Transfer Control Of Your Blog, Using Two Browsers

The process of transferring control of a blog, from one Blogger account to another, involves 4 distinct steps, using 2 different Blogger accounts, alternately.

If you do any step out of sequence, or if you fail to properly keep the 2 Blogger accounts separate, you end up with a blog successfully controlled by neither account. There are 3 ways to keep the two Blogger accounts separate - and the easiest yet most reliable is to use two separate browsers.

Transferring control of a Blogger blog requires 4 distinct steps.

1. Add a new blog member, using the current Blogger account.
2. Accept membership, and setup the new Blogger account.
3. Make the new Blogger account a blog administrator, using the current Blogger account.
4. Remove the old blog administrator account, using the new blog administrator account.

If you do these steps out of sequence, or fail to use the proper account in each step, you will (if you are lucky) have a blog that will require some innovative account management. In some cases, you can end up with a deleted blog.

And, you will end up with confusion, and stress.

When you accept membership in a blog which you own, by default you remain logged in to the Blogger account which owns the blog. When you execute Step #2, by default, you will accept membership in the blog using the current Blogger account. If you are using only one browser, you may accept membership using the same account as you used in Step #1.

If you use the same account to accept membership, you end up with a blog owned by the "current" Blogger account, but listed in Permissions under the email address of the "new" Blogger account. If you then remove the "current" Blogger account, using Permissions, you will lose control of the blog.

If you start using the "new" Blogger account, and delete the "current" Blogger / Google account, the blog will be deleted - since it is still owned by the "current" Blogger account.

If you don't make either of the latter mistakes, you will login later using your "new" Blogger account, and find either a dashboard listing your other blogs (but not the one just transferred) - or an empty dashboard

You are not yet a member of any blogs - setup a new Blogger blog, now!

Obviously, you don't want either of these scenarios.

There are 3 ways to ensure that the correct account is used, in proper sequence.

1. Use two separate browsers (on one computer, or on two computers) - one browser for using the current Blogger account, the second for setting up, then using, the new Blogger account. Some browsers may provide multiple sessions ("Incognito" in Chrome - or "Private Window" in Firefox), which will provide an alternate solution here.
2. Clear cache, cookies, and authenticated sessions, after each of the first 3 steps.
3. Carefully use the "Use different account" link, when authenticating before each of the last 3 steps.

When we provide advice about blog control transfer, the simplest choice is to advise use of 2 different browsers. Either of the latter 2 choices is easy to mis execute, leading to a blog fully owned by neither account.

• Clearing cache, cookies, and sessions, and restarting the browser, is time consuming, and may have undesirable side effects.
• Consistently selecting "Use a different account" is not always done, with reliability.

The only choice, with any reliability, is to advise the use of 2 different browsers. It is possible to recover from an unsuccessful transfer - but recovery is complicated, and has side effects.