How to Use Blogger on the iPad

As I noted in my previous post using the free default Blogger iPad application produced by Google can be done but has severe limitations. Thankfully I'm now sitting at the very same table using a different 3rd party application (which I will describe in a moment) that makes Blogger on the iPad a joy to use. In fact, I may just end up using this app more than my laptop for future posts. This isn't the only Blogger iPad application, I'm sure. But, it comes to the top of the list when you search the App Store at Apple. Let me dive in deeper on this.

My choice for Blogging on the iPad

The app I selected is called BlogTouch Pro (version 2.6.5) by Alexandru Denca. I had downloaded the free version initially but found immediately that the feature/functionality was so much greater than the Google tool that I just ended up buying it for only $4.99.

The first thing I noticed was the full editor feature set that was sorely lacking in the Google tool. I mentioned in my previous article that the smaller font size in the Google editor was driving my eyes crazy and made it mostly unusable for an iPad Mini (a larger iPad would probably be ok). Well, right away I altered this post's font size and now have a very comfortable screen to view and type on. I really like that the editor also fills the entire window with a very clean look.

The editor gives you the features you need to highlight, change font colors, use bold and italics, strikeout, ^super-_subscripts and more. Of course, the standard paragraph formatting is available as well as image and video inserts which I'll cover next. Hyperlinking is also very easy if you want a valuable external link. However, if you're an expert on HTML you're really in luck because you can switch to HTML view and add any customizations to a post - awesome option!

Image Editing

Using the image uploader is a dream compared to the Google tool. You get full control of the image to resize, justify and set the picture properties. Here is the example of this post being written from a picture I just took from my iPhone. I used a small utility to scale the photo down a bit and crop it (just as I would on my laptop). Then, I just pressed the image icon to insert it from my photo gallery on the iPad.

As you can see the screen layout is much nicer with the larger font. There is also a video link embed icon for Youtube or Vimeo videos 

Saving and Posting

After using this tool for a while I started to wonder about internet connectively while working. This iPad is Wifi only so it doesn't have a 4G option - what does this mean to editing and saving posts? Good news is that BlogTouch Pro has a Save Local feature that allows you to work in remote settings and not having to worry about connectivity - a great feature! You are given the option to save Locally, in Draft mode or to Publish. Draft and publish post to Blogger. 

Accounts

I had no issues with multiple Google accounts - Blogtouch Pro can switch between them and the associated blogs so you can keep track of all your work. There are a few things that are not quite user friendly - such as having to manually hit the small refresh icon in the lower left to see the blog posts appear (you get a bit startled not seeing your posts when you switch). 

All in all I have found this to be an excellent iPad application for Blogger. I cannot say if there are limits or bugs to large images or complex posts since I haven't used it for very long. But, I've attempted a number of test posts without problems (other than my own learning curve). Frankly, you could really use this app to be a great notetaking complement since you can adjust fonts, pictures and posts the way you want and just use a private blog for the notebook. 

Highly recommended!

Posted By my pwiki2:21 PM

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Blogger on the iPad - Part 1

I love my iPad mini - in fact, I find myself using it more and more for most of my day to day work and even my home business work. Now that I have a Zagg keyboard for it as well I find it even easier. Some of the research I've been doing over the last few months is on what the best Blogger app is for the iPad. Blogging on the iPad is convenient and works great if you're traveling or on the move. Frankly, I hate carrying around a laptop on vacations and have fully adopted my both my iPhone and iPad for any remote work.

That said, there still are some problems with using Blogger mobile apps. The iPad mini is small and compresses your screen size significantly. Additionally, viewing web sites or using online tools becomes more problematic due to the sites switching to mobile modes which can be reduce usability especially for those sites that have been designed for full laptop or desktop work.

Google's Blogger Tool for iOS

I must say I was excited to see that right away Google had created an iOS tool (version 2.1.7.2) for both iPhone and iPad specifically for Blogger that was free in the App Store. I immediately downloaded it and began trying it out.

Well, I have to say it didn't go very well. There are a number of problems with the tool besides just not having the amount of flexibility you get with the web interface we all use today. In fact, I'm writing this post using the Google iOS app right now at the dining room table with the Mini and Zagg keyboard. 

First issue is the default font size for posting. Right now my eyes are going completely buggy due to the very small posting font. There are no settings that allow you to directly alter this. What really bothers me the most about that is you're stuck either using this post editor with tiny fonts (the larger iPad might work a bit better), or, you have to use an external editor such as Write 2, Write for iPad, Notability or even Evernote to get a comfortable size.

Next, is the capability of the editor itself. It is severely limited in functionality. As you can see here the only thing I can do within the post is to create bold text with italics and/or underlined. That is all you can do - you can't alter the foreground or background color, the font, or this size. My first reaction was to alter the HTML of the post itself. But, Google declined to even have that feature. 

Amazingly, you cannot even highlight some text to create a hyperlink.In fact, I had to use an external html editor in order to copy / paste this into this post. This seems to be the only way to get html into your posts. So, if you need special html within, you must find an iOS app in the App Store that allows html editing.

Thankfully, you can add photos to your posts but even that feature is very limited in scope:

As you can see from this picture taken right now just how limited the photo functionality is. First, I cannot adjust the size. This tool just blasts a full image across the post (In fact, I had to re-adjust this image to fit properly - if your template isn't standard the mobile photo upload probably will cause you issues). So, no matter the size of the photo it will be placed dead center in your post. Second, there are no additional justification, caption, alt text or border settings to allow any creative work.

You can save a post as a draft and then publish it later. Also, you can add keywords to the post itself. However, without any template adjustments, post adjustments, html editing or photo editing this app is sorely lacking and can only really be utilized by the most casual user for things such as travel blogs or family photos.

I have to stop this post now because I'm truly getting a headache. Once I had discovered the flaws in this iOS app I decided to find another blogging app that might give me a better user experience for Blogger on a mobile platform. In my next post I'll be reviewing a much, much better iOS app that really does what Google should have done for mobile posting.

Posted By my pwiki9:09 AM

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How to Add Google Analytics to Blogger

There is probably not a more interesting real-time or site statistics tool than Google Analytics. If you haven't used it before you'll find that it blows away the Blogger stats tool in the Blogger editor. I haven't added it to Blogger Tips Pro earlier since I've been intending to create the tutorial - but kept putting it off for other reasons. I do use it for my other sites, however.

Let's get started. If you don't have a Google Analytics account yet you just need to sign into your Blogger Google account to start. Now, if you have a large number of blogs under a parent name or company then I would suggest you monitor all of your sites from a single account. You be the judge.

Creating a Google Analytics Account

Once you're logged in, simply go to http://analytics.google.com - you should see a page like this. Just select 'create an account':

Now that you're into the main sign-up page just click the 'Sign up' button to start:

You'll now be presented with a number of options to get your account started. I chose 'Website' and 'Universal Analytics' as my options to start. I felt that the benefits of the Beta would be good to try out.

Scroll down the screen to find the rest of the options  - enter your 'Account Name', 'Website Name' and 'URL':

There are some more options near the bottom of the sign-up screen called 'Data Sharing Settings' and I will let you pick and choose if you want to opt-in on those. Once you've done that just click on the 'Get Tracking ID' prompt at the bottom of the page, accept the Terms and Conditions and you're ready!

Adding Your Analytics ID to Blogger

You'll be brought into the main page with the 'Tracking ID'. One point to remember is that the ID is tied to a specific blog. If you have more that one blog be sure to go back in and create another ID for a different blog.

I've highlighted the ID below - this is the ID you're going to want to copy and paste into Blogger. Be sure to copy this ID right now by highlighting it and using a mouse click copy:

Now, go back and log into Blogger - open your specific blog - and choose the 'Settings', 'Other' menus and scroll down to the bottom of the form to find the 'Google Analytics' entry field like this:

Add your analytics ID in the empty field as I have above and press 'Save Settings' in the upper right of the screen. Your blog is now ready and monitoring all users hitting your site.

Viewing the Google Analytics Data

The best part of the analytics screens is just the overall breadth of what data is provided. My goal in this tutorial is not to give you an in-depth view. You can take a look at this step-by-step tutorial. However, go back into your Analytics account to get to the reporting data.

The main page you want to look at is the 'Reporting' screens where you'll see your traffic and other analytical information:

Here is a snapshot of one of my old sites with the type of data you'll see in your main Google Analytics dashboard:

My favorite view in the Analytics page is the real-time view of who's hitting the site. Here is BloggerTipsPro.com literally minutes after I added the ID:

You can see that a desktop, mobile and tablet hit the blog and what pages are being access. That is a very cool view of your site's traffic. There's so much more you can do with what Google provides. Enjoy!!

Posted By my pwiki2:51 PM

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Best Blogger Templates - 2014

So, this might be one of the most difficult posts that I have written on BloggerTipsPro.com. I have to start off by first apologizing to the creative authors out there that have produced some amazingly beautiful Blogger templates for the world to use. That said, I have some unfortunate comments to make to my readers that may or may not persuade you to use what Google provides out of the box or just to go get one of these templates.

Here it goes - I have spent many, many hours and days trying to find any template out there that qualifies as a 'best Blogger template' and found nothing - absolutely nothing. I've gone through hundreds of websites all pitching either free or paid Blogger templates and not a single one has made the grade of what a Blogger template should be. People have pitched their templates directly to me to add to this site but still did not qualify in my mind.

Blogger Templates are not Wordpress Templates

The problem - web designers totally understand page layout and design - however, they do not understand Blogger templates. Part of that must be blamed on Google for not adequately explaining the technical aspects of the template.

You see, Blogger templates are not Wordpress templates or vice versa. Yes, CSS design is the same but the deeper technicalities are not. What I have found in almost all cases (there are some exceptions I will explain) is that the web designers have taken Wordpress template CSS code directly or modified and just replaced it in Blogger.

Most of the websites pitching 'Best Blogger Templates' out there are all using the very same core of templates from a Creative Commons set that have be placed in the marketplace for free - many come from these sites (Templateify, Soratemplates, Templatism, Premiumbloggertemplates, Bloggertipsandtricks, Mybloggerlab, etc. dot-com. I won't honor these sites with links since I personally don't think they are in the spirit of what a blogger template should be - you are free to add the .com to each and take a look). These are great designs - don't get me wrong.

The Blogger Template Designer

What they all missed was the very essence of a Blogger template - the core template designer from Google. Since you the readers are aware of the Blogger template designer in out of the box templates you know that you can modify many of the parameters of each template - from colors, fonts, widths, outlines, etc. If you're not familiar with what I'm saying - here is an image of the designer with the sections I just mentioned outlined:

However, in the case of the templates offered in the marketplace, they've missed this point completely by stripping out the template designer code from Google and just pasting in other CSS code. The template designer is configured to allow you to modify CSS without knowing CSS - a key point!

Now, is that a bad thing overall? No, it isn't earth-shattering. However, by removing the template designer you're stuck with what you get with their templates and cannot modify them without having deeper CSS knowledge to edit the CSS code directly. Many bloggers do not understand CSS code - and the beauty of the template designer is that a template author could provide user enabled modifications down to the deepest CSS levels - it is fully extensible.

Consequences

What that means for you the reader is that if you install one of these free templates you are stuck with the look-and-feel unless you know CSS (Want to learn? Go to Code Academy - Web Fundamentals). Your only other option is to install another template from scratch. If you don't mind doing that then by all means do so - there are some very nice designs out there. Just be aware of the consequences when you do that.

I did find a few template offerings out that that did use the template designer - but, unfortunately, they just modified the Google templates directly which I think is a copyright violation since there are no Creative Commons licensing statements in the Google free templates. You are much better off just using a Google template and extending it directly as I showed in the tutorial - Build a Basic Wordpress Theme in Blogger.

Or, if you're really ambitious, learn how a Blogger template works, strip out all of the CSS and build your own resell-able templates with the template designer.

I would love to hear some feedback from both users and authors on this post. What have you found? Are you an author that I missed? Are you wondering if some templates you have found qualify?

Posted By my pwiki12:06 PM

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