Google Upgrades Blogger With New Layout and Privacy Tools

Posted on August 15, 2006

Google has added upgraded its free Blogger service with some helpful new features. Information about the new features can be found in Google's Blogger Help section.

Blogger has made it easier for bloggers to edit the blog's template using new layout editing tools. Another one of the new features is a privacy feature that lets you control who can read your blog.

Steve Rubel says the new privacy feature is not so secret. You can also label your posts in Blogger. Is there some reason Blogger did not call these tags? Another big change is dynamic serving which keeps bloggers from having to republish their blog.

The biggest change of all is perhaps the least immediately visible, but it affects the entire underlying structure of Blog*Spot. What used to happen was that Blogger would create static HTML files on your Blog*Spot account every time you published, and those files would remain there unchanged until your next update. In the new version, adding a new post simply updates your information in our database. Then, when someone wants to see any of the pages on your blog, those pages are created for them dynamically, on the fly.

If you want to use the new features you have to switch to Blogger in Beta. This requires using an existing Google Account or creating a Google Account. If you don't want to switch too bad because Google will make you switch to Google Accounts in a couple months anyway.

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.

Google has set up a special FAQ about Google Accounts and switching to Google Accounts. Google Accounts could be used to integrate Blogger with other Google products, like Gmail and Google Reader. From a privacy standpoint it will also give Google more access to what its users are doing including searches, blog posts, email, etc.

There are many bloggers covering the Google Blogger upgrade. Some bloggers are hoping Google clears out some of the blogs with no posts on them.