Google’s free Blogger tool makes it easy for anyone to start their own website, but the platform is undergoing some issues in India this week. Somehow, Google unfortunately let the “blogspot.in” domain lapse, breaking millions of sites and potentially putting them at further risk.
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Last October, Blogger for Android saw a surprising Material Theme revamp. Google’s writing platform is seeing another quiet update that introduces a modern and responsive design on the web.
Remember Google’s Blogger platform? If not, we’d understand, but tonight Google has started rolling out a major refresh to the Blogger app for Android in its first update since 2016, weirdly on the eve of its big hardware event.
Google announced tonight that it will be updating its adult content policy on the Blogger platform once again. Starting March 23rd, no sites built on Blogger will be allowed to publicly share “sexually explicit” content or media containing “graphic nudity.”
Sites that currently host objectionable content will be required to either remove it or set the blog to private. Google also suggests exporting a site and moving it to a different host if neither of those options are suitable. Blogs that violate the policy after March 25th will risk being set to private automatically. Google says no sites will be completely deleted due to this change.
The Verge reports that Google is banning the monetization of adult content on its Blogger service, though adult content will continue to be permitted provided there are no accompanying ads for adult sites.
The move seems designed to address blog sites which are no more than vehicles for promoting porn sites.
Google recently made some updates to its Google Takeout service to allow users to download even more types of content from both Blogger and Google+. As noted recently on its Data Liberation blog, Google is now allowing users to download each of their Blogger blogs as an Atom Xml file. It is also adding more ways to download data from Google+, including the ability to download your posts as HTML files and your Google+ Circles as JSON files. Google noted that it can also just “export a single blog or page of your choice.”
If you are a blogger and you are using Google’s blogging service called “Blogger,” you are probably aware of its many limitations compared to WordPress— the de facto blogging standard. Google has been slow to address the many concerns Bloggers users have and has been neglecting the service lately. One of the glaring issues has always been Blogger’s commenting system that leaves a lot to be desired.
Today, the Blogger team announced that threaded commenting is now live in Blogger. Previously, there was no way of telling whether posters put up a new comment or responded to another comment on the thread. Threaded commenting, which is a norm on the vast majority of other blogging platforms, solves this problem elegantly with indentation. A small, but welcome fix. Here is to hoping the team is working on bigger issues as Blogger is definitely crying for some love.
Google embarked on a Blogger redesign back in July, part of a broader push to update the look and feel of their many services that now resemble the clean, elegant appearance of the Google+ service. The revamped UI today went live for everyone, the first in a “series of major updates” due over the course of the coming months, Blogger product manager Chang Kim wrote in a blog post.
Thorough changes are evident in all parts of the Blogger interface, from the post editor to Dashboard. Code has also been optimized and parts of it rewritten from scratch, mainly the editing and management experience.
We here at 9to5Google are all for Google’s new design language stemming from the work of the original Macintosh designer, Andy Hertzfeld. Design-wise, Blogger never felt like a Google service. Updating the Blogger interface to conform to the broader design changes in other Google’ products makes sense from the usability point of view, and especially if you live in a Google world. The new design has to be enabled manually in your dashboard, mind you.
Stunning 45-degree views are now available in Maps for more places in the US and abroad.
Never content with resting on its laurels, Google have been iterating their products at a pace faster than ever before. Here’s a quick overview of some of the noteworthy changes we spotted in Google’s popular services, such as Docs, Tasks, Chrome Web Store, Blogger and Maps. The latter now features breathtaking 45° imagery for many more US cities (full list here), including international locales, such as Córdoba, Spain. If you haven’t yet seen highly detailed aerial photography in action, definitely give it a try now by checking out the Córdoba, William P. Hobby Airport or the Houston Ship Channel 45° views from all four directions.
Chrome Web Store, the Google-ran online repository of web apps, now supports more markets, having added sixteen new countries for 31 countries in total. In-app payments in web apps distributed on Chrome Web Store are also a go-go: Google confirmed paid transactions in web apps will be available to users in twenty countries “later this year”. Zyngas of this world will love it, that’s for sure. More features in other services right below the fold.
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As spotted by Dain Binder on Google+, Blogger is receiving a redesign just like the rest of Google’s products. The new redesign resembles Gmail’s new look, sporting new buttons and an overall touchup. Currently, the new design can only be viewed in the draft section of Blogger, but we’d bet this is coming to the full site soon. More images after the break.
