Testing blog post and comment notification via email using Google grooup

There have been question about how to get post and/or comment via email. For email notification for new post to blog owner, this can be done via the template, but this will apply only to the blog owner, not other team members. The method outlined in this post will be useful for team blogs with many team members. I have written a post on that using Yahoo group with which I am very familiar. The post is here: How to get comment and post notification via email (close new window to get back to this page). I am not so familiar with Google group, and since I haven't tested such method with a beta blog, I thought this will be a good time to test it. I have set up a beta blog Good Health Information for the purpose of testing and also for the purpose of publishing articles on health. I have also set up the Google group http://groups.google.com/ghis (ghis is short for Group Health Information Subscription). The reason for the 4 alphabets will be given later. The way to post to the group is thus to send an email to ghis@googlegroups.com. I have then gone into the Dashboard of the Good Health Information blog, click on the SETTINGS > EMAIL tabs and and set the BlogSend address as ghis@googlegroups.com

(Blogger wouldn't accept email address with only 3 alphabets like ghi, also email address with too many alphabets. That is the reason for setting up the Google group as above, and not with a long name). I have similarly click on the SETTINGS > COMMENTS tabs and set the "Comment notification address to ghis@googlegroups.com:

Now, whenever anyone publish a post to that group or comment on a post, that will be posted on the Google ghis group, and anyone joining that group and have elected to receive posts by email will get a notification whenever a post or comment is made to the Good Health Information group.

I have tested it and it works OK, after correcting some mistakes.

Try it. Join the Google ghis group (close new window to get back to this page), elect to receive post by email, then make a comment on the Good Health Information (close new window to get back to this page) blog, and check your email. The comment should be in your Inbox.

Testing "Blog this" from Picasa to Blogger Beta

The Google photo software - Picasa has a "Blog this" via which you can post photos direct to your Blogger blog. The problem before was, you can only do this for Blogger classic template. It has been announced that now it is possible to use "Blog this" function for Blogger beta blogs.

I decided to test this, and at the same time, write a post for my other beta blog Guide to Malaysia (close new window to get back to this page). I downloaded and installed the software from a referral button on a friend's site as I am not allowed to do it from my own site. And after installation, I had immediate access to the photos in my computer. I chosed one, click on the "Blog this" button in the toolbar at the bottom of the page (see screenshot below):

A page opened, allowing me to log into either my Blogger classic account or Blogger beta account. I click on "Sing in to Blogger in beta" and was taken to a page to sign in. After that, was a page to select the blog from a drop-down menu, and a choice of small, medium, large, none, left, right and center. After the selection, a post editor window opened with the photo HTML already in place, and I just type in the rest of my post. The result is this: Multi-racial, multi-cultural Malaysia, truly Asia (close new window to get back to this page). By the way, that beautiful Malaysian Chinese lady is my daughter.

So, it is confirmed. You can use "Blog this" with Picasa for Blogger Beta. You read about Picasa and also download and install Picasa from My Photo Store

Testing "Blog This" for Blogger Beta.

A reader of my blogs asked about the "Blog This" feature for Blogger Beta, and I replied that the truth is, I have never ever used that feature before, but I am a retired scientist, and scientist like to experiment. So I have just installed the "Blog This" link to my FireFox Link bar and found a newspaper article I would like to blog about while I was logged into the Blogger beta account. I highlighted some text, and clicked the "Blog this" link, and a pop-up opened, requiring me to sign in. I filled in my gmail address and the password (same as the one I was already logged into) and submitted it, but got the error message "User account not found". Looks like you guys who are dying to use the "Blog this" feature for Blogger Beta will just have to be patient and wait.

Post URL (permalink) remains the same even after changing the title and date

Changing the title of the post after the post is published does not change the Permalink

I posted a photo of Malay traditional kite flying in this post: Traditional kite flying in Kelantan, Malaysia (click "BACK" button to get back to this post) for reasons you can find in that post. That was the original title of the post and its individual post URL (permalink) was
http://testing-blogger-beta.blogspot.com/2006/12/traditional-
kite-flying-in-kelantan.html.

I then had second thought and think the title is not very appropriate for this blog, and decided to change its title to Photo of traditional kite flying in Kelantan, Malaysia, and had expected the individual post page (permalink) to change, as in Blogger classic to something like this:
http://testing-blogger-beta.blogspot.com/2006/12/photo-
traditional-kite-flying-in-kelantan.html.

This would have been a bad thing as existing inbound links may then become dead link, and that post will have to start afresh with search engines. I had a pleasant suprise. Although the title was changed, its URL remained the same, which to me, is a good thing. (you can confirm that by looking at the URL in the address bar in that post or hovering your mouse over the timestamp at the bottom of the post and observing the taskbar or "pop-up" depending on the browser).

Testing to see if changing the date of a published post change the permalink

From this pleasant suprised find, I decided to do another test. Previously, with Blogger classic, if you change the date and/or the post title, the individual post page URL (permalink) will also change (not a good thing). I am posting this at 2:58am, 12/19/06 and will be changing the date the next few days, and again next month (January 2007), to see if this will change the permalink. My expectation is that if I change the date to the another day in the same month, the URL will probably remain the same as it seem to depend on the month (12). When I change the date next month, the individual post page (permalink) will probably change, but in Blogger beta, I hope not. Anyway, we will see in the next few days, and next month.

For the record, after publishing this post, I see that the individual post URL (permalink) is

http://testing-blogger-beta.blogspot.com/2006/12/post-url-
permalink-remains-same-even.html

UPDATE 25 December 2006: Editing this post, clicked on "Post Options" at bottom of post editor, and changed date to 12/25/06. Now let's see what happen to the permalink. After publishing, I found the individual post page (permalink) of this post to be

http://testing-blogger-beta.blogspot.com/2006/12/post-url-
permalink-remains-same-even.html

which is the same as the above. In other words, changing the date to a different day in the same month doesn't change the post URL. Next is to try it next month.

UPDATE 2 January 2007: I am now editing this post and have clicked the Post Options in the lower left corner of the posst editor to change the date from 12/25/06 to 1/2/07 to see if that will change the post URL (permalink) which as stated above is
http://testing-blogger-beta.blogspot.com/2006/12/post-url-
permalink-remains-same-even.html. Publishing the post now.

Well, what is the result? Although republishing the post with the date to 1/2/07, the post URL (permalink) remained
http://testing-blogger-beta.blogspot.com/2006/12/post-url-
permalink-remains-same-even.html

This is good news, as when we changed our mind regarding the post title and date, the permalink remain the same, and we can do so without worrying about dead links in search engine result pages and other inbound links. I am going to change the title from "Post URL (permalink) remains the same even after changing the title" to "Post URL (permalink) remains the same even after changing the title and date" to reflect this additional test and can be assured that it will not affect the permalink.

UPDATE: 8 January 2007: Still more test. A reader of my blogs commented at my post How to change the order of the posts. This is his comment: "Thanks Peter, that is the method I am using. The issue is that the post editor seems to ignore any date change I make there. It accepts a new date and time on a post but when 'published' the time and date changes are ignored by blogger." He is referring to the new Blogger (formerly beta) and if I understand him correctly, he is saying that if he edit a post today, but using the POST OPTIONS to change the date, say to November 2006, which will mean that this post will still remain at the top of the main page as new Blogger will ignore the change in the date. That is not what I experience, and if I am correct, and change the date of this post to 11/11/06, this post will no longer be the second post in the main page today, the date at the top will change to 11 November 2006 and the post will end up in the archive and no longer visible in the main page, even though the permalink (individual post page URL) remain the same. I am going to do it now and see what happens.

RESULT: As I expected, this post disappeared from the main page, and ended up in the archives for 2006.

Testing effect of saving a post as draft and publishing it later with a different title

I wanted to test something. A member at Google Blogger Help group commented that he discovered that when he save a draft with a title, and then published it with a different title, the URL for the individual post page (permalink) follows the original title of the draft. I prepared a post to be saved as draft with the title "Bullshit", but mistakenly posted it instead. See post Bullshit (click "BACK" button to get back to this post.

Instead of resaving it as draft to be published later with a new title, I decided to leave that post alone, and prepare a new post, save this post as draft with an original title "All bullshit", now publishing it later with a new title "Testing effect of saving a post as draft and publishing it later with a different title on the URL". This post actually prepared on 10 November 2006, saved as draft, and now being published. Here goes:-

Well, the new title was incorporated into the post URL:
http://testing-blogger-beta.blogspot.com/2006/11/testing-effect-
of-saving-post-as-draft.html

This shows that what the member of the problem said is not correct. There URL follows the new Title.

Bullshit

A member at Google Blogger Help group commented that he discovered that when he save a draft with a title, and then published it with a different title, the URL for the individual post page (permalink) follows the original title of the draft. This, if true, will not be good for search engine purposes as the text in the URL is important when people are searching for relevant sites. So I am going to test this to see if what he said is true. I am going to put the title as bullshit and then saving it today 11 November 2006 as a draft, and then publishing it later, with a different title "Testing saving a post as a draft, and then publishing the post later with a different title".

NOTE: I mistakenly published the post instead and have already ping the various services at pinggoat.com. So, I am going to copy the content into a new post and save it as draft with the title "All bullshit" and later republishing it as "Testing saving a post as a draft, and then publishing the post later with a different title".
This post will remain temporarily on the Web, but will be deleted later.

BTW, the URL of the individual post page (permalink) is http://testing-blogger-beta.blogspot.com/2006/11/bullshit.html. Note that the title Bullshit was incorporated into the URL.