The Skull Cinema

The blog has reached 20 … blog posts, so time to have a quick review of progress. Since the last review I've established a working process for creating posts and become more familiar with the Blogger interface . But that learning curve and its' documentation has sucked up most of the time available for writing posts. So I have only published twice on non-blogging topics, which isn't what I started out to do. I recall reading once that most things made on a lathe are more tools for the lathe, and so it has been that most of my blogging has been about blogging (and this is yet another post about blogging). I will still continue investigate the Blogger system in more detail as there is more utility to be had from a better understanding of it, but it is also time to do something else. Back to Wikipedia first I think.

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...

The Blogger posts body is the working area for the Posts page, it is essentially a file list of the posts on the blog. The data on each post is split into two sections. The left hand side group starts with a checkbox to select individual posts. After which the function buttons of the posts navbar (the group above the post names) can operate on the selected posts. The title of the post and any labels applied are displayed next. Below that are three options for working on the post, Edit , View and Delete . The Edit function opens the post in the Blogger post editor, View will load the blog at the point that the post was made, and Delete removes the post from the blog. On the right hand side are four data points associated with each post, the author log‑on name, the number of comments made on the post, the number of page views the post has received, and the date that the post was published or last edited. Overall the data is presented well, but I can image that...

Labels are Blogger's way of allowing a user to divide posts into different categories. They appear at the end of a post as a hyperlink that, when clicked, will present a set of posts with similar content. They aren't indexed for search engine purposes, but are there to provide readers with a way to focus in on other posts that they are interested in, rather than reading through a blog that is displayed in date order. The labels can also be read by a Gadget (a program that will present blog-related information, usually in a side bar or footer) to create a list or word cloud of the labels. But that is a further set of tools that I don't want to get into yet. There aren't really any rules as to how to choose or present the labels. But the rule of thumb seems to be, not too many words per label and not too many labels per post; generally no more than 3 of each. Adding your first label First select the post you want the label to be applied to. Then hit...

Below the Blogger dashboard header lies the posts navigation bar . It contains functions associated with moving around the list of your posts and some basic operations for working with posts. The bar is split into an upper and lower rank. The buttons for basic posts operations are grouped together on the left hand side. On the top rank is a New post button that will take you straight into the post editing screen. Next to that is the user name that you are currently logged into Blogger with. The first button on the lower rank allows you to select all posts (even though the tool tip says ' Select all comments '). The next button allows you to label or tag posts that you have selected (more on that later). The Publish , Revert to draft and Bin buttons will act on all selected posts in the posts body. The right hand side of the posts navbar groups together the navigation tools for your blog posts. The upper rank allows the selection of a subgroup ...