DISQUS

AMERICAblog: I need an expert in Blogspot's new version of html

  • Patrick in Madison · 1 year ago
    its fun to bang your head against someone's dumb application until that sweet moment when you finally get everything right and it finally works!!
  • John Aravosis · 1 year ago
    Yeah, I'm trying to understand how it works. But it's still got me flummoxed. And I understand html. I'm simply trying to rearrange columns, change the number of sub-columns, etc. - for example, on this page, we have 3 columns, and the 3rd column has two sub-columns. The new template mistakenly has two columns - and the 2nd column has 3 sub columns, I want it like this blog, in terms of 3 columns and 3d column has two subs. In normal html it's easy. This new blogger code isn't normal, I'm sorry, I don't care what anyone says - I can't make heads or tales of the code, and designed the code for this blog, simple-looking as it is.
  • Techie · 1 year ago
    It sounds as if Blogger's new code is using XSLT.

    http://www.w3schools.com/xsl/

    XSLT is used for formatting XML data as HTML for destkop or mobile web browsers. Example: you could turn an RSS feed into a webpage. Within Apple's Safari browser, Apple's built-in XSLT transforms RSS feeds into those nicely formatted pages.
  • Marc · 1 year ago
    There is nothing odd about Blogspot's format. Not as elegant as WordPress, but not odd.
  • budpaul · 1 year ago
    Could it be that we might finally see the much discussed 2.0? Truly, it is a Christmas miracle!
  • Marc · 1 year ago
    You mean the one that was related to the fundraising effort?
  • John Aravosis · 1 year ago
    Yes, there is a Santa Claus. This is, will be, the beginning of the new AMERICAblog. I'm also talking with some other top blogs/bloggers about using some of the donations to help finance an effort to build an open source blogging platform that liberal bloggers can use.
  • polizeros · 1 year ago
    You might want to look at Drupal. It's highly configurable, open source, easy to customized. WordPress too. Why reinvent the wheel?
  • intoxination · 1 year ago
    Drupal is the way to go. Since we moved Crooks and Liars over we had a day with over 500,000 page views (over 60,000 an hour) and the servers sat damn near idle. Here's my write up on moving Crooks and Liars from Wordpress over to Drupal:

    http://drupal.org/node/341231

    There's no way I know of to directly move Blogger to Drupal, but you can move Blogger to Wordpress and then Wordpress to Drupal. There's even a module for Drupal to let you use Disqus for your comments.
  • David Dvorkin · 1 year ago
    Blogger doesn't have it's own HTML that I can see. I use Blogger, and the only recent change has been to a widget-based, drag-and-drop template, which is fairly easy to use. That change wasn't all that recent, for that matter.
  • John Aravosis · 1 year ago
    It's only easy to use if you use one of bloggers boring templates :-) If you create your own template, or have someone do it for, you it's not normal at all. :-)
  • DKarma · 1 year ago
    This should help...its about the new google blogger api

    http://code.google.com/apis/blogger/
  • John Aravosis · 1 year ago
    Thanks, I'll read it.
  • EdNSted · 1 year ago
    OT: I don't always agree with Jane Hamsher (FDL), but I think she nails it on this one:

    http://firedoglake.com/2008/12/07/obama-deputy-...

    People on the left are not looking at Obama's appointments with a jaundiced eye because they think he needs to apply some liberal orthodoxy litmus test. They have legitimate concerns that people like Geitner, Summers and other Rubin acolytes created this mess, and it's reasonable to ask why they're being appointed to get us out of it. While some of us want to give Obama a chance to fulfill the promises he campaigned on and work with the staff of his choice in order to do so, we'd have to be a bunch of intellectually dishonest kool-aid swilling freaks to pretend his economics team didn't have some troublesome baggage.

    And after the past eight years, it's a bit much to stomach someone saying "just shut up and trust me, because I know better."
  • dacnova · 1 year ago
    John,

    I'm an HTML expert and I'd advise you to steer clear of Blogger if they're not following standards. Standards is my area of expertise.
  • John Aravosis · 1 year ago
    I'm not thrilled about blogger changing their html, especially as I like to be able to tinker with the html myself (as in this case, where I have the thing almost done by someone else, but it needs some more changes at the last minute that are far over my head). But blogger does have some pretty cool widget functionality now, and from what I've been told, the kind of spikes we get from Digg, Reddit, and big news days, could be hell on a non-blogger server (I also think that blogger offers us some security from outside attacks as they're having to attack Google).
  • Marc · 1 year ago
    Friends don't let friends use Blogspot.

    Really John you need to move it over to something like WordPress and a quality host. Don't be a blogger tenant. Own your site!
  • BobR · 1 year ago
    I am a software developer. Admittedly, I have not worked with Blogspot (I wrote my own blogger software, because none of those available did what we wanted). HTML is HTML - there isn't any special version, because if there was, then browsers wouldn't be able to support it.

    However, how that HTML is *created* is probably where you're running into problems. I took a look at the link mentioned in the comments below, and I can't believe that a person trying to set up a blog would need to manually create an XML template.

    While I agree that someone with specific experience might be able to help you more quickly, if you don't have any luck getting someone like that, I would be happy to try to help.
  • Carrie · 1 year ago
    I so cannot help you, sorry! I've been resisting Google's new format for a while now. I cannot use my knowledge of html on their new blogspot versions. I am interested in who knows the new language, as well.
  • Carrie · 1 year ago
    Gotta add more comment, after reading some of the comments. For those that are using old blogspot format, there are serious wierd changes that cannot be correct with standard html formatting. I have two other non political blogs I manage, and I have used the new format from blogspot, and I can see the difference in the html between the new blogs and my Bar and Grill. That's why I am holding off changing the Bar to the new format, because I don't want to lose three years of tweaking my blog.
  • morkus · 1 year ago
    John, you really need to give us an example of the code before we could help. Can you post a snippet?
  • Asphyxia 8 · 1 year ago
    Blogger is F*CKED UP! I have a personal blog which I've been operating for over a year. It was pretty simple, until I tried to add some of the bells & whistles. I can't even get the d@mn thing verified!!! There's apparently some mixture of this "new" HTML code and the "old code that's screwing it up. And I'm using one of their templates!!! Have had 3 different people try to help so far, but to no avail. Am going to have 4th friend who builds websites look at it this week. If he's unable to help, I may have to scrap the whole d@mn thing and start over. So over Blogger/Blogspot/Google!

    A-8
  • morkus · 1 year ago
    It would appear that the template tool is in fact an XML-based template which makes reference to some sort of pre-processor which allows the author to define variables, execute conditional (if/or/and) statements, etc. If anyone would like to see an example of this code, here's a simple one: http://btemplates.com/2008/11/29/ice/

    John, we'd REALLY need to see the XML source you're editing before we could help.
  • Asphyxia 8 · 1 year ago
    Can't you just click VIEW on your browser menu and then select SOURCE to see code?
  • morkus · 1 year ago
    We need to see pre-processed code, not post-processed code. In any case, I don't think John has posted a link to see the template either pre- or post-processed.