-post-title   </blockquote>the part you are looking for is the bold part, ie "/2012/06/my-post-title" - including the single slash a the start. 2    Edit the existing post, go to the HTML tab and <ul><li>Copy the contents (like you would if you were <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/03/moving-post-from-one-blog-to-another.html">copying a post from one blog to another</a>). </li><li>Note the value under Options > Line Break, which is either use tag or Pressenter for a new line.</li></ul> 3    Log in to Blogger with the account that you want to use as the new post author-name. 4    Create a new post, and make sure you have the same setting under Options > Line breaks, to be sure that you get the spacing right. 5   Edit the post to be just like the old one: <ul><li>Put the HTML that you copied into in the HTML view of the new post.</li><li>Apply any Labels or Location values that applied to the old post.</li><li>Make the title the same as it was in the old post.</li><li><a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2009/12/changing-date-for-post.html">Change the date</a> to the same as the old post.</li></ul> 6   Make the URL of the new post similar but not quite the same: <ul><li>Put the value you found in 1 step into the <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2012/07/Control-words-used-for-post-urls-in-blogger.html">custom-permalink field</a>. </li><li>Add some text to it so that it is not the same as the original value, eg make "my-post-title" into "my-post-title1"</li></ul> 7   Publish the post and  note the part of  the post-URL from the single-slash after your blog's name 8   Set up a re-direct from the old post to the new post: <ul><li>Go to Settings > Search Preferences</li><li>Edit the Custom Redirects</li><li>Add a new redirection (only needed if you already have some)</li><li>Enter the value from step 1 into From</li><li>Enter the value from step 7 into To</li><li>Tick Permanent</li><li>Click the save link for this particular re-direction, and then the Save Changes button.</li></ul> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCqchZkQUklj1GFabYnh6C45qkKyJc8WgvzbFNdt50NB7bxeJXh1GJuZmPkI1Bk62TgGPBZLkE80i-QYCkUkZEpjwmepQXvSY27iXDgd_h1vzJfmeo5fXNEwHp_nozZXUvOMvQNjxtbmTz/s633/set-custom-post-url-redirection-blogger-changed-post-address-repointer.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="picture of the Settings > Search Preferences > add re-direction settings screen in Google's Blogger tool" border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCqchZkQUklj1GFabYnh6C45qkKyJc8WgvzbFNdt50NB7bxeJXh1GJuZmPkI1Bk62TgGPBZLkE80i-QYCkUkZEpjwmepQXvSY27iXDgd_h1vzJfmeo5fXNEwHp_nozZXUvOMvQNjxtbmTz/s640/set-custom-post-url-redirection-blogger-changed-post-address-repointer.png" title="Setting up a customized redirection from one blog-post to another" width="640" /></a></div> 9   Check your blog, to make sure that the re-direction is working correctly. 10  Once you are happy that the re-direction is working correctly, delete the old post. You will need either the existing author account, or a Google account with administrator rights, to do this.   If <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2012/08/seo-is-irrelevant-for-some-blogs-because.html">SEO matters for your blog</a>, then it is good to do it as soon as you can, so you are not penalized for having duplicate content. <h2>What your readers will see</h2><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Akregator-Oxygen.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="eyeglasses underneath orange RSS chiclet icon" border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Akregator-Oxygen.png" title="By KDE Team (self made screenshot) [LGPL (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons" /></a></div>Everyone who is subscribed to <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/08/why-rss-subscribe-to-posts-is-important.html">your blog's RSS-feed</a> or <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2011/03/follow-by-email-gadget-easy-way-to-add.html">follow-by-email gadget</a> will see a new post. (I you don't want this, <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2011/12/turning-rss-feed-off-or-on-again.html">turn your feed off</a> before you start - but don't forget to turn on again when you are finished!) Visitors who browse your blog posts will see the "old" post, with the new author, in the original place. Visitors who try to go directly to the old post via an existing link or from search-engine results will automatically be re-directed to the "new" version of the post. Very observant ones may notice that the URL is slightly different from the original. Most won't. <h2>A quicker way:  get control of the original Author account</h2>The method described above is fiddly and tedious - especially if you want to change the author of many posts. An alternative is to ask the original author if they still want the <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/10/understanding-google-accounts.html">Google account</a>  that they used to make the posts. If you are lucky they <ul><li>Don't want it, and </li><li>Are willing to hand the password over to you. </li></ul> In this case, you could <ol><li>Quickly change the password (before they change their mind!), and</li><li>Edit their profile to the new author name that you would like to have displayed. You may also want to change some other details - and if they are using a Google+ profile and you already have one, then you should probably delete this.</li></ol> This isn't a total solution, of course: no matter how you edit their profile, it will still be different to your own profile. But it may be better than nothing. <hr /><h2>Related Articles</h2><a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2012/01/editing-published-posts-in-blogger.html">How to edit a post that has already been published</a> <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/10/understanding-google-accounts.html">Understanding Google accounts</a> <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/03/moving-post-from-one-blog-to-another.html">Copying a post from one blog to another</a> <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2011/12/making-someone-author-on-your-blog.html">Giving someone permission to author posts</a> <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2009/12/changing-date-for-post.html">Changing the publication date for a blogger post</a> <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2012/07/Control-words-used-for-post-urls-in-blogger.html">Setting the URL for Blogger posts</a> <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2012/08/seo-is-irrelevant-for-some-blogs-because.html">Why SEO doesn't matter for some blogs</a>

How to change the author for a published blog-post

This article explains how to change the author of a post that has already been published in Blogger. Blogger posts and changing post-authors...

May 28, 2015

How to change internal links when you chance your blog's web-address

This article is about how to change internal cross-reference links in your blog, if you change your blog's URL or web-address. <div style="clear: both;"></div><a name="more"></a><h2>Blog Name vs Blog Address</h2><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ0sbWfmbyHop5hbprBKM13EDhuTie98r9Z1jK6z5KHk8DxyKeMJWxP1HtVtLNOZXZHIxuZPIdUPkAm1A3hrH5z5k3Lb_F3dKS8ht6XFls5fkuFJSd_GAGuL7sHb611u9BUT2oCwpq6dVU/s576/Changing-blog-address.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ0sbWfmbyHop5hbprBKM13EDhuTie98r9Z1jK6z5KHk8DxyKeMJWxP1HtVtLNOZXZHIxuZPIdUPkAm1A3hrH5z5k3Lb_F3dKS8ht6XFls5fkuFJSd_GAGuL7sHb611u9BUT2oCwpq6dVU/s576/Changing-blog-address.png" width="280" /></a></div>Your blog has two "names". The blog title is what you type into the Title field when you create a new blog.   It is displayed in your header (unless you've replaced it with a picture), and in the title-bar of the browser window when someone reads your blog.  It does not need to be unique:  you can make a blog with the same name that anyone else has already used. The web-address, also called the URL or just address is quite different. You select in the Address field when you create a new blog - but it's not just a matter of typing in what you want.   Web-addresses must be unique, so as you type in a possible URL Blogger says "checking availability" - and if someone else already has what you have entered, it says <blockquote class="tr_bq">Sorry, this blog address is not available.</blockquote>and you have to keep trying until you find a blogspot URL which is not already taken. Usually the blog-title and blog web-address are very closely related.   For example, the name of this blog is Blogger-hints-and-tips, and the web-address is <a href="http://www.blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/">www.Blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com</a>.  And they may be even more closely related if you have a custom domain, eg <blockquote class="tr_bq">Title / Name: Rustling.org Web-address: <a href="http://www.rustling.org/" target="_blank"> www.Rustling.org</a></blockquote> In this case, I've made the blog-name slightly geeky (with a .org on the end) to make it more memorable. <h3>Changing title vs changing address</h3>You can change the blog-name at any time, using the Settings > Basic > Title tab.   Doing this has no effect on any links in you posts or widgets.  (Although it may confuse people who find your blog by searching for the name rather than for the web-address - which is a good reason to encourage them to become subscribers, instead.) You can change the blog-address using the Settings > Basic > Publishing tab.   Just like the original URL, whatever you change it to has to be unique, ie not one that anyone else has used. Sidenote:  If you want to use an address that a different Google account, eg a friend, used to have, then you need to <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/01/transferring-blog-ownership.html">transfer the ownership</a>:  having the previous owner delete a blog is not enough to release the blogspot address for someone else to use. <div> </div>But if you change the blog-address, then any existing links to your blog become dead, ie they stop working and anyone who tried to follow them gets a 404 error. This applies to both external links (eg on other people's blogrolls or Google's search index) and to internal links (when you have a link to one post inside another post or gadget) <h2>What happens if change your blog's web-address</h2>If you change your blog's web-address, then Blogger changes the links in your <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2012/01/page-gadget-menu-bar-for-your-blog-with.html">Pages gadget</a> that point to your pages. But Blogger will not change any other internal links in your blog. This includes: <ul><li>Links in your Pages gadget that were added as External web-addresses - even if those web-addresses are posts or pages in your blog.</li><li>Links in one post that point to another one (called cross-links)</li><li>Links in your other gadgets - including LinksList gadgets and HTML/Javascript ones.</li></ul> Therefore all these links will break if you change your blog's web-address.    If someone tries to follow one of these links they get a message like this: <blockquote class="tr_bq">Blog has been removed</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Sorry, the blog at yourOldAddress.blogspot.com has been removed. This address is not available for new blogs.</blockquote> However gadgets which calculate links (eg Blogger's Popular Posts, or the third-party widgets like LinkWithin) do keep working, because the they get the current link of your posts when they need them rather than keeping a stored copy.   (That said, ones that rely on your RSS feed to for information may stop working correctly.) And of course Blogger will not change links to your blog that are in other people's blog-posts or gadgets. This is why it's A Very Good Idea to get your blog name - including a custom domain if you want one - right before you start writing posts with cross-links. <h2>Relative addressing and the Blogger Post Editor</h2>Some people have asked if it is possible to internal links (ie links from one post to another) as <blockquote class="tr_bq">/12/2013/how_to_do.html</blockquote>instead of <blockquote class="tr_bq">www.my_blog_name.blogspot.com/12/2013/how_to_do.html</blockquote> So that if they change the blog-address, the links will still work. However Blogger's Post Edit does not support relative addressing, so this isn't possible: If you enter a link as <blockquote class="tr_bq">/12/2013/how_to_do.html</blockquote><div> </div> then when you you publish the post it is changed to <blockquote class="tr_bq">http://0.0.0.12/2013/how_to_do.html     (if you add the link in compose mode), or</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">http://yourWebAddress/12/2013/how_to_do.html     (if you add the link in HTML mode).</blockquote> (I think this is a change from Blogger's previous behaviour from when I last investigated this issue:  previously it changed the links to something like http:/blogger.com/12/2013/how_to_do.html - and of course this doesn't work either.) <h2>How to change internal links in your posts when you change blog-address</h2>Unfortunately Blogger doesn't provide any tool to automatically update all internal links in your posts when you change blog-address. Instead, you have to manually: <ul><li><a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2012/01/editing-published-posts-in-blogger.html">Edit each post</a>, </li><li>Look at it in HTML mode and </li><li>Find-and-replace any links. </li></ul> The only slight automation is that you can do the find-and-replace by copying the entire post-contents to a text-editor like Notepad, using the Replace tool there, and then copying the entire post contents back to the post editor. Some people have asked if it's possible to do this by: <ul><li>Exporting all your posts using the Export Blog tool on the Settings > Other > Export Blog option</li><li>Opening the exported file in a text editor, and changing all the links with the Find-and-Replace tool.</li><li>Deleting all the posts from your blog</li><li>Importing from your export file, after it's been edited.</li></ul> However this won't work because Blogger remembers the address of each individual post, even after they're deleted.   It won't give the same URL to another post, ever.  Instead, it puts some numbers on the end, to make the URL unique. For example, when I tested this: <blockquote class="tr_bq">http://myTestBlog.blogspot.com/2014/07/sweet-retroo.html</blockquote>became <blockquote class="tr_bq">http://myTestBlog.blogspot.com/2014/07/sweet-retroo_19.html</blockquote><div> </div>You could use the custom-re-directs feature to repoint each old post-url to the new one, it would probably be quicker overall to simply edit each post. <hr /><h2>Related Articles:</h2><a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2012/01/editing-published-posts-in-blogger.html">How to edit a post you have already published</a> <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2012/01/page-gadget-menu-bar-for-your-blog-with.html">Adding a Pages gadget to your blog</a> <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/02/setting-up-your-custom-domain.html">Setting up a custom domain for Blogger</a> <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/01/transferring-blog-ownership.html">Giving another Blogger account access to an address that you own</a>

How to change internal links when you chance your blog's web-address

This article is about how to change internal cross-reference links in your blog, if you change your blog's URL or web-address. Blog Name...

July 29, 2014

Help visitors who arrive at your blog via a link to a deleted post

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_QY4XI5lBdcfpWKKSeOKJrmbgbJeQUhoqqp3eXnb9Y6ybG3OOEXU85eptJCNfPdOPq3-YDT56jBqb3AZTbEaW6WFds29V0aCNP030ybAQWLIGxO_p-AhkZ8pGUiUKBpdJWkQcqbcP7BwF/w795-h488-no/regular-blogger-hints-tips-weekly-post-generic-picture.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_QY4XI5lBdcfpWKKSeOKJrmbgbJeQUhoqqp3eXnb9Y6ybG3OOEXU85eptJCNfPdOPq3-YDT56jBqb3AZTbEaW6WFds29V0aCNP030ybAQWLIGxO_p-AhkZ8pGUiUKBpdJWkQcqbcP7BwF/w795-h488-no/regular-blogger-hints-tips-weekly-post-generic-picture.png" width="200" /></a></div>If you sometimes delete posts from your blog, then it's a good idea to provide some help to people who who arrive at your blog via links to those posts. (Even if you don't have any links to those posts, it's likely that a search-engine somewhere will have some - and other people may have bookmarked or shared them, too.) There are two options for doing this: <a name="more"></a> <h2>Post-specific redirects</h2>Use these if you want to re-direct visitors who come to a particular previous post: Go into Settings > Search Preferences, click Edit beside Custom Redirects. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNRE4xInD81PCdJt2qKguff3-1eiQELJDPcTIeh7541uCtbb85KObt5yTWgey1KuUKyc23SmN3ukgh-uwEv3EXDw7gHleVsE8sm2CB2ovVNow4kLifDv-BoACpX9iGbTcPaNSmTpRSW_8E/w899-h476-no/make-redirect-instructions-for-posts-removed-from-your-blog.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNRE4xInD81PCdJt2qKguff3-1eiQELJDPcTIeh7541uCtbb85KObt5yTWgey1KuUKyc23SmN3ukgh-uwEv3EXDw7gHleVsE8sm2CB2ovVNow4kLifDv-BoACpX9iGbTcPaNSmTpRSW_8E/w899-h476-no/make-redirect-instructions-for-posts-removed-from-your-blog.png" width="90%" /></a></div> Click New Redirect, to create instructions for what to do if a visitor tries to navigate to a specific post. Put the address of the post that you want to make a re-direct for into the From field. Put the address of the post that you want to visitors to be taken to into the To field. <blockquote class="tr_bq">For both addresses, the part you need to enter is the URL of the post from the first backslash on.   </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Do not put in your blog-address</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Do include the date-part of the URL and the backslash. eg for    <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2013/01/changing-a-label-value-for-all-posts.html">http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2013/01/changing-a-label-value-for-all-posts.html</a> use   /2013/01/changing-a-label-value-for-all-posts.html</blockquote><div> </div><div>Tick the Permanent check-box.</div><div> </div><div>Click Save.</div><div> </div><div>Click Save Changes.   (Yes, you need to do both Saves)</div> <h2>A generic page-not-found message</h2>Use this if you do not want to set up post-specific re-directs, or if you cannot remember the URL of your deleted posts. Go into Settings > Search Preferences, and edit the Custom Page Not Found option. Put in some text welcoming the visitor, explaining that the page they were looking for is no longer available, and suggesting other places that they could try.  This text can include links to other posts, so long as you hand-code them. (You might like to get code for this <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/05/getting-html-code-to-put-picture-into.html">using the post editor</a>).

Help visitors who arrive at your blog via a link to a deleted post

If you sometimes delete posts from your blog, then it's a good idea to provide some help to people who who arrive at your blog via links...

April 26, 2014