Bloggeris ablog-publishing servicethat allows multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. It was developed byPyra Labs, which was bought byGooglein 2003. Generally, the blogs are hosted by Google at asubdomainofblogspot.com. Blogs can also be hosted in the registered custom domain of the blogger (like www.example.com).A user can have up to 100blogs per account.Up until May 1, 2010, Blogger allowed users to publish blogs on other hosts, viaFTP. All such blogs had (or still have) to be moved to Google's own servers, with domains other than blogspot.com allowed via customURLs.[6]UnlikeWordPress.com, Blogger allows its users to use their own domain free of charge, while WordPress.com charges around $13 to use a custom domain.Blogger cannot be installed ona web server. One has to useDNSfacilities to redirect a customURLto a blogspot domain.


History
On August 23, 1999, Blogger was launched byPyra Labs. As one of the earliest dedicated blog-publishing tools, it is credited for helping popularize the format. In February 2003, Pyra Labs was acquired byGoogleunder undisclosed terms. The acquisition allowed premium features (for which Pyra had charged) to become free. In October 2004, Pyra Labs' co-founder,Evan Williams, left Google. In 2004, Google purchasedPicasa; it integrated Picasa and its photo sharing utilityHellointo Blogger, allowing users to post photos to their blogs.
On May 9, 2004, Blogger introduced a major redesign, adding features such asweb standards-compliant templates, individual archive pages forposts, comments, and posting by email. On August 14, 2006, Blogger launched its latest version inbeta, codenamed "Invader", alongside the gold release. This migrated users to Google servers and had some new features, including interface language in French, Italian, German and Spanish.[9]In December 2006, this new version of Blogger was taken out of beta. By May 2007, Blogger had completely moved over to Google-operated servers. Blogger was ranked 16 on the list of top 50 domains in terms of number of unique visitors in 2007.[10]On February 24, 2015, Blogger announced that as of late March it will no longer allow its users to post sexually explicit content, unless the nudity offers "substantial public benefit," for example in"artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific contexts."On February 28, 2015, accounting for severe backlash from long-term bloggers, Blogger reversed its decision on banning sexual content, going back to the previous policy that allowed explicit images and videos if the blog was marked as "adult".

Redesign
As part of the Blogger redesign in 2006, all blogs associated with a user's Google Account were migrated to Google servers. Blogger claims that the service is now more reliable because of the quality of the servers.Along with the migration toGoogle servers, several new features were introduced, including label organization, adrag-and-droptemplate editing interface, reading permissions (to create private blogs) and newWeb feedoptions. Furthermore, blogs are updated dynamically, as opposed to rewritingHTMLfiles.In a version of the service called Blogger in Draft,new features are tested before being released to all users. New features are discussedin the service's official blog.In September 2009, Google introduced new features into Blogger as part of its tenth-anniversary celebration. The features included a new interface for post editing, improved image handling,Raw HTML Conversion, and otherGoogle Docs-based implementations, including:
*.Adding location to posts viageotagging.
*.Post time-stamping at publication, not at original creation.
*.Vertical re-sizing of the post editor. The size is saved in a per-user, per-blog preference.
*.Link editing in compose mode.
*.FullSafari 3support and fidelity on bothWindowsandmacOS.
*.New Preview dialog that shows posts in a width and font size approximating what is seen in the published view.
*.Placeholder image for tags so that embeds are movable in compose mode.
*.New toolbar with Google aesthetics, faster loading time, and "undo" and "redo" buttons, also added the full justification button, a strike-through button, and an expanded color palette.

In 2010, Blogger introduced new templates and redesigned its website. The new post editor was criticized for being less reliable than its predecessor.

Available languages
As of late 2016, Blogger is available in these languages: Afrikaans, Amharic, Arabic, Basque, Bengali, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Hong Kong),Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (United Kingdom), English (United States), Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Malayalam, Marathi, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish (Latin America), Spanish (Spain), Swahili, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese, and Zulu.

Country-specific blogger addresses

Starting in February 2013, Blogger began integrating user blogs with multiple country-specific URLs. For example, exampleuserblogname.blogspot.com would be automatically redirected to exampleuserblogname.blogspot.ca in Canada, exampleuserblogname.blogspot.co.uk in the United Kingdom. Blogger explained that by doing this they could manage the blog content more locally so if there was any objectionable material that violated a particular country's laws they could remove and block access to that blog for that country through the assignedccTLDwhile retaining access through other ccTLD addresses and the default Blogspot.com URL. If a blog using a country-specific URL was removed it is still technically possible to access the blog through Google's No Country Redirect override byentering the URL using the regular Blogspot.comaddress and adding /ncr after the .com.These redirects have privacy implications for anonymous users: those who share a link to a Blogger site obtained from their web browser's address bar may inadvertently reveal which country they are currently in – unless they fool (e.g. using aVPNservice located in another country) or override the country detection, or manually edit the link to refer to blogspot.com before sharing it.
Available designs Blogger allows its users to choose from various templates and then customize them. Users may also choose to create their own templates usingCSS. The new design template, known as"Dynamic View", was introduced on 31 August 2011[18]with Dynamic Views being introduced on 27 September 2011.[19]It is built with AJAX,HTML5, andCSS3. The time for loading is 40 percent shorter than traditional templates, and allows user to present blog in seven different ways: classic, flip card, magazine, mosaic, sidebar, snapshot, and timeslide. Readers still have the option to choose preferable views when the blog owner has set a default view. Some of the widgets (e.g., Labels, Profile, Link List, Subscription Links, Followers and Blog Archive etc.) are available for Dynamic Views; other templates are chosen by the blogger. In April 2013, Blogger updated its HTML template editor that has some improvements to make it easy for the users to edit the blog's source code. The editor was updated with syntax highlight, number line and jump-to-widget button for ease of editing the code. For over half a year dynamic views users were suffering from a bug causing custom CSS and page navigation often not to load properly. This happened because a Java Script routine rendered the page before it was loaded. A blogger user fixed the template and published the fix.
*Integration*.
*TheGoogle Toolbarhas a feature called"BlogThis!" which allows toolbar users with Blogger accounts to post links directly to theirblogs.
*."Blogger for Word" is an add-in forMicrosoft Wordwhich allows users to save a Microsoft Word document directly to a Blogger blog, as well as edit their posts both on- and offline. As of January 2007, Google says "Blogger forWord is not currently compatible with the newversion of Blogger", and they state no decision has been made about supporting it with the new Blogger.However,Microsoft Office 2007adds native support for a variety of blogging systems, including Blogger.
*.Blogger supports Google'sAd Sense service as a way of generating revenue from running a blog.
*.Blogger also started integration withAmazonAssociates in December 2009, as a service togenerate revenue.It was not publicly announced, but by September 2011 it appeared that all integration options had beenremoved and that the partnership had ended.
*.Windows Live Writer, a standalone app of theWindows Livesuite, publishes directly to Blogger.
*.Blogger can be optionally integrated withGoogle+.
*.Google+ comments can be integrated with blogger comments.
*.The Campaigns tab in Blogger dashboard links to Adwords making it easier to create ads.."Blogger for Word" is an add-in forMicrosoft Wordwhich allows users to save a Microsoft Word document directly to a Blogger blog, as well as edit their posts both on- and offline. As of January 2007, Google says "Blogger forWord is not currently compatible with the newversion of Blogger", and they state no decision has been made about supporting it with the new Blogger.However,Microsoft Office 2007adds native support for a variety of blogging systems, including Blogger.
*.Blogger supports Google'sAdSenseservice as a way of generating revenue from running a blog.
*.Blogger also started integration withAmazonAssociates in December 2009, as a service togenerate revenue.It was not publicly announced, but by September 2011 it appeared that all integration options had beenremoved and that the partnership had ended.
*.Windows Live Writer, a standalone app of theWindows Livesuite, publishes directly to Blogger.
*.Blogger can be optionally integrated withGoogle+.
*.Google+ comments can be integrated with blogger comments.
*.The Campaigns tab in Blogger dashboard links to Adwords making it easier to create ads.

Blogger on mobile devices

Blogger has launched mobile applications for users with mobile devices. Users can post and edit blogs, and also share photos and links on Blogger through their mobile devices. Not only advanced mobile devices, such as smartphones, are being considered, since users can also post blogs via traditional cell phones by SMS andMMS.
SupportThe official support channel is the Blogger Product Forum.This online discussion forum,delivered using Google Groups, serves Blogger users of varying experience, and receives some monitoring from Google staff. "Top contributors" are community-members nominated by the Google staff who enjoy additional privileges including managing discussions and direct access to Google staff. There is likely to be a top contributor or other knowledgeable person reading the forum almost all the time.A number of people, including some top contributors, run personal blogs where they offer advice and post information about common problems.StackExchange's Web Applications forum has a tag for "blogger", which is used for questions about various blogging platforms, including Blogger.