Blogger (service)

Blogger (service)

Blogger is a blog publishing service created by Pyra Labs and was acquired by Google in 2003. In general, blogs hosted by Google are under the subdomain blogspot.com. Blogger allows its users to publish their blogs on other servers, via FTP until May 1, 2010. After that date, all blogs must be stored on Google's servers, although users can use their own site address with the Custom URL feature.

History

On August 23, 1999, Blogger was launched by Pyra Labs. As one of the first blog publishing tools in the world, Blogger plays a role in popularizing the blog format in the world. In February 2003, Pyra Labs was acquired by Google, making a number of premium Blogger features that were previously commercialized by Pyra Labs into a completely free service. In October 2004, co-founder of Pyra Labs, Evan Williams, resigned from Google.

In 2004, Google bought Picasa, and integrated it with Blogger so that Picasa users could publish their photo collections to their blog site.

On May 9, 2004, Blogger introduced several major changes to its blog publishing system, adding features such as templates that met web standards, individual archive pages for each post and comment, and posting features by email.

On August 14, 2006, Blogger launched its latest version in beta, which was codenamed "Invader". This latest version migrates Blogger users to Google's servers and adds several new features. In December 2006, this new version came out of beta. May 2007, Blogger finished migrating all of its user data to Google's servers.

Redesign

As part of Blogger's redesign in 2006, all blogs on Blogger were migrated to Google's servers. Blogger claims that with the migration, their service is more stable because Google has better server quality than before.

As the Blogger service migrates to Google's servers, several new features are introduced, including label management, a drag-and-drop template layout, blog reading permission (for creating personal blogs) and new web feed options. Furthermore, now every blog is dynamically updated, different from before where each new post or comment is treated by rewriting HTML files.

In September 2009, Google introduced new features as part of its tenth birthday celebration. These features include a new look for writing posts, improving image handling, and other Google Docs based implementations, such as:

Add location of writing in post.

Writing dates are determined at the time of publication, not at the time of manufacture.
Change the link in writing mode (Compose mode).
Full service for Safari 3.
A preview view that displays posts with estimated text width and font size when they are published.
New toolbar with a distinctive Google look, faster loading times, and Undo and Redo buttons.
In 2010, Blogger introduced a new template and redesigned the site.

In 2013, Blogger updated its features one of them is the comment and integration features on Google+, there are several new features including:

Interface Design that was updated in 2012
Direct integration with Google Adsense, 2012
Integration with Google+ in the comments and posts box, 2013
Mobile template feature where we can design or choose designs that have been provided so that users can view blogs on their mobile phones or gadgets with customized designs (responsive).

Integration

Google Toolbar has a "BlogThis!" Feature that allows a toolbar of users with a Blogger account to post a direct link to their blog.
Blogger supports the Google AdSense service as a way for blog owners to earn money from their blogs.
Blogger offers the Google Adwords service as a way to promote new blogs.
Blogger offers multi-author blog support, which allows users to create a blog for groups.
Blogger offers a template modification feature, which allows users to change the design of the blog template as they wish. For users who have programming skills or understanding CSS code, this feature is very useful because it allows them to design their own blog designs, including adding a number of menus and columns.
Bloggers can be linked directly to Google+ which can tag friends and share directly with them.