The Skull Cinema

I 've discussed the process of making static pages previously. What follows is only related to decisions on the content of the About, Contact and Privacy Policy pages that are needed for the Google AdSense program. Let's start with the About page. When I set up the domain I ticked the privacy option to keep my details off WHOIS . So it would seem a bit silly to splatter a load of personal information back onto the web in an About Us page. Better to keep it short and generic then. If Google would like me to have an About page what does Google's look like? Our mission is to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful . Well that is short and to the point. I'm not aiming for quite that level of coverage but in the first post on this blog I set out what I was about. Given that information, the following is suitably anodyne , The world is too complex to be made difficult. By relying on direct experience to help make t...

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.

The result of the AdSense review is in and it's time to assess the outcome. I have described my experience of the applicant's portion of the application process for an AdSense account in more detail previously. In total the process wasn't really that complicated, although it wasn't completely plain sailing either. There was quite a lot of information spread across multiple pages that managed to be complex but not specific (as in exactly what Google expects from the website), which I found somewhat frustrating. However the process was completed and left at the review stage in which Google submits the site to an internal review against a set of not-completely-clear-to-me criteria. I finished my part of the process with an active but non-operational AdSense account. Over the next week the number of accessible tabs on the menu of the account fluctuated, but the We're reviewing your site notice remained. I assume that the steady appearance of the tabs was mo...

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 ...