Naked Domains on Blogger

Google sometimes isn't great at updating its documentation. Or perhaps they need to improve their search. If you search for information about how to use a naked domain on Blogger, you will get the impression from results that this isn't possible.

The highest search result I found from Blogger seems to say the same thing:

To simplify custom domain configuration on your blog, Blogger only accepts non-naked domains in our sign-up process. If you try to enter a naked domain in the advanced settings of the Settings | Publishing tab, you will run into an error stating that Blogs may not be hosted at naked domains.

To fix this, simply enter the non-naked version of your domain and save your settings.

But you can use a naked domain! (sort of). No hosting, redirect pages or .htaccess files required. You can achieve the same result by configuring some A records on your naked domain to redirect to Google's server.

I knew I saw this somewhere while I was setting up Ferny Blog but it has taken me far too long to find the information in Google's documentation.

But found it I did - Look at the second half of this page

Keep your Blogger Template Clean with the HTML and JS Gadget

This is a short note. A little while ago Blogger announced the introduction of their Blogger Template Designer. The Blogger Template designer was a great addition, allowing very easy modifications to blog design from a number of good-looking starting points.

The implication of the Blogger Template designer is that for many people, editing the template code directly is no longer required. In fact, if you use Blogger Template Designer, you probably shouldn't. The reason is that while your template markup remains untouched by human hands, Google can maintain it, improving browser support, accessibility, searchability or anything else.

Blog directly from Gmail, IGoogle

If you didn't know, there is a Google gadget that can be added to iGoogle and GMail that allows you create blog entries for one or more Blogger blogs. Read about it on Blogger help page Blogging from iGoogle and Gmail. The Gadget only works effectively from a plain Gmail account however - the Gadget relies on the currently signed in user account to find your blogs. Google Apps users are therefore out of luck. 

Web Blogroll for Specific Blogger Labels

These days I try to keep my other blog Fuel For Fusion separate from this blog. I use that blog for company news only and put the informational (some would say boring) technical stuff not directly relevant here. One of the posts on Fuel for Fusion before I made this change was Starring Items in Google Reader for Productivity.

One of the many things I discussed in that post is how you could insert a Starred Items blogroll into a webpage using the Folders/Tags tab under settings in Google Reader. The good news is that this is possible for any Folder or Tag in Google Reader. This feature is not just available for Shared or Starred items.

I mentioned that because I have just used this piece of knowledge, along with the feed for a specific Blogger label, to insert a blogroll for only a specific Blogger label into a webpage. The web page is the landing page for my new project (currently in development), and the specific Blogger label is the project label on Fuel For Fusion.

If you are wondering what the sequence of steps is:

1. Find out the Feed URL for your Blogger label using the instructions from a previous post.
2. Subscribe to the feed in Google Reader
3. Select the feed in Google Reader and add it to a new Tag/Folder. The name of the Tag/Folder will be the blogroll heading.
   
4. Click on Settings and the Tags / Folders tab on that page. This should show a list of Tags / Folders with your sharing options on the right side.
   
5. Share your new Tag/Folder and click on the link 'Add Clip to Website' to display a dialog that lets you configure script for inclusion in your webpage.
6. The script calls are placed directly in the document markup where the blogroll needs to appear.
   

Let me know if you have any comments or questions.

Blogger Feeds for Labels / Tags

If you need a feed URL from Blogger blog for only a specific label (what the rest of the blogosphere calls a tag) you can use the following grammar to construct a URL:

http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/labelname

OR

http://your.custom.domain/feeds/posts/default/-/labelname

Replace yourblogname, labelname and your.custom.domain as required with the real values.

Thanks goes to a post by BloggerDesign for the information required to work that out.