Skip to main content

People Follow Blogs, Not Templates Or URLs

Occasionally, we have people expressing confusion about loss of Followers.
I updated my template, and I lost my Followers!
If you only update your template and nothing else, your blog should still have its Followers. You may lose various gadgets from the template, when you make changes - but even if the Followers gadget is lost, the existing Followers continue. Just look at the Followers community, from your dashboard, and you'll see the Followers.

If you look at the code behind the "Follow Blog" link in the navbar, you'll see an odd code snippet. Here's an example of what you might see.

<script type="text/javascript">function follow(blogID) {window.open("/follow-blog.g?blogID=" + blogID, "followblog", "height=600, width=600, toolbar=no, menubar=no, scrollbars=no, resizable=no, location=no, directories=no, status=no" );} </script>

The key there is "blogID" (blog number), not "URL" (blog address). When you Follow a blog, you Follow the blog by number, not by address. This gives two very interesting results.

  • If you setup a new blog, to maybe test a major template change, use that blog only for testing, and copy the tested template into the existing blog. If you swap URLs, and make the test blog your operational blog, your Followers will remain with the old blog.
  • If you change the URL of your blog, setup a stub blog at the old URL, with a redirected feed. Your Followers will Follow the feed from your new URL, just as they Followed the the feed from the old URL.

That does mean, though, that renaming your blog will not affect your Followers - though it will affect their ability to Follow you using the blog newsfeeds. If you care about this detail, immediately after renaming your blog, setup a stub blog, at the old URL - then use the Post Feed Redirect to point to the new URL.

Comments

polyhexanide said…
so what exactly is a blog id?
i have changed the title of my blog recently and seem to have no response from my followers. is that the problem
Nitecruzr said…
Adele,

If you're deleting your blog, make a new blog, with a stub post, "This blog has been deleted.". If you're renaming your blog, make a new blog, with a stub post "This blog has moved to xxxxxxxx.blogspot.com".

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2006/06/stub-post.html

Popular posts from this blog

Adding A Link To Your Blog Post

Occasionally, you see a very odd, cryptic complaint I just added a link in my blog, but the link vanished! No, it wasn't your imagination.

Embedded Comments And Main Page View

The option to display comments, embedded below the post, was made a blog option relatively recently. This was a long requested feature - and many bloggers added it to their blogs, as soon as the option was presented to us. Some blog owners like this feature so much, that they request it to be visible when the blog is opened, in main page view. I would like all comments, and the comment form, to be shown underneath the relevant post, automatically, for everyone to read without clicking on the number of comments link. And this is not how embedded comments work.

What's The URL Of My Blog?

We see the plea for help, periodically I need the URL of my blog, so I can give it to my friends. Help! Who's buried in Grant's Tomb, after all? No Chuck, be polite. OK, OK. The title of this blog is "The Real Blogger Status", and the title of this post is "What's The URL Of My Blog?".