I am trying to add some features to my blog but am befuddled by the
Blogger interface, and inexpert at HTML. There are three features I
would like to add, and one quibble.

First, this may not be possible on Blogger at all, but can I allow
visitors to post comments that will be published on the blog? If not,
what system are the many blog-style websites which do have comments
using?

Second, is there a way to have a "mailto" link inserted into the
signature lie at the end of each post - so that visitors can email the
author of a specific post? This seems like something which would go in
the "Post Temmplate" box (under Settings / Formatting), but perhaps I
had better not speculate given my HTML cluelessness. Also, what would
the HTML code be for this?

Third, I want to add a "search this blog" link, and Feedster seems to
offer this, but they ask for a RSS url to generate the code, and I
have no idea what a RSS url is or what mine might be.

Finally, are there permalinks for posts to blogger blogs? If so, how
do I fugure out what they are, and if not, what system are those blogs
whoch DO have permalinks using? Can I incorporate permalinks into my
standard Post Template?

Thanks

Hi there,

The Blogger template can be found by clicking on the Template tab at
the top right of your Blogger account.


1. Comments
-----------
The Blogger help files say:
"Comment functionality is not yet built into Blogger. In the meantime,
however, there are several third-party tools and services that will
allow you to easily add comments to your Blogger blog."
http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=126&query=comments&topic=0&type=f

Follow the link to see the third-party services you could use.


2. mailto: in the sig line
--------------------------
According to the Blogger help files:

<BlogItemAuthorEmail> is the email address of the author of a post, as
stored in the Profile Editor.
http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=120&query=email&topic=0&type=f

The usage appears to be <$BlogItemAuthorEmail$>, just insert it in the
template where you wish it to appear.

I made a clickable email link of the author's name by going to the
template and replacing

posted by <$BlogItemAuthorNickname$>

with

posted by <a href="mailto:<$BlogItemAuthorEmail$>"><$BlogItemAuthorNickname$></a>


3. Search this blog
-------------------
First of all, an RSS is

"... a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites,
including major news sites like Wired, news-oriented community sites
like Slashdot, and personal weblogs.  Once information about each item
is in RSS format, an RSS-aware program can check the feed for changes
and react to the changes in an appropriate way."
More at http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/18/dive-into-xml.html

Here's an example of a Blogger RSS feed:
http://timing.blogspot.com/rss/timing.xml

RSS Syndication was offered as a part of Blogger Pro:
http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=133&topic=30

Blogger just recently offered all the Blogger Pro features to regular
Blogger users for free. Although I can't make it work on my Blogger
account at present, one can only presume that it will be available in
the future, because an email to Blogger Pro users says:

"We're no longer offering Blogger Pro as a separate product and we're
folding most of the features into regular (free) Blogger.
Don't worry - nothing you paid for is going away. Your subscription is
still valid, and you will continue to have access to features like RSS
and post-via-email that are still not in the free version."
http://new.blogger.com/feature_giveaway/pro_email.pyra

In the meantime, if you can't wait for Blogger to offer it again (one
cannot subscribe to Blogger Pro any more), and you are using your own
server for your blog, there is a Perl program that can create a RSS
feed for you:
http://www.kalsey.com/tools/blogfeed/

Don't be surprised if Google incorporate Blogger searching one day,
with constant index updates.


4. Permalinks
-------------
I found this at the Blogger Unofficial FAQ blog

Permalinks:
Several of the Blogger tags are used to build permalinks, which are
the links for each post that lead to that post's permanent location in
the archives. To make permalinks work, you need two sets of tags.
Before the <$BlogItemBody$> tag, include

<a name="<$BlogItemNumber$>"></a>
(or <a id="post<$BlogItemNumber$>"></a> if you insist on XHTML)

Then, for the link itself, use

<a href="<$BlogItemArchiveFileName$>#<$BlogItemNumber$>"><$BlogItemDateTime$></a>
(or <a href="<$BlogItemArchiveFileName$>#post<$BlogItemNumber$>"><$BlogItemDateTime$></a>
for XHTML)

Since it may not be obvious to everyone what the link is, even if you
use "link" as the text rather than the post time, including
title="Permanent link to this item in the archives" is a good idea.
http://archives.blogspot.com/2002_03_01_archives_archive.html

In my current Blogger blog, and I haven't touched the template, there
is a "#" below each entry, which links to the archived page containing
the entry. I have chosen monthly archiving, so the entire month of
entries appear when it is clicked on. The best way around this is the
newly introduced ability to have daily archives.

In the template you can change the second "#" in this line to
"permalink" or whatever you wish to call it...

	  <div class="byline"><a
href="<$BlogItemArchiveFileName$>#<$BlogItemNumber$>">#</a> posted by
<$BlogItemAuthorNickname$> @ <$BlogItemDateTime$></div>


Google search keywords:

blogger permalinks
"rss is"
rss blogger


The Blogger KnowledgeBase is a good starting point for any questions
you have in the future:
http://help.blogger.com/


Best wishes,
robertskelton-ga

---

Request for Answer Clarification by 484572-ga on 17 Sep 2003 10:29 PDT

I think this covers everything - just to clarify, you're saying they
should be adding RSS and post-via-email sometime in the near future?
And when they add RSS, then I will be able to figure out my RSS url?

---

Clarification of Answer by robertskelton-ga on 17 Sep 2003 14:13 PDT

That's the impression I get. It would be strange to make the Pro
version free, and then start charging again for just two features. It
would also be strange to drop the features completely.

The only possibility I can think of where RSS would not return, would
be perhaps Google (the new owner of Blogger) are designing something
better than RSS. Or they intend to index every Blogger blog on a daily
basis, with their own Feedster like search/display interface.

I don't believe Robert covered your question about allowing posts and
comments to be made on your weblog by visitors. You said "If not, what
system are the many blog-style websites which do have comments using?"

In the main, they're using <a
href="http://www.movabletype.org/">Movable Type</a>, the most popular
independent blog script system, although there are a few others
lurking out there.

Oops. Please excuse the HTML there. More coffee required!