Blogger Interface Has Become A Complete Mess

Since I started Blogging, Blogger CMS was my first choice, because it performs better than any CMS out there. But from some weeks, it's behaving strangely and doesn't work smooth as it used to before.

If we go back in the past, the only problem people faced with the New Blogger Interface was some BX Error Codes and it doesn't used to appear instantly, it was rare, only appeared when you make some invalid move on the CMS. Which we can call the client side mistake.

But some Weeks or month the Blogger CMS has become more unstable, I don't mean the whole Blogger CMS but only the New Blogger Interface. Both interfaces were coded differently but do the same job. Anyway, back when both Interface were available, we had the option to revert into Old Interface if we faced problems in the New Interface but now we can't even do that because Old Interface has been removed permanently from Blogger.

These problems have decreased the fun writing on Blogger. It's very messy when the post don't get Published even after click the Publish button, it throws error every time.
        

Post Publishing/Saving Issue

The first job of a Blogging Tool is to save and post that content on the website smoothly without any problems, it was really smooth in the past but from a month or two it has gone wild and doesn't save nor publish the post at the time we push the Publish button. (Even at the time of publishing this post, I faced the problem).

Also when you click the Publish button multiple times, it post multiple posts in the background and also create extra Drafts and that's very messy to work with.

Some Settings Are Not Saved

I don't even want to make any changes to my blogs settings, as it have gone mad too. You change some settings and after that you click the Save settings button, you see a message saying "Settings Save" but no, the setting haven't changed.

I am facing it and very disappointed because my blog is not available at http://stramaxon.com (Without www.) First I thought it has some with the CNAME records, I went to my Domain management Dashboard and it's all well.I returned to Blogger and saw that I haven't check marked the option in Settings that says
Redirect stramaxon.com to www.stramaxon.com.I checked the option and Save the settings, but no matter how many times you save the settings, the check mark never stays there, it disappears and the settings is still the same as it was and because of that I am not able to redirect stramaxon.com to www.stramaxon.com 

Do You Face any other Problems ?

If you have some different problems related to Blogger or the New Blogger Interface then drop your comments and also remember to use the Send Feedback button on the bottom right corner of Blogger Dashboard, it can help your problem reach the Blogger team. 

Is Feedburner Down ?

Shockingly Feedburner is acting strange. Readers are gone from the Feedburner account.

Yup, it's not only for my blog or yours, any website or blog or Feedburner subscription isn't working now. It was very strange when I saw my readers count go 0 but sadly it's a truth and not only mines but any one using Feedburner have lost their readers from Feedburner. Big or Small, any type of website has now feeds showing 0 subscribers, that's really sad.

But Why ?

The question is obvious and can rise in any one minds but I don't have any clear answer for it. I searched for the exact reason and in many results I saw News of Feedburner shutting down. It will be very hard to say goodbye to one service that has always been a way to reach a larger audience directly through emails to send feeds.

Google is shutting it down soon but the Feedburner website is yet available for login and etc. All you don't see is the readers. I don't see any reason Google should shut down Feedburner.

Yesterday, Goolgle/Blogger removed the Old Blogger Interface permanently and today it's turn for Feedburner. I really can't accept the truth that Feedburner will be down in the fire. Google has announced that Feedburner will be shut down by 20th October


Say Goodbye To Old Blogger Interface

I came to know that reverting option to old Interface is no longer there where it used to be and that means Old Interface is now just a history


Blogger released this new Interface last year but both the interface were available back then and even after 1 year of it's launch the old interface was yet there for users because the New UI (user interface) has many bugs that needs to be fixed before making it the only interface.

Blogger Help forums were filled up with complaints and bugs of the New Interface, the most common were those mysterious BX errors but to their relief Old Interface was still there to get things done smoothly.

From months Blogger had been announcing about the removal of Old Interface but many users including me think that this decision is not necessary at all. The reason told by Blogger about the permanent removal of the  old interface was because both Interface are hosted on different servers and that's just a waste of server bandwidth to keep two interfaces, but my question is "Can't Google afford to keep one extra CMS in their Servers ?".

Revert back to Old UI?

Aah, hope Old UI was there forever. As I was using it since I started using Blogger and it was one of the most fine CMS I ever used. Many people yet don't understand the concept of New UI and they feel uncomfortable with it. For them I wrote a tutorial which even works today (20th Sept.) but I am not sure if it will keep working because the Old Interface will be permanently removed from the server. Anyway, here's the link, using it you can still use the Good Old Interface
http://www.stramaxon.com/2012/06/how-to-get-into-old-blogger-interface.html

Why permanent removal ?

"Change is a part of Life"
That's the bitter truth but it would have been so good if New and Old UI both were available together. One reason I love Google more than Facebook is because when Facebook launched Timeline they completely removed old profile page but when Google/Blogger launched new UI, the old interface was available at the same time but Blogger wants to lose it's reputation itself. Sadly.

Lastly, I hope Blogger keep up the good work and improve the New UI to fight wit bugs and errors so people can use it without using my tweaks :)

Transformation of Stramaxon to a Web NEWS Blog

This is a personal note, I don't usually write personal notes in a blog post but this is going to be a big change for this blog and also the readership.

When I started this Blog, I used to write latest NEWS that aired on TV but soon I found that I wasn't doing well in it so I started learning Web Designing and at the same time I join Blogger Help Forum, so the first transformation of this blog was a from a NEWS blog to a Web Design and Blogger Help blog.

I got a very nice response from the the few readers but to make my life from a blog that was not all. I didn't posted on this blog since September 5 but meanwhile I have learned some more ways to run a better blog.

Does that mean I won't post any Blogger or Web Design Post ? No, I will still post on topics I used to write but the change is about adding more topics to my blog where more readers can join and I get a larger audience for a better future of this blog.

Change is a part of Life.

Infographic About Responsive Web Design

Responsive Design is getting very important with time and almost every website has a responsive design and that's important because 30% of people visits your site with a hand device like an iPad or a Mobile Phone.
If you are just a web surfer and likes to find new sites on your iPad or phone then there might be times when you see websites not compatible with your device because of the small display of your device and the website looks very dull with it, just imagine if you were the website owner you don't wanted to miss the 30% of traffic and Responsive Web Design is gonna fulfill your needs.

Before Responsive Web Design came into existence, people used different designs for different devices and that was really a time wasting job, but Responsive Web Design technique has really reduced the hard work needed to design different looks for different devices.

Dot Come Infoway has published an interesting and informative Infographic which covers almost everthing about it, from it's birth to how it gain such popularity.

Responsive

This infographic have every detail an Infographic can have to show the importance of responsive web design on a website.

Dot Com Infoway's previous Infographic was about HTML5 and I shared it with my readers, if you haven't checked it yet, then here's the link

Social Share Count Fluctuated After Custom Domain Change

If your are on Blogger or any other website being run on a sub-domain for example .blogspot.com or .wordpress.com you have the option to have your own purchased domain on it but if you have did it already then you would have noticed the share count on post are all reset.

Are you using social share plugins from AddThis or a self made code that works for blogger automatically in the template ? Let's say you have 100s of +1, Tweets or Like on one of your post and all the shares were made when your blog was on the sub-domain (eg. .blogspot.com, .wordpress.com) but when you changed the domain to your own purchased domain what you see is all shares have been reset.

If you don't have much information about these then at first you will shocked because all the shares on your hard work are not there anymore but is that true, should it be called an issue ?

What's the reason

If you know how the share buttons work and how the web works then you don't need to read this but many people who don't have the knowledge about it would be tensed about it. The reason is that the shares were made when your blog was on blogspot domain eg.
http://yourblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/some-post.html
And the social sites will send data to the share counters that redirects to this URL but when the URL is changed the counters are redirected to other URL (your new domain) and it then count shares for
http://yourblog.com/2012/03/some-post.html
If you try to add a code that will redirect to your old domain then you will see back the counters to normal as it fetches the count for the old URL but you shouldn't do it.

What to do ?

If you ask me I would  just sit back and relax, it won't have any bad effect on your blog. If the redirection of your old blog domain to the new custom domain is working then you don't need to worry at all because the old shares for the sub-domain are yet on the social sharing sites.

You need to remember that social sharing widget don't see your blog it sees the URL. 


Sinhala Font in Blogger

Bloggers in different country needs different fonts that supports their language, most of them are already in the computer but when you are talking about some forgotten languages then you hardly get it on computers, then you need to get a font for it on your web page and so in Blogger.

Sinhala or Sinhalese language is mainly used in Sri Lanka and if you are here in search of getting Sinhala font then you are probably a blogger from Sri Lanka or Blogging in that language, because Sinhala is not that a famous language, people wanting it on their blog find it difficult to get a perfect solution.

Being not a famous or talked language doesn't mean that need for it is not there. Bloggers, blogging mainly in their language need that the most, however big blogs manage to get fonts for their blog easily by hiring professional web designers but if you can't afford to hire one then we are free to help you.

Adding the font

Easy as eating a cake, you don't need any extra knowledge about computers. First we need the font to load on the page or you blog, that can be done adding this CSS. Don't add the CSS directly in the document or it will load the page slow, I am hosting the CSS file on host, you just have to link it
<link href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/93278694/stylecssff.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
If you open the link in href value you will realize how big the CSS code is, it's because we aren't loading the font file, we are directly rendering it's data content.
Note: We are hosting the CSS file on Dropbox and we have no guarantee when it get deleted, so i suggest you to host it on your own server and then link it.

Add this in your template

To add the <link> HTML given above you need to first access your HTML of your page, follow the steps to add it.
  1. Go to Blogger Dashboard 
  2. Select the Template tab
  3. Click Edit HTML and Proceed
  4. Use CTRL+F to find </head>
  5. And paste the HTML given just above/berfore </head>
Save the Template, that's it. Now move to the next section to learn how to put it to work.

CSS to change the font

Adding the font in Template won't work alone and also it won't change your font automatically, to tell the browser to load a specific font (this time it's Sinhala) you have to define a CSS.

You can make the whole body (full page) font to Sinhala or can also make only the Post area to be in Sinhala, it's completely depends on the CSS selector. If you know how CSS selectors works then you can detect the class or id of an element on page (can be post area) and then change the selector, to know how to  do that read this post.

If you don't have any idea about the selector then these two different CSS will help you.

#1 Sinhala font only in Post area
.post-body {
font-family: Dhananjayaweb;
}
#2 On full document/page
body {
font-family: Dhananjayaweb;
}

Add the CSS 

Now when you have choose one of the CSS either for the full body or just the post body, now you have to add it into your template. Do it easy with this tutorial on adding CSS in your template.

This is the end of this tutorial but do remember to subscribe our email newsletter for more post. We are excited to hear from you in comments.