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Country Code Based Aliases Will Interfere With Filters

As the Country Code TLD aliases, for blogs published to "blogspot.com", become more and more noticed, incidental problems are being reported.

For people who are security minded, as well as people who are conscientious about what is permitted on their personal computer, a few domain based filter related problems should be obvious.
Where are the pencil / tool icons on my blog?
and
Why can't my readers comment on my blog?
are just a couple examples of the various questions being seen in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, since the CC TLD aliases went into effect last week.

As with any layered security feature on our computers, local country domains affect our blogs in several ways.

  • Content filtering.
  • Cookie filtering.
  • Script filtering.

These are all concerns, for both the blog owners, the blog readers, and of course Blogger Support.

Any filter, which permits cookies and / or scripts from "blogspot.com", needs to be checked - and to permit cookies and to permit scripts from the country local domain, that's relevant to the location of the computer being used. Note that with computers located near international borders, the owners may need to consider the country local domain for the countries on either side of the border.

  • "blogspot.com.au" - if the computer receives service in Australia.
  • "blogspot.in" - if the computer receives service in India.
  • "blogspot.ca" / "blogspot.mx" - if the computer is located in northern / southern USA (or Canada / Mexico).
  • Any future added CC TLD alias - if the computer receives service in the relevant country.

The blog owner, and the computer owner, must accept responsibility for filters.

As always, I will ask you to remember that Blogger Support cannot support the filters affecting your personal computer. Both blog owners, and blog readers, have to check all filters in their browsers, their computers and their networks.

Any local filters are the responsibility of the "owner" of the computer in use - whether the "owner" is the blog owner, the blog reader, or someone supporting the blog owner or reader. There are several problems, reported periodically.


All of these issues are related, in some way, to domain based cookie and / or script filters. And all of these issues, when reported, involve personal use of a computer - and can't be exclusively resolved by contacting Blogger / Google Support.

Some of the above problems, like a similar issue with custom domain publishing, may be seen on any computer used by the blog owner - or by any blog reader.

There may be workarounds, depending upon the actual problem.

If you are a blog owner, and the redirection is causing you problems, it's possible that you could work around the problem, by using the "No Country Redirect" modifier - if use of the "/ncr" modifier does not cause secondary problems, like language used.

If I had a problem with my blog, published as "bloggerstatusforreal.blogspot.com", I could access it as "bloggerstatusforreal.blogspot.com" in any country subject to the CC based redirect, by using the URL "bloggerstatusforreal.blogspot.com/ncr". This is, unfortunately, not likely to help our readers with their problems.

Please, don't be misled by advice to use clever JavaScript based redirection of blog traffic, to the "/ncr" alias, as an alternative to Country Code alias redirection. Clever solutions will not work well for you, in the long run.

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