Blogger have announced that their Beta is ‘feature complete’. They write:
“Aside from its interface being available in French, Italian, German or Spanish (with more languages on the way), you can now publish blogs via S/FTP, a feature formerly available on the older version of Blogger. Beta’s FTP functionality is significantly enhanced however — it includes Label support!
If you use FTP on the older version of Blogger, you should definitely log into the beta and set up a test FTP blog to make sure it can publish properly to your ftp server. We did a ton of FTP testing on several different popular hosting services, but if you experience any publishing weirdness, let us know via the Contact form — use the “Report a bug or problem” -> “I found a bug with Blogger in beta” selection to send in reports, ’cause we wanna fix the bugs ASAP.
Most importantly, the addition of FTP to the beta means that account migration will soon (like Really Really Soon) be available to all Blogger users — it’s currently just enabled for blogspot users. Thank you all for your patience with the recent outages and networking problems – they’ll soon be a thing of the past!”
I’d be interested to hear from anyone who is using Blogger Beta – how’s it been for you?
I use blogger beta for one of my blogs and I absolutely love it! Really the only thing that ticks me off about it is that it still doesn’t support trackbacks without the use of a 3rd party service. Other than that I enjoy using it much more than WordPress even.
Its especially helpful because if you ever get something on Digg or Slashdot you won’t have to worry about outages, Google’s servers are more than powerful enough to handle such loads.
I also started using the blogger beta on one of my blogs as well, so far, so good. It seems easier to use and simple to work with. With the simplicity of the blogger beta, I may consider moving all my blogs to the blogger side of things, for the more simplified blogging.
I noticed that too as well, Jeremy, that there was no trackbacks listed, too. I kinda wonder if blogger is doing away from this feature or merely planning to implant that later in another updated version?
I am by no means ‘techie’ and am loving blogger beta. Point, click, drag..these things I can do.
Use Blogger beta – its nice although has some quirks especially with formatting – puts in way too many formatting tags.
Love the labels/tagging feature, Article tree is a great feature too – helps in get more page views. Overall – a thumbs up and a worthy competitor to WordPress
Jeremy & Jeff,
Are you using labels? Can this be used with an existing template? Thanks.
John
I have three blogs on the old blogger format and just started a new one to trial the beta version. I’m not ready to make the transition with my established blogs until I know it’s what I’m happy with, cos once you swap them to beta, you can’t unswap them!
Having taught myself some html basics and other blog bits, I found the old version easy enough to tweak. The beta version seems harder to make adjustments to the template – or maybe it’s just the template I chose?
The other annoying thing is that in the beta promo they show all these cool “new templates” you are supposed to have available, but once you’re in there, they are nowhere to be found. Just the same old ones.
I currently have two blogs. One on the old Blogger and one on the new Beta. I like the ease and speed of the new Beta, but I’ve encountered some issues when playing with the HTML code.
I get error when trying to add some tracking code from Performancing and from StatCounter. Something about unclosed tags — which can’t be since I use the same snippet of code with the old Blogger without any issues. As such, I can’t save the modified template.
Is anyone else having these problems?
On the other hand, playing around with page elements with such ease is a real blessing.
I was fortunate enough to become aware of blogger beta not long after I started my first blog. Since I am a amature blogger, I know very little of CSS, HTML, SEO and many of the tech-babble that is writen off. So for that most part I’m feeling my way through this experience. Upon signing up for beta, you will notice the layout button which is a user friendly interface that allows you to arrange your blog by simple clicking and pasting….hooray for simplicity.
in a short week, with the help of articles found here on Problogger, I have built a simple yet effective site that meets my needs for the time being. as I learn more about blogging I know it will reflect upon my site, however the user friendly interface is a great help.
I agree with the other commenters – I really like Blogger Beta. Initially I was a bit peeved about the outages but once they knocked out the kinks and the outages are no longer regular occurences it’s been very good. Fast and easy to use. Like CrazyKinux I’ve found a few problems fiddling with templates, too. Hopefully this is resolved at some point, it’s not a major issue but will be annoying if/when I want to change the look of my blog significantly.
I now have several blogs on the Blogger beta and like that it is easy to add and delete items. I know HTML code and it just nicer to point and click instead of typing everything in. I’ll be switching all mine over in the near future.
I updated my blog quite early to beta version. It was really a pain in the ass – e.g. template in html format couldn’t be altered, you could just make some standard actions from graphic editor.
However guys from Blogger cleaned up most annoying issues rather quickly (editing template after a week or so) and now I’m satisfied with overall performance.
I use labels as it was main reason for me to switch and they’re cool. New templates with some standard components (like improved post archive) are also useful.
My general opinion is that now blogger is OK, but I can’t say I’m stunned. I’m not sure if they improved upgrade process. Unless it’s done I wouldn’t recommend upgrading old blogger sites to beta version. However if you start a new blog it’s a good choice.
John Hood: As far as I know labels work with new templates only.
I had to set up a temporary “event” blog the other day for a client and used blogger beta for it. The interface is smooth, gmail like, and fast. The basic layouts are easy to add widgets to, I didn’t try any further customisations, but it is pretty simple to work with. The labels feature is a big plus, as is the speed of creating a new blog in under five minutes.
How Do I Love Blogger Beta? Let me blog the ways:
http://paulamooney.blogspot.com/2006/10/how-do-i-love-blogger-beta.html
So far, so good with Bloger Beta. My only problem is that my profile ends up being the same on in all blogs that I have switched over to Beta. Is there a way to avoid this? I don’t know. I wish it was easier to tweak the templates without knowing how to write code. Maybe more of a WYSIWYG feature.
argh just lost everything so have to type the darn thing again…
I’ve been on Beta Bloggr for a while and i like. it is fast and easy to use. templates are very easy to adjust and the whole thing looks and feels much better. if you can read and follow logic you can adjust the html even if you don’t really know much about it (as is my case) but most of the time you can do everything in the layout easy peasy
unfortunately though i am having a problem with the promised ftp. i should have organised the hosting off my own domain BEFORE upgrading to beta because now that i’m upgraded i find it is not behaving
error message:
[i]You’re publishing on blogspot.com
Hint:If you want to publish to an external FTP server, you will have to turn off ACLs and use a Classic Template. [/i]
I have no idea what an ACL is and I couldn’t find it in the help section. A??? C??? Layout maybe???
Anyway the bottom line is that I thought it would be better to have mirror blog pages as a page off my website xxx.taliamana.com/blog (or whatever) but I’m not sure how to convert my blogger beta to FTP
So I am finding that verrrrrry frustrating. if anyone knows how i can get the ftp working i’d appreciate it…
Another fan of blogger beta. Love the freedom, love the features – particularly the ease with which I can add/remove sidebar items. I wish there was a way to edit tags (maybe there is and I just haven’t found it), but overall it is a 110% improvement over the old blogger.
I have had huge problems with blogger beta. I’m thinking about either switching to wordpress (which i don’t want to do because of the amount of work i have put into my blogger blog) or paying someone to make me a really sweet template.
I blogged about my experience with blogger beta
http://pro-seo.blogspot.com/2006/12/my-email-to-blogger-im-not-happy.html