Help With Google Blogger

I wrote last week about having "upgraded" my Blogger site to the "new" Blogger, called now "Google Blogger." There are many advantages to Google Blogger for people like me who aren't very code savvy. Yet, even as limited as my skills are I had with old Blogger been able to drop snippets of code into the Blogger template and out comes a flickr badge for example, or a we101 badge, or whatever.

It's not quite so easy in Google Blogger. The template code is built around the architecture of the Blogger "gadgets" - little programs like WordPress widgets that can be added to the site and move around easily. This new functionality for Blogger requires code that looks very mysterious to guys like me, and which from all I have read makes it all but impossible to plop in other code for badges and such.

There is a new Blogger gadget called "HTML/JavaScript." supposedly this gadget allows the user to add code from third parties, but no code I have dropped in there has come out right. I am talking about code provided by various third parties to add to Blogger templates.

If any of you have transitioned to "new" Blogger I would love very much to know if you know how to insert things like the Flickr badge that Flickr provides, or the we101.com badge, or the like. You can comment here or e-mail me.

Thanks,

Joel

Help! New Blogger and Flickr

Due to the gradual build up of small coding problems on my Blogger site (which I am not smart enough to fix) I have taken the plunge into the world of "new" Blogger or as they now call it "Google Blogger." Seems it is trying very hard to be like Word Press without the Open Source aspect. ). I have set up a "new" Blogger site. Don't know if I will stay with template. As far as I can tell the new Google Blogger is trying to make it as hard as possible to access non Google sites - places like as Flickr, Pandora, Facebook, or Technorati. It looks like Google is turning into a proprietary monster. I do like the new Blogger widget thing - it's useful for code dorks like me.

But here is the problem. Their widgets for non Google sites are lame. For the life of me I can't figure out how to paste html code the old fashioned way (even in their html widget) and have things show up on the side bar - such as my Flickr badge. Flickr generates the code for a badge but it won't take inside the new Blogger. It does not work just dumping it into the "new Blogger" template code or into the html widget. Do any Blogger users out there know how to do this?

Thanks,

Joel

By Design, Not Default

My good friend Mack Arrington has started a new blog called By Design, Not Default. Check it out. He is new to Blogger and to blogging.