New Blogger Version : Labels, Privacy, RSS Feeds, Instant Publish

Google today launched a new version of Blogger in beta. Blogger is the popular free blogging platform offered by Google. It hopes to fulfil many of the commonly requested features often requested by Blogger users.
Initially only few bloggers will be allowed to switch to the new version, and soon all can follow.

I know the first question you will ask. Does blogger now support categories? Yes and they call it labels (like folders in your gmail). When you publish your post, the labels will be listed with it. Clicking any of the labels will take you to a page containing only posts with that label.

Another important advance is you can create a private blog accessible to only those readers whom you authorise access. This addressses an important privacy issues and now you can create your own personal family blog with private access to friends and family.

Blogger’s Layout feature is a template editing feature that will allow you to edit and customize your Blogger template without any knowledge of HTML or CSS and now easily edit and customize the colors, fonts, header and sidebar of your blog.

Also welcome is the feed upgrade. Now you can have a feed for all the comments on your blog, and even individual feeds for all the comments on each separate post. Weve also added support for the RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0 standards.

Say goodbye to the publishing spinner….20% published, 60% published etc. Instant publishing updates your blog changes go live immediately so you dont have to remember to republish.

Add to that an updated dashboard with easy access to common blog management tools. And of course there are lots of new blogger templates to give your blog that fresh look.

With these host of new features, the new Blogger beta comes as a serious competitor to other popular blogging platforms like WordPress, without the need for paid webhosting, PHP and MySQL knowledge and manual upgrades. Blogger has answered the prayers of Blogspot bloggers and now stands amongst the top choices to start a blog.

If your account did not switch to the upgraded version, you can visit beta.blogger.com and create a new account to test it out. Did you switch to the new Blogger? Tell us.

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About the Author: P Chandra is editor of QOT, one of India's earliest tech bloggers since 2004. A tech enthusiast with expertise in coding, WordPress, web tools, SEO and DIY hacks.