New Blogger.com Features – A Complete Blogging Platform

As everyone becomes crazy when it comes about blogging and if we talk about blogging then the top blogging platforms which strike are:

Blogger.com
Wordpress.com
Wordpress Self Hosted
Typepad
Lycos Tripod

and today we’re going to have a look at Blogger’s new features which are released lately and made it a complete blogging platform and on top of it you can run many blogs at Blogger.com absolutely FREE !

Apart from that the first and most exciting feature from Blogger’s laundry list which attracts everyone’s attention is:-

Template Designer
As it’s name suggests you can design your own unique blog template and it’s really very easy to use and handy when it comes to blog customization, changing colors, fonts, CSS, or a complete theme of your blog, putting adsense or if need to add some widget in your blog’s sidebar.

Here’s a Short Video Demo

and if you want hands on practice then go ahead here’s the real Template Designer Demo

 
Beautiful New Templates: Blogger has added fresh new range of prebuilt templates/designs which are ready to use, so no hassles if you’re in hurry and setup a blog with new design.

 
Separate Business Logic and Presentation Logic: One of the best feature and change which blogger team has done is, they separated business login and presentation logic. Those who don’t know about this technical term, in simple language it means that now design is separated from programming, the whole blog design is now defined in CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and you can change anything, any part of your blog design through CSS and you don’t need to do any change in your blog or in your existing blog posts etc… Now this much simplicity is there!

 
Cross-Browser Support: Now your blog will look same in all browsers like:- Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer. No more design/layout compromising.

 
Real Time Preview: As you make some changes in your blog design and simultaneously you can see the changes in the preview panel which is beneath the
Template Designer. Here’s the demo. You can decide whether it looks good or not before you make blog design public.

Commercial Photos At No Cost: Blogger has paired up with istockphoto.com a site which provides professional pictures on paid subscription basis but you don’t need to pay any cent for any picture. You can use a lot professional gorgeous images in your blog at no cost and blogger will take care of that. This really shows that Blogger cares about their users so 3 cheers for blogger.

 
New Video Player: Now all the blogger can use a new YouTube based video player in their blogs which has numerous features like full-screen mode, larger buttons, animated seekbar, users can see playback performance through Show Video Info by doing right click on the video and also do network speed test and last but not least better user interface than ever.

 
Social Bookmarking Buttons: As I always say sharing is caring and social bookmarking sharing buttons really help in this regard because when you post something and readers find it interesting then they use social bookmarking sharing buttons and share it with other people and in return your blog get a lot of traffic. Blogger guys also believe same that’s why they have also provided a social bookmarking sharing buttons feature.

You can find this feature under Design tab, then there is a Page Elements tab and then look at just below, there is box with dotted line named Blog Posts which has a edit button, click on it and the new window will be opened and you’ll find Show Share Buttons options there.

 
Make Money Through Google Adsense: Everyone loves blogging and want to blog what they feel like. But what if, you start earning from what you love to do.

Yes, it’s possible, through Blogger.com. Even earlier there were people who were doing the same, but the process was very tedious because it was very hard to associate adsense account with Blogger. But now things are smooth. You can integrate Google Adsense account with Blogger in a very simple and spoon feeding manner and earn a lot of money while blogging.

 
Fast and Redundant Server Solution: Everyone notice that now blogs at Blogger.com load faster than ever and the reason is Bogger guys has revamped their server architecture and did a lot of changes to make blogger platform faster and lighter in terms of performance. Earlier every next bloggie has a tendency that blogs at Blogger.com load slowly because it’s a free host and they never consider Blogger.com seriously for professional blogging but now perceptions are getting changed because everyone is getting positive results, their blogs are running faster, pages are loading faster etc… and their visitors are sparing more time at their blogs.

 
Better Help and Support Panel: There is an Official Blogger Help Panel where you can find tons of How-To’s and common questions and their answers which helps any bloggie to run their blog smoothly.

If you feel that your question isn’t answered in Blogger Help Panel then also you don’t need to worry because there is an Official Blogger Support Panel aks Help Forum where you can post questions and get answer from a lot of experience bloggies and from Blogger Employee (an official member of the Google team) as well.

 
Summary
So in a nutshell, now blogs at Blogger.com load faster, design is lighter but with rich interface, attractive which gives professional look, easy to customize the design as per individual needs, a terrific discussion forum for support and help panel which makes Blogger a complete professional blogging platform and it’s becoming a choice of newbie to an advance blogger. Happy Blogging