Photobucket Drops Free Image Display, Outside Their Website

One of the most popular third party image hosting services, for Blogger blogs, recently changed their photo hosting service.

Photobcket no longer allows embedding of their hosted photos on third party websites, for free accounts. They now require a $399 / year membership, for accounts with photos shared outside their website.

Some Blogger blog owners, publishing blogs which use third party templates that feature images - decorations, illustrations, and wallpaper - hosted by Photobucket - now see their blogs decorated by various demands.

PLEASE UPDATE YOUR ACCOUNT TO ENABLE THIRD PARTY HOSTING



This is (was) a small image, tiled (repeated horizontally and vertically), to fill a larger space. It's now a PhotoBucket ad, similarly tiled.

In many cases, this is simply a third party supplied template, using wallpaper designed by the template publisher. The template publisher used PhotoBucket, to host the image.

The blog owner, and others, now face the need to pay dearly, to publish their blogs using their current templates.

Whether the template objects were created by you - or by the supplier of a shiny third party template - if the images are hosted by Photobucket, they are now unusable, on your blog.

Photobucket, a US-based image and video-hosting website founded in 2003, quietly changed its policy late last month to prevent users from hosting their content on third-party websites unless they pay a $US400 ($526) annual fee.

Photobucket published a brief blog post, on June 26, referring to the service change - buried deep in their website.

We have updated our Terms of Service, effective June 20, 2017. Please take a moment to review our updated terms and policies as they may affect your account.

If your blog uses a third party template with PhotoBucket hosted images, the account in question won't be yours - but your blog will still be affected. You're going to have to find out how your template designer is going to support their product.

Third party template publishers now need to convert their templates, to use images hosted by other services. And Blogger blog owners may need to find other image hosting.

Blogger blog owners, who use third party templates in their blogs, may need different templates. Not all third party template publishers may be able to support their templates, and this change.

The simplest solution is to switch back to a Blogger standard and supported template, using the dashboard Theme page. If you've had your current template for a while, you may not know what possibilities have been added, to the Blogger template selections.

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Photobucket, a popular third party image hosting service used by many #Blogger blogs, originally allowed their hosted images to be embedded or hot linked on Blogger and many other websites. They recently started requiring a $400 USD / year membership, for images to be displayed outside their website.

Many Blogger blogs, with third party templates that use Photobucket hosted images, now have broken templates.

Does Your Blog Need HTML Validation?

A few blog owners are concerned about blog network performance - and spend time validating and tweaking the template, based on advice from various third party services.

I don't know how to use W3C Validation, there are always errors displayed for my blog!

And we see periodic questions about validation - and sometimes reports about broken templates, with blog owners following the validation advice, blindly.

W3C Validation produces hundreds of errors, for every blog page.

I Tried Validation, For This Blog.

I used to tear my hair out, trying to fix my W3C validation errors, for this blog.

Check out the validation log, for this blog, as an example. See the size of the scroll tab? That's a 20 page report - of critical errors, in the blog home page.

See the size of the scroll tab? This display shows just the first page, of 20 or so.



Validation Is Useful, For Static Websites.

W3C validation is designed for HTML based, static websites - that are centrally located. Blogger blogs are XML based, and dynamic - and use the Google Content Delivery Network, which serves blog content from dozens of different data centres, worldwide, based upon the location of each individual reader.

With the Google CDN delivering content locally, to many readers, distance related network issues are less important - and with Blogger templates being maintained and tested by Blogger Engineering, a lot of the issues identified by validation are not easily resolved by the typical blog owner.

If you publish a Blogger blog, using a Blogger supplied template, work on content. Blogger manages the network settings, relevant to your blog, as it is served by the Google Content Delivery Network. You publish your blog - and let Blogger / Google worry about the networks, the servers, and the templates.

Custom / Third Party Templates May Benefit, In Specific Cases

It's possible that some blogs with third party templates, and non Blogger standard code, may benefit from validation.

If your blog has a non Blogger template, you could check out Blogger Developers or Stack Overflow - and ask for advice there. Or, try contacting the person / site that provided you with the template, and see what they can tell you.

But with a blog with a supported Blogger template, concentrate on content. Don't tweak the template HTML, unless necessary. Leave Blogger / Google to worry about network issues and the template.

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Some #Blogger blog owners concern themselves about third party network performance analysis. Learn why some performance analysis advice may be unnecessary - and can be harmful to your blog.

https://productforums.google.com/d/topic/blogger/8plQKqdwSGg/discussion

Blogger Magic - Third Party Templates

There are millions of Blogger blog owners - and each owner has their own idea, how their blog should look.

Not every blog owner is willing to settle for using a Blogger supplied template. Some blog owners design their own templates - and others choose templates provided by non Blogger developers.

Some blog owners - even those with no technical background - choose third party supplied templates, and demand instructions in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger. Not every blog owner can be supported, according to their personal level of need.

It's OK for you to install a new third party template, for your blog - though you should plan to do some extra work.

Third party templates should include some installation instructions.

A template publisher should provide instructions for uploading and installing their template. Installation procedures may vary, however.

• Scripted install.
• "Theme" Restore.
• "Theme" "Edit HTML".

Scripted install.

If the template publisher is honourable, using an install script, provided by the template publisher, can be the most reliable install procedure. A well written script can extract the template of your choice from the publishers library, copy it to your blog, and tweak the install to your satisfaction.

You do nothing other than select the template, and maybe some key options - and provide access to the dashboard. The script does all of the work.

This is similar to the selections on the Blogger dashboard "Theme" page - you simply select the template that interests you, and the script does the rest.

Giving control of your Blogger account, to an unknown third party, is not always the best idea, however.

Theme Restore.

If the template publisher provides a template as an XML file, and describes the template as "for Blogger", you can install the template from the dashboard. You will first download the template of your choice, to a local computer.

With a template downloaded locally, you use the Blogger "Backup / Restore" wizard, in the dashboard Theme page.

Start with the dashboard Theme page.

Hit the "Backup / Restore" button.

Hit the "Choose File" button.

Now, you have the file manager, provided with your computer. Select the file, containing the template just downloaded.



The "Backup / Restore" wizard is part of the Blogger dashboard. The template will be selected, using the file manager wizard on the computer being used.

Theme "Edit HTML".

This is the most universal procedure - if the template is provided as HTML. Just use the Blogger "Edit HTML" wizard, in the dashboard Template page.

The simplest install uses "Edit HTML", from the dashboard Template page.

Copy the HTML or Text file content, into the window.



In some cases, you may have to do some work, to use an HTML template.

It's your blog - and the template choice is yours too.

You can use any acceptable third party blog template. Many blog features will perform best, though, if you use the Blogger supplied post template.

To ensure up to date Blogger code, always refresh the post template, after installing a third party blog template.

And as always, I'll suggest that you backup the template, before and after installing a custom template.

If you install a third party template, you may have to support your blog on your own.

Please understand that Blogger won't be able to support your third party template - that is the responsibility of the template publisher. Problems with your blog, after installing third party accessories, may be yours to resolve.

Try and choose a reliable template, from a publisher with a past - and future.

The shinier and more feature rich your template needs are, the more carefully you should choose your template publisher. Even if the template that you choose works today, will it work next month?

When Blogger adds a new feature, next week, you can bet that they won't test their changes against the third party template that you're using. And even if your chosen template publisher is careful to test any Blogger changes, their testing won't start until Blogger makes their changes public.

And any problems that they discover will be yours to deal with, until a solution is developed and tested - and you install the corrected template.

If you choose a template made by a startup publisher, and you're their first / only customer, they may get a new day job, next month. The next time Blogger makes a change that requires an update to your template, they may not answer your plea for help.

With no support, you'll be left with one solution - revert your blog to a standard Blogger supplied and tested template.

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There are millions of #Blogger blog owners - and each owner is different. Blog design - and templates used - will vary similarly.

Some blog owners cannot be satisfied by the Blogger supplied template library - and require third party produced templates.

Blogger Resolves The FaceBook Photo Sharing Issue

Blogger Engineers recently added Blogger template code, to provide images in shares to FaceBook.

The added code is included in the standard template header. If you have a custom template, you may need to verify template header content.

If you have added the previously recommended Open Graph Code to your blog, to allow Open Graph based post / photo sharing - and you use the FaceBook Developers Debugger tool, you may see a new diagnostic suggestion.

Given newly added template code, blogs with added OG code may generate ominous warnings in the FaceBook Developers Debugger tool.

Looking at my blog, and the blog main page.

Object at URL 'http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/' of type 'article' is invalid because it specifies multiple 'og:url' values: http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/, http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/.

Looking at my blog, and a FaceBook Debug log, for this post.

Object at URL 'http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2016/03/blogger-resolves-facebook-photo-sharing.html' of type 'article' is invalid because it specifies multiple 'og:url' values: http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2016/03/blogger-resolves-facebook-photo-sharing.html, http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2016/03/blogger-resolves-facebook-photo-sharing.html.

With Blogger now providing a properly resized image, automatically, from each post, the image provided in the previously suggested Open Graph code is now redundant - and causes duplication.

The browser source listing, for this post.

The FaceBook Debugger log, for this post.



Here's what I see now, in the standard template header.

<meta content='Blogger recently added template code, to properly share content to FaceBook. Learn how this affects your blog.' name='description'/>
<meta content='http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2016/03/blogger-resolves-facebook-photo-sharing.html' property='og:url'/>
<meta content='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinBb17rkStDcQMf4ySxb5DdvxHQM51ZwDHKE1fpfLBsh4uYuz2XEKgs6Do0mySLXLrQB7j1N-GiquUrzKWMNo3I4GRL-KR79KB0HxBisfjUkYSNW9hSytOiTR3rJmGTOo1c1Hl0j6XjtWv/w1200-h630-p-nu/Screenshot+2016-03-13+at+14.35.32.png' property='og:image'/>

So, what do we have?

<meta content='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinBb17rkStDcQMf4ySxb5DdvxHQM51ZwDHKE1fpfLBsh4uYuz2XEKgs6Do0mySLXLrQB7j1N-GiquUrzKWMNo3I4GRL-KR79KB0HxBisfjUkYSNW9hSytOiTR3rJmGTOo1c1Hl0j6XjtWv/w1200-h630-p-nu/Screenshot%2B2016-03-13%2Bat%2B14.35.32.png' property='og:image'/>

The chosen image - resized to 1200 x 630, to suit the FaceBook recommended 1.9 aspect ratio - and large, to suit the FaceBook recommended size.

Now, 3 data elements (2 Open Graph) may be redundant.

• description
• og:image
• og:url

This makes the immediately previous advice unnecessary.

If one wishes to provide author information, that also becomes slightly simpler.

<!-- BEGIN Open Graph tags -->
<meta expr:content='data:blog.metaDescription' name='description' property='og:description'/>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.pageTitle' name='keywords'/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
<meta content='article' property='og:type'/>
<meta content='https://plus.google.com/nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn/about' property='article:author'/>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.pageName' property='og:title'/>
<b:else/>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.title' property='og:title'/>
<meta content='blog' property='og:type'/>
</b:if>
<meta expr:content='"en_US"' property='og:locale'/>
<!-- END Open Graph tags -->

If you truly want to share author details, you still have some work to do - but photos should now be shared, automatically, if your blog has a template with a standard header.

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Recently, Blogger Engineering added OG code to the standard template header, to allow us to share posts with images to FaceBook, without having to add special code. This should help, for owners of blogs which have standard headers.

Your Blog, And Third Party Accessories

Third party accessories are a big part of many blogs.

As Blogger proceeds to command a larger and larger share of the free online web site market, they encourage (directly or indirectly) the development of third party templates, and accessories. This lets us make our blogs more personal to our desires, and shinier to our egos.

Layouts Blogger is more mature, and commands an ever growing share of Blogger. And so, the the selection of Layouts compatible templates and accessories, again provided by third parties, will grow.

And as the selection grows, so does the possible risk, from installing what's available on our blogs. As I wrote long ago, what better way to hack somebody's blog (or computer) than by conning the victim into installing the hack, on his own?

As we install third party accessories, we need to remain aware of the risks involved, in using non Blogger components.

• Some accessories may not work as well as Blogger developed and certified products.
• All accessories may not work together, if developed by different third parties.
• Some accessories may not work at all.
• Some accessories, maliciously crafted, may work as designed - but their design may not be to our benefit.
• Some accessories, maliciously crafted, may attack the computers of our readers. What better way to acquire new victims en masse, than to con a third party into distributing malware without realising it?

Consider the last possibility carefully. It's one thing to unintentionally download and install a hack on your own computer - it's another thing to intentionally install the hack onto your blog, and then onto your readers computers.

Properly designed, a blog installed hack has to only contain code linking the blog to a web site where malware is distributed. Not all malware scanners, either installed on the computer or run from a web site, will detect the blog based component that merely redirects the victim to a malicious web site.

However, we are currently seeing reports of some malware scanners which do validate, on a page by page basis, against all links on the page.

Spread malware onto your computer, and you answer only to yourself. Help spread malware onto your readers computers, and you won't even know all of the people to whom you should answer.

In some cases, your readers won't know that you were the one who contributed to their problems - but you'll still be responsible. Your readers may not blame you for their troubles - but your blog will still suffer from less activity, because your readers are busy carrying their computers to the nearest tech shoppe, and paying for malware removal services, instead of reading your posts.

And should you choose to install a third party accessory or template on your blog, make sure that it's properly chosen and installed. And carefully control the install process.

And finally, keep track of what you install, after it's been installed and tested. Some accessories will work fine immediately when installed, and will fail later - giving your readers unwanted content, when they try to read your blog.

Installing A Third Party Template

One of the neatest features of Layouts Blogger is the ability to backup and restore your template, using a wizard - without having to copy and paste code.

You use a single link to download the code, and a two step procedure to choose then upload a template backup.

If you're getting a template from an external source, you can upload what you get using the restore procedure, too. If you get a template as text, you'll install using the "Edit Template" window. If the blog uses a Classic template, the "Edit Template" window will, of course, be the only choice.

If the blog uses a Layouts template, you'll have the use of the Browse then Upload buttons, which will only upload XML code - so you'll have no chance to make a mistake.

If the template comes as a text file, it might be HTML or XML, so make sure when pasting the code into the "Edit Template" window that the blog uses a Classic or Layouts template, respectively.

Installing an HTML template into a blog that uses Layouts, or an XML template into a blog that uses Classic, will cause you various problems, some which you may see immediately, others only later. If you use the "Edit Template" window to install your template, make sure that you have the right type.

1. If the blog "Edit HTML" wizard has an Upload button, but the template is HTML, you won't be able to use it until you Revert the blog to use a Classic template. Don't try using the "Edit Template" window, until you Revert the blog.
2. If the template is XML, but the blog "Edit HTML" wizard has no Upload button, you will need to Upgrade the blog to use a Layouts template. Don't try to use the "Edit Template" window, to install an XML template. If the blog is published by FTP, you won't have this option at all.
3. Use the "Edit Template" window ONLY if there is no "Upload" button, and the template is HTML.
4. If the template is XML, ONLY use the "Upload" button.
5. If you follow all 4 of the above rules, you'll be fine. Since you're here, you probably ignored one or more.

You cannot fit a square peg into a round hole, nor a round peg into a square hole. Neither can you make a Classic template work in a Layouts blog, nor a Layouts template work in a Classic blog. Before you load a third party template using the "Edit Template" window, make sure that it's the right type of template.

Having said that, I will note that you can use HTML in a layouts template, and that is easier to do than you would think. That's still a layouts template, though - there is no way to fit XML code into a blog that uses a classic HTML template.