Adding a small google map to a post?

Hi all, I've started another blog that I really enjoy covering places to eat in my town (Chengdu, Sichuan). At the end of each post I give the adresses in Chinese but am getting feedback from readers, especially those who don't read Chinese or those unfamiliar with the city, who are having a hard time figuring out where places are. So I am trying to figure out how to add a link to a google map on the post instead.

I can copy the link from the google map and insert it in the post, but the map is really big (almost another picture) and it makes the post look strange. Does anyone know how I could make the map smaller, or an obvious link to a map?


This Post was written by Pepper from Frugal Cuisine.

Photos not visible

Hello Food Blog S'cool girls and boys,

I'm wondering if anyone would be kind enough to help me figure out why the photos for a particular post are not appearing on my blog. When I look at the html version, the code is there, but they're not showing up on "compose" mode or on the published blogger site.

The post is here.

Much thanks, in advance, to anyone who bites.

This Post was written by Sarah from Food and Paper.

[Blogger] Comments Feeds for FTP Blogs

I just thought I'd post this for anyone who uses Blogger on a remotely-hosted blog. I finally managed to get a comment feed enabled yesterday after having selected "Full" for the Comments feed months ago. It didn't work until yesterday, when I got the bright idea to change the No button by "Show Comments in Pop-up Window" to a YES. Once that was changed, my comments feed miraculously was published.

I'm not sure if this is an issue for blogspot blogs, but it definitely made the difference for me. I couldn't find this problem addressed anywhere else.

Just in case, I'll back up a little and set this out step by step:

1) Go to Settings, Comments, and select Yes by "Show Comments in Pop-up Window."

2) Go to Site Feed, and if you haven't already, choose Advanced Mode (or whatever isn't Basic Mode).

3) Choose Full by Blog Comment Feed.

4) Republish your blog.

5) Your comment feed will be at http://www2.blogger.com/feeds/YOURBLOGID#/comments/default . You will need to replace YOURBLOGID# with your blog's ID, which you can find in the URL anytime you are in the Dashboard. (You can also get it by looking at the comments on your blog and checking the URL in page info.)

Once you have the link to your comments feed, you can go to Feedburner and burn your new feed. Post a link to it in your side-bar or email it to all the readers who have been begging you for a comments feed!

This Post was written by SusanV from Fat-Free Vegan Kitchen

[Tech + Spam] Captcha + alternatives

Hi all,

We're publishing using WordPress, and we've had great success with Akismet for spam-comment filtering. But a handful of spam comments slip through each day, and I worry about the implications of having close to 60,000 comments in our database (even though 99.9% of them are tagged as spam). At this rate/capacity I fear we're taxing the limits of what WordPress was designed to handle.

I've shied away from Captcha and other verification methods in the past, because I don't want to put up any barriers for our readers to comment. But I'm sick to death of dealing with the spam comments, and I realize more and more that nearly every site where I comment has some form of user validation in place. Maybe my readers won't balk as much as I fear?

I'd love to hear from any of you who've added Captcha to your site about how it affected your (legitimate) comment rates. And also, any Captcha alternatives that you've used and liked -- I know I've seen sites that ask commenters to enter a simple check-phrase, but I can't seem to remember where.

Thanks!
~A


This Post was written by Anita from Married... with Dinner