Blog Tutorial: New Feature: Mobile Templates!

To turn on mobile templates, go to your Draft homepage- draft.blogger.com. (This tutorial will not work unless you start at your Draft homepage--it has not been released on the main Blogger site yet.) 

If you see a pop-up that says "Turn On Mobile Templates" next to the blog you'd like to enable them for, click on it (make sure it's the right blog).

Otherwise, find the name of the blog you want to turn on the templates for and click "Settings".
Next, click "Email and Mobile".

Click the "Turn On Mobile Templates" button...

...and then the orange "Save Settings" button at the bottom of the page.

You're done!



Now, why would you want to turn on mobile templates?
I knew that was coming. If a hypothetical person, I'll call her Amy--if Amy had a SmartPhone (iPhone, Droid, etc) and she used it for blog surfing a lot, it would take a while for the blogs to load (especially if they had big images and stuff-like my Blogger Blog). After Amy waited for the page to finish loading, she'd have to zoom in to be able to read the text, and would probably be frustrated by the time it took to find exactly what she wanted to read.

If, however, Amy chose to enable Mobile Templates, all backgrounds and gadgets would be eliminated, allowing Amy's SmartPhone to load your blog very quickly and Amy to see your blog posts in a comprehensive format (as well as a readable font size). (If you're concerned about the size of pictures in your posts, they're scaled down to a thumbnail size. Amy can click on the photos  to see them at full size.)

Thank you, Amy.

Wow, that sounded like a really corny commercial. But it's true. I know when I'm looking at blog on my (*cough* mother's) iPhone, I get fed up with waiting for stuff to load. Well, I used to- I gave up on blogs a while ago. It's way easier to stay updated with your favorite blogs if they're using mobile templates.

One more thing-readers will still see your regular blog if they're using a full sized computer.

Blogger Tutorial: New Feature: the Share Button

To get started, go to your Blogger dashboard (blogger.com). 

Find the name of the blog you want to add the Share Button to (ex, The Blogger Blog, then click Design under that blog title.

Next, click 'Edit' under 'Blog Posts'. 

Click the checkmark next to 'Show Share Buttons', then scroll down to the bottom of the page and click 'Save'.

You're done.


There's an ever-expanding pool of non-Blogger ways to share your blog, including buttons that you paste directly into your posts,widgets to put on your sidebar, links from Facebook, etc. So why use the Blogger one? For me, the Blogger "Share Buttons" are better for two reasons-they're more convenient (you don't have to find them, mess around with the settings, and copy and paste the HTML code onto your blog; plus they appear at the bottom of each post no matter what) and they're more reliable (interactive third party gadgets tend to malfunction constantly). 


Although the "Share Buttons" are pretty basic and you can't customize them, I find that when I there's a large selection of sites to include in my gadget (the basics such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as the less used StumbleUpon and digg-the list goes on and on) I either get overwhelmed and quit or add so many sites that my computer crashes. Either way, the Blogger button is easier. 


If you have a high-traffic blog or you're connected on some lesser-known sites, however, I would recommend adding the "Share Buttons" to your blog as well as a more detailed third-party widget. My favorites are AddtoAny, AddThis, and ShareThis, mostly because of their formatting and options.