Deleted Blogs Can Be Restored - But There Are Limits To This Ability

As a Blogger blog owner, and being human, we occasionally make mistakes. If this were not so, the "Delete" key would be unused - instead of being the most worn down key on my keyboard. One commonly seen mistake, reported in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, involves deletion of our blogs.

Help me! I just deleted my blog!!!

This is a cry, seen almost daily.

In normal circumstances, the blog owner has to only look behind the "Show all" or "View all blogs" link, at the bottom of the blogs list, on the dashboard. But normal circumstances need to be occasionally defined.

1. Within the last 90 days.
2. Made by an account to which the owner has access, or can recover.
3. Made by an account that the owner knows the name, or the email address.
4. Made by the owner, or an administrator.

Blogs deleted within the last 90 days are listed on the dashboard, but hidden. When all blogs are viewed, blogs just deleted can be found, with the link to "Un delete". After 90 days, this won't be the case.

In order to access the dashboard, the blog owner must be able to login to the owning Blogger account. To do this, we either need access to the account, or need to be able to recover access to the account. This isn't a trivial issue, for some Blogger blog owners.

If you deleted the blog under another Blogger account, hoping to transfer use of the URL to your current Blogger account, you wasted your time. You're going to have to un delete the blog under the other Blogger account, then transfer control of the blog, to this Blogger account.

If you don't remember the name of the Blogger account, under which you own a blog, you can possibly recover access to the account. Deleted blogs can't be queried, to recover the account name. The recovery information goes to the email account associated with the account, so access to the email account is required. You're going to have to brute force a recovery to the owning Blogger account.

When the owning Blogger account was deleted, the problem is even more complex. And with a blog that contained photos, hosted with Blogger / Picasa, still more so.

Once again, we see an example why using a bogus email address, to setup a Blogger account, just isn't a good idea.

So Blogger has given us the ability to correct some mistakes - but recovering from this one carries with it some basic responsibilities.

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