Skip to main content

Accepting Membership In Somebody's Blog

When somebody invites you to be a member of a blog
  • To read a private blog.
  • To become an author.
  • To become an administrator, or maybe the new owner of the blog.
You get a token in your email, attached to a membership invitation. When you exercise the token, by clicking on the link in the email, you connect the blog with your Blogger account. What you do, when you exercise the token, affects both your immediate and future access to the blog in question - and you need to understand the details.

To accept membership in someone's blog, you are required to provide a Blogger account, or to setup a new Blogger account.

When you accept membership, you see a modified Google login display.

You should see a version of the standard Blogger / Google login display. There are several possibilities, when you use the Blogger / Google login wizard.

Note that the invitation - to a private blog or a team blog - has an expiration date.

If you intend to accept the invitation, you should consider it seriously, and act promptly. If the invitation includes a "Preview" option, use the option only to view the blog once - then accept membership, promptly.

Remember the account name / email address, and the password.

The login process will not verify for you, that you are using the correct Blogger account - that is your responsibility.

Always use the correct account, when accepting membership. Make a note of - or memorise - the account name / email address, and the password. Do not depend upon account / blog recovery, for routine blog access.

Verification of details varies, by GMail or non GMail email address.

When you wish to accept blog membership using a Google email address, you provide the password for that account, and the password is verified against the account. This verifies that you own the account in question. Blogger / Google accounts based upon GMail accounts are authenticated, and account ownership is verified.

When you wish to accept membership in a blog using a Blogger account based upon a non Google email address, you provide the password for the Blogger account, and the password is verified against the Blogger account (for an existing Blogger account), or a new Blogger account is setup. In neither case is ownership of the non Google email address verified, nor is the password checked against the non Google email account.

You are allowed to accept membership using any Blogger account that you may have, or may create - regardless of the email address used in sending the invitation, by the blog owner.

If you accept membership using an email address / Blogger account that does not appear in the original Permissions based invitation, your membership acceptance should, even so, be accepted - provided the mysterious "100 members, total" limit is not exceeded.

Possibilities for more problems come later.

Changing the password varies, similarly.

When you change the password for your Google / GMail account, the password for the Blogger account changes too - since it's really one account. When you wish to change the name of the GMail / Google account, you have to setup a new account, and transfer all assets to the new account.

The latter process is clumsy, and complex - but whether you change the account name, or the password, you know what you have done. And the account name, and password, is always synchronised.

When you change the password for a non Google account, that's all that changes. If you have a Blogger account that's based upon a non Google email address, that password does not change - unless you change it intentionally, and separately.

When you rename a non Google email account, or setup a new non Google email account to replace an existing account, again, your Blogger account does not change.

Access recovery of a non GMail Blogger account requires account access.

If you later become confused about a Blogger account name or password, and the Blogger account was based upon a non Google email address, you will need access to the non Google email account to recover the Blogger account or reset the Blogger password. Lack of access to the non Google account, whether it was originally yours - or whether it never existed in the first place, will leave you unable to manage your blog.

As always, you are responsible for using the right Blogger account when accepting membership - just as you are responsible for proving your identity or membership, in general.

Comments

Hi there. For a while I was stuck (being the noob I am), but this article was fantastic, very easy to follow and very informative. Thank you very much! :)

~ A.A.

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?".