Even after you have your blog up and running, you still have to perform a bit of ongoing maintenance. Fortunately, you can do everything you need to do from the Blogger Dashboardand you don't have to do much.
Editing Your Posts
No one's perfect. Every now and then you'll post something to your blog and later discover an egregious spelling error, or a bad link, or maybe just something you wish you'd never written in the first place. Have no fear, gentle blogger; Blogger lets you edit any post you like. To edit a Blogger post, follow these steps:
1. From the Blogger Dashboard, click the Manage: Posts link for your blog.
2. When the list of recent posts appears, click the Edit link next to the post you want to edit.
3. When the Edit Posts window appears.
4. When done editing, click the Publish button.
Limiting Comments
By default, anyone can post comments to your blog postings. These comments appear below each posting when a visitor clicks the Comments link. If you'd rather not have everyone and their brother comment on your blog, you can limit comments to either registered Blogger users or members of your blog. You do so by following these steps:
1. From the Blogger Dashboard, click the Settings link next to your blog name.
2. When the Settings page appears, click the Comments link.
3. When the next page appears, pull down the Who Can Comment? list and select either Anyone (the default setting), Only Registered Users, or Only Members of This Blog.
4. Click the Save Settings button.
Moderating Comments
The Comments screen of the Settings tab also lets you configure several other ways to display comments on your blog. One of the key settings concerns comment moderation. When you choose to moderate comments, you must approve any comments to your blog before the user can post them.
You turn on moderation by checking the Enable Comment Moderation? option on the Comments screen of the Settings tab. This displays a new Moderate Comments link on the Posting tab, which is where all user-written comments appear. (You also receive an email to alert you to all new comments.) On this page, you can choose to publish or reject any listed comment; click the Publish button and the comment is posted to your blog.
Fighting Comment Spam
Another problem with blog comments is that, without any moderation, they can be used for spamming purposes. That's right, unscrupulous spammers use spam robots to seed blog postings with unwanted spam messages. It's all done automatically; don't be surprised if you wake up one morning and find a ton of comments to your blog that have nothing at all to do with your original postings.
There's an easy way to defeat these spam robots. All you have to do is require some sort of human input for posting a comment. Blogger does this by adding a word verification section, to the comments posting page. Readers have to enter the word verification code before posting their comments; because robots can't read graphic images like this, they can't enter the word verification code, and no spam is left.
You turn on word verification by going to the Comments screen on the Settings tab and checking the Show Word Verification for Comments? option.
Controlling Access to Your Blog
By default, your blog is completely public, and anyone on the Internet can read it. However, there's a way to make your blog private so that only invited guests can view it. To control access to your blog, follow these steps:
1. From the Blogger Dashboard, click the Settings link next to your blog name.
2. When the Settings page appears, click the Permissions link.
3. When the next page appears, go to the Blog Readers section and select who can view your blog: Anybody (keeps the blog public), Only People I Choose, or Only Blog Authors.
4. If you choose the Only People I Choose option, you'll have to invite people to view your blog. The page expands to include a new text box; enter the invitees' email addresses, and then click the Invite button. (If the invitee already has a Google account, he's automatically granted access; if he doesn't yet have a Google account, he's sent an invitation via email.)
5. If you choose the Only Blog Authors option, you'll have to enable some authors other than yourself. Click the Add Authors button to invite other authors to post on your blog.
Note
A blog author is someone like you, who can create new blog postings. Although anyone can add comments to existing postings, only blog authors can create new postings.
Displaying Backlinks
Interested in who is linking to your blog? If so, Blogger lets you display backlinks for each of your postings. To display backlinks, follow these steps:
1. From the Blogger Dashboard, click the Settings link next to your blog name.
2. When the Settings page appears, click the Comments link.
3. When the next page appears, check the Show option in the Backlinks section.
4. Make sure that the Backlinks Default for Posts has the New Posts Have Backlinks option selected.
5. Click the Save Settings option.
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