Showing your oldest blog-post first - and the rest in reverse order.

Blogger does not have an option to display your posts in reverse order - so that the oldest post is first, and the most recent post is last.  

But this article describes displaying your posts in this way by manipulating their post dates.  And it links to an article about some other possible options.

Overview

Previously I've discussed the options for giving your blog a home page.  One option is to organise the post-date for each of your posts, so that you control the order posts are displayed in.

This is easy enough to do, although there are a couple of risks that you need to be aware of as discussed below.

Blogger Posts and the Post-date

Each Post in your blog has a date-time value, which is called its "post-date".   Normally , this is set to the date/time when you publish the post for the first time.  But you can change the post date for any post, and you can do this either when you post it first or later on.

The post-date is important because it controls the order that posts are shown in:

• The post that appears first when a reader visits your blog is the one with the most-recent Post-date.

• If you have more than one post-per-screen, then the next-most-recent post is on the screen underneath the first one.  And then the second-next-most-recent, etc.

When a reader is looking at any post, and they click Newer-Posts or Older-Posts, the post-date is used to decide what posts to show on the next screen.

This means that you can make your posts appear in the order than you wrote them (ie first post first, second post second, etc) by changing the Post-date so that:

• your first post has the most-recent post-date, 
• your second post has the next-most-recent-date, 
• your third post has the third-most-recent poste date
• etc

An alternative approach is to just make one post always appear first, and let the other posts appear in the order that you posted them.

How to make your posts appear in reverse order, using dates

1  Give your first Post a post-date (eg today), AND remember that date.

2  Give all other posts (even ones that you write next week, or next year) a post-date that is earlier than the post-date you picked in Step 1.

• If you want your posts is strictly reverse order, you need to give each one a date that is earlier than any existing post.  This is quite easy:  just look at the list of posts in Posting > Edit Posts and scroll to the bottom of the list to see the oldest date used so far.

3  Turn off the post-date display on your posts (since the post-date won't make sense, because you're manipulating the dates).

• To do this, go to the Layout tab.  
• Choose Blog-posts (edit).    
• Un-tick the date under "Post Page Options".
  

4  Remember to make the same date change for every post you write from now on.


Also, if it might be relevant for your readers to know when you wrote a post, make sure that you always manually put the date into each post.

Risks of this approach

If you follow this approach, you will give a far-in-the-past date to pages that you never want to appear first.  There is a risk that Google might convert the data behind older posts at some time.   If your post-dates get too far into the past, then it's possible that they might not cope well this.   This could be for reasons that seem logical, or because of things that are totally to do with the internal workings of Blogger's database, and make no sense to you at all.

Also, be aware that Google might choose to force the post-date to appear on posts at some time in the future.  At the moment, they don't:  it's your choice.   But you cannot guarantee that they won't change their minds about this, one day.   (Personally I think they probably won't, and I've built a couple of "real" websites that make use of the technique described here.   Just remember it's not guaranteed.)

An Alternative Approach

Adam of Too-Clever-by-Half has suggested a totally different way to display your posts in reverse order.   I haven't used it, but think that it has a lot of potential in some situations, provided you are comfortable using Yahoo pipes and RSS feeds to display things on your blog.

He has also recently shared another approach he found, which uses a script to manipulate elements within Blogger, and so is more robust than his first approach.

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Related Articles

Changing the post date for any post

Giving your blog a home page

Using a gadget instead of a post as your home page
 
Stopping certain pages from ever appearing on the home page

Blogs, Blogger and blogger, Posts, Pages and Screens - understanding how blogger works.

mail2Post: How to update your blog by email, instead of using Blogger

Blogger's mail2Post tool lets authors make blog-posts, without using the Blogger software.   All you need to do is set it up, and write posts using your regular email tools.

Mail2Post and Blogger

The mail2Post feature, sometimes known as Post-to-profile, is a way of putting content on your blog without using the full Blogger software for writing the post.

It's not quite as good as using Blogger itself - there are a few features missing - but it is good enough in many situations.

How to set up mail2Post

Log in to Blogger with the Google account that you want to have mail2Post rights to your blog:  this account needs to already be set up as an author for the the blog.

Go to

• The Settings tab - if you are logged on with an author account, or
• The Settings > Email tab if you are using an administrator account  

Beside Posting using email, there is a place where you can enter some "secretWords", to make up an email address that you can use to post to your blog.

Enter some suitable words:  make sure it's not too easy to guess (your surname would not be a good choice!), so that spammers cannot get into it:

Choose either to publish emailed updates as soon as they arrive, or to save email as drafts so that you,  or another administrator, can review them before posting.

Note down the full email address, ie   NAME.your-secret-words@blogger.com   (you will need this later - and unfortunately because of the way it's displayed, it is not easy to copy-and-paste the value).

Click Save Settings.


Job Done!   Your blog is now set up so that posts can be created by being emailed to it, instead of requiring someone to use the Blogger software to write each post.

Using the mail2Post address

Once mail2Post is set up, anyone who sends an email message to the email address you copied can post to your blog, with what ever restrictions you set.

You might put message on your blog saying

 "send contributions to YOURNAME.YOURSECRETWORDS@blogger.com"

But be aware that this could generate a lot of spam.   And in the worse case, the spam could get your blog deleted for breaking Blogger's terms and conditions.

Alternatively, you might just tell the address to selected people - or perhaps even just use it yourself.

How is a Blogger Post made from an email message

When a message is sent to your mail2Post address:

• The subject-line of your email message becomes the Post-title
• The body of the email message becomes the body of the post
• I think:  If you automatically publish emailed posts, then the post date-and-time is the moment at which Blogger's servers received the incoming email message - expressed in Blogger's default time zone (PST OR PDT, I think).
• No labels are applied to the post
• The post-author is the profile name of the blog-author who set up the mail2Post address.

Pictures and Videos
People have reported various results when they include images and videos inside messages sent via mail2Post.   Personally, I have tested:

• An attached picture - posted ok, the image is show before all the text from the body of the email message
• An attached video file (4meg) - posted ok with the video appearing to be above the text from the email message
• An in-line photo - worked perfectly, the picture is placed in the post in the same position (relative to the text) that it was in the original email.

I suspect that the results  depend on they type of picture, the email client you are using, and the message format settings.   My testing was with Mozilla Thunderbird, which has a particular way of thinking about "attachments", slightly different from other email systems that I have used (eg Microsoft Outlook).

Probably the only way to discover how photos are handled when you use your email to send them is to set up a test-blog and experiment with different options.

What your readers see

People who read your blog in a web-browser see mail2Post entries just like any other posts.   If your blog displays the poster's name, then mail2Post entries have the name of the blog-author who set up the mail2Post address.

As mentioned before, the positioning of pictures and videos may not always be as good:  attached pictures, in particular, may be shown as the very stop of the post.

Apart from that, there is nothing to show visitors that the post was created using email - in either the post or in the blog's RSS feed.

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Related Articles

Giving someone write access (ie author permissions) to your blog

Setting up a blog administrator

Understanding Google accounts

Setting up a test-blog to try things out in private

RSS, and why it matters for your blog

How Can I benefit from Ajaxsurf Trading And Investments

Easy, through Forex. So what is forex...?

Forex (Foreign Exchange or Currency Market) is a global market for the trading of currencies.
The Forex market is the most traded market in the world with a daily turnover of  $5.7 Trillion. This market is open 24hrs a day. It includes of all aspects of buying and selling of currencies at the current price. This gives you a chance to trade with forex and make a  lot of money out of it. And here at Ajaxsurf we can give you all the skills and tools required to trade Forex successfully. with only R5000 for full month you can learn  to be a quality Forex trader. We also do investments with a 7% return and our investments start at R10 000 only t&s apply.  

How to put a gadget above your blog's header

This article is about how to put an item (any type of gadget) above the Title section in a blog made with Google Blogger.

If your blog has a layout or designer template, then (almost?) all of Blogger's templates start out with a nav-bar at the top of the screen, followed by a Header section showing your blogs title & description, or a custom header image if you've uploaded one.

And even if you go into the place in the layout-designer where you can re-arrange the layout by drag-and-dropping items, you cannot drag any gadgets to above the header.

But this is easy to change, provided you are willing to accept the disadvantages of editing your blog's layout template.

How to allow changes above your blog's header

Follow these steps to make it possible for you (or any blog administrator) to add gadgets to the area about your blog's heading section:

1  Edit your blog's template in the usual way

2  Find this code in your template:

<b:section class='header' id='header' maxwidgets='1' showaddelement='no'>
<b:widget id='Header1' locked='true' title='YOUR BLOG TITLE(Header)' type='Header'/>

Hint:  use the template-editor search tool, to look for a key phrase like "id='Header1'

4  Change it to

<b:section class='header' id='header' maxwidgets='4' showaddelement='yes'>
<b:widget id='Header1' locked='true' title='YOUR BLOG TITLE(Header)' type='Header'/>

Notice that there are two changes made:

• Setting maxwidgets to greater than 1, and
• Setting showaddelement to Yes, instead of No

Job Done:   after you have successfully saved this change, then the next time you edit your blog layout  (Dashboard > Layout  ), then you will find that you can add or drag-and-drop up to three gadgets to the Heading section of the blog, making a total of four.

You can add even more gadgets by changing the number for maxwidgets to something else.

Related Articles

Disadvantages of editing your blog's layout template

How to set up an extra administrator for your blog

Types of Blogger template

Planning changes to your blog - in private

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How to edit your Blogger template

How to use Picasa-web-albums without being re-directed - August 2016 update

This article explains what has happened to Picasa-web-albums, why it is now re-directing to Google Album Archive, and what you can do about it.

Back in July 2013, I described how many people who started Picasa-web-albums were being immediately re-directed to Google+ photos and what they could to to return to using PWA again without being re-directed.

Quite a few things have changed in the last three years - and especially in the last six months or so.   In particular, Google have:

• Changed their strategy around Google+
• Released Google Photos and retired Google+ Photos
• Changed the Picasa-web-albums re-direct to go to Google Photos instead of Google+ Photos
• Stopped supporting Picasa (announcement)
• Stopped supporting Picasa-web-albums (announcement)
• Released a new tool called Google Album Archive, which gives you access to photos, photo-albums and data about photos that you created in Blogger (and other Google tools) - which isn't available in Google Photos.
• Changed the re-direct on Picasa-web-albums, so that it goes to Google Album Archive instead of to  Google Photos.

That is why you see this:

Instead of this:

when you go to www.picasaweb.google.com.

How to stop Picasa-web-albums from re-directing to Google Album Archive

Bad news:    As Google's Album Archive product is turned on around the world, and specifically once it is turned on for your, there is no way to to use Picasa-web-albums, without being sent to Google Album Archive.

Our only option is to use to Google Photos directly, or to work with pictures only through Blogger's post-editor.

Is there a problem with using Google Album Archive and Google Photos instead of Picasa-web-albums?

There are posts on help-forums etc from people who are unhappy about this change:   Picasa-web-albums and Picasa-desktop had a number of features which Google have simply decided not to provide in Google Photos.   These features include:

• Making slideshows and putting them into blog-posts or websites.
• Embedding Picasa Web albums and photos in blog-posts or websites.
• Linking to photos, albums, and Public Galleries which an URL that contains your usename 
• Photo tags, tagging people, likes, +1's, and Picasa Web comments. 
• Making slideshows.
• Following people based soley on their photo collection
• Viewing public galleries.

People who used those features didn't want to lose them, and they certainly see a problem with the changes.  Personally, I think that things are a little more nuanced.  

• There is one particular missing feature (not listed above that I'm annoyed to have lost - but I've found a work around, and will be writing a post showing how to use it as soon as I've finished this one.
• There is a lot of detail behind what you can and cannot do in Album Archive - and why certain actions are and aren't available.   This isn't always consistent with the documentation - eg the documentation says that we can delete photos in Album Archive, but I've got at least one album / photo with no delete icon showing.   Other people have reported that they had albums which aren't showing up in their Album Archive.     Some are unhappy because they cannot create new albums, only work with ones that they've already made.    

But for all that, I haven't yet found a total show-stopper issue that stops me from using the Google tools to work with images for my blogs.    Have you?

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Related Articles

Using Picasa-web-albums without being re-directed to Google Photos.

What was Picasa vs Picasa-web-albums - a basic introduction

Options for showing photos in Blogger

The Danger of Identity Theft

Any business owner or even every single person should be well-conscious of the current state of identity theft. And we all must know how important it is to to protect your customers and your own business from fraud to maintain its well-known reputation and stable development.

What is identity theft?

Identity theft is defined as the fraud of someone to make money from using your confidential document or illegally enter any transaction under your identity. An example can be the “credit card cloning”. The culprit may use someone else’ information and apply for credit cards, bank accounts to buy items through the Internet, One other of the most common identity theft cases is tax fraud and scams that may be greatly damaging under any tax season no matter how safe and secured your personal info is. Specifically, the identity thieves use made-up Social Security Numbers (SNN) randomly and file the tax forms to try to claim any possible return. And sadly, the chances of being the random victim can be you.

The consequences can be terrific and time-consuming for anyone, which which can lead to nonstop amount of unknown debts, bankruptcy, etc. Even worse, solving your identity theft case or reversing the harm from the fraud is also as troublesome as it can go for years to settle.

Facts of Identity Theft

Frank Agagnale once said, ‘the police can't protect everyone. Individuals should be more mindful and instructed about identity fraud or theft. You should be a little bit wiser, and smarter; plus, nothing is wrong with being skeptical. We live in a world where if you make it easy for someone to steal from you, they will eventually.’ And I believe this always stays true. Up until now, there have been over 8,513,000 identity theft victims worldwide, which is happening every two seconds. Identity theft is a growing serious issue in the United States which has risen alarmingly over the last decades. Another surprising fact is that currently, medical sector has been on top of those that have data stolen by identity thieves since five years ago. Hence, protecting your own health insurance is as crucial as your SSN.

How do you protect your identity from being theft?

This question must be constantly asked right after the frightening facts above have been shown.Fortunately, there are many easy and effective ways to protect yourself. First of all, having the  best paper shredders  can be the foremost solution to dispose of any sensitive information and that info will stay safe and secured within your organization. Other possible ways can be regularly checking your credit reports to let your bank know about any suspecting spending amount, strengthening your passwords and well securing any of your contact information or important accounts. Personally, I would recommend that you change your passwords for any highly-secured accounts every 6 months. Also, you should be smart and wary in using social media because there have been plenty of scams online. Social media has become tremendously so popular that even a company will look at the profiles of their job candidates through those media sites. Hence, people tend to upload most of their personal data but forget that they themselves make it easier for scammers to duplicate their information.

By implementing these steps, any top secret documents such as employee files, social security numbers, banking details, medial insurance information, and addresses cannot be stolen and frauded. If you can secure yourself first, the chance of the information being stolen can be surely eliminated. And your company can avoid being sued for violating regulations on information protection. Likewise, Bill Nelson once said, “If we don’t act now to safeguard our privacy, we could all become the victims of identity theft”.

Criminals look at identity theft and say only 1 in 700 criminals gets convicted of it. And they look at check forgery and they know that for every 1,400 forgers arrested, only about 123 get convicted and about 26 go to jail. So the rewards are great, but the risks are very slim. So that's one of the reasons that make it very popular.

How Will Technology Change The World?

Almost a decade before, none of us had predicted we will be tech-savvy to an extent that would astonish us all. Today, we all have smartphones in our hands, internet in every corner of the world, we can communicate, can eat, can travel and drive, can do online shopping and many more impressive technological innovations are on their ways to invade the world. Education has become easier, communication improved, the world turned into a global village, and it will be a big injustice if we don’t expect much better in the offing. According to the United Nations sources, in 2050 the world will be accommodating 9.7 billion people- that mean more loads on the planet, more severe problems, and more energy crisis but there is few ways technology will revolutionize the contemporary world. Let’s have a look at what is more in the next episode.



Balloon Internet

Though most parts of the world are provided with internet access and the 4th generation is spreading rapidly to serve the world all around, there are so many underdeveloped countries with such areas with no access to the internet. Provision of the internet on such large scales will require building infrastructure and the finance is a bigger hurdle on the way. To overcome the very issue and promise equity in providing the internet, the internet giant, Google is planning to bring balloons that will be called balloon internet.
The work has kicked off, and some countries like Sri Lanka and India are benefiting from this installation by Google. 2015 observed and experienced many practices, and 2016 will see much more in the offing as well. Thus, it can be generalized, the internet scarcity will be handled ultimately, and it will indeed change the world in upcoming years.

Food Shortage Will No Longer Be a Problem

The technology in the offing will be more fruitful in obtaining more crops and combat the traditional food production methods. It will become easy to produce genetically-modified crops in the house as well. That means the pest and environmental issues regarding food will be achieved and we will be getting sustainable and healthier foods.

Artificial Neural Networks

Artificial neural networks on their way to impress the world but there would be much bigger soon as well. These are the stimulated brains used in the traditional computers. Thus, these can be used to tackle the problems that we can never solve. In short, these ANNs will be in the limelight in the future. These are being used nowadays by Facebook to detect photos, by shipment companies for route identifications and credit card companies use them to find out frauds.

Social Purchasing

Social purchasing is not a new thing in the commerce but Facebook offered a sort of social buying through its ads, and so did Pinterest. All this leads to more demands and more purchasing opportunities in the future. Rather than the paid ads and posting, the content marketers will have to look forward to getting more sustainable ways. The only left solution is influence marketing, but that again carries paid marketing through influential personalities. However, influence marketing can also be done via collaboration, and this will become the future choice of every marketer.

Digital Networking

Nowadays, though, the global internet provision is managing all the resources and facilitating the world, in the offing, we will observe how the wireless networks will take over the digital networking. The time is near and only till 2025 cars, home appliances, and everything will be digitally connected. Technology will be stored for future consumptions and in one or the other way, energy crisis will be managed at all.

Augmented Reality

Virtual and augmented reality has reached and reshaped the content consumption. Facebook, one of the best and most social media forums, owns VR and using it all over the world. We will be able to see more products based on virtual and augmented realities.

Final Thoughts

We can expect everything from age reversing to overcoming food scarcity and a hell more is all awaited for the future lifestyles. This is time to brace ourselves for these innovative technological advancements. In short, technology will present the current world into a much modified version sooner or later.

Author Bio: 

Nicki works as a senior editor and writer at TheOneSpy Blog. She is an ardent reader and a professional writer. She spends most of her time browsing through technology related subjects such as operation of various devices and use of mobile applications. Her writing niche includes posts on fix-ups of common problems related to cell phones and gadgets and the use of monitoring application in business, social and personal circles.