Publish a Google Drive Presentation to Blogger

Step 1. Publish to Web

I developed a Google Presentations slideshow to showcase my professional background with the goal to upload it to a new "Professional Inquiries" Page on my personal Blogger blog.

I managed to learn how to use Google Presentations AND how to upload a presentation to Blogger with this project! That's what I call shooting two birds with one mouse. xD

The process I followed in Google Drive is as follows:

Step 2. Options for Publish to Web

I created my presentation in Google Drive and made sure it saved. While the file was open, I looked under the File menu and selected Publish to the Web.

There was a pop-up reminding me that publishing to the web had no impact on the visibility of the presentation within My Drive.

I clicked OK and proceeded to the Publish to the Web pop-up window, where I now had a variety of options to select from. For my particular needs I opted for a small size and to restart the slide show after the last slide. I left all the other options as they were.

Now that all my options were selected, I clicked inside the embedding code box and copied it.

Step 3. Add New Blank Page to Blog

The process for the Blogger portion:

In a separate tab in my browser, I opened up my Blogger Dashboard and clicked on the correct blog from my list of personal blogs.

Step 3. Paste the HTML code into the Page

The blog's dedicated dashboard opened up. On the left-hand side menu options, I selected the Pages tab. I started up a new, blank page.

Once on the blank page, I entered the page title "Professional Inquiries" and clicked on the HTML button to edit the html of this new page.

Once on the HTML editing section, I pasted the code from Google Drive, then clicked back on the Compose button to see how it looked. I centered the embedded presentation, then saved the page.

New Page with Embedded Presentation

Fail of the Day: FeedBurner, No More

After reading in a couple of places that FeedBurner was on its way out (here, here, and here), I got severely ticked off. I don't often check my FeedBurner stats often, but that's because it's a set it and forget it type of thing. That was the whole point of using it.

If Google is going to shut off the FeedBurner service, a large majority of blogs will be left without a way to syndicate their blogs to those who subscribed to them via email or an aggregation tool such as Google Reader, and more importantly, those who monetize their blogs won't have that important tracking tool anymore.

I went into all my Blogger blogs and deleted the RSS and email links (and the redirect under the dashboard) I had been using with FeedBurner, which were on my blog's layout on the right-hand side. Then regretted it. I went back into my accounts, and found out there's an email subscription widget you can add to your Blogger layout. Guess what? It's FeedBurner. What are they going to replace this with when they take it offline?

My Experience With Domains and Websites

I've been paying a hefty sum to GoDaddy over the past 4 years for the domain, space, and Website Tonight management solution for my freelance company's website and for the domain on my personal website. After some thought, I decided to cancel my GoDaddy account this past week.

In the years that I've used the GoDaddy domain and Website Tonight services, I've been frustrated to no end by the user interface. It seems unnecessarily convoluted and incredibly bloated--a la Geocities back when Yahoo! purchased them in late 1998. It offers solid value, but in order to find what you're looking for, you almost need a treasure hunt map and tips on how to survive the deadly booby traps.

Items such as changing DNS and other drill-down management is severely dig click-intensive. However, as a plus, customer service is usually helpful, pleasant, and straight-forward if you're willing put up with moderate wait times on the phone. Also, if you purchase a multi-year renewal, your fee is much lower.

I'm all about simplifying my online presence and not adding complexity--or yet another thing to keep track of for my expenses. So now I'm two domains down, with one business left to promote. I was left to decide what my next step would be.

I decided that I wanted to continue promoting my freelance business online. I have a Facebook page, but I feel this is an ancillary tool, and wasn't really solid enough to stand on its own. I needed to identify some sort of service that could help me provide a home for my business, and the option to add dynamic content on a periodical basis, if I felt like it.

I decided to try Blogger. I've used it since 2005 and have stuck with it through a variety of UI changes, functionality upgrades, and even ownership changes. I felt it was as good a place as any to create a useful space for my freelance business and without racking my brain to figure out how to use the tool.

Blogger's Pages feature has made it an excellent avenue, along with the many customizable options for layouts, color schemes, and background themes. The navigation on the dashboard is very transparent and makes it easy to find things.

I'm not the only one who's noticed that there are benefits to using Blogger as a website creation tool (see here, here, and here as a start).

So we'll see how well the move over to Blogger, rather than a website, works out. If you're interested in seeing what I've done so far, check out http://fourtongues.blogspot.com

Blogger Themes vs. Google Analytics

Silly me. I thought that because Blogger now includes some really poor limited Google Analytics statistics from within the Blogger dashboard, that it was therefore easier to integrate Blogger and Analytics. Tisk. Tisk.

I recently updated my blog template and a couple of days later (no surprise there!) find that my hits as recorded on Google Analytics (not the analytics within Blogger) have gone down to zero.

Checking the status for the blog(s) on Google Analytics was pointless, because GA was saying it was receiving data. Which it wasn't.

This is a typical occurrence whenever you modify the blogger HTML via the design and layout options: the Google Analytics code needs to be re-inserted into the <head> </head> tags to keep working.

Because Blogger in Draft now has an updated interface, things have moved around. More fun. In order to access the HTML edit mode in the new navigation in Blogger in Draft, do the following:


1. Log into Blogger, and navigate to your dashboard.
2. Select "Template" on the left-hand side menu.
3. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the template page, and select: "Edit Template HTML."
4. find the </head> tag, and just above it paste your Google Analytics tracking code.

Voilá.

Blogger Themes

I happened to look into Blogger's themes section a few weeks ago and realized they've tweaked the layout settings to even more personalization options.

So, tonight, I finally set some time aside to play around a little with the settings. Now, as a result, all my five Blogger blogs got a little TLC and look a little bit more updated.

If you go under the Template section in your dashboard, you get to pick the navigation look and customization options: colors, fonts, etc. You can truly knock yourself out and go wild here.

The pages option is another great tool, which has come in handy to clean up the right-hand side column. I've added a third tab to all my blogs, which contains links to all my pages and profiles online.

I'm really liking the accessibility and personalization options that Blogger is making available. It's possible that more than one Blogger blog out there may use the same background, but because of the number of personalization options, each shines with its very own personality.

Blogger's Outage

This just in! Blogger blog says that while the engineers at Blogger were updating something in the back end, some corrupted code came to the surface and snatched the entire system offline, as well as removed a number of posts and comments(!).

Blogger Template Designer

I've been playing around with Blogger's Template Designer, in particular to find good fonts for the Blog Title under the Advanced tab.

I've set some interesting fonts for all my blogs over the past few weeks. I think I got inspired to play around after I started my Foodie Blog, which is a little more creative than the other ones.

It pays to check out some of the latest additions to Blogger, via their Blogger Buzz blog, in order to learn a little more about what's possible with CSS and other features. You never know what you might be able to pull off, with a little help from Blogger ;o)

New Blog!

If you love food, reading about food, and learning about food, please join me on my fifth Blogger blog (my sixth in total!) Foodie Blog.

Blogger Mobile

As I was logging into my Blogger account today, I saw a little pop up that said Blogger now had mobile templates.

WHOOOOO

To activate Mobile templates log into your Blogger account, and in your dashboard, select the "Settings" option for your blog, or the blog you wish to modify. Under Settings look for the "Email and Mobile" option. The first radio button, "yes" option should be clicked, then at the bottom of the page select Save. All done!

I'm very excited, because being able to see blogger blogs on my iPhone is actually pretty important to keep up with my friends and just to stay upated on news and other stuff like my Google Reader subscriptions. This is very, very cool.

I went ahead and enabled the mobile view for all my four Blogger blogs, and found out there's a little QR code you can use for each of your blogs. I decided to post that here just for grin and giggles. I really am giggling tho, cause this is the bomb. Thank you Blogger, you guys rock, as always!

Adding Facebook's Like Button to Blogger Posts

If you want to add visibility and traffic to your website, it seems like the new Facebook "Like" button is just the thing.

However, if you don't just want to recommend a blog, but rather, a particular post on a blog, there's a walk through I found that you might want to look into. I found this how-to on Blogger Plugins, and it's titled Facebook Like/Recommend Button for Blogger. Hope it helps!

Blogger in Draft Stats Tab

I completely forgot about Blogger in Draft's incorporated Statistics tab, and I REALLY love it now that I checked it out. Happy Camper.

To access the tab, make sure you have Blogger in Draft, first of all. Then just go to your Dashboard and click on the stats option under your blog or blogs. If you don't see the Stats option, click on Edit your Posts, and on that window you should see the Stats tab. Just click on it and feel free to go wild with it. :)

Blogger Photo Upload

I noticed the photo upload UI has been updated a wee bit since the last time I uploaded an image (last week?). There's now a window with the option to upload from the Blog (upload from computer also), from Picasa, and from a URL. It used to be just from your computer and from a URL.

A couple of extra click throughs are now required, but all around I think I like this more sophisticated UI.

Blog Look Revamp

I've taken a look at some of the new or old that look new layout templates for my blogs and revamped some of them. I've also added an adsense block on the nav bar on the side.

You click Customize up on the right (template, moving nav items around) or Monetize once you're in the Dashboard for the blog you want to modify (AdSense) and go from there.

Always looking and fiddling ;) you know me.

Blogger Widgets

This Mashable article, 25 Great Blogger Widgets by Sean Aune, is my bible for hot and useful Blogger widgets -- items you add to your layout to incorporate your social media participation onto your blog. Crosslinking creates valuable points of interest for blog visitors, and helps tie-in/link to all your different social media outlets/channels.

I ESPECIALLY like the Twitter widget, which I think is the best available -- simple and to the point. The Twitter widget for Blogger actually annoys the crap out of me with continuous login requests (pop up window) for either me or my blog visitors. Not good.

I hope the article and widgets give you some ideas on creating interest and linking your social media profiles/channels together.

New Tool: BlogPressLite

I installed and have begun using the iPhone app BlogPress Lite. You can download this free version, or shell out for the paid version (BlogPress) which allows you to post to many more platforms besides just Blogger.

My first test post was on my Jeda's Automotive and Car News Blog (http://jedascarz.blogspot.com), about the new Mini Cooper dealership that's coming up in Naperville, Illinois.

The setup of your Blogger accounts is easy, you just navigate to the settings "tab" of the app (there's three "tabs" at the bottom of the app), then enter your log in info for your Blogger account. Since I have four blogs on Blogger, I just had to do this four times.

It also allows you to link your choice of Picasa albums to which pictures will be saved to when posting from your iPhone. I wish there was support for Flickr too.

I like it thus far. Here's a couple of print screens from my iPhone to show you some of the navigation.

Blogs Update

I repositioned some of the apps and other items on the right-hand column of each of my four Blogger blogs. I really didn't like the cluttered look and so I removed the Adsense block because it was redundant, since there's a block under each post anyway. I'm still thinking about how I can optimize the Amazon ad block...

AddThis Widget

I updated my Blogger blogs due to a need to clean up the right-hand column.

1. I added a gadget with HTML/JavaScript as the first thing on the right-hand column, to show the AddThis chicklet, the BlogCatalog chicklet, the Technorati favorites add link, and rss/email subscription links.
   
2. I standardized across my blogs the order of when the AdSense gadget and the Amazon/plus personal links gadget shows up.
   
3. In the process of doing all of the above I noticed my rss/email subscription code was screwed up and linked to an incorrect blog (for most of my blogs orz) so that's been taken care of now.
   
4. This AddThis help page helped me figure out how to add the AddThis button at the end of each blog post.
5. Throughout this housecleaning I noticed Blogger changes
   tags to
   for some reason ?_?
6. I'm tired now, this took 1 hour and my carpal tunnel is the worse it's been in a long time this week :(

Next I'm planning on adding my Zazzle store and Flickr widgets to all my blogs not just a select few. That should help with cross-feeding some visits.

I hope this helps someone looking to clean up and/or add useful links to their blogger blogs.