Disable The Mobile Template, On Your Blog - As A Default View

Over a year ago, Blogger introduced a useful template option for our blogs - mobile templates.

Blogger mobile templates are mobile-optimized versions of our Template Designer templates. If you are using one of these templates, when you enable the mobile template option your blog will begin rendering using the mobile version of the same variant. Even if you are not using a Template Designer template, or using a heavily-customized version of one, you can still enable this feature to have your blog start rendering in a generic default mobile template that we have created.

The mobile templates let computers with lower display size / resolution - aka PDAs, mobile phones, and smart phones - display the content of our blogs, without the unnecessary overhead which may be a part of our normal blog formatting.

If you are viewing this post on your smart phone, it's likely that you are viewing it using a mobile template. As exciting as the mobile templates are, however, they will not replace the normal, full feature templates - on every blog, or on every mobile computer.

Not every blog owner, nor every visitor, wants to view any given blog using a mobile template. Some tablet computers have display units which rival normal desktop displays from a few years ago - and low feature, mobile templates are unnecessary. Fortunately, there are a number of options - for the blog owner, and for the blog visitor.

If you are a blog owner, you can disable the mobile template, as a default, for your blog. For those blog owners who have forgotten how they set the mobile template on their blog, you use the "Template - Choose mobile template" wizard, from the gear icon beneath Template - Mobile. Simply select "No. Show desktop template on mobile devices.", and Save - and that's it.

If your blog has a Classic Template, you can disable the default mobile template from your blog, with a little extra bit of effort.

1. Start with the Template wizard, and select "Upgrade template".
2. Once your blog has an upgraded template, you can use the "Choose mobile template" wizard, and select "No.".
3. Go back to the Template wizard, and at the bottom find "Revert to classic templates".
4. Selecting the latter link, your blog will be back to the previous, Classic template.
5. But now, the default Mobile template will be disabled.

Upgrade your blog, to a Designer template.

Return your blog, to a Classic template.

Having set - or un set - the default mobile template for your blog, your visitors have the final say, how they want to view your blog. If you are the visitor, you can choose, with a little effort.

Any time you are viewing a Blogger blog, from any computer, you can select - or de select - the mobile template for the blog which you are viewing. Just use the appropriate mobile template URL suffix.

• To de select the mobile template, use "/?m=0". http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/?m=0
• To select the mobile template, use "/?m=1". http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/?m=1

You can view a blog using a mobile template on your desktop computer - or a blog using a full feature template on your mobile computer. It's now your choice.

This blog, viewed from this computer, using a Mobile template.
Unfortunately, it's your choice, when you use your mobile computer, only. You have only two choices, for your blog.

• Don't enable the mobile template.
• Enable the mobile template.

Each of your readers have to choose how to view your blog - if you choose to offer the mobile template.

>> Top

A Template For Virginia USA, #5

For a few years, I have been making jokes about some Blogger blog owners, and their (perceived) need to keep a Classic (HTML based) template, on their blogs. Some blog owners continue to ask naive questions in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I?.

How do I let my readers view 'Older Posts'?

or

How do I add a Pages menu?

or

How do I use Following, with the "Follow" link recently removed from the navbar?

Recently, in musing about some of the recent Blogger policy changes, such as the end to the Blogger FTP Publishing option, a formalised browser support policy, and the end of pre-Google (aka "legacy") Blogger accounts, I realised that one of the next changes, logically, would be a phasing out of support for HTML based templates. I think that this idea is probably long over due.

With the recently offered Layout, then Designer, and now Dynamic templates, there are so many features offered by Blogger that you are just plain missing out on, if you insist on using an HTML based template.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not suggesting that you need to upgrade your template, this month - or even this year. Even so, I believe that one day, possibly sooner than you would think, the day will come, and you'll see the latest Buzz article.

Time to upgrade your template!

My suspicion is that the few remaining owners of blogs, still using an HTML template, are smaller in number than those who objected to the forced installation of auto pagination, or those forced to migrate from FTP Publishing, or those who are currently objecting to the New Blogger GUI. And of those 3 changes, possibly only the implementation of auto pagination was simpler to execute.

Those of us who have migrated a blog from Classic (HTML) to Layout (XML) - or maybe Designer (XML) - know how simple most Classic template upgrades are.

• Click on the "Upgrade" button.
• Select an XML template.
• Use the "Page Elements" wizard (now the "Layout" menu entry), and start adding accessories.
• Occasionally, use the "View Classic Template" option, to retrieve some overlooked HTML code.

The GUI menus and wizards, too, will make a Classic to Designer upgrade almost transparent. Under the Classic Blogger GUI, there was a completely different set of links, menus, and wizards, for a Classic, as opposed to a Designer, template.

Under the New Blogger GUI, the main difference between a Classic and Designer template would be the absence of the Layout menu entry, for a Classic template. A Classic template only needs the "Template" menu entry, and the "Edit HTML" button in "Template" - just a clean subset of the existing menu structure.

Is this jumping the gun? If so, my apologies, in advance.

Time to upgrade your template!

But, is 5 years (less 3 weeks) not long enough, to wait?

>> Top

A Template For Virginia USA, #4

As the frustrations about the CC TLD aliases continue to be reported in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, and some of the details are discovered and resolved, we are seeing suggestions of other, more subtle problems.

Some blog owners claim that their page rank / search engine reputation has taken a nose dive, because their readership is spread out over many different countries. Apparently, canonical resolution by the search engines does not work, for all "blogspot.com" published blogs. Older blogs, including those with Classic (HTML based) templates - and possibly some older Layout templates - seem to lack canonical resolution.

The canonical resolution process, by the search engines, requires a canonical tag which defines the base URL of the blog. Blogs with older templates don't have the canonical tag in the template header - and the search engines can't aggregate the CC alias URLs generated by the many different country code references.

Any blog, indexed by the search engines, separately, under the different CC TLD aliases, is going to have a lower overall search reputation. The different references, under the many aliases, will be indexed - but as each will be more diverse, each reference will appear lower in SERP lists. This will result in less search engine related traffic - and subsequently still lower SERP positioning.

If your blog depends upon search engine generated traffic for publicity, and you have an older blog, you are going to want to check the template header.

<link href='http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/' rel='canonical'/>

If you do not find a similar tag in the template header for your blog, you need to upgrade your template. Your readers will thank you, too.

>> Top

Dynamic Templates, As Part Of Blogger History

Recently, we've seen people who want to use a dynamic template on their blog - but are unwilling to put up with the limitations.

Why can't Google make its Dynamic View Template easy to customize?

and

Why can't I choose who I want reading my blog, and let my readers use a dynamic view?

and

Why should I publish my blog to a "Dynamic Template" - which appears to be Google speak for "It doesn't work at all."?

Not every Blogger blog owner realises why the dynamic templates work as they do, yet offer as few options.

To understand why dynamic templates work - or don't work - as they do, one should understand the history of Blogger blogs, and use of templates.