Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Blogger in Beta

Blogs and Blogging...



Blogger has come out with a new beta. You can only use it now if you start a new blog, but in the future (hopefully) it will be available to all Blogger users. Those of us who continue slogging along in our old blogs will see a message on the Blogger dashboard when we have the option of switching over.

One nice change is that it will be possible to set up categories.

Take the Blogger tour here: Blogger Buzz: Blogger in beta

UPDATE:
There is a message on my Blogger start page that I can switch over to Blogger Beta if I want to. It is tempting, but a couple of things have made me hesitate. If I switch, I can't switch back if I don't like it. Also, there's this:

Users who have not switched to Blogger in beta will not be able to login to comment on blogs that have been switched. Commenting using the "anonymous" or "other" options will still work.
If I switched and you hadn't, you'd have to post here as "Anonymous" or "Other" even if you are a registered Blogger user.

On the other hand, here's more info from another page that makes it sound like I might as well make the change.
When you see the invitation to create a Google Account and join Blogger in beta, you're welcome to postpone it and switch later at a more convenient time. If you do this, your old Blogger login will continue to work as before. However, after a couple of months we will begin requiring you to switch in order to access your Blogger account.
The Google Account is just your Gmail if you have one, and if you don't want to get a Gmail address, apparently you can register the e-mail address of your choice.

6 comments:

Phil said...

I wasn't aware of the commenting issue. I backed up my template, and it turns out that there is an option to go back to using a "classic" template if I want... it would just the new features.

Sarabeth said...

Even with the messes that I encountered, I like the beta version.

Although, I did like that I learned html in order to change my template colors and fonts and the like. The drop and drag editor sort of dumbs you down.

Genevieve Netz said...

I don't know if they're right about the commenting thing if you have a G-mail account, or maybe they already have it worked out? I was able to comment on both your new blogs without using the "Other" or "Anonymous" options.

Genevieve Netz said...

I did switch, but I still have the old template, I'm not going to change it until they have HTML editing for the templates. I wasn't very happy with Blogger Beta today when it wouldn't upload an image, but I trust they'll get it straightened out.

Phil said...

You transitioned to blogger beta very smoothly. I admire the consistency of your blog.

Genevieve Netz said...

Thanks, Phil. I miss having the Google AJAX search, but to be honest, I haven't had much time to try to get it working. I have a couple things in mind to try on it. If it turns out it's something in the javascript, though, I'll never get it fixed by myself!

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