Delete Comments Without Trash Can Icon!

To delete a Blogger comment first click the '4 COMMENTS' link below the post on the Main Page to open the comments page. Then click the Trash Can icon below the comment.


Sometimes the Trash Can icon is not present. In such cases follow this method to delete the comment..........


The Blogger Help article on deleting comments suggests using the following methods to see the Trash can icon :

1. Refresh the Cache repeatedly.

2. Use another browser.

3. Check that you are logged in at Blogger.com.

4. Temporary disabling of Firewall or Security software on PC.


Here is the method by which you can delete the comment even if the Trash Can icon is not there or does not appear even after trying above methods :

STEPS TO DELETE COMMENT

1. Find your Blog ID - Login at Blogger.com and click on NEW POST button on Dashboard. The post editor will open. Look in the address bar of the browser window for the URL of the page :

http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=BIG_NUMBER

Copy the 'BIG_NUMBER' at the end of the url. That is the ID Number of the blog.





2. Find the Comment ID - Open the comments page bu clicking on COMMENTS link below post on Main page. Or open the Post Page which has the comment you want to delete. Below the comment is the TIMESTAMP of the comment. It is linked to the permalink for that comment. Right click the timestamp and choose 'Copy Shortcut'. Open Notepad and paste it there. It will appear like this :

http://MYBLOG.blogspot.com/2007/10/POST_TITLE#comment-BIG_NUMBER_2

Copy the 'BIG_NUMBER_2' at the end.





3. Create the Delete Comment URL - Copy the URL given below and paste it in same Notepad file :

http://www.blogger.com/delete-comment.g?blogID=BIG_NUMBER&postID=BIG_NUMBER_2

In above replace 'BIG_NUMBER' with the Blog ID number from Step 1 and 'BIG_NUMBER_2' with the Comment ID number from Step 2.

Then copy the whole link and paste in address bar of your browser and hit Enter key on keyboard.

You will see the confirm Delete Comment screen. Check the box to Delete forever and OK it. Now you will need no Trash Cans to delete comments!

Enjoy!

Making the COMMENTS Link more User Friendly.

The "0 comments" link at the bottom of the blog posts can hardly be called intuitive. Viewers fail to understand it's significance. That is why on this blog I have customized it to make it more viewer friendly.


If there are no comments on the post this is what appears "Be the first to leave a comment!". If only one visitor commented on the post viewers see "1 VIEWER CLICKED HERE TO COMMENT ON THIS POST. ADD YOUR COMMENT." If more than one visitor left a comment than you see "n VIEWERS CLICKED HERE TO COMMENT ON THIS POST. ADD YOUR COMMENT." where 'n' is the number of comments left.


This can be done by customizing the comments code.............

ENABLE COMMENTS

The first step is to enable comments in your Settings. There are three places where comments have to be enabled. Login at Blogger.com and click on Settings link on Dashboard. Follow all steps outlined in Tips on Blogger Comments to enable your comments.



This will make the comments show up on the Post Pages. On the Main Page comments are not shown since it would make the Main Page slower to load if there are many comments. If after enabling all comment settings they are still not seen then possibly your template code has been corrupted. To reset it first backup your widgets data and customization. Then login at Blogger.com and click Layout link on Dashboard. Click Edit Html subtab of Layouts tab. Scroll down to bottom of Template Code box and click on the "Revert Widget Templates to Default" link. This will lose any customization in widget templates which you can restore from the backup you had made first.

MODIFYING THE CODE

To modify the comments link code login at Blogger.com and click Layouts link on Dashboard. Click the Edit Html subtab of Layout tab. Click the 'Expand Widget Templates' checkbox on top right of the Template Code box. Wait for the page to refresh and scroll down to locate this code in the Blog Posts widget :

<span class='post-comment-link'>
        <b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != "item"'>
  <b:if cond='data:post.allowComments'>
   <a class='comment-link' expr:href='data:post.addCommentUrl' expr:onclick='data:post.addCommentOnclick'><b:if 
cond='data:post.numComments == 1'>1 <data:top.commentLabel/><b:else/><data:post.numComments/> 
<data:top.commentLabelPlural/></b:if></a>
          </b:if>
        </b:if>
      </span>

Copy and paste the code below instead of the above code :

<p style='font-size:90%'>What have you to say?</p>
<span class='post-comment-link'>
   <b:if cond='data:post.allowComments'>
 <a class='comment-link' expr:href='data:post.addCommentUrl' expr:onclick='data:post.addCommentOnclick'><b:if 
cond='data:post.numComments == 0'>
    <p style='font-size:90%'>Be the first to leave a comment!</p> 
 <b:else/> 
<b:if cond='data:post.numComments == 1'>
<p style='font-size:90%'>1 VIEWER CLICKED HERE TO COMMENT ON THIS POST. ADD YOUR COMMENT.</p>
<b:else/>
<p style='font-size:90%'><data:post.numComments/> VIEWERS CLICKED HERE TO COMMENT ON THIS POST. ADD YOUR COMMENT.</p>
</b:if>
</b:if></a>
          </b:if>
    </span>
<b:if cond='data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl'>
<p style='font-size:90%'>Who has talked about this post?</p>
</b:if>

Preview and save the template. To increase the size of the letters increase '90%' in the code above.

You can see the modified comments link in action in this blog.

Enjoy!

Blogger Introduces New Features.

Ever since Beta Blogger debuted last year and then gradually shed off the beta tag, new features have quietly been intruding into the Blogger interface and making their presence felt.


After Google took over Feedburner it was only a matter of time before it connected to Blogger and now you can redirect your Blogger feeds there. Then there is the new Autosave feature below the post editor, the introduction of new widgets, the sitemap in a robots.txt file, a Twitter badge and now a Comment policy declaration at the top of your Comment Editor..........

TWITTER BADGE

Twitter is the new micro blogging tool by which you can keep all your friends anywhere abreast of exactly what you are doing at the moment.


Now you can add a Twitter badge to your blog sidebar. Get the code from http://twitter.com/badges/blogger. This will display your Twitter updates in the blog sidebar.

BLOGGER IN DRAFT

Blogger In Draft is not exactly an add-on to Blogger. Instead it is a place for Blogger aficionados to try out the new features in Blogger before they are released fully.



You can try out the video upload function which will soon be introduced as a button in the post editor. Also check out the Blogger In Draft blog.

REDIRECT FEED AND INCREASE SUBSCRIBERS OVERNIGHT

Here is an easy way to almost double your feed subscribers overnight. Hope you have already burned your feed at Feedburner and put a subscriber count chicklet in the sidebar.


Now go to Settings----->Site Feed in your blog and type in the Post Feed Redirect URL box your Feedburner feed address. For this blog it is :

http://feeds.feedburner.com/DummiesGuideToGoogleBloggerBeta

Now all my post feed traffic will be directed to the above address. Hence readers subscribing directly to :

http://betabloggerfordummies.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

OR TO

http://betabloggerfordummies.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/full

will also be counted. The change in your chicklet number will be evident after 24-48 hours so don't do an immediate check. Another advantage is for users migrating from another blogging platform like Wordpress can redirect their old subscribers to their new feed.

THE POLL WIDGET

New widgets have steadily been added by Blogger to the in-house stable. The latest to be added is the poll widget. Now you do not have to rely on third party sites to add a poll widget to your blog. Add one yourself and introduce interactivity with your readers.
Check out the poll widgets at the end of my posts column and right column.


Before this Blogger had introduced the Newsreel Widget to automatically add current headlines from Google News to your blog and the Video Bar widget to display clips from YouTube and Google Video for your readers to watch without leaving the page.

COMMENTS POLICY DECLARATION

Using this latest addition you can now declare your comments policy to anyone who wishes to comment on your blog. When a reader clicks on the 'Comments' link at the bottom of your posts he/she will see this declaration just above the comments editor : See picture below :


To write one for your blog go to Settings----->Comments------>Comment Form Message---->Type policy in the box and Save Settings. You can add hyperlinks in this box. . Click on 'Comments' link below this post to see my comment policy where I have added a link to my profile.

ROBOTS.TXT and SITEMAP LINK

Blogspot blogs do not have facility for you to upload a robots.txt file to the root directory. Hence we have to add a Robots Metatag so that the search spiders know which pages to index in your blog. Google Webmasters Sitemaps has added a robots.txt file in the root of each blog. To see it go to Google Webmasters Sitemaps. Before doing this add your site to Google and verify it with a metatag.



Then go to https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools------>Dashboard------>Diagnostic tab------->Sidebar------->Tools------->robots.txt analysis. You will see the text in the robots file :

User-agent: *
Disallow: /search
Sitemap: http://YOURBLOG.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?orderby=updated

At the moment you are not allowed to edit it but I expect this facility to be introduced soon. The Disallow: /search option is to reduce the amount of duplicate content in the blog by refusing the spiders to index the Labels pages. Now you can add as many labels below your posts as you want without worrying about duplicate content.


The sitemap option points the spiders to the feed of that blog which contains the latest posts and updates.

IMAGE IN HEADER

You can now upload an image in your header directly instead of adding an image element to the header or adding it in the CSS. To center this image make sure to upload an image with the same width as that of the header-wrapper in your template.

AUTOSAVE POSTS

Below the post editor (Login to Dashboard------>Click +New Post) there is a blue autosave button which saves as you type. After saving it turns grey and waits for you to type more or edit previous entries. If you are editing a previously published post then instead there is a Save as draft button in it's place. For more info. see Blogger Buzz: Auto-savory Blogger Posting

Recent Comments Widget for Blogger.

There are many benefits to having the latest comments on your blog displayed on your main page. In Blogger comments are only seen on post pages so visitors coming to your home page cannot see them unless they click on the small "COMMENTS" link after every post. If you include a Recent Comments section in your sidebar or your posts column then visitors can immediately read them and hopefully become impressed enough to return or click on them to read the posts.



When readers see the importance you give to their comments by displaying them on the main page of your blog many will take that as an incentive to post a comment.



There are two ways to include a Recent Comments Widget on the main page : The easy method and the slightly difficult Geek method..............

FEED WIDGET (EASY) METHOD

Blogger has the feed widget which you can add to your blog like any other page element. Blogger also puts out post, label and comment feeds. Combining these two we can construct a Recent Comments widget by pasting the URL of your blog comments feed into a feed page element.



To do this login to Dashboard of Blogger and click on Layout link for your blog. This will open the Page Elements subtab of Template tab. Click on 'Add Page Element' link in sidebar. In the popup window click on Feed widget. In the Feed page element window paste the comments feed URL of your blog which is :

http://YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default

Instead of 'YOURBLOGNAME' put actual name of your blog. Choose the number of comments you want to show. The maximum is five at present and OK it. View Blog.
If you want to show comments only from one post put this URL in it :

http://YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com/feeds/THISPOSTID/comments/default

Replace the CAPS.
To get your post ID login to Dashboard and click on Posts. Click on Edit link of the post you want or place your mouse cursor over the link and look at the status bar of your browser bottom left hand corner. (Enable status bar from View--->Status Bar menu of your browser.) You will see something like this :

http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx&postID=7938018824060714868

Copy down the number after postID and paste it in your comment feed url. You will then get the comments from this post only. The disadvantage of this method is that you get five comments only. The advantage is it is easy.

The FEED-TO-JAVASCRIPT (GEEK) METHOD

This is the second method and it is slightly more complicated. It enables you to have much more than five comments in your widget and also to customize it in the colors you want. It also includes a NOSCRIPT tag in case the viewer has Javascript disabled in his browser.




This method can also be used to add content from your other blogs or any other site which puts out a feed to your blog. Since the new Blogger layout templates do not have a Previous Posts section in the sidebar like the Classic Blogger templates you can use this method to add it.




For this go to http://www.bucks.edu/feed/build.php. In the URL field enter the url of your blog's RSS feed which is :

http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default?alt=rss

Substitute actual blog name in place of yourblogname. Verify the URL of your feed before using this form. You can do this by opening the above URL in your browser. It should show all your blog posts. If not check Settings----->Site Feed in your blog and verify that it is set to Short or Full.



Then selct the settings you want :

Show channel? (yes/no/title) Display information about the publisher of the feed (yes=show the title and description; title= display title only, no=do not display anything)

Number of items to display. Enter the number of items to be displayed (enter 0 to show all available)

Show/Hide item descriptions? How much? (0=no descriptions; 1=show full description text; n>1 = display first n characters of description; n=-1 do not link item title, just display item contents)

Use HTML in item display? ("yes" = use HTML from feed and the full item descriptions will be used, ignoring any character limit set above; "no" = output is text-only formatted by CSS; "preserve paragraphs" = no HTML but convert all RETURN/linefeeds to
to preserve paragraph breaks)

Show item posting date? (yes/no) Display the date the item was added to the feed.

Target links in the new window? (n="no, links open the same page", y="yes, open links in a new window", "xxxx" = open links in a frame named 'xxxx', 'popup' = use a JavaScript function popupfeed() to open in new window)

After selecting the settings you want click on Preview and check to see that content from your blog is being displayed. Then click on Generate Javascript button. Copy all the code. Login to your Dashboard and click on Layout. Click add Page element link in sidebar and choose Html/Javascript option. In the popup window paste the code, give it a Title and OK it. View Blog. See picture below :


Click on picture to enlarge it. Number 1 Feed is using the second method and shows much more comments than Number 2 Feed which has been added using the Blogger feed widget. To add a page element to the posts column you will have to alter the code as shown in 10 Quick Tips for Smarter Blogging.

STYLE THE FEED WIDGET

You can change the colors of the feed widget added using the second method above. To do this go to Template------>Edit Html and scroll down to your sidebar code for the feed widget. It will look something like this :

<b:widget id='HTML5' locked='false' title='RECENT COMMENTS' type='HTML'/>

Look for the number id of the widget. In this case it is HTML5. You will use this to add code to CSS part of your template to style the widget. To do this add this code just before ]]></b:skin> tag in your template :

#HTML5 .rss_item {
padding:.5em 0em 1.5em;
width:500px;
}
#HTML5 .rss_items {
margin-left:5px;
}

The CSS classes are :

.rss_box defines the bounding div for the entire display- use to define borders, fill, etc.
.rss_title the title of the feed and link style if displayed. Use with variants of rss_title a:link, rss_title a:hover, etc for rollover styles
.rss_items defines the unordered list <ul>...</ul> for the feed items- use to define the padding/margins for items.
.rss_item display of each feed item description and title, <li>...</li> as well as the channel description, if displayed.
.rss_item a: variant for the item title and link style
.rss_date defines the display of item posting dates

Just add your widget id before the clases above which represent the elements in the feed.

Remove Nofollow Attribute on Comments.

All Blogger templates have the Nofollow attribute built into their comments. This is done to discourage comment spam. However you can, especially if you are a new blogger, encourage people to comment on your blog by removing this attribute. The Nofollow attribute instructs the search spiders not to follow the link thus preventing the spread of "Google Juice"...........

You can encourage people to comment on your blog once they recognize that links in comments are being followed. To discourage spam enable comment moderation in your Settings---->Comments. Also put a prominent text widget in your sidebar proclaiming that links in your comments are followed by the search bots. This will act as a freebait by sharing your link juice with fellow bloggers.

MODIFYING THE TEMPLATE

To do this login to dashboard and click on layouts of your blog. Then click on Edit Html subtab of Template tab. First backup your template by clicking on the Download Full Template link. Put a check in the Expand Widgets Template Checkbox at the top of the Edit Template text box. This expands the Blog Posts Widget Code within which is the comments code. Then scroll down till you come to :

<dl id='comments-block'>
<b:loop values='data:post.comments'var='comment'>
<dt class='comment-author'expr:id='"comment-" + data:comment.id'>
<a expr:name='"comment-" +data:comment.id'/>
<b:if cond='data:comment.authorUrl'>
<a expr:href='data:comment.authorUrl' rel='nofollow'><data:comment.author/></a>
<b:else/>
<data:comment.author/>
</b:if>
<data:commentPostedByMsg/>
</dt>

Delete the words in red in the above code : rel='nofollow' and save the template.

TEXT BOX WIDGET IN SIDEBAR

Click on Add Page Element link in sidebar on Page Elements subtab of Template tab. Choose Text widget and add following text in it :

COMMENT POLICY
Comments on this blog are made DOFOLLOW for the Google Spiders.
Comments are moderated.
Spam will not be tolerated.

Save the widget and place it in a prominent position in your sidebar.

Comments
Search Engines
Freebait

Create Add Your Comment Link.

At the bottom of each post there is a COMMENTS link which viewers have to click if they want to comment on your post. However for first time viewers this is not very intuitive so I thought of a way to change it to 'MAKE A COMMENT'.......

To do this go to Template----->Edit Html and first backup your template.


Then put a check in Expand Widgets Template check box and scroll down in Edit Template text box till you come to the Blog Posts widget. Here locate this piece of code


<span class='post-comment-link'>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != "item"'>
<b:if cond='data:post.allowComments'>
<a class='comment-link' expr:href='data:post.addCommentUrl' expr:onclick='data:post.addCommentOnclick'><b:if cond='data:post.numComments == 1'>1 <data:top.commentLabel/><b:else/><data:post.numComments/> <data:top.commentLabelPlural/></b:if></a>
</b:if>
</b:if>
</span>


and change it to :


<span class='post-comment-link'>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != "item"'>
<b:if cond='data:post.allowComments'>
<a class='comment-link' expr:href='data:post.addCommentUrl' expr:onclick='data:post.addCommentOnclick'><b:if cond='data:post.numComments == 1'>1 <data:top.commentLabel/><b:else/><data:post.numComments/> COMMENT ON THIS POST</b:if></a>
</b:if>
</b:if>
</span>


Save Template. Refresh Cache. View blog.

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