General Note
There is a style in this book that is kind of odd, and that's the use of an arrow-looking-thing within blocks of code (HTML, JavaScript, CSS). This graphic means "you can type this all on one line but the line is wrapping on this printed page." It's used mostly in programming books, and looks out-of-place in this book. For instance, in Step 9 of Topic 22, "Using Paragraphs, Blockquotes, and List Markup in Your Posts," the blockquote example at the bottom of the page has three of these little arrow guys in it. Just ignore them, and understand that arrows mean you can keep typing and don't have to physically break the lines as shown.

About Updating Images Used in the Book
In many cases, screenshots do not reflect the current state of the Blogger User Interface—this is to be expected in web-based software. However, unless the difference is important to the topic in which the screenshot appears, I'm not going to point out the difference here (but they'll be updated if I get to do a second edition of the book).

For instance, on page 4 under the heading "Understanding the Anatomy of a Blog" you will see a screenshot that includes the Blogger NavBar. The Blogger NavBar pictured in the screenshot is missing a few elements which were added to the Blogger NavBar functionality after this chapter was finalized. However, since elements of the Blogger NavBar are not called out and explained in this part of the text, I am not going to label it as "errata" and provide an updated image here when it's not germane to the topic discussed at that point in the text.

The items listed below are actual errata, either because of an error in writing, in printing, or because the software has been updated since the time of the writing.

Chapter 2: Getting Started with Blogger

• In Topic 2, "Naming Your Blog," on page 18: In the "Key Term" definition for captcha a sharp-eyed reader will note the explanation of the acronym is missing an explanation for the last three letters! The text says the acronym stands for "completely automated public Turing test" which is true, but the -cha comes from the rest of the phrase, "to tell computers and humans apart."
• In Topic 9, "Configuring Blogger's Comments Settings," on pages 42-46: Some comments settings have been changed and some added to those discussed in this topic.
  - Comments: no change
  - Who Can Comment?: no change
  - Default for Posts: now called Comments Default for Posts but works as described.
  - ADDITION: Backlinks radio button (show/hide)
  - ADDITION: Backlinks Default for Posts drop-down (New Posts Have Backlinks/New Posts Do Not Have Backlinks)
  - Comments Timestamp Format: no change
  - Show comments in a popup window?: no change
  - Show word verification for comments?: no change
  - ADDITION: Enable comment moderation? radio button (yes/no)
  - Show profile images on comments?: no change
  - Comment notification address: no change
  
  NOTE: Information about Backlinks can be found in the Blogger Help entry, "What are backlinks and how do I use them?," and code for implementing Backlinks can be found in the Blogger Help entry, "Backlink tags."
  
  NOTE: Information about Blogger Comment Moderation can be found in the Blogger Help entry, "How do I moderate comments on my blog?."
• In Topic 12, "Configuring Blogger's Email Settings," on page 51: In the callout and title of Step 3 I refer to the "Mail-to-Blog Address" field when in fact it is the "Mail-to-Blogger Address" field.

Chapter 3: All About Posting

• In Topic 15, "Creating a Post Using the Blogger Editor in Compose Mode," the image on page 64 is slightly different than what you'll see now when you view the Blogger Editor. At the bottom of the box that makes up the editor, the per-post Comments and Time/Date options are now hidden behind a clickable link. See figure 15.1 for an example. If you click the link as shown in figure 15.1, you will see either figure 15.2 (comments shown for posts) or figure 15.3 (comments hidden for posts), depending on your settings. The functionality described in Steps 18 and 19 in the topic is still accurate, although the callout and title of Step 18 should really be "Allow New Comments on This Post" to match what the text says in the interface.
• In Topic 16, "Creating a Post Using the Blogger Editor in Manual Mode," the image on page 70 is slightly different than what you'll see now when you view the Blogger Editor. At the bottom of the box that makes up the editor, the per-post Comments and Time/Date options are now hidden behind a clickable link. See figure 16.1 for an example. If you click the link as shown in figure 16.1, you will see either figure 16.2 (comments shown for posts) or figure 16.3 (comments hidden for posts), depending on your settings. The functionality described in Steps 11 and 12 in the topic is still accurate, although the callout and title of Step 11 should really be "Allow New Comments on This Post" to match what the text says in the interface.
• In Topic 20, "Editing Existing Posts," the image on page 82 is slightly different than what you'll see now when you view the Blogger Editor. As with the descriptions of the post editor listed above, at the bottom of the box that makes up the editor, the per-post Comments and Time/Date options are now hidden behind a clickable link. The functionality described in Step 7 in the topic is still accurate.

Chapter 5: Working with Blogger Templates

• Although I discuss using Google's AdSense in Topic 43 in Chapter 7, the Blogger Template Editor now includes a subnavigational section for registering with AdSense and getting started with placing ads at the top of your template.
• In Topic 31, "Defining and Implementing Custom Styles," the callout for Step 1 isn't really pointing to the style sheet start tag. It's actually pointing to the closing title tag. The callout should point to the line that says <style type="text/css" media="screen">.
• In Topic 32, "Understanding the Blogger Template Language," I list and provide short descriptions of all the commonly-used template tags which were available at the time the book was written. As Blogger gains features, you can expect this list to grow. Blogger Help contains a list of their template tags, which is where you should go for updates. I will provide descriptions of new template tags as part of any additional topics I write which uses such new tags, but I won't maintain a comprehensive list because the Blogger folks already do.

Chapter 6: Commenting and Trackback

• Since this book was published, Blogger went and added two key new features: Backlinks and enhanced Comment Moderation. So, where it says on page 142 "The Blogger commenting system does not currently offer trackback functionality" well, that's not entirely true anymore! It is true that backlinks are not entirely the same as trackbacks, but the idea is the same and they achieve the same goals.
  
  NOTE: Information about Backlinks can be found in the Blogger Help entry, "What are backlinks and how do I use them?," and code for implementing Backlinks can be found in the Blogger Help entry, "Backlink tags."
  
  NOTE: Information about Blogger Comment Moderation can be found in the Blogger Help entry, "How do I moderate comments on my blog?."
• Topic 36, "Moderating Comments with Blogger," is still accurate. However, for information on the enhanced moderation now available in Blogger, see the Blogger Help entry, "How do I moderate comments on my blog?."
• In Topic 39, "Using the Haloscan Commenting System," on page 161 you'll note that some of the steps don't actually point to anything. There were more/different images for this topic but I guess they didn't use them, going with the notion that readers could figure it out on their own. Probably so, but I wanted to point out the lack of, uh, pointing things out.
• In Topic 41, "Moderating Haloscan Comments and Trackback," on pages 168-169 the images show the Haloscan management interface. This is just a note that the "Post ID" field displayed by Haloscan is now called "Thread" in the comment moderation screen, and "Post" in the trackback moderation screen. These fields now show the titles of posts instead of the can't-tell-what-it-is Haloscan "Post ID." This is an improvement in the Haloscan service offerings.

Chapter 7: Additional Blogging Tools

• In Topic 46, "Using the Blogger NavBar," the image of the BlogThis! popup on page 189 is now different, although the concept is exactly the same. See next item for information regarding how it looks now.
• In Topic 47, "Using BlogThis! Add-Ons," first let me point out a particularly LAME things my editors (love them, but this was dumb) did: Step 2,"Launch BlogThis! from the Google Toolbar" is shown completely out of context. All that is shown is the wee "B" (Blogger) icon, which is how the icon appears but makes more sense when you're looking at an image of the actual Google Toolbar, like figure 47.1.
  
  Additionally in this topic, the BlogThis! interface now looks different. Figure 47.2 shows the BlogThis! editor in HTML editing mode, while figure 47.3 shows the editor in rich text editing mode. For more information on the new look of the editor, check out this Blogger Buzz article.

Chapter 8: RSS, Indices, and Folksonomies

• In Topic 49, "Providing an External RSS Feed," Step 3 talks about configuring additional FeedBurner services and on page 203 it states "These features are broken into several categories: Analyze, Publicize, Optimize, and Monetize." Additionally, there is a "Troubleshootize" section you can use to troubleshoot your feed issues.
  
  Since the publication of this book, FeedBurner introduced a new service called "FeedFlare." I have written a little intro/guide to FeedFlare and recommend all FeedBurner users try it out. In fact, FeedBurner introduces new tools all the time, so many that trying to keep up with them on this errata page would be crazy!
• In Topic 51, "Using Index Mechanisms to Your Advantage," the search results interface in Technorati is slightly different, although the concept of what you can do with it (Steps 1-3) remains the same. Figure 51.1 and figure 51.2 point out new elements of the Technorati search results, showing you how to find who links to you, how to follow links to referring blogs, and how to see who links to these referrers. You can keep up-to-date with the goings-on at Technorati on their blog.
• You can use RSS, indices, and the concept of folksonomy a bazillion different ways. Once you get the hang of it through the very brief introductory topics present in my book, wander out into the wide world of these sorts of things and discover what you can really do. I recommend reading the posts at FreshBlog, which cover all sorts of tricks using RSS and tags (and more).

[last updated 2006-08-12]