Blogspot: How to insert an internal cross-reference using anchor points

Blogspot is a useful (and free!)  software package, but like many web authoring packages, puts limitations on what you can do with it. Blogspot does allow you to access and modify the HTML code, but this should be done with care. Here is an example of something useful that can be done....

Cross-references

In case anyone is still trying to figure our how to insert links to other points within a single blog, try this remedy. No guarantees, of course, but it worked for me....

A.      Inserting an internal cross reference using anchor points

If you are someone who authors quite long blogs as I do, it can be helpful to your readers to provide links within the blog to other paragraphs or footnotes. 

I haven't so far found an option for creating internal links within a single Blogspot blog – the default option seems to be creating links to external sites via their full URLs. 

You can, however, insert appropriate HTML code to create internal links yourself, since Blogspot does allow access to the HTML version of your blog directly via the 'Compose/HTML' toggle switch (mid-left of the display). This may seem daunting if you haven't handled HTML code before yourself, but it is worth a try, even if you have no experience of HTML programming (I didn't !). You won't lose your blog, since it's already stored in multiple version in the Google cloud.

To insert the necessary HTML code for a cross-reference, you need two separate elements:

1)      An ‘anchor’ point – this goes at the point where you want the hyperlink to start in your text. It looks like this:

<a href=”#example _anchor”>anchor text1</a>

2)      A reference point – this identifies where you want the user to jump to in your blog when they hit the hyperlink. It looks like this:

<a id=”example_anchor”>anchor text2</a>

Notice that although “example_anchor” must be exactly the same to tie the hyperlink and its reference together, you can have different text representations at the start and end points. You also need any splits in the “example_ anchor” ID represented by underscore (_) characters and not ordinary spaces for this to work.

Editing your blog’s HTML Code is relatively easy – just Toggle to ‘HTML view’ via the Compose/HTML toggle switch and find the appropriate start and finish points in your blog text. (Hint: use the search button to find the text references – scanning through HTML text manually to find the reference you want can be hard work !). 

Once you've found the hyperlink entry point (in this case 'anchor text1'), simply replace it with: <a href="#example _anchor">anchor text1</a>.

Now move to the reference point (in this case 'anchor text2') and replace this with:

<a id=”example_anchor”>anchor text2</a>. 

If you've got the syntax wrong, the HTML editor will highlight the errors in red. If not, you can now revert to 'Compose' view and update your blog. Once updated, the internal links should work OK.

Also, make sure you get the two elements the right way round - it's easy to mix them up when using the method for the first time.

Blogspot: How can I check who's looking at my blog ?

The Blogger software already provides a useful internal 'Stats' option which you can find on the main menu. This will give you limited information on the number of views each of your blogs has had over various periods. You can get a little more info by clicking the 'More on this Blog' button as to which types of platforms your viewers are using. It won't, however, give you as much info as Google Analytics. 

So why not just use Analytics ?, I hear you ask...unfortunately, therein lies the problem.

My own experience has been that Google have made rather a mess of the transition between the old 'Universal' (UA-) properties and the current GA4 ones, and this has complicated the process of connecting websites with Analytics. The transition was supposed to occur seamlessly in preparation for the planned shutdown of monitoring of all Universal properties in July 1st. To cut a long story short, it didn't....

The Universal properties are no longer being monitored, that's for sure, but the 'seamless' migration hasn't happened, for Blogspot domains at least. Although you can attempt to set things up yourself, I've found from bitter experience that Google's instructions are excessively complex (as for most things !), and don't actually achieve the end result when you follow them. I would therefore hesitate to encourage anyone to waste time attempting it.

I'd therefore recommend anyone wanting tracking to stick to the internal Blogspot option - at least that still works....

One other possibility is to use Microsoft's Bing Webmaster Tools SEO tracking service. To do this, you'll need a MS registration, but once registered you can submit your website/blog's url, request indexing if not already indexed, and get useful visit info. 

Bing seems to be much less restrictive on inclusion in indexes than Google, which begs the question as to which is the better bet if you're interested in the full picture.

How can I back up my Blogger blogs, and do I really need to ?

We’re all guilty of it…and most of the time we get away with it…but one day…..

I’m of course referring to forgetting backups of our data, and how we assume they’re either not necessary at all, or that someone else is doing them for us.

Nowadays most things are stored in ‘the cloud’, and we assume that anything that lives there is properly protected. While this is the case most of the time, things can and do go wrong. Blogs and websites that we’ve taken time and trouble over creating are no exception – they’re all stored carefully on Google’s servers, but they can get accidentally deleted, (sometimes even unwittingly by ourselves!). I’ve dealt with the process of backing up a Google Sites website separately in my User Setup Guide, which you can download here. Now for some info on how to do the same for a Blogspot blog…..and more to the point what we can do with the backup copy if things go wrong.

Backing Up Your Blog

Backing up from Blogger is relatively simple. First, log in as you usually would to compile and edit a new blog.  Make sure you have the correct blog selected – if you have more than one blog, you’ll see a dropdown menu  at the top left of the screen – select the correct blog using this if it’s not already loaded.

Move down the main menu until you find the ‘Settings’ Option and scroll down to the ‘Manage Blog’ heading. You’ll see an ‘Backup  Content’ option – click it. This will invoke an app called ‘Google Takeout’ which is used to export any content from your account’s workspace.

Google will now display the Google Takeout app’s main screen, and show a record of what you’ve exported recently. It will also show you the product it thinks you’re most likely to want to export (in this case Blogger). Click the Next to proceed to the next screen where you’ll be asked how you want to receive the data. You do have the option of storing the backup on your GDrive, but this would defeat the object of taking it out of the cloud and storing it elsewhere. You would also be unable to view the content offline. Instead, select the default option i.e. ‘Send Download Link via eMail’. Select the options ‘Export Once’, Filetype as ‘.zip’ and the file size limit as ‘2GB’ – unless you have a huge blog, you’re unlikely to exceed this. Finally click the ‘Create Export’ button to start the process.

Google is normally quite quick at compiling the export file, but it may take a few minutes for the email containing the link to come through (make sure you check your Spam folder if it doesn’t appear within about 5 mins).

The final part of the jigsaw is to retrieve the link and use it to download the file – you’ll be asked for your Google login credentials and where you want the file to go to.

The output you actually get from Takeout is quite complex (a typical example with the export stored in a Backup directory on a pc HDD is shown in the figure). As we’ll see shortly, you only need one of the files to re-create your blog.

How Do I use the Backup Output Created ?

Reasonable questions at this stage would be “…what on earth can do I do with all these files ?..” and “..how do I do it..”.

The answers depend on your situation.

If you just want to have a backup copy, which you update periodically and don’t need to view, you just need to store the export content safely for now. If you lose your blog content from the cloud, you can then re-import it into Blogger.  The easiest and quickest way to do this is to use the .atom file from the original export. This contains most of the information you need.

Re-Creating a Lost Blog

To re-create your original blog, log into Blogger for editing as usual, then click the inverted triangle at the top left of your display to see the list of blogs you have available. You’ll see a ‘New Blog’ option at the end of the list – click this. You’ll then be asked for a name for your blog – call it something different from your original blog in case the old one reappears.

Blogger will now create a blank blog for you. Make sure this is the one currently selected.

To import the content of your .atom backup file, select the ‘Settings’ option and move down to the ‘Manage Blog’ option. This will offer you an ‘Import  Content’ option. Click it and browse for the .atom file generated by the backup process (make sure you select the one for the original blog – if you have more than one blog there will be an .atom file for each in the Takeout output).

Blogger should now load your content into the new blog  - follow the options to publish it. Remember to check the new blog’s settings to ensure you allow indexing, etc. as for the old version.

Viewing a backup blog file offline

If you want look at the content of a backed up blog, you could use a specialised viewer or browser extension capable of viewing .atom files. However, I spent a lot of time trying to find something that would render the .atom files in the form they were shown in Blogger, but couldn’t find anything that would do this as well as the parent program. The problem is that blogger generates the blog content in .atom format, which is effectively .xml i.e. the same content as for RSS Feeds. Although you can see the text content via offline/online XML readers, the layout can be confusing. Unfortunately you cannot use Blogger itself offline, since the software is designed for online use only and requires access to Google’s servers to function.

The best solution I’ve found to date for displaying your blog’s contents offline in an intelligible format is to use a tool to convert an image of it to HTML to PDF. If you do this at the same time as you create a backup, you’ll have a viewable record of what’s in your backup file, and will be able to access each blog individually.

There are a number of online packages which will perform the conversion. An easy to use option is ‘I Love PDF’. This online tool has a series of conversion options – look for the ‘HTML to PDF’ icon several rows down the main page. (Beware though that the free version limits the size of documents, so if your blog is a long one, you may only get a curtailed version.)

Click the option and you’ll be asked for the URL of your blog (use the URL shown when you VIEW the blog, not the one that appears when you EDIT it). The software will then display a preview of your blog – click ‘Download’ and the software will render the blog content to .pdf and download it to your pc. You can then interrogate the individual posts within the .pdf version as you would normally when using Blogger.

If you decide to back up your blog regularly (say monthly), remember to create a parallel .pdf copy each time.

First published 9.6.26