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Showing posts from August, 2014

Problems With "Create a new blog", Caused By Limits

We've recently been seeing a number of reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , from blog owners having problems with the "Create a new blog" wizard. When some of my students try to create a new blog, they get an error message The page you requested is invalid. These blog owners appear to be running up against new blog creation limits, possibly caused by Blogger prevention of abusive blog creation. Blogger has apparently added new ways of preventing abusive blog creation, by use of new activity limits.

Reading Posts In Main Page View Affects Stats

Some blog owners don't understand why Stats displays show that no one is reading their latest post. I know that my most recent post is being read - but Stats shows pageviews, for that post, as 0! This owner does not understand the difference between main page, and post page, access. If you read this blog , without being interested in any particular post, you can access the main page. On the main page, and other index pages, you'll see anywhere from 10 to 15 carefully summarised , recently published, individual posts. Clicking on "Read more »", at the end of any of the summaries, you can read any complete article. This complete article, and others in this blog, is published as an individual post page - and summarised on index pages, using Jump Break. Not every blog owner uses Jump Break , to display the posts. Some blog owners publish complete blog articles, in each index page post. Depending upon how any blog is designed, some readers may click on a link, to

Stolen Blogs Can Not, Generally, Be Returned

Whether you give up your blog willingly, have your blog stolen from you, or accidentally enable your blog to be stolen - once your blog is in someone else's control, Blogger cannot, legally, help you. We see the naivete, periodically, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken . I made my friend an administrator of my blog, and he changed me to an author. Can Blogger restore my ownership? And the short answer, too frequently given, is denial. No, Blogger cannot help you. Blogs stolen, supposedly from their rightful owner, can generally not be returned by Blogger.

All "Read More" Solutions Are Not The Same

Auto pagination, and "Jump Break", have been a (controversial) feature in Blogger blogs since 2010 . Oddly enough, not all blog owners yet understand the difference between "Jump Break", and other "Read More" features. And there are more than a couple "Read More" features available, in the Internet - some not so beneficial . Occasionally, we see the confusion, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken . I have 12 articles which must appear on my homepage. Just 10 of the 12 articles are showing up. When I added 2 new articles, another old post disappeared from my homepage. This blog owner, like many, suffers from the effects of auto pagination . When I suggested using "Jump Break" , to make the posts smaller, I was met with confusion. Did you not look at the blog? I have "Read More" there, already. And looking at the blog again, I saw that he was correct.

"You do not have access to this service", Being Seen

Recently, we've been seeing a number of reports in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , from people suddenly unable to login to Blogger and maintain or publish their blogs. It appears that more and more private network owners are converting their email and office applications suites, to use Google Apps / Docs. This gives the various employers and schools the ability to block people, using their email, from also using extraneous / unnecessary services like Blogger and YouTube - and encourages the employees and students to spend their time more productively. People with Blogger accounts, that are based on the converted email domains, are seeing problems accessing their blogs.

Blog Owners Seeing "You do not have access to this service", When Logging In To Blogger

Recently, we've been seeing a number of reports in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , from people suddenly unable to login to Blogger and maintain or publish their blogs. It appears that more and more private network owners are converting their email and office applications suites, to use Google Apps / Docs. This gives the various employers and schools the ability to block people, using their email, from also using extraneous / unnecessary services like Blogger and YouTube - and encourages the employees and students to spend their time more productively. People with Blogger accounts, that are based on the converted email domains, are seeing problems accessing their blogs.

"Nice Blog" Spam Is Not Random Garbage

Some time ago, I discovered an odd type of comment spam, which I termed "Nice Blog" spam . Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often. This spam, from what I can tell, has been published by the millions, in various blog comments. It's likely that this particular spam is being published as a very imaginative form of email address mining. The phrasing started out almost identical to the above example - but recently became rather imaginatively worded .

Blogger Blogs Use The Posts Newsfeed, As A Sitemap

Some Blogger blog owners don't know how to setup a sitemap , for their blog. Setting up the sitemap, for a website, is a major process - and takes time. Every time you add a page to a website, the sitemap has to be updated - or how do your readers find the new page? Alternatively, you can use a sitemap builder service, which builds the sitemap. This gives you a file, hosted by the sitemap builder service. Will the sitemap builder service be in business next week? In either case, you take your sitemap file, and upload it to the blog. Every time you add a page, you update the sitemap, then you upload the updated sitemap. Every time - or the new page remains unindexed, until you do. (Update 2014/11/04): Blogger is now providing an automatically generated, dedicated sitemap , to replace the newsfeed sourced sitemap - and an automatic "robots.txt" update. There is no need for a custom sitemap - nor to update "robots.txt".

DMCA Violations Must Be Appealed

Some blog owners don't understand the severity of DMCA violation citations. We see occasional naivete, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken I got email After reviewing your account, we noticed that you have violated the terms of service frequently: http://www.blogger.com/go/terms . And where we have sent you several warnings about these abuses and offered you information about our policy towards repeat infringers, we were forced to disable Blogger service provided to you. Thank you for your understanding. - Blogger Team Why can I not login to Blogger, now? This blog owners, and too many others, do not understand about the severity of repeated DMCA / TOS violation, upon their Blogger / Google accounts.