The new Followers gadget is out - and is causing some confusion.
If you are Following a blog - either your own blog, or somebody else's - and you examine the Followers gadget, you will see a button labeled "UnFollow".
Long ago, "UnFollow" was a selection, in the "Options" menu.
The "Unfollow" button is there, to let you stop Following a blog that you are Following.
"Unfollow" lets you stop Following any blog - yours or not.
If you are Following this blog, you should see a button labeled "Unfollow".
Previously, "Stop Following" was just one link, in the Followers gadget Options menu. Now, it's a button, in the gadget.
This blog, with the Followers gadget, as I see it.
If I wish to Unfollow a blog - possibly because I can Follow only 300 blogs at any time - I can click "Unfollow".
Since I am Following my blog, I see a button labeled "Unfollow".
Long ago, "Stop Following" was an "Options" menu selection.
Previously, the "Stop Following"" option was available, behind the "Options" link in the gadget.
What we used to see.
A blog that you are not Following will display a "Follow" button.
We see a "Follow" button, on blogs that we are not Following.
I am not Following this blog.
Since I am not Following this blog, I see a button labeled "Follow".
It's that simple. If you are Following a blog, you'll see an "Unfollow" button. If you're not Following, you should see "Follow".
If you wish to Follow, you will need a Blogger / Google account - though not necessarily a GMail account.
If you see "Follow" when viewing this blog, you are welcome to click on the button.
The "Options" wizard is now titled "Manage followers" - and is accessed through a link in the Stats dashboard page. Right now, the "Block" button is the only "Manage followers" option.
The #Blogger Followers gadget now has an "UnFollow" button, visible to people who are Following a blog. Previously, "UnFollow" was a "Stop Following" selection, in the gadget "Options" menu.
We've been experiencing - and discussing - referer spam, since 2011.
We still see unaware blog owners, asking in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue.
When I checked my stats for my blog, and looked at traffic sources, I noticed a link from a different country - and it just seems weird that Russian readers would then go to a US site.
When we explain that they're probably seeing another referer spam attack - and that clicking on the links is not always a good idea, we get a variety of responses. Some want to know if there is a purpose, to this noise.
Referer spam has a variety of purposes - ranging from commercial, to dangerous, to deceptive.
Garbage? Or a purpose?
Here are just 3 examples, from Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue.
- Advertise any paying customer.
- Lead you to a website with hacking content.
- Attack innocent third parties.
Advertise any paying customer.
This is the commercial possibility. If there's money to be made from publishing informative, interesting, and original content, there is probably lots more money to be made herding innocent third parties to ads on any website needing traffic - and lacking informative, interesting, and original content.
This may even represent a variation of GPT. And with the volume of referer spam that's possible, there are surely enough naive blog owners to make this a very lucrative activity.
Lead you to a website with hacking content.
This is the dangerous possibility. With hacking activity as a possible destination, clicking on a Stats link blindly is like playing "Russian Roulette", with your computer.
And, don't expect the website URL to provide a clue as to the destination. "www.innocous-name.com" could itself be hacked - and might unknowingly serve content from "www.hacking-website.com" - or redirect to "www.hacking-website.com".
Attack innocent third parties.
This is the deceptive possibility.
My blog was a "victim" of referer spam attack, in 2011. I have seen similar referer spam reports, that suggest this is not an unusual use of referer spam.
Protect yourself - if you must investigate your referers.
Surely, there are still actual people surfing - and some referer links are genuine. Eventually, you will want to check out some of the more intriguing URLs, in "Traffic sources".
If you decide to investigate one of the links, copy the text of the link URL - then use a proxy server.
Just don't investigate links, without protection. That's what proxy servers are for.
Some #Blogger blog owners want to know if referer spam has a purpose - or if it is simply random noise. It actually has a variety of purposes - commercial, dangerous, and deceptive.
Some people who will enjoy your blog may prefer to follow it using their email.
It's not difficult to setup email delivery of the comments or posts - from various source selections. FeedBurner offers a wide assortment of delivery options, for the many sources.
Blogger offers the "Subscribe by Email" gadget and service, which delivers the posts newsfeed. That's one feed possibility - and you can have many more, with very little work.
Using the many options provided by FeedBurner, combined with the many feed possibilities, you can produce a generous set of email subscription options.
- Setup a FeedBurner feed.
- Activate the "Subscribe by Email" service, for the feed.
- Add a FeedBurner form, to the blog.
- Setup the Post Feed Redirect, to connect the blog and the FeedBurner feed.
Setup a FeedBurner feed.
To add a standard blog posts subscription, add a "Subscribe by Email" gadget (for blogs with non dynamic Blogger templates) - or a "Subscription Links" gadget (for all blogs, including those with dynamic templates).
The standard blog posts subscription is not the only possibility. You can setup a FeedBurner feed for any blog published feed - including various label based feeds.
Blogger now publishes a pages feed, which complements the posts feed. And FeedBurner will distribute the pages feed, as it does the posts feed.
Start with the URL of any blog native feed.
Give the feed an Address and a Title.
The feed is setup. Proceed to the dashboard, to Activate the feed.
Activate the "Subscribe by Email" service, for the feed.
Activate "Email Subscriptions", for the FeedBurner feed that you setup.
From the FeedBurner dashboard Publicize - "Email Subscriptions" - "Subscription Management" page, Activate the "Email Subscriptions" service, for the feed.
The service is active - now check out other options.
With the "Email Subscriptions" service activated, look at the various formatting and distribution options available.
Add a FeedBurner form, to the blog.
You can use the form provided with "Subscribe by Email", if you are setting up the standard blog posts feed. For any other feed, you can use either form provided on the "Subscription Management" page, installed as an HTML / JavaScript gadget.
Using the "Subscription Link Code", you can add a fixed location ("floating") subscription icon.
Setup the Post Feed Redirect, to connect the blog and the FeedBurner feed.
FeedBurner "Edit Feed Details" is used to link the FeedBurner feed, to the blog. Similarly, you use the Blogger "Post Feed Redirect" to link the blog to the FeedBurner redirected feed.
Just use your imagination.
FeedBurner presents you with endless choices, for letting your readers enjoy your blog from their Email inboxes. Think about what will look good on your blog - and what will interest your readers.
Not all #Blogger blog owners know how easy it is to use #FeedBurner email delivery, to provide your readers the option to view your blog - in many content options - using their email inboxes.
This week, Google announced the end to its website based community building accessory, Google Friend Connect, for non Blogger based websites.We're retiring the service for all non-Blogger sites on March 1, 2012.
The announcement notes its replacement with Google+.We encourage affected sites to create a Google+ page and place a Google+ badge on their site so they can bring their community of followers to Google+ and use new features like Circles and Hangouts to keep in touch.
Blogger blog owners can continue to use the Followers gadget, can use Google+, or can build their communities using both features.
Blogger blog owners were recently offered several suggestions, to integrate Google+ into their blogs.- The Google+ badge, placed on the blog, directs your readers to your Google+ profile.
- You can replace your Blogger profile with your Google+ profile.
- Replacement of your Blogger profile with your Google+ profile enables you to publish your blog updates to your Google+ followers.
With Google retiring Friend Connect, this allows Blogger to take over its functionality. Blogger blog owners, who like the idea of letting their Followers display their icons on the faces of our blogs, and view our blog updates in the Blogger Reading List / Google Reader displays, can continue to use the Followers accessory.
By removing Google Friend Connect from the Followers accessory, Blogger is hoping that the code supporting the Followers gadget can be simplified, and will become more stable. This will hopefully resolve many of the recently reported outages, both in the blog face display, and in our dashboard and Reading Lists.
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Having noted a couple downsides of the new Blogger community, Following, I have been intrigued to note that a number of bloggers are in agreement with me on one issue - Following interaction with Google Reader is a bit rough. Or was, for a while. The advice we get about Following, in this capability, isfollowing a blog will create a subscription to the blog in your Google Reader account.
That's a rather vague statement, and says nothing about what happens if a given blog is already in Google Readers, or what happens when you remove a Followed blog from your Reading List.
So, I decided to find out what happens.
Having accumulated a small number of interesting blogs in my Reading List, I clicked on the View in Google Reader link. I see all of my Followed blogs, plus a few others that I added some time ago.
The advice isYou can also hide followed blogs if you'd rather not see them in Reader.
Good advice, so now they aren't seen.
I click on the Manage Subscriptions link, and under Preferences, I see the checkbox "Show followed blogs from Blogger", and it's now unchecked.
With "Show followed blogs from Blogger" unchecked, my Reading List is a bit empty.
So I go back to Settings - Preferences, and re check "Show followed blogs from Blogger".
And now, I see my Followed blogs again.
So it looks like you have two possibilities - see all Followed blogs, or no Followed blogs. This is better than always seeing Followed blogs, but I hope it can be improved upon. For a start, how about "Don't duplicate blogs." - that doesn't sound so complicated, does it?
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