Two questions:
First, has anyone "upgraded" to Layouts in Blogger?
If I did it, would I lose all the design and graphics, and the Sitemeter and all that?
Second, who uses other services for comments? Pros, cons, recommendations? What would happen to existing comments?
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
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9 comments:
To your first question, do you mean changing templates?
No. When I log into my dashboard, I see that I have __ followers. Then there's this note: "Followers are people interested in your blog. You need to convert your blog to Layouts before you can add the followers gadget."
When I check into that, it warns me that if I convert to Layouts, I read:
"We've introduced a new tool for customizing the appearance of your blog. Before you can use this tool, you'll need to upgrade your template.
"By upgrading, you will lose many of the changes you previously made to your template. However, we will save a copy of your current template so that you can access it later."
If you're talking about the upgrade that happened a year or two ago, to the "new" Blogger, I did.
I had a generic template at that time, so losing the design wasn't an issue. It didn't affect sitemeter. I've tinkered with my template significantly since then, so it's not hard to put design and graphics in. You can still access the template in html.
The only plus I can see is that it's easier to add things to the sidebar and rearrange them. So, it was really easy to make a blogroll and I can move it around the sidebar. But the I can't cut and paste the links, because they're forever locked in some sort of widget that I don't understand.
I've used Haloscan, then Blogger comments, then back to Haloscan. On my edit posts screen, I can see how many comments my old posts have, but they don't show up with the posts. If I remember correctly, the Blogger comments were visible again when Blogger comments were activated.
And bear in mind that I don't really know what I'm doing. I fiddle with it until it looks okay. My software developer husband is scandalized by my reckless tossing around of html, and I'm probably only one misplaced comma away from crashing the whole thing.
All that to say I'm probably not one to take advice from in this matter.
Thanks. Is Haloscan free? Does it enable tracing commenters' IP addresses, and blocking individual commenters?
There is a free Haloscan, but I paid for the upgrade because the free Haloscan had advertisements for dating services and I didn't want that. I think it cost twenty dollars.
I just checked, and I can ban commenters by single IP and IP range (my homeschool/book/knitting blog doesn't generate a lot of controversy, so I didn't know). And yes, it does show the IP.
I can also edit comments, like the other day when a friend typed in my parents' last name and I didn't want it there. I like Haloscan because I can email commenters directly, instead of having to click through their Blogger profile.
Mm; I'll have to check it out.
Did you lose all previous Blogger comments when you converted?
Dan...yes, you will lose all your graphics but they can be replaced. I'd be happy to do it for you, on-the-house. Drop me an email and I'll take care of it for you.
Haloscan - Big no. Unreliable and unnecessary.
Or... you could make the move to Wordpress.com (free) and get all sorts of goodies and extras that you don't get with Blogger.
I have just launched Disqus, and I don't like it really at all. Looking for a way to remove it.
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