An Official "Follow by Email" Gadget for Blogger (Easy set up for Feedburner Email Subscriptions)

Many blog readers prefer to receive updates of new posts by email (rather than subscribing in an RSS feed reader). To make it even easier for our readers to stay in touch with our sites, the Blogger Team have developed a new, official gadget: Follow by Email.

Using Feedburner technology, this new gadget offers a one-click solution for adding an email subscription form to our Blogger-powered blogs. We don't even need to sign up with Feedburner or visit the Feedburner dashboard to configure this for use in our sites!

Blogger's Forthcoming Features - New Dashboard, Post Editor, Content Discovery and more!

While 2010 was an exciting year for Blogger with the addition of the new Template Designer, Real-time stats and web fonts (to name a few of the features released), 2011 looks to be even more exciting.

At SXSW the Blogger team demonstrated two fabulous forthcoming features: an updated post editor and "content discovery". I can't begin to describe how much I'm looking forward to these new features!

Easy Post Summaries and Thumbnails for Blogger Blogs - No JavaScript Required!

The ability to display post summaries and automatic thumbnails is one of the most sought-after Blogger customizations. Using such a feature enables us to create a cohesive layout on non-item pages with the entire post and full-sized image on item pages.

Recent changes to Blogger's functionality now enables us to achieve this using only Blogger code - no need for JavaScript, awkward CSS customizations or restrictions on the length or format of our posts.

With only a few small changes to our Blogger template, we can display post summaries and thumbnails using this easy to manage hack.

Minimal Swiss Design - Free Blogger Template Released

Minimal Swiss Design template - View Live Demo

Although I rarely choose to convert other theme formats to Blogger, every so often a design comes along which I'd love to be available for my favourite platform.

The Minimal Swiss Design theme by Marios Lublinski (released by Smashing Magazine) is just one of those templates. Ideally suited to artists and designers, this simple and beautiful theme instantly inspired me to create a Blogger conversion (including additional theme options for customizing the design).

I'm releasing this Blogger template for free under the GPLv2 License, which means you can use them for all your projects for free and without any restrictions.

Take a look at the live demo site to see this theme in action.

Xbox Live Gamercard Gadget for Blogger

Example Xbox Gamercar

For a recent design project I was asked if it was possible to display an Xbox Live Gamercard in a Blogger site.

Thanks to this useful guidance from Jamie Huskisson I discovered it was surprisingly easy to achieve and have now created a simple Blogger gadget for gamers to easily add their own Xbox Gamertag to Blogger blogs.

Add your Xbox Live Gamercard to your Blogger powered site

Get the Blogger App for your Android Device

Blogger App for Android

Blogger have released an official Android application, enabling Android users to post quickly and easily from their device:

We are excited to announce our first version of the Blogger Android App. Using the app you can easily compose a post, attach a photo that you just took with your phone, and either save it as a local draft for later or immediately publish it to your blog - via Blogger in Draft

Android users can download the app for free from the Android Market.

Add Facebook "Like" Box Beneath your Blogger Posts

Facebook has become one of the most popular tools among Bloggers for syndicating blog posts. By adding a stylish Facebook "Like" box beneath your articles in Blogspot, you offer readers a temptingly easy means of sharing your posts with their friends.

Aneesh of Blogger Plugins has developed a simple, customizable way of installing a Facebook Like box for each page of your Blogger-based site. This tool is based on the original code and design developed by Mia of Dezign Matterz. I'm using a slightly altered version of this widget here on Blogger Buster.

In this post, I'll offer an overview of how to install Aneesh/Mia's stylized Facebook Like box, and an additional method for adding a simpler "Like" widget to your Blogger/Blogspot site.

Like Blogger Buster? Join us on Facebook (Plus 15% eBook Discount!)

I've been working on the Blogger Buster Facebook page in recent weeks to include a better landing page, gallery of my recent Blogger templates and content exclusively available for Facebook fans:

Blogger Buster Landing Page