Monday, November 06, 2006

More techie stuff - those Labels

I was pleasantly surprised yesterday to find myself cited an instant expert in installing Technorati, simply as a result of posting a comment about the difficulties I had first encountered.

So I'll take the opportunity of adding a second techie comment, while it's fresh in my mind. One never knows, it might help someone else up their learning curve.

It's do do with those "Labels". Choosing them, and displaying them at the end of a post is not the problem, since the boxes for doing that are right in front of one. It's getting the Labels displayed in the margin, on the right hand side on the page, (circled in red on the graphic) that was the trouble. The directions for doing so weren't clear - I could not find where to start.

All is now clear, at least for those who have upgraded, as I recently did, to Beta Blogger. You have to click on Upgrade Template, and then either choose a new template, or, if you want to keep the one you've already got, make sure it's selected, and then Save. That then gives you access to a whole lot of new options for re-designing one's blog by user-friendly dragging. It involves going to one's Dashboard, and clicking on Templates. Once you been through the routine described earlier, you'll now see a new Layouts tab, that wasn't there before, which then gives you a menu of options, including the Labels that got me started on all this. I trust all this makes sense.

ed. Monday 6pm approx. Quelle horreur ! I have just discovered that Technorati and the hit counter have disappeared from the blog - the result, no doubt, of "upgrading" the Template. Blogger gave no warning this would happen. That means having to reinstall them - how very tedious.
I shall now add "software bugs" to the list of Labels for this post.

ed. 7.10pm Fortunately, the system allows one to revert to the original Template, so Technorati and the hit counter are now restored. But I've lost the listed Labels, and have no clues (as yet) on how to get them all up together. It's as well that I used the Print Screen to show that listed Labels were achieved, albeit temporarily. So it's back to the drawing board. Any ideas, anyone, where I go from here ?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The following was received by email this afternoon, and is posted here with the writer's permission, with his preferred pseudonym

Dear Colin and Hippo,
I've tried to leave a comment but at 59yrs I'm am not technically qualified to do so. As yet....
I wanted to say that I read your blogs with interest and like them just the way they are! The loo deposit and Meteorological clock items just happen to have struck a chord with us this week. Amazing that such subjects should be posted while under review by us. As to your style... It's fine by me. Please don't get hung up by counters of interest, it's quality not quantity that counts. I read the comments on Salut! and feel as if I'm just not on their wavelength. There must be others 'out there' that are as puzzled as I by the slick nonsensical chatter that prevails. Please continue to interest, educate and challenge me.
Thanks for all your trouble.

Regards,

Potty

Sarah said...

Colin, what I did was save my old template just in case, then highlight and save all the extra code I had added (for counters, BritBlog etc) and copy the new stuff en bloc into the relevent new block in my beta template.

You don't need to reinstall, just copy.

sciencebod said...

Thanks for the timely advice, Sarah. I had just this minute posted a PS, in fact, saying I'd been able to retrieve the original Template, so will try saving and pasting into the new one. But not today. As Popeye used to say, before popping his can of spinach: "I've stoods enough, and I can't stands no more !"

angela said...

Hi Clin,
I haven't dared to change to Beta , not having yet fully grasped the original.
I don't understand the labels and have decided it's something I can do without for the moment...
My disappearing links came back. All I did was publish a post asking for suggestions and overnight my links linked to something after, apparently, 10 days of linking to nothing. My husband was deeply suspicious of that.
I'm afraid that I have you pegged now as my instant expert so hold yourself in readiness for the inevitable change to Beta.
Have a good day,
Angela