The Skull Cinema

Just a very small post on this topic. While I was uploading the images for the previous post I ran into an issue with uploading images from my PC to Blogger. It took me a while to work out what was happening here, which is why I am posting this. When you choose Upload from computer from the image tool dropdown. It opens a File Open dialog box. As you can see, the first three images are identical apart from their names. But when you hit Open only two of four files are displayed in the Add Images box It seems that Blogger won't allow image files starting with AdSense to be uploaded (capitalisation is disregarded). Clearing the browser cache had no effect and the images were viewable in the Blogger album archive. However adding an underscore (_) to the front of the image name solved the problem.

As part of the process of obtaining  an AdSense account for the blog I need to create some static pages to hold housekeeping information. Fortunately Blogger already has this function in hand with ' Add pages to your blog '. The pages can contain whatever you want and Google isn't stingy about how many you can have, allowing the creation of an unlimited number of pages. There are two steps to adding pages to a blog; creating them and adding links to them to the blog. But before we start here is the current layout of the blog, It is pretty minimal, and that is OK. With a small title and a link to a search function at the top; and three links to the side, one for a drop-down that gives access to the archive of posts, one to the set of labels that I experimented with in a previous post and one to Report abuse, which goes off to Blogger not me. There is a mix of fonts which I hadn't noticed before, but that is a problem for another day. The first task, then, is t...

Well the blog is doing what it was supposed to do, as outlined in my first post . The content is quite 'blogging-about-blogging' heavy, but that topic is still interesting to me. So let's dig a little deeper into Blogger. Use of the platform is free, however the cost of hosting a domain is not. Although at £10/year it is not ruinously expensive. That said, there is no reason why part of that cost couldn't be offset by some ad revenue is there? From the outset let me state that I am not interested in a full-blown commercialisation of the blog with search engine optimisation, careful ad placement strategies and the inevitable desperate attempts to garner e-mail addresses or upsell readers. It's just too much effort. Instead, this is a curiosity-driven peek into another aspect of Blogger and the target of recouping the domain fees is just a means to this end. If you really want to get into that then there is an ocean of data, help and opinions out there. Good lu...

The final step in the process of reworking the blog is to invite the new account to become an author. Open the blog using the managing Google/Blogger account and select the Settings tab from the menu on the left-hand side of the screen. Then scroll down to find Invite more authors in the Permissions section and enter the e-mail address of the person you want to join the blog into the dialog box that pops up, in our case blog@skullcinema.com, and hit SEND . Blogger will then send out an invite link by e-mail. Now log out of the original account and back into the new account, this stops Google from automatically switching the invitation to your currently open Google account (yes, the one you just sent it from). Go to your e-mail in-box (or extract it from your junk mail box) and follow the Accept invitation link, which will pop up a new tab back in your browser with another Accept invitation link. Clicking this will add you to the blog author list and open up a cut-d...

As I've set up an e-mail address for the blog it makes sense to be able to post from it too. To do that I will need to set up an account with Blogger for the new e-mail address. At the same time I'll create a gmail account to both manage the blog and give access to the Google apps suite without the monthly fee. Skullcinema@gmail.com is already taken (as there is nothing new under the sun), but I can take a related e-mail address. I won't publish it here as the first address will generate enough spam as it is. Setting up a gmail account really doesn't require a guide, but it is covered here if you need one. So, off to set up an account  through Blogger . First of all though, log out of Google and/or Chrome or it will pull you straight through to Blogger on the account you are logged in on. Choose SIGN IN in the top right-hand corner of the Blogger home page, and then select  Use another account underneath the list of your current Google accounts. Now ...

In a previous post I noted that the tool tip associated with the Select all posts check box reads Select all comments instead (tsk, tsk). The Blogger interface has a Send feedback button (circled) which I assume is for this sort of thing. Clicking it brings up a pop-up box that automatically grabs a screen shot of the page. Unfortunately you can't have the tool tip up and select the Send Feedback option at the same time. But I can point to what I mean by selecting Click to highlight or hide info in the middle of the screengrab. After which you can use the highlight tools to mark the issue you have or block out any sensitive information that you think Google doesn't already have. The tool is quite nice as it will automatically select a feature if you hover over it and you can draw as many rectangles as required. Each rectangle can be deleted by hovering over it and clicking the X that appears in the top right hand corner. Once you have marked up...

The Blogger dashboard footer is focussed on Google's interaction with your use of Blogger. As there's nothing you can do about Google's general terms and conditions, apart from take them or leave them, I will just be taking them. Leaving them would mean switching to another service (probably with similar T&Cs) and getting to grips with it, or setting up a hosted site using something like Wordpress , which is another whole (and much more complicated) kettle of fish. On the extreme lower left hand side of the dashboard is a group of three links to the Terms of Service for using Blogger, a link to Google's Privacy Policy and another to the Blogger Content Policy . The Terms of Service are written in standard legalese so are not that accessible, but to my reading don't really contain anything surprising. Google puts more effort into explaining their Privacy Policy with clear and detailed explanations of what they use and why. There are plenty of non-...

The blogger dashboard navigation sidebar links to pages that allow you to edit everything from individual posts to the whole blog. There's too much in it to cover in a single post, so at this point I will only describe the major role of each of the pages and come back to investigate their functions in more detail later. At the top of the sidebar is the name of the blog that you are currently working on. The drop-down arrow next to the blog name allows you to switch between blogs, if you have more than one, and the View blog link opens the live blog in a new browser tab. Underneath that is a list of the ten function pages. Posts . The default option when you load the dashboard is to display the Posts body, which is essentially a file list of the posts on the blog. It has three options to view All , Drafts or Published posts; the number alongside each is the number of posts in the category. Stats . Selecting this will display an Overview of the viewing...