Automatically Share Blogger Posts on Google+

For some reason, Google doesn't make it easy to automatically post content to Google+. You can't add the URL of a feed and import the posts from a blog. There's an exception: Blogger.

If you've integrated Blogger with Google+, you probably noticed a Google+ sharing box after publishing a post. It only required one click to share the post on Google+.

Now you can get even lazier: enable "Automatically share after posting" in Blogger's Google+ section and your posts will be shared automatically.

Google says that "automatic sharing to Google+ is enabled by default on all public blogs linked to Google+ pages or profiles. When you publish a blog post, a snippet of the post will automatically be shared publicly on your Google+ page or profile." That's probably true for new blogs, but it wasn't true for my blog: I had to manually enable "Automatically share after posting".

You can still enable "Prompt to share after posting" if you like to see the Google+ sharing box. Disable both options if you don't want to share your posts on Google+. Blogger also adds "share" links next to "edit", "view" and "delete" and you can use this feature to manually share posts on Google+.

Update: This feature is buggy. Here's what I got after publishing this post:

{ via Blogger Buzz }

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Blogger Bug Hides Old Comments

I don't like to use this blog to report bugs, but sometimes it's important to do that. Blogger no longer shows the old comments imported from the native commenting system. I've switched to Google+ comments and all the comments were properly imported. Now the legacy comments are no longer displayed.

Here's an old post that has 218 comments, but none are displayed:

Disabling Google+ comments fixes this issue, but the comments powered by Google+ are missing. This means that the old comments aren't lost, but there's a bug in the Google+ commenting system.

I checked the Blogger help forum before posting this and I was surprised to see some top contributors claiming that "all the non-Google+ comments disappear when you switch to Google+ comments". I'll link to the official Blogger blog: "older comments will continue to appear in the new widget".

Update (a few hours later): Google fixed the bug, but there's another one. I can't post a new comment and clicking "reply" doesn't have any visible effect. I've seen similar reports in the Blogger help forum.

Update 2: Google acknowledged the second issue and promised to fix it.

Update 3: Apparently, blog owners were the only ones that couldn't post, but this was fixed. Thanks, Yonatan Zunger.

{ Thanks, Kristian. }

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Blogger Requires to Write the Title First

I don't know about you, but I like to write the title of the post at the end. It makes sense to pick a title only after writing an article because the title usually summarizes the text. Sometimes I have no idea what's the right title, but it reveals itself after writing the last paragraph.

This post is not about finding the right title for a blog post, it's about a new Blogger feature (or a bug?) that shows this message as soon as you start writing a post: "Required field must not be blank". The warning is placed below the title field, but it's not obvious that it refers to the title. Click "ignore warning" and the warning is displayed again in a few seconds.

You can't save, preview or publish post if you haven't picked a title. This is really dangerous: what happens if you write a long post and the browser crashes? Until now, Blogger automatically saved the post as a draft and you could find it later. Now it's no longer saved until you write a title.

You could write a temporary title and change it later, but why use a workaround? The title should not be a required field. Blogger could show a warning before publishing the post and that should be enough. It's important to mention that Blogger has never required post titles before. You could even publish posts without a title.

To sum up: here's a feature that's annoying, not useful, dangerous and hard to understand. It's really difficult to come up with something like this, but someone did.

What if Gmail had a similar feature?

Update (July 8th): The feature has been removed (or the bug has been fixed).

{ Thanks, Beben. }

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Outsourcing Blogger Comments to Google+

While Blogger's new commenting system has a lot of cool features, there's an important downside: Google+ Comments has nothing to do with Blogger.

The old comments are available in the new interface, but the new comments are not available in the old commenting system, if you decide to switch back. Blogger's comment feeds don't include the comments from the new interface, you can no longer manage comments from the Blogger dashboard and the new comments aren't included when you export your blog.

Here's the empty comment feed for a post that has a lot of comments:

When you switch to Google+ Comments, you outsource the comments to Google+, but Google+ doesn't have a section that lets you manage the comments and there's no way to export the new comments.

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Blogger Comments Powered by Google+

I don't know if you've notice, but this blog's comments look different. That's because I've switched to the new Google+ Comments feature for Blogger.

The upgraded commenting system preserves the existing comments, but the future comments require a Google+ account. That means, visitors can no longer post comments anonymously, using an OpenID account or using a Google account that hasn't been upgraded to Google+. When posting a comment, visitors can also share it on Google+. The new commenting system doesn't just show the comments posted on Blogger, it also shows all the Google+ messages that link to the post and their comments.

Just like Disqus, Google+ Comments shows by default the best comments and there's an option to show the most recent comments. It's not clear how Google determines the top comments, but the number of +1s could be one of the signals. You can also restrict the comments to the people from your Google+ circles.

Bloggers will notice some other changes: the comment management feature from Blogger is no longer available and you can only manage comments for each post. That's a significant downside, especially if you receive a lot of comments. When one of your posts receive new comments, you'll see a notification in the Google bar and you'll get an email notification. I haven't found a way to disable these notifications, not even from the Google+ settings page.

How to enable Google+ Comments if you have a Blogger blog? "Google+ Comments is available for Blogger users who have created a Google+ profile and connected it with their blog. If you haven't upgraded your Blogger profile to a Google+ profile and would like to, you can start the process by clicking the Google+ tab on the Blogger dashboard. Once your blogs are linked to a Google+ profile, a new 'Use Google+ Comments' setting will be displayed on the Google+ tab of your blog," explains Google. If your blog has a heavily modified template, you may need to reset widgets or use the code from this page.

There are additional limitations: Google+ Comments is not available for private blogs and for blogs with adult content. This means that the old commenting system will continue to be available as long as Blogger supports these kinds of blogs. You can always disable Google+ Comments and go back to the legacy Blogger commenting system.

It's important to point out that Google+ Comments are embedded as an iframe (the URL starts with https://plusone.google.com/_/widget/render/comments) and the comments are no longer included inside the Blogger page. Google manages to index content from iframes, but the change could affect your Google rankings.

Another interesting thing: it's the first time when the official Google Blog has comments.

Some early thoughts:

* Blogger is now more relevant, it's less likely that it will be discontinued in the next few years

* Blogger finally has a modern commenting system

* Google+ Comments will be available for other blogging platforms

* "sign in with Google+" will make Google+ even more popular as an identity service.

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