McSweeny's Review

Blogger Bullstuff - Part Two

Remember how I told you all that I found a workaround to create a static homepage? Well, I hope you did it already because you can't anymore.

For the last year or so, Blogger has had a new interface on the back end. It's flashy and serviceable, but I noticed some things that it cannot do. Thankfully, they have allowed you to use their "Old Blogger Interface" since they forced this new one on you.

Until now.

So now all those things you used to be able to do on the back end through the old interface that the new interface can't do, well you can't do them. One of those random things happens to be hiding your original homepage (the site that automatically populates your blog posts). Random as hell, I know. But now you can't do it. Which means you'll be stuck showing that page somewhere on your site, which makes things not only more confusing for the casual user who is just trying to use my workaround to create a static website, but also ugly. I'm going to have to amend my earlier post to tell people how to do it the ugly way since we all have to now. God save us all.

Ed note: Since original publication, I've found that blogger has fixed this and the new interface does the same thing the old interface did. So please disregard this post.

Blogger Bullstuff - Part One

I keep giving Blogger the benefit of the doubt. And I keep regretting it. Like that girlfriend that couldn't possibly cheat on you again. Not with another roommate.

Here are the bugs I know of so far.

1. You cannot make a static homepage. I have discovered a workaround that is well documented on my website, but it leaves several flaws. And it's hard and laborious to do. Certainly not something I'd consider "user-friendly." (Ed note: Updated 10/1/12 at 12:26am: Blogger no longer allows you to use the Old Blogger Interface, making it even more messy to perform this workaround. More on that later.)

2. People who purchased their domain name through blogger couldn't access it for a while. I didn't do this because I already pay for my own website over on Wordpress. I don't know if it's been fixed, but it seems like it was a pretty deflating issue for those in our class who did this.

3. None of my links work. I noticed this when looking at some classmate's sites. All of my banner links (Home, This Blog, Other Blog, Homework, Tech Crap) are redirects. Whenever I mouseover any of the links, a little "javascript;;" notice appears where the website link normally appears. And when I click on the link, nothing happens (in both Chrome and IE). This also happens on several other classmate's websites. A Charm Life's Recommendations and Mephistofalafel's Ephemera to name a couple. This doesn't seem to happen with all redirects and this only recently started happening for mine, so it may be cleared up by the time you read this. But here's what I see when this happens.

So I'm done working on this website for tonight and I'm still not sure how this buggy outfit is so much more user-friendly than Wordpress. But that's probably just my late night frustration typing. Hopefully I'll have something to show the class tomorrow instead of just a static homepage and four broken links.

How to Create a Static Homepage on Blogger

They said we’d never walk on the moon. They said we’d never have a black president. And they said we’d never have a static homepage on blogger.

But nobody told them about me.

So I managed, mostly because my teacher said I couldn’t do it, to figure out how to make a static homepage for a blogger site. I’ve compiled the information needed to do this (and the complications that arise from it) on this one easy to follow (hopefully) page.

First, the concept so that you understand it. You’re not really creating a static homepage. Blogger forces your homepage to be the blog. And by homepage, I mean the part that ends in .com (aka http://duckpindustin.blogspot.com). So this is really just a workaround (Ed note: The easiest workaround is using wordpress). What you’re doing is setting up a redirect so that when somebody types in or clicks on that address, it sends you to another page within your website. You have to then create another page called “blog” or whatever you like and have that page redirect to all blog posts. The way I’ve figured to do this is by labeling ALL posts with the label “blog” (or whatever you like). OK, let’s get to the hard part:

Step One: Create the “Blog” page. I ran into trouble doing things before I did this. Like I couldn't see any of my blog posts because I had the main blog page redirected to my static page. So I couldn't prove I had done anything. How to do this?

1.       From the dashboard, go to “Pages.”

2.       Select “New page” and from the dropdown menu, select “Web address.”

3.       Type in your homepage followed by “/search/label/Blog”, e.g. (http://duckpindustin.blogspot.com/search/label/Blog)

4.       Make sure to label all your blog posts with the label “blog.”

This will create a page on your blog that will be all blog posts with the label “blog.” Again, this is a workaround for blogger sites. There are much easier ways to do this somewhere else. Suck it up.

Step Two: Create the Homepage you would like. Figure out what you want your homepage to say. Maybe you want it to function as an “about me” page. Maybe you want it to be links to all funny cat videos. Maybe you just want a photoshopped picture of you with all your ex-girlfriends for some unhealthy reason. I’m not here to judge.

1.       From the dashboard, go to “Pages.”

2.       Select “New page” and from the dropdown menu, select “Blank Page.”

3.       Put that stuff in there that we talked about earlier. For information on how to create a webpage, go anywhere on the web.

4.       Name the page “Home” or whatever you want.

Step Three: Create the redirect from the original homepage to your new static homepage. This is the tough part. So get your big girl pants on for this step. Apparently, you can create custom redirects within your website.

1.       From the dashboard, go to “Settings.”

2.       Click on “Search preferences.”

3.       Click on “Custom Redirects.” This will lead you to a dropdown box where you can type in two web addresses, the “from” and the “to” address. All addresses start with your website domain name (a.k.a http://duckpindustin.blogspot.com).

4.       In the “from” field, type in only a slash “/”. This will indicate that it is supposed to come from the main page.

5.       In the “to” field, type in “/p/home.html” if you’ve named your new static homepage “home” as I suggested. Otherwise, try to find that page and replace “home” with “whatever the hell you chose to name your silly little page.” Note: The “/p/” stands for “page”. Just so you know.

Step Four: Hide your original homepage. If you’ve done everything correctly, you should have two pages called “Home,” your original homepage that blogger defaults to your blog AND your created static homepage which the address now redirects to. Well, it can get confusing with two pages called “Home,” so I recommend you change the ORIGINAL home to “*” or something equivalent that no one will really care to click on.

1.       From the dashboard, go to “Pages.” There should be two pages labeled “Home.”

2.       Under the “Home” page that ONLY has selections to either “Edit” or “View,” click “Edit.”

3.       Change the name to “*” or something short you would hope no one would click on.

4.       Move the other “Home” page to the top of your list.

Step Five: Hide your original home page. This is a tough one because I’ve found that I could only accomplish this through the old blogger interface (Ed note: I’m reminded now of the time during our first class where the teacher said we should use blogger because “it’s more user-friendly” than wordpress).

1.       From the dashboard, click on the gear-looking thing in the top right of the page.

2.       From that dropdown menu, select “Old blogger interface.”

3.       Select “Design” under the blog you wish to edit.

4.       Select “Edit” within the “Pages” element.

5.       Deselect the Home page in the box under “Pages to show” as shown below.

6.       Scroll down and click “Save.”

This should hide your original home page (the one that defaulted automatically to the blog) so you only have one home page. I think.

Once again, this is a Blogger workaround. There are several issues that shouldn’t exist if life was perfect (or if you went to wordpress). For example, you have to remember to label every post with the word “blog” or it won’t show up anywhere. Also, the blog will have the following bar at the top. And if you click on the link that says "show all posts," it redirects you to your new homepage, not your blog. That can be a project for someone out there to figure out. But all in all, if asked to make a blogger site for a class and you want to have a static homepage, this is how you do it.

The Sharpened Axe of Publicity

I’ve been surveying the landscape for years now, but I’ve recently started looking more closely at the individual brush strokes. In the past few months, I’ve even started taking my brush and very tepidly putting some earthy tones to canvas. Abraham Lincoln once said if he had six hours to chop down a tree, he’d spend four sharpening the axe. Well, I wonder what he would have done if he had no deadline and no guarantee that the axe worked or if he even liked cutting down trees anymore.

I’ve been writing a blog for years now and the one conclusion I’ve drawn is that it isn’t working. I’ve spent the years since this revelation analyzing why it isn’t working. I mostly believe it’s because the subject matter has no focus. Movie reviews, football predictions and stories about my childhood are written and published in consecutive posts. It also probably doesn’t help that I have no real publishing schedule that I follow.

When I go to read something online, I generally bring up a search engine and type in “stupid cat videos” or “Bill Cosby dead” or “Abraham Lincoln quotes” and I’ll click on a link or two. If I’m really interested in a topic, I will bookmark their website and check it frequently, aka ESPN and Rotten Tomatoes. Very rarely will I stumble upon a site with no specific focus that I will come back to again (with the exception of friends’ sites). The Onion and McSweeny’s are two good examples of such sites. My blog only has two regular readers and one of them isn’t even my wife.

I haven’t really ventured into the electronic publications, mostly because my writing doesn’t fall into those categories. The things I enjoy writing are more commentary on current events, be it social issues, political issues, or most often, sports or movie-related commentary. I have on occasion written something worthy of submitting to an electronic publication, but part of me thinks I’m too busy sharpening my axe to start cutting just yet. Part of that sharpening is figuring out how to operate this whole social media landscape, including my blog – which just underwent a major transformation last month. Also, trying to figure out what I want to do with my writing would help.

Adam Ruben, a fellow storyteller and non-fellow chemist, writes a monthly a science-related humor column called “Experimental Error” for sciencemag.org. Derek Hills, another storyteller friend, has written theater reviews for Washington City Paper. Nevin Martell, a food writer from the same storytelling crew, has a few regular gigs with magazines such as City Eats and Washington Post. I also have a friend who fell ass backwards into being a regular contributor for the Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader series. These people all get paid for their craft and the common thread is that they all found a niche in the writing world. Alex Petri, fellow storyteller and comedian, writes the ComPost, a daily editorial for the Washington Post. She is the notable exception. She is also brilliant and has an English degree from Harvard. I have links to all these friends on my “blogroll.”

As far as how this will shape what I do for this class, I’m not sure. Because I already have my own blog with an established and purchased web address, I’m using this blog mostly as practice. I plan on incorporating the things I’ve learned from this class into my future posts and projects. Right now, I have plans to continue with my current website (dustinrecsports.com) as a general “Here’s what Dustin is all about” site to promote myself. I also have visions of writing a very specific “stay at home dad” blog with an obviously more specific focus. Additionally, I have plans for a multi-author website that I’d like to use for my final project. But since none of this fits into the material I’m being asked to write about for this class, it will likely be a standalone blog that I’ll only really share with people in this class. I think it would be confusing to include posts like this on a stay-at-home-dad blog and as I made mention several times already, it’s all about the niche.

Day One

Dear Diary,

Day One has already pissed me off. Adam showed us how to add a twitter feed to our blogger site. As usual, it did not work. It might be the ever-incompetent twitter or the equally confusing blogger. Odds are close to 50/50. I've completely ruled out user error. (Ed note: It was a user error)

Oh yeah, we also have to use blogger. After I just made a big deal about the big change to wordpress. It's like having to walk back into your ex-girlfriends room for your keys after you just slammed the door.

So anyway, I spent the entire class trying to figure out why my twitter feed wasn't working and missed his explanation of everything else. Which probably would have helped. But also probably wouldn't have worked.

Sorry for complaining so much, Diary. I'll write more tomorrow. I love you.

Dustin.