Blogger (service)

Last updated

Blogger
Blogger icon 2017.svg
Type of site
 Blog host
Available in See below
Country of originUnited States of America
Area servedWorldwide
Owner Google
Founder(s)
URL www.blogger.com
CommercialYes
RegistrationOptional, Free
LaunchedAugust 23, 1999;25 years ago (1999-08-23) [1]
Current statusActive
Written in Java

Blogger is an American online content management system founded in 1999 that enables its users to write blogs with time-stamped entries. Pyra Labs developed it before being acquired by Google in 2003. Google hosts the blogs, which can be accessed through a subdomain of blogspot.com. Blogs can also be accessed from a user-owned custom domain (such as www.example.com) by using DNS facilities to direct a domain to Google's servers. [1] [2] [3] A user can have up to 100 blogs or websites per account. [4]

Contents

Blogger enabled users to publish blogs and websites to their own web hosting server via FTP until May 1, 2010. All such blogs and websites had to be redirected to a blogspot.com subdomain or point their own domain to Google's servers via DNS. [5]

History

Pyra Labs launched Blogger on August 23, 1999. It is credited with popularizing the format as one of the first dedicated blog-publishing tools. [6] Pyra Labs was purchased by Google in February 2003 for an undisclosed amount. Premium features, which Pyra had actually offered for a fee, were made free as a result of the takeover. Evan Williams, a co-founder of Pyra Labs, left Google in October 2004. Picasa was acquired by Google in 2004, and Picasa and its photo-sharing service Hello were incorporated into Blogger, enabling users to upload images to their blogs. [7]

Blogger underwent a major redesign on May 9, 2004, which included web standards-compliant templates, individual archive pages for posts, comments, and email posting. Blogger's new version, codenamed "Invader," was released in beta alongside the gold update on August 14, 2006. Users were moved to Google servers, and new features such as interface language in French, Italian, German, and Spanish were added. [8] In December 2006, this new version of Blogger was taken out of beta. By May 2007, Blogger had completely moved over to Google-operated servers. Blogger was ranked 16 on the list of top 50 domains in terms of number of unique visitors in 2007. [9]

On February 24, 2015, Blogger announced that as of late March it would no longer allow its users to post sexually explicit content, unless the nudity offers "substantial public benefit," for example in "artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific contexts." [10] On February 28, 2015, accounting for severe backlash from long-term bloggers, Blogger reversed its decision on banning sexual content, going back to the previous policy that allowed explicit images and videos if the blog was marked as "adult". [11]

Redesign

As part of the Blogger redesign in 2006, all blogs associated with a user's Google Account were migrated to Google servers. Blogger claims that the service is now more reliable because of the quality of the servers. [12]

Along with the migration to Google servers, several new features were introduced, including label organization, a drag-and-drop template editing interface, reading permissions (to create private blogs) and new Web feed options. Furthermore, blogs are updated dynamically, as opposed to rewriting HTML files.

In a version of the service called Blogger in Draft, [13] new features are tested before being released to all users. New features are discussed in the service's official blog. [14] In September 2009, Google introduced new features into Blogger as part of its tenth-anniversary celebration. The features included a new interface for post editing, improved image handling, Raw HTML Conversion, and other Google Docs-based implementations, including:

In 2010, Blogger introduced new templates and redesigned its website. The new post editor was criticized for being less reliable than its predecessor. [15]

In March 2017, Blogger released new designs like Soho, Contempo, Emporio, Notable, and call them as Theme, not templates. [16]

In 2020, Google Blogger slowly introduced an improved web experience for Blogger. They moved everyone to the new interface starting in late June, many Blogger creators see the new interface become their default. Blogger is now responsive on the web, making it easier to use on mobile devices in addition to having a new look. [7]

Available languages

As of late 2016, Blogger is available in these 60 languages: Afrikaans, Amharic, Arabic, Basque, Bengali, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Hong Kong), Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (United Kingdom), English (United States), Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Malayalam, Marathi, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish (Latin America), Spanish (Spain), Swahili, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese, and Zulu. [7]

Country-specific Blogger addresses

In February 2013, Blogger began integrating user blogs with multiple country-specific URLs. For example, exampleuserblogname.blogspot.com would be automatically redirected to exampleuserblogname.blogspot.ca in Canada, exampleuserblogname.blogspot.co.uk in the United Kingdom. Blogger explained that by doing this they could manage the blog content more locally so if there was any objectionable material that violated a particular country's laws they could remove and block access to that blog for that country through the assigned ccTLD while retaining access through other ccTLD addresses and the default Blogspot.com URL. If a blog using a country-specific URL was removed it is still technically possible to access the blog through Google's No Country Redirect override by entering the URL using the regular Blogspot.com address and adding /ncr after .com. [17] In May 2018, Blogger stopped redirecting to ccTLDs and country-specific URLs would now redirect to the default Blogspot.com addresses. [18]

Available designs

Blogger allows its users to choose from multiple templates and then customize them. Users may also choose to create their own templates using CSS. The new design template, known as "Dynamic View", was introduced on August 31, 2011 [19] with Dynamic Views being introduced on September 27, 2011. [20] It is built with AJAX, HTML5, and CSS3. The time for loading is 40 percent shorter than traditional templates, and allows user to present blog in seven different ways: classic, flipcard, magazine, mosaic, sidebar, snapshot, and timeslide. Readers still have the option to choose preferable views when the blog owner has set a default view. [21]

Integration

Blocking

Blogger has been blocked for various periods of time in the following countries:

Blocking of *.blogspot.com domains by keyword-based Internet filtering systems is also encountered due to the domain containing the substring "gspot"; however, this can be alleviated by excluding the "blogspot.com" section of the URL from the keyword-based Internet filtering whilst the *. section of the URL is exposed to keyword-based Internet filtering.

Support

The official support channel is the Blogger Product Forum. [39] This online discussion forum, delivered using Google Groups, serves Blogger users of varying experience, and receives some monitoring from Google staff. "Product Experts," formerly known as "Top contributors," are community-members nominated by the Google staff who enjoy additional privileges including managing discussions and direct access to Google staff. There is likely to be a top contributor or other knowledgeable person reading the forum almost all the time.

A number of people, including some top contributors, run personal blogs where they offer advice and post information about common problems.

Stack Exchange's Web Applications forum has a tag for "blogger", which is used for questions about various blogging platforms, including Blogger. [40]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Blog</span> Discussion or informational site published on the internet

A blog is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order so that the most recent post appears first, at the top of the web page. In the 2000s, blogs were often the work of a single individual, occasionally of a small group, and often covered a single subject or topic. In the 2010s, "multi-author blogs" (MABs) emerged, featuring the writing of multiple authors and sometimes professionally edited. MABs from newspapers, other media outlets, universities, think tanks, advocacy groups, and similar institutions account for an increasing quantity of blog traffic. The rise of Twitter and other "microblogging" systems helps integrate MABs and single-author blogs into the news media. Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Domain name</span> Identification string in the Internet

In the Internet, a domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. Domain names are used in various networking contexts and for application-specific naming and addressing purposes. In general, a domain name identifies a network domain or an Internet Protocol (IP) resource, such as a personal computer used to access the Internet, or a server computer.

Spamdexing is the deliberate manipulation of search engine indexes. It involves a number of methods, such as link building and repeating related and/or unrelated phrases, to manipulate the relevance or prominence of resources indexed in a manner inconsistent with the purpose of the indexing system.

goatse.cx, often spelled without the .cx top-level domain as Goatse, is an internet domain that originally housed an Internet shock site. Its front page featured a picture entitled hello.jpg, showing a close-up of a hunched-over naked man using both hands to stretch open his anus and expose his red rectum lit by the camera flash.

The blogosphere is made up of all blogs and their interconnections. The term implies that blogs exist together as a connected community or as a social networking service in which everyday authors can publish their opinions and views.

URL redirection, also called URL forwarding, is a World Wide Web technique for making a web page available under more than one URL address. When a web browser attempts to open a URL that has been redirected, a page with a different URL is opened. Similarly, domain redirection or domain forwarding is when all pages in a URL domain are redirected to a different domain, as when wikipedia.com and wikipedia.net are automatically redirected to wikipedia.org.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pyra Labs</span> American company

Pyra Labs is a subsidiary of Google (Alphabet) that created the Blogger service in 1999. Google acquired Pyra Labs in 2003.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.kz</span> Internet country-code top level domain for Kazakhstan

.kz is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Kazakhstan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Evan Williams (Internet entrepreneur)</span> American technology entrepreneur

Evan Clark "Ev" Williams is an American billionaire technology entrepreneur. He is a co-founder of Twitter, and was its CEO from 2008 to 2010, and a member of its board from 2007 to 2019. He founded Blogger and Medium. In 2014, he co-founded the venture capital firm Obvious Ventures. As of February 2022, his net worth is estimated at US$2.1 billion.

A domain hack is a domain name that suggests a word, phrase, or name when concatenating two or more adjacent levels of that domain. For example, ro.bot and examp.le, using the domains .bot and .le, suggest the words robot and example respectively. In this context, the word hack denotes a clever trick, not an exploit or break-in.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WordPress.com</span> Blogging platform owned and hosted online by Automattic

WordPress.com is a web building platform for self-publishing that is popular for blogging and other works. It is owned and operated by Automattic, Inc. It is run on a modified version of the WordPress software. This website provides free blog hosting for registered users and is financially supported via paid upgrades, "VIP" services and advertising.

This is a list of blogging terms. Blogging, like any hobby, has developed something of a specialized vocabulary. The following is an attempt to explain a few of the more common phrases and words, including etymologies when not obvious.

URL shortening is a technique on the World Wide Web in which a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) may be made substantially shorter and still direct to the required page. This is achieved by using a redirect which links to the web page that has a long URL. For example, the URL "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL_shortening" can be shortened to "https://w.wiki/U". Often the redirect domain name is shorter than the original one. A friendly URL may be desired for messaging technologies that limit the number of characters in a message, for reducing the amount of typing required if the reader is copying a URL from a print source, for making it easier for a person to remember, or for the intention of a permalink. In November 2009, the shortened links of the URL shortening service Bitly were accessed 2.1 billion times.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jaiku</span> Company

Jaiku was a social networking, micro-blogging and lifestreaming service comparable to Twitter, founded a month before the latter. Jaiku was founded in February 2006 by Jyri Engeström and Petteri Koponen from Finland and launched in July of that year. It was purchased by Google on October 9, 2007.

DNS hijacking, DNS poisoning, or DNS redirection is the practice of subverting the resolution of Domain Name System (DNS) queries. This can be achieved by malware that overrides a computer's TCP/IP configuration to point at a rogue DNS server under the control of an attacker, or through modifying the behaviour of a trusted DNS server so that it does not comply with internet standards.

While the term "blog" was not coined until the late 1990s, the history of blogging starts with several digital precursors to it. Before "blogging" became popular, digital communities took many forms, including Usenet, commercial online services such as GEnie, BiX and the early CompuServe, e-mail lists and Bulletin Board Systems (BBS). In the 1990s, Internet forum software, such as WebEx, created running conversations with "threads". Threads are topical connections between messages on a metaphorical "corkboard". Some have likened blogging to the Mass-Observation project of the mid-20th century.

Typosquatting, also called URL hijacking, a sting site, a cousin domain, or a fake URL, is a form of cybersquatting, and possibly brandjacking which relies on mistakes such as typos made by Internet users when inputting a website address into a web browser. A user accidentally entering an incorrect website address may be led to any URL, including an alternative website owned by a cybersquatter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bitly</span> American link management platform

Bitly is a URL shortening service and a link management platform. The company Bitly, Inc. was established in 2008. It is privately held and based in New York City. Bitly shortens 600 million links per month, for use in social networking, SMS, and email. Bitly makes money by charging for access to aggregate data created as a result of many people using the shortened URLs.

The Indian blogosphere is the online predominantly community of Indian weblogs that is part of the larger blogosphere.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Putlocker</span> Online illegal movie streaming site network

Putlocker is a file hosting index website used for streaming entertainment media, particularly films and television series, for free. The initial website originated in the United Kingdom in 2011, and grew to receive millions of daily visitors after the shutdown of Megaupload. In May 2016, the website was blocked in the UK by a High Court order, and at its peak prior to a temporary closure in late 2016, Alexa Internet listed Putlocker as ranking among the top 250 most-visited websites worldwide. Putlocker has been reported by the Motion Picture Association (MPA) as a major piracy threat.

References

  1. 1 2 "The Story of Blogger". Blogger.com. October 8, 2003. Archived from the original on April 19, 2010. Retrieved December 25, 2011.
  2. ↑ "Set up a custom domain - Blogger Help". support.google.com. Archived from the original on October 25, 2019. Retrieved June 2, 2018.
  3. ↑ "Custom domains for your blog made easy". buzz.blogger.com. Archived from the original on January 18, 2015. Retrieved January 13, 2015.
  4. ↑ "the limits on my Blogger account". Archived from the original on January 8, 2014. Retrieved January 8, 2014.
  5. ↑ "Important Note to FTP Users". Official Blogger Blog. Archived from the original on September 6, 2016. Retrieved December 25, 2011.
  6. ↑ "History of blogging". NDMU. March 22, 2018. Retrieved November 22, 2024.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  7. 1 2 3 "Official Blogger Blog". Official Blogger Blog. Archived from the original on August 1, 2018. Retrieved April 20, 2021.
  8. ↑ "Blogger Beta: Feature Complete!". Official Blogger Blog. November 2, 2006. Archived from the original on June 27, 2023. Retrieved July 10, 2023.
  9. ↑ Meattle, Jay (October 30, 2007). "Top-50 Websites - Ranked by Unique Visitors; Digg.com, Facebook, Flickr sky rocketing". Compete. Archived from the original on June 25, 2008.
  10. ↑ McCormick, Rich (February 24, 2015). "Google-owned Blogger bans sexually explicit content". The Verge. Archived from the original on April 12, 2021. Retrieved July 10, 2023.
  11. ↑ Khan, Sami (February 28, 2015). "Backlash Forces Google to Reverse Move to Ban Porn on Blogger". www.ibtimes.co.in. Archived from the original on October 16, 2022. Retrieved July 10, 2023.
  12. ↑ "Blogger Buzz: The New Version of Blogger". Buzz.blogger.com. Archived from the original on July 8, 2011. Retrieved December 25, 2011.
  13. ↑ "Draft.blogger.com". Draft.blogger.com. Archived from the original on September 12, 2011. Retrieved December 25, 2011.
  14. ↑ "Bloggerindraft.blogspot.com". Bloggerindraft.blogspot.com. Archived from the original on September 19, 2012. Retrieved September 9, 2012.
  15. ↑ "Critique and Criticism of the New Blogger Post Editor – Experiment Garden". Experimentgarden.blogspot.com. June 26, 2008. Archived from the original on July 21, 2011. Retrieved December 25, 2011.
  16. ↑ "Share your unique style with new Blogger themes". Official Blogger Blog. Archived from the original on April 5, 2023. Retrieved April 5, 2023.
  17. ↑ "My blog redirects to a country-specific URL (ccTLD)". Archived from the original on July 13, 2014. Retrieved June 18, 2014.
  18. ↑ "It's spring cleaning time for Blogger". Blogger team. May 15, 2018. Archived from the original on August 2, 2018. Retrieved August 1, 2018.
  19. ↑ "Blogger's fresh new look". blogger.com. August 31, 2011. Archived from the original on September 24, 2014. Retrieved September 20, 2014.
  20. ↑ "Dynamic Views: seven new ways to share your blog with the world". blogger.com. September 27, 2011. Archived from the original on September 24, 2014. Retrieved September 20, 2014.
  21. ↑ "Use themes to change how your blog looks - Blogger Help". support.google.com. Archived from the original on July 10, 2023. Retrieved July 10, 2023.
  22. ↑ "Blogger Help". Archived from the original on June 25, 2014. Retrieved June 23, 2014.
  23. 1 2 "Microsoft releases Windows Live Writer as open source". The Register . Archived from the original on October 22, 2019. Retrieved October 22, 2019.
  24. ↑ "Buzz.blogger.com". Buzz.blogger.com. Archived from the original on July 4, 2011. Retrieved December 25, 2011.
  25. ↑ "Blogger / Amazon integration is finished – what are our options now?". Amazon Integration is Over – what are our options now?. September 23, 2011. Archived from the original on November 14, 2012. Retrieved September 21, 2012.
  26. ↑ "Microsoft volunteers open source Live Writer blogging tool". ZDNet . Archived from the original on August 13, 2020. Retrieved October 22, 2019.
  27. ↑ "Blogger says Cuba blocked access to her site". ZDNET. Archived from the original on December 30, 2022. Retrieved December 30, 2022.
  28. ↑ Jardin, Xeni (May 17, 2007). "Fiji declares war on bloggers and open internet access". Boing Boing. Archived from the original on December 30, 2022. Retrieved December 30, 2022.
  29. ↑ "Blogspot blogs blocked in India?". July 27, 2012. Archived from the original on May 31, 2016. Retrieved September 9, 2012.
  30. ↑ Dehghan, Saeed Kamali (May 13, 2014). "Iran cyberpolice blocked in bid to identify blogger". The Guardian . Archived from the original on December 9, 2022. Retrieved December 30, 2022.
  31. ↑ "Kazakh bloggers say can't access popular website". Reuters. October 10, 2008. Archived from the original on December 30, 2022. Retrieved December 30, 2022.
  32. ↑ "5 social media accounts, 8 media channels blocked in Kyrgyzstan since August for extremist content". m.akipress.com. Archived from the original on December 30, 2022. Retrieved December 30, 2022.
  33. ↑ Rosen, Jeffrey (2008). "Google's Gatekeepers". The New York Times . Archived from the original on October 30, 2015. Retrieved December 1, 2008.
  34. ↑ Cina, Sapore di (November 8, 2021). "The List of Blocked Websites in China in 2022 - Latest News". Sapore di Cina. Archived from the original on December 30, 2022. Retrieved December 30, 2022.
  35. ↑ Полосатый тормоз "Билайн" заблокировал сайт "Доброй машины правды" (in Russian). Lenta.ru. July 27, 2012. Archived from the original on September 27, 2012. Retrieved September 9, 2012.
  36. ↑ "Syria: Blogger Blocked in Syria · Global Voices". October 10, 2006. Archived from the original on December 30, 2022. Retrieved December 30, 2022.
  37. ↑ "Blogger.com banned in Turkey · Global Voices Advox". Archived from the original on October 20, 2015. Retrieved December 30, 2022.
  38. ↑ "Online censorship in Vietnam". nordvpn.com. January 15, 2019. Archived from the original on October 17, 2023. Retrieved December 30, 2022.
  39. ↑ "Google Discussiegroepen". Archived from the original on December 3, 2018. Retrieved January 31, 2013.
  40. ↑ "Web Applications Stack Exchange". Archived from the original on June 18, 2014. Retrieved June 18, 2014.
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