Following Blogs Made More Difficult by Google

I noticed recently that the "Follow" link/button no longer appears at the top left of my Blogger page when I visit a new blog. This isn't a glitch - Google recently removed this option, as discussed here.

This was how I normally started following new blogs, so it wasn't immediately apparent that I could still follow a blog. Poking around, I found there are still two ways to follow a blog, neither of which is as easy as the old way.

1. Go to your Blogger Dashboard, where there's a button right below "Reading List" that says "Add". Once clicked, it brings up a window to paste in an url to follow:

 2. If the blog has a Followers Gadget click "Join this Site with Google Friend Connect":

I never tried this before today, because I'd never used Google Friend Connect. It requires a login, even if you are already logged into your blog. Select Google, and login, and then it will give you options for following the blog.


I suspect this change is somehow tied in trying to get everyone to join Google+.

Update:
I found a way you can make it easier for someone to follow your site, basically by creating your own custom link to replace the missing "Follow" link/button.

To do this, you need to create you own Follower Gadget with a html link. I have one now in at the top of the right column. Instructions are here, although slightly out of date.

What I did was go to the Dashboard, click Layout, and then Add a Gadget. 
In the window that opens, I pasted the following HTML text into the Content section

<data:post.body/>

<p><a href="http://www.blogger.com/follow-blog.g?blogID=###" target="_blank">Click here </a></p></data:post.body>

In place of ###, I put in my blogID number, which can be found at the top of the dashboard page in the url for the blog.

This seemed to work when I tested it using a different account.