The Real Blogger Status

We're seeing a noticeable amount of noise today, from blog owners reporting that their blogs appear to be susceptible to antivirus detection - and others reporting that their readers are complaining of mysterious misdirection, when viewing their blogs. My blog is struggling to fully load, and hangs saying "Waiting for platotv . com" and "Waiting for directagain . net" and I'm getting warnings from Avast when I try to view my blog! Upon examination of the blogs affected, we see a large number which contain the "I'm An Instagram Addict!", or similar, gadget. Most blog owners who admit to having an Instagram gadget have reported relief, having removed the gadget in question. We're still looking, to see where these dodgy gadgets are coming from. (Update 2012/10/08): We are now seeing suggestions from various people, representing themselves as employees of "BadgePLZ", suggesting that the problems with their code has been fixed. I...

We're seeing evidence of confusion, in Blogger Help Forums, from blog owners who read the out of date instructions, about using "Buy a domain". We see considerable confusion, where people using that feature insist that they don't have to add a "CNAME" . In other cases, people using the Blogger / GoDaddy DNS Configuration wizard will think that the second "CNAME" is being added for them. (Update 2013/09): The second "CNAME" won't be required, in all cases. If you don't see instructions for adding a second "CNAME", focus your efforts on getting the domain working, with righteous base DNS addresses ,

One oddity, observed by a few blog owners, is that even after adding the "CNAME" to verify domain ownership, not every blog owner is able to see theirs successfully verified. I added both "CNAME"s - and I'm still getting "Error 12" when I try to publish. There are several "common sense" rules , that not everybody observes. The new "CNAME" can't use the example values. The new "CNAME" has to be a "CNAME". Don't let your registrar add a "TXT" instead. The new "CNAME" has to be specific to the URL in question. Enter your published URL precisely, into "Advanced settings". The new "CNAME" has to be added with attention to domain manager address entry convention . Even with these rules observed, there are still a small handful of unsuccessful blog owners, seeing "Error 12" - or "Error 32". One of the possible reasons for these last few hold outs, I...

Ever since Blogger finally restored the custom domain publishing feature , blog owners have been asking about the addition to the domain setup process - the new "CNAME". Do I really need this? My old blogs don't have it, and they are fine. and My registrar won't let me add a second "CNAME" - they allow one "CNAME" / domain (my "www"). and My registrar won't allow long addresses, such as what you have for "Destination" / "Target" / "Points To". And we are learning that this requirement is going to be a problem for blog owners using some registrars, who can't provide this "CNAME" in their customers domains.

As we sift through the wreckage of the blogs damaged by the recent Blogger custom domain security issue, we note a significant omission. The " Buy a Domain For Your Blog " wizard is conspicuous in its absence. When I click on the Settings - Publishing options, I don't even have the option to check availability or purchase a domain name. Where is the "Buy a domain" display? Right now, it appears that "Buy a domain" was sacrificed, so that the general custom domain publishing feature could be restored more promptly (though not promptly enough , for many blog owners). There are several tasks that must be completed by "Buy a domain", which are complex - and the necessary coding simply could not be completed by Tuesday of this week. I saw one message of hope. We will be restoring the ability to purchase a custom domain from Blogger soon. We'll simply have to have faith, that they are working on this feature as we lament its current abs...

Several people are reporting seeing the New Blogger GUI in their dashboard - even when they did not intentionally upgrade. Possibly, this was forced by the necessary Custom Domain Authentication Feature , which is now operational - on the New GUI only. I am expecting my Blogger account to change, soon. Let's see if I get a "Your blog post published successfully!" display. So far, I am in Virginia - though I am thinking of a procedural workaround for that shortcoming. I realise that everybody won't have a workaround for their dislikes - though we have to be contemplative, and accept the changes . If you wish to make your feelings known, please post in the latest Problem Rollup: V4 I do not like the New Blogger Interface because ... >> Top

After a very stressful week , Blogger Engineering has restored the custom domain publishing option . Last week we encountered an issue that could affect Blogger users in the process of configuring a custom domain, during the verification of ownership of domains between the provider and Blogger. Blogs with previously configured custom domains were not affected. With the reason for disabling custom domain publishing being security, Blogger Engineering has added a step in the publishing process , to add a random token as a "CNAME", and verify your right to publish to your domain, from Blogger. You get the random token from the "settings instructions" document, " How do I use a custom domain name for my blog? ".

Last week, we saw a fairly large number of reports from blog owners, reporting that their blogs had been apparently classified as spam hosts - but with a new symptom. Possible Blogger Terms of Service Violations This blog is currently under review due to possible Blogger Terms of Service violations. If you're a regular reader of this blog and are confident that the content is appropriate, feel free to click "Proceed" to proceed to the blog. We apologize for the inconvenience. If you're an author of this blog, please follow the instructions on your dashboard for removing this warning page. When the problem was forwarded to Blogger Support, they identified a recent change in the spam classifier as a cause - and suggested that they could review and reverse all such false classifications, en masse. Later that same day, Blogger Support declared that the problem was resolved .

We're seeing problem reports from some confused blog owners, who are apparently customers of ISPs who have made the switch, from using a private email infrastructure, to using GMail based email (administered using Google Apps). When I try to sign in I get this message. Blogger has not been enabled by the administrator of the domain How do I administer my blog? We've known, for a while, that having a Blogger account based on a Google Apps provided GMail account may not be a good long term strategy - particularly if the Apps account is based on a domain which you own, and the domain was purchased to host one of your blogs . Possibly considering the latter scenario, Blogger / Google now requires that you enable the Blogger service , for any new Google Apps controlled domain - if you wish to use email addresses in that domain to host Blogger accounts. This is a safety measure, helping to prevent you from having a Blogger account that you can't control - or can't recove...

Many owners of Blogger blogs - and most owners of Blogger blogs published to non BlogSpot URLs - know the sad truth . Mapping a blogspot domain to a custom domain is currently disabled. It's been this way, for several long days. If you are the owner of a Blogger blog, currently published to a non BlogSpot URL, you have probably seen the problem, when trying to view your blog - even after setting up righteous DNS addresses , and having published the blog to the domain . 404 . That’s an error. The requested URL / was not found on this server. That’s all we know.

Blog owners have been asking, for years, how to protect their blogs against viewing by undesired or unknown readers. How do I password protect my blog? When told that Blogger password protection involves membership invitations, accepted using a Blogger Google account , some would be private blog owners decline the suggestion. That's too complicated for my readers! Can't I just give everybody a password? But Blogger does not use common passwords. Some blog owners, who are technically astute, find add on template code, provided by third parties - which demands a password, in a popup window, to continue. This is where their problems start .

Recently, we've seen a few reports from unhappy blog owners who used to publish blogs using FTP, who tried to delete the FTP published blogs from their Blogger account, and now can't access their dashboard bloglist - or even login to their Blogger accounts successfully. I recently tried to delete an old FTP published blog from our account, I hit the "delete blog" button, and I get error code bX-dm6o9e. When I try to access my dashboard, I get the same error. The option to publish a Blogger blog to remote, non Google hosted, server space - known as FTP Publishing - ended several years ago . Now, people attempting to clean up their blog list, and trying to remove old, FTP published blogs will find a problem. We note that the dashboard utilities, in general, can still be accessed, using the navbar links - or the quick edit post links.

This month, we are seeing a sign of the end of The Classic Blogger GUI, coming soon. The old Blogger interface will be removed in the coming days. We've made many improvements to the new Blogger interface. Learn more You can upgrade to the new interface at any time. We've all been expecting this, for a while - but it's still a shock. Some of us are concerned that forced use of the New GUI will cause problems in productivity, if not blog functionality.

Every week, in Blogger Help, we see the cries of frustration. Many years ago I had a Google account with a "gmail.com" e-mail address. But I deleted this account, because I didn't need it anymore. Later, I wasn't able to login to Blogger, to delete my blog. And I also wasn't able to remove it by contacting Blogger. Why doesn't Blogger support their customers? The point being overlooked here is that both Blogger and Google do support their customers. Blogger / Google, like every commercial enterprise worldwide, simply supports their active customers more than their not-so-active customers. They have millions of customers, who spend much time maintaining and publishing their blogs. They also have some customers, who start blogs, and leave them dormant for many years - then require assistance recovering access to their Blogger accounts, because they have forgotten the account name or password, and the backup email address can't be used. Considering that...

Recently, people who use the popular Multiply blogging platform were given bad news . From December 1st, we will unfortunately no longer be able to support Multiply in its current form - notably we will be removing the social networking and content sharing part of Multiply (photos, videos, blogs, social messaging, etc.). We have decided to discontinue providing and hosting these services, as we have concluded that other Internet sites who are committed to social networking services will do a better job serving you than we can. They are, right now, unsure what options they can offer, to help existing Multiply blogs be transitioned to alternatives such as Blogger. We're still finalising the exact list of formats and platforms that we'll export to, but users will be able to download all their original media and data, (in some flexible formats) and also able to migrate directly to alternative blogging platforms. So, let's see what options Blogger Engineering can offer. Watc...

This afternoon, we started seeing some frantic problem reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken . My custom domain published blog is not loading today. What is going on with your servers??? The numbers, of concerned blog owners, are relatively small, compared to normal custom domain publishing problems - but the concern is very real. When we look at the DNS addresses for the domains involved, we see one common factor - a custom domain, relying solely on the Google Apps DNS server "216.239.32.21".