Google Plus Shutdown - Blogger Implications

As most of you probably know by now Google is officially shutting down the consumer version  Google+ in April 2019. Unfortunately for Blogger admins, this has some significant impacts for any Blogger blogs tightly integrated with Google+ widgets, comments and profiles. But, for me the real tragedy on this change is just how much Google had pushed Blogger owners to integrate Google+ into their blogs especially back in 2012 to 2014 like these - Socialize and Grow your Blog with Google+ or Automatically Share your Posts to Google+.

I know I was very tempted to convert my comments and add the Google+ widgets in BloggerTipsPro but thankfully I hadn't made the move since I already had so many native Blogger comments which was something I didn't want to lose. If Plus had grown a bit more I might have jumped.

So, what does this mean to you, the Blogger admin of one or more blogs? Well, the news isn't great. First, let's start with the easy change. If you have an About gadget on your blog and it is using the Google+ profile, it will be automatically converted back to the native Blogger profile like mine here. However, it will be blank and you will be prompted to create that profile with a image.

Adding Related Posts to Blogger Blogs

NOTE: LinkWithin no longer exists. This post will not work any more.

There has been a change in Blogger and LinkWithin. A number of users have found that LinkWithin is not working for them. Be aware you might find some issues. If you find you are having the issue, select Other for your Platform and manually add the script to a HTML Widget. You've probably seen a number of blogs that have related internal blog posts tagged at the end with inter-linking across the site. It's a very nice feature that has been made even easier by a online utility called LinkWithin.com.

The steps to adding this feature are so simple that it only takes a few minutes to get a great looking extra look-and-feel without much effort. Start by navigating to LinkWithin.com. Right away you'll see the starting point by entering your information into the widget form on the main page like this:

How to Create a Favicon for Blogger

Copyright 2012, Google, Inc.

Have you ever asked 'what is that little icon in the address bar?' or 'what is the little image next to the url called?' I would hazard to guess that asking someone who has worked online probably never bothered to learn what the word 'favicon' means (though, guessing that it meant 'favorite icon' wouldn't be too tough to figure out). First released in 1999 in Internet Explorer 5, the World Wide Web Consortium adopted it soon after.

Creating favicons for Blogger is pretty easy these days and can be done in literally minutes. The hard part is trying to map your logo or symbol into such small dimensions. And, to add to that, the expansion of icons of larger sizes has exploded over the last few years with mobility and the evolution of browsers.

Overall, however, it is a simple task at hand with only the need of a paint program (with a supplement - possibly) and a great online tool called Iconifier. These will allow you to create favicons and icons for almost all browsers and devices. If you're really interested in the history and aspects of the favicon you can jump over to Jonathan T. Neal's very comprehensive article called Understand the Favicon.

Here we'll just be concerned for favicons for Blogger. I'll walk you through some of the key considerations when designing your own with an emphasis on using simplicity as your guide (more creative folks who have deeper digital artistic skills can go much deeper).

How to Add the Goodreads Widget to Blogger

If you love reading as much as I do, then keeping track and sharing your reading list on Goodreads.com is a must! A great place to add your widget is to your Blogger layout.

If you haven't experienced Goodreads yet - just think of it as a social networking sites for avid readers (like myself) who want to share and rate what they've read. I find it personally much more enjoyable than Amazon reviews.

Anyway, since you landed here I assume you're trying to add the Goodreads widget to your Blogger blog. Let's look at how to do this.

Add a Blogger Html Gadget

Once you're logged into Blogger, go down and select your 'Layout' menu. It should look something like this depending on what layout you chose (posts on the left or right). Select 'Add a Gadget':

You should the standard Blogger Gadget list. Scroll down and find the HTML/Javascript Gadget - select it by pressing the blue plus sign: