Balkeni Studio

If you've been wanting to start a blog, and were considering blogger as your blogging platform of choice but were immediately told off by other bloggers, then you will find confidence in this post because we are about to prove everyone wrong, once again.

If you're new to this series, Blogger on Blogger is my brainchild. It's my interview series that I've started to let people know that's acceptable to start your blog on the blogger platform, and whether your blog makes money or not is dependent on a hundred different factors none of which are labelled as your "blogging platform".

In this interview, Brenda, a full-time blogger will share why the blogger platform works for her and might work for you too, there's no need to be afraid of the platform.

Know More About Brenda

If you have just started your blog on the blogger platform and you know nothing about it, this post is for you. If you are thinking about starting a blog, I have some other tutorials for you.





By the end of this post, you will be confident in your way around the blogger dashboard. You'll know about all the settings available to you in the dashboard that you can use to manage your blog easily.

To make this blog post easy to understand I have divided the blogger dashboard into four sections, the top section, left section, middle section and the right section.

We will be covering in detail what buttons and features each of these sections have.

Top Section

Starting from the hamburger menu (≡) on the very left: Clicking on this button will collapse the navigational tabs on the left (Which is also called the main menu). These tabs lead to other places inside the dashboard, by default the posts tab is open every time you log in to your blogger dashboard.

Then you'll see the blogger logo along with the text letting you know you are in the blogger dashboard currently.

There is a search box located in the middle of the top section. If you would like to search for anything such as a post, whether published or not you can use this. You can even search by typing the post name or some of the words that are present in the post name. For a more detailed search guide, read this post from Google.

Next, you'll see a grey circle with a question mark, this is specifically to help you understand how you can use the search box more effectively. It leads directly to the post I linked above. It's always there and easy to access so that you can look it up for reference whenever you need.

Moving on you'll see another question mark, this question mark serves a different purpose. You can access two places using this button. You can enter the blogger help forum (this is where normal blogger users volunteer to help each other with blogger related problems.

I myself am a blogger product expert in the forum, you can check me out here.) or you can send feedback directly to blogger about an issue or general features/updates you might want to see (for example, password-protected pages and posts is a great feature blogger blogs don't have, you can send in this request in the feedback telling blogger you want this feature and how it would be beneficial for you).



Unfortunately, there is no "customer care" available for blogger. There is no contact number you can use where someone from their support team will get in touch with you.

That is why I started the dedicated blogger section on this blog. I wanted to help you, the information on this blog, to the best of my capabilities is accurate, tried and tested. And it's all free. So I encourage you to add this blog to your reading list or signing up to receive blog posts directly in your inbox. Just so you're always in the loop about the latest about blogger, tutorials and obviously ways to use your blogger blog by taking it to the next level.

The Left Section

Not much has changed in the left section. For the most part, it remains the same. Let's take a look at the few changes there have been before we get into what each button is for:

• The help and feedback button which had previously been relocated to the left navigational menu, is no longer there. This button has now been moved to the top section as mentioned above.
• And addition has been made in the form of a new button, this button is called, "Back to Classic Blogger" all blogs using the new blogger are able to switch back to the classic editor if that's what they prefer. 

The left section of your blogger dashboard serves the purpose of helping you navigate around the blogger content management system.

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If this blog post has helped you, in any way please consider donating to help me publish content more regularly. This blog as you know is powered by hours of work and coffee (it's expensive!, by the way).

Your kind donation really helps me keep up this blog, costs related to running it and helps motivate me to keep bringing the latest news, status, and tutorials to you.

You can even follow my blog add it to your reading list, or sign-up to receive all my blog posts in your inbox so you never miss them.

And lastly, you can request for a blog post or a tutorial you need but can't find on the blog.

Many people have been bringing the issue of being unable to comment on blogger blogs using the Safari browser. If you've been having this issue, you're about to hear some good news.

There are many bloggers who wrote to me highlighting this issue, and since I experienced it too recently (after upgrading my Macbook) I just had to dig deeper into it.

This issue is fixable and you're going to learn exactly how to fix this issue in this post.

01. Clear Browser cache and Cookies

The first step is to clear out your browser cache and cookies.



When I mention Tab, I mean the set of options that look like this:

• Open your Safari browser
• In the tab click on Develop > Empty Cache
• Then Click on Safari > Preferences > Privacy > Manage Website Data > Remove All

02. Disable Safari Extensions

03. Enable Cookies and Cross-Site Tracking

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If this blog post has helped you, in any way please consider donating to help me publish content more regularly. This blog as you know is powered by hours of work and coffee (it's expensive!, by the way).

Your kind donation really helps me keep up this blog, costs related to running it and helps motivate me to keep bringing the latest news, status, and tutorials to you.

You can even follow my blog add it to your reading list, or sign-up to receive all my blog posts in your inbox so you never miss them.

And lastly, you can request for a blog post or a tutorial you need but can't find on the blog.

As a blogger product expert in the Blogger Forums, and a tech and design expert who offers services related to the blogger platform, I find it important to discuss some known issues and more about the blogger platform.

Recently bloggers have been reporting that their images in blog posts have disappeared leaving a minus sign on grey circle. This is an issue that seems to be affecting all blogger blogs.

The good thing is that blogger is aware of it and is working on a fix. However, there is no official ETA available on the resolution.

My personal recommendation

This issue has been affecting all my blogs as well. If you are impatient on a resolution I recommend swapping out your images, this means re-upload them to your blogger blog posts.

When will a fix be available?

As I mentioned, there is no official ETA available on it, however I'm keeping a close watch on the issue itself and will update this blogpost whenever a fix is offered.

Additionally you can even follow this post on Blogger Forums to stay updated.



This will help you to easily replace images or content if something goes wrong! In case you don't have the images stored with you, you should click on the image link in your blog post editor, go to Google Album Archive or From This Blog and you should be able to get the image back into your post.

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If this blog post has helped you, in any way please consider donating to help me publish content more regularly. This blog as you know is powered by hours of work and coffee (it's expensive!, by the way).

Your kind donation really helps me keep up this blog, costs related to running it and helps motivate me to keep bringing the latest news, status, and tutorials to you.

You can even follow my blog add it to your reading list, or sign-up to receive all my blog posts in your inbox so you never miss them.

And lastly, you can request for a blog post or a tutorial you need but can't find on the blog.

Recently, I painted this beautiful floral wreath with yellow roses and red peonies making it a perfect fit for this weather. It was time well spent. With real watercolour stimulation, it's hard to say it's handprinted, but digitally.

It's available for purchase on my shop, my Etsy and on Canva as always.

Author Bio

Here at Balkeni Studio, I want to make sure I encourage people to learn, grow and become the best versions of themselves. Obviously, I want to impact as many people as possible.

An year ago, I made the decision to work with small business, solopreneurs, and creatives. To help them brand their business and blog online instead of going after the big clients. I did this, because I like supporting small ventures with big hearts.

I like working with heart-centred businesses, not for-profit ones. Ones that want to genuinely help their customers. As I've served clients with all kinds of budgets, I realised, so many more could benefit from my work as a designer if only it was more affordable.

Till date, this has been the biggest challenge to my business. I don't wish to compromise on the quality, and there is only so many clients I can help at a given time.

And let's not forget bloggers and creatives who simply cannot afford my services at the moment. I still wish to help them.


After brainstorming for quite some months, I was finally able to take the plunge. I'm offering more and more of my designs, graphics, and more on Canva!

Working with clients over the course of 4 years I have made note of one thing repeatedly, you guys dig Canva. It's understandable, because it's free and lets you design easy.

So, to make design and branding more affordable for you guys, Balkeni Studio will now be contributing to Canva. This will include images, graphics, clipart, designs and templates.

Why Canva for Affordability

Canva is free, you can't go over budget with something that's free. Canva has premium elements you can use in a design for $1. Imagine, an endless supply of quality graphics from Balkeni to you at $1. If that isn't a STEAL, I don't know what is.

I actually just feel so amazing about offering this to you guys because I know for a fact that this will encourage you to DIY your design, do it better and make branding your blog online an easy task for you.

As I add more DIY design tutorials on the blog, I hope my Canva graphics and templates will help you. You will still be able to purchase all design elements from my Etsy and the Balkeni shop in inclusion to Canva.

Why I'm Doing This

As I already mentioned, it means the world to me to help YOU. Every single blogger that I can drive towards success, makes me feel like I'm making a difference in that person's world. There's nothing more satisfying than seeing my clients happy because it's working for them.

And you know what I hate?

 I love your work, and I know I need this, I just wish I was able to afford this..."
- Every new blogger on a small budget ever.

So, this is my solution to your branding on a budget needs. I've done most of the brand work for you. All you need to do is make it your own, encourage yourself to be creative and watch your brand flourish.

I hope you'll love this Easter surprise.

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If you like the content I create, and it has benefitted you in anyway, please consider donating. The thing is, blogging IS hard-work. I put in hours of work in each tutorial I write here, and tons of research into bringing quality information.

I don't push one-size-fits-all into the work I do, also this blog is powered by pizzas, coffee and fruit cream. That's expensive. Help me keep up the good work by supporting my work.

Alternatively, you can add my blog to your reading list, or sign-up to receive all my posts in your inbox. You can even request a blog post or tutorial you really want to see on the blog.

Recently got done painting this floral wreath in a painting session early morning. It was inspired by my travel to Dehradun where I spotted the blue flower originally. It was a bliss painting this one, overall, it has a calm and collected tone.

Serene, feminine and elegant.

This further led me to add this into my Canva library, you can now download it and use it in your designs however you wish within the constraints of Canva licenses.

I hope you have a fun time using this design and playing around with it. This is in lieu of my efforts to make high-quality graphics more easily available to creatives so that they don't get caught up with hefty licenses.

You can also purchase it from my shop, or Etsy.

It could be that you have just stumbled upon this whole, "blogging" thing recently or you've known about it for a little while yet never really thought of getting into it until now.

So, you quickly Google, "How To Start A Blog", and suddenly you see a lot of information being thrown at you, words you've never heard before or you have heard before but don't know what they mean and you just don't want to look like a complete newbie and never asked anyone to help you out.

Don't worry, I'm here to explain everything there is to 'starting a blog' and the blogging basics you should know about before you start blogging. In fact, my aim is to help people like you, to make blogging more accessible to those who are on a budget, or those who just want to get started but don't know how to do it.

I'm here to hold your hand and guide you through it all.



Today we are answering any and all questions you may have about the words "domain name".  How people use it, what is the use of a domain name and more.

What is a domain name?

A domain name is like your address on the world wide web. Let's compare you blog to a house, when you would want someone to visit your house, you'll give them your address, right?

Similarly, if your blog is your house and you want someone to visit you will need an address. This address is called domain name.

A domain name can be anything, numbers and characters, however they cannot have spaces between them.

As simple as that. For someone to be able to find your website and/or blog online you will need to give them your address which is called a domain name.

Kinds Of Domain Name

For the purpose of this blog post I will not go into the technicalities as you don't need to know those.

But I do want you to know the difference between a domain name and a subdomain. As this will be handy in your blogging adventures.

You will mostly see two kinds of domain names on the Internet:

• balkeni.com (yourdomain[.]com)
• shop.balkeni.com (subdomain[.]yourdomain[.]com)

Premium And Free Domain Names

Where can I buy my domain name from?

What are my recommendations?

This blog post was requested by one of my readers, hence here is the tutorial. I am well aware of the power of Pinterest in driving traffic to blog owners. I also use Pinterest to drive traffic to this blog.

So, giving your audience an easy way to share your blog posts and save them on Pinterest becomes imperative for most bloggers.

While those on WordPress enjoy easy integration through plugins or built-in systems (blogger has a share button too but it will automatically choose the first image in a post) those on blogger will sometimes feel left behind.

This is exactly why I am writing this tutorial to help you install a Pinterest save button that pops-up automatically when someone hover over an image on your blog.

01. Getting the code from Pinterest

• First, make sure you are logged on to Pinterest.
• The second step is to get the code from Pinterest. For this, you should head on to Pinterest Developer Tools.

02. Installing the codes in your blogger blog. 

I hope this blog post has helped you in making your blogger blog integrate well with a social media platform you like. You can always request more tutorials or blog posts here. If you'd like, consider adding my blog to your reading list or sign-up to receive blog posts straight in your inbox.

If you would like some additional help or need to leave some feedback, please consider leaving a comment, I read and respond to all of them.

If it resonates with you, please consider donating to help me keep my blog running smoothly and the content updated regularly. 

I'm not proud of the fact that majority of my teen years, and even my early 20s I spent being disorganised. I was always to lazy to organise things at all let alone organise them well. It was always such a task, such a chore and I would always find a million reasons to do it, "later".

When I started my business 4 years ago, I never thought this habit of not being organised would help me lose both money and time. Not to mention it took a toll on my health later too, but that's not what I want to discuss with you today.

What I really want to speak to you about is the whole "trend" of planners and planning your work, your life, maybe even side hustles etc. I could never get myself to sit down, fill in my planner, plan my life, my work and stick to the schedule.

Every time I read a blog, it was always the same thing. People's life were soooo much better because they started organising and using planners. There were many times I bought planners, so many of them, but just never got around to filling them, you know?

This made me so sad. I was not happy with my work and life all over the place. I wanted to be organised, I wanted to work efficiently and be productive. So, without realising I started doing something, and it was the best thing ever.


But before I tell you what it was that I did, I want to let you know that if you're like me and struggle with planners, yet still love them. You are not alone. I'm with you!

I used to be just like that. No matter my love for the planner, or how insanely well it was created, I would print them out and never get around to using them. Or using them for a bit before I slacked off because I thought I had more pressing tasks to handle.

For example, making products, updating my blog, social media... hanging out in Facebook groups, losing 5 hours to my Pinterest feed. Yeah. Talk about distractions. I had a bag full of excuses, for not going back to that planner and filling it down.

Now, on the other hand, I make planners for myself, even for others to use, for my clients and more. And you know what, I'm proudly using them, properly. I've even found good use of all my other planners I bought previously but never used initially and they are all helping me take my work to a new level, simplifying my life and making things much easier for me overall.

So, what was this so called miracle in my life?

How I Discovered The To-Do List System

I like art, I like drawing and my personal Instagram is filled with it. I want to continually improve as an artist even though it is just a hobby as of now. So, I enrolled in a course that would help me draw better.

And, one of the first things the instructor ever said is that most people think that drawing well is a talent. Surely, for some people it is. But for most people, it is an acquired skill. And that's exactly why you need to practice it everyday.

That's when it hit me, could it be possible to acquire organisational skills even though I wasn't born with them? The answer, yes!

Like anyone learning a new skill, it's important that you take baby steps instead of diving in it all at once, overwhelming yourself and then quitting. It's also important to keep in mind to practice this skill so that you can make it into an effective habit and then, eventually, it will become a system for you.

What is the to do list system?

The to-do list system, is the exact system I started using to develop a habit of using a planner, sticking to my schedule and completing tasks related to both, my work and my personal life.

The to-do list system gave me an environment where I wasn't getting overwhelmed by the pages I hadn't filled or used, the deadlines that weren't met because something else took over that and it got pushed a bit.

The system was forgiving as long as some requirements were constantly met:

• You need a to-do list
• You need to accomplish 3 work related tasks and 3 life related tasks everyday. 

How to get started with the to-do list system

This system is great for people who work from home

I hope that this system will help you organise yourself better just as it did for me, I also hope you're balancing self-care and work together if you too work from home.



As always, if you have any feedback, I'd love to read all about it in the comments down below. I read and respond to every comment.



If you've liked this post and enjoyed reading it, then please consider donating to help me support this blog and keep it running smoothly, with more helpful content at regular intervals. You can also send in a request for a blog post or tutorial you would like to read.Additionally, you can follow my blog and even sign up to receive blog posts straight into your inbox.

Today's blog post was inspired by a request I got earlier this week where I was requested to write a tutorial on how to remove dates from a blogger blog post. This got me thinking, is it really necessary or beneficial that we remove dates from our blog post URLs?

So I started digging around, and read many blog posts published by many SEO pros out there, you know all the big names and I finally came to a decision. The answer is neither a yes nor a no. It's complicated and that's why it was needed I write this blog post for my audience, to help them understand advices they have read somewhere on the internet and actually be able to make an informed decision.



If you take into account the entire topic of links (urls) most pros will give you a different opinion, however all of them according to my research believe that having clean, short, easy-to-remember URL structure is good for your blog and/or brand.

Let's dive into why URL structures are important

In his ultimate guide to permalinks, Neil Patel explains how clean URL structure are a good practice. That having a URL that's easy to understand, remember and clean is a good SEO practice.

However, there have been instances where you'll see representatives of Google themselves have said that dates in URL are absolutely fine.

Keeping in mind the authority Neil has in his niche, and that he has worked with companies like Google etc. it quickly becomes confusing on what advice to take.

This is why I thought to check on another authority site in the SEO niche and they were of the same thinking! The community over at Moz also thinks clean URLs are a good practice.

So what do we do now? Should we have or not have URLs with dates?

At this point the very short answer is that it depends. And the longer answer is that you need to be able to understand the basics of SEO and how SERP works to be able to come to a decision about what's best for you and your blog.

As is my belief with most things related to blogging, making an informed choice is always the best.

Google considers well over 200 ranking factors when deciding which page should rank the highest in SERP (search engine results page - if you still don't know what that is I'm attaching a picture below)



And because there are many Google ranking factors, the structure of your URL is just one of those factors and not one of THE deciding factors.

This is why I believe that the Google Webmasters replied in this fashion:

Having a date in the URL is fine! #AskGoogleWebmasters

— Google Webmasters (@googlewmc) September 23, 2019

This means that while it is recommended that you have clean URL structures from the beginning, it's really okay if you have dates in your blog post URLs.

What does this mean for new and old bloggers?

New Bloggers

Old Bloggers

If you're a new blogger, or someone who is thinking of starting a blog it might be something you want to consider. Think about the blogging platform you wish to start with, your budget, and your end goal with blogging are all essential factors.

If you've been blogging for some time and your URL structure does have dates in it and you wish to change it, you must remember that any permalink (URL) changes will lead to a negative impact on your SEO unless you set up proper 301 redirects for each blog post created. This is exactly why, I think if you don't have the time or resources to make a change such as this happen then leave your URLS with dates as it is.

What does this mean for bloggers on blogger?

If you've been reading this blog for any amount of time, you know I write mainly for bloggers on blogger and that I love the platform just that much. I even suggest people to start their own blog using blogger.

As most people on blogger know that blogger as a platform includes dates in the URL that it generates. I believe that if you are on blogger or are starting a blog on blogger, you don't need to worry about the URL dates.

As bloggers, we are content creators and worrying too much about optimising our blogs technically can be counterproductive. If there is something you should know about Google is that it loves good content, sure you should make other changes to make your blog better but your content should still be your number 1 priority.

A date in the URL of your blog post in not going to make or break your blog. Don't let this deter you from choosing blogger as your blogging platform. People on the blogger platform are still making money despite dates in their URL.

But if it really matters a lot to you, I did write a tutorial on removing dates from blogger blog post URLS.

I'm still worried about the dates in my URL as a blogger

Like I mentioned above, your main concern should be someone giving your audience a better user experience, better content than dates in your URL.

Think about it, how many times have you actually paid attention to the address bar beyond the website name?

If you're like most people then you haven't paid that much attention to the address bar beyond the website name. And when you share URLS you just share them by the sharing tools available on your phone or copy pasting on your desktops, pc, laptops etc.

Depending on your blogging platform you can choose to change your link structure and set-up 301 permanent redirects from your old URL to the changed ones if you wish to retain your rankings and not effect your SEO in a negative way.

If you've followed the blogger tutorial or changed the URL structure on your blog on some other platform, make sure to set-up 301 redirects.


I hope that this blog post will give you clarity on what route you want to go. Personally for me, I'm on the blogger platform and I'm happy with the way things are with my blog post URL. It's the kind of optimisation I don't think too much about.

I believe in providing my audience with a good user experience, and content that helps them. The URLs are fine as it is.

If you have any thoughts and feedback to share, I'm looking forward to reading and responding to your comments.

As always, If you've liked the content and it has helped you in any way then please consider signing up to receive my blog posts directly in your inbox, or add my blog to your reading list. Alternatively, if it resonates with you, please consider donating and helping me keep the blog up and running and make our mission reality. 

I was requested to do a post about removing dates from blogger blog posts. Being a fan of the blogger platform I decided to do a bit of digging. And the good new is, it's possible. The other news is that there is a bit of a catch as blogger otherwise does not let you remove or change the permalink structure.




To remove the date structure from URL of your blogger blog posts:

• Copy this script and click Theme


• Then click Edit HTML
• Click anywhere on the code in your template once, and then press CTRL+F or Command + F (for Mac users) and type in "</head>" and press enter.
• Paste the code you copied earlier right above the tag "</head>".
• That's it and you are done.