Blogspot appears to have been up all day, so my blog viewers, apparently, didn't lose interest. My hit counts are almost equal to a month ago; though discounting the fact that half of my viewers are reading this blog, not my main one, we are still suffering. But Blogspot, today, was not the concern.
Blogger was the story today.
Since today, the action was in the forums, mainly Google Blogger Help: Something Is Broken, and Publishing Trouble, that is where today's story comes from.
The last post is the most telling. Let's look at the most current Blogger Status post, as of today - Friday, June 06, 2006:
That is symptomatic of the same problem - ongoing lack of communication. We see the same, stale, content that we saw there, yesterday evening. If we see a problem today (Friday), how do we know if it's the same problem, returned? Or a new, unrelated problem? Or maybe a problem caused by the final changes made last night (if any were made)?
Blogger Employee: We appreciate that you are willing to take 10 minutes out of your busy day of playing frisbee and napping on the couch to post a few words of comfort (identical content, pasted into half a dozen threads), but you are (were) replying to people in real pain.
Jason speaks in the highest overview - "...infrastructure overhaul..." and "...another change that has improved performance...".
These words mean very little to the typical Blogger. We see the post editor - or the photo upload - up right now. Here's an immediate decision to be made. Will it be up for 2 more hours, or just 10 more minutes? Should I rush and finish this post now, or maybe take a shower now, and do some better work after I am refreshed? Decisions to be made, constantly - and your vague status reports don't help us with those decisions.
And this morning's content, which is unchanged from last night, provides no sense of closure. Was anything actually done last night ("...additional changes this evening")? Or will you maybe make an unplanned improvement sometime today?
And here's a thought. If you find using Blogger Status to be less than useful when Blogger (or Blogspot) is down, mirror Blogger Status on another service. This blog, The Real Blogger Status, is being mirrored this weekend. Watch this blog (or its mirror) during the next Blogger / Blogspot outage (NOTE the truthfulness of this statement depends upon how long it is until the next major outage).
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Blogger was the story today.
Since today, the action was in the forums, mainly Google Blogger Help: Something Is Broken, and Publishing Trouble, that is where today's story comes from.
- From What the *%^%$ Is going on with Blogger?!, drjewest writes
It really is tragic because its just another example of American indifference to customer service. When the country is bankrupt and has to receive foreign aid in a few years maybe folk will wake up and do their jobs. But of course then it will be too late. - From What the *%^%$ Is going on with Blogger?!, Blogger Employee writes
We're currently having some trouble with one of our databases. This is likely the cause of the problems that you are experiencing. We're aware of the issue and are working hard to resolve it as quickly as possible. - From What the *%^%$ Is going on with Blogger?!, blogonaut writes
- If it´s downtime one day, blogger is likely to be sluggish and jumpy for the next few coming days and as we´ve experienced today, hardware problems can return and become worse.
- It´s really bad that blogger don´t post to their status page immediately.
- Good thing is that if blogger is down, blogspot usually work better... it can be slow but is usually not gone completely, which means people can still access our blogs although we can´t update them. That said, today was awful :)
- Yeah, I´m thinking of moving as well but a) I´ve just finished too many hours on my template.... b) I´ve always hated Wordpress´s interface and I don´t like it more just because Blogger is having trouble c) I fear a mass-migration to other platforms, which mean they´re gonna get into trouble as well. Pls. tell me what you think, I´m still struggling with this issue!
- Learning from the posts in this forum in the past days, the problem is not always on the blogger side ... clean out cookies and cache and switch browser for a while if you can´t post and you have no reason to think blogger is actually down again... It´s better than waiting a few days for a reply from support and it can work very well.
- Back up... as soon as blogger is running as normal again I´ll be heading for the help page and learn how to make a back up of all my posts!
- If it´s downtime one day, blogger is likely to be sluggish and jumpy for the next few coming days and as we´ve experienced today, hardware problems can return and become worse.
- From Google has better things to do..., electricwind writes
Google has better things to do than to attend to Blogger outages and outrages...
Remember, Blogger only costs money for Google--while they're busy making their billions.. - From Google has better things to do..., CyberNewsmaster writes
I suspect Blogger actually generates revenue for Google through Adsense. It's a great model. Get other people to write content for you. Split the profit from ads on their blog... - From blogger sluggish today?, J.D. Matthews writes
Hey Blogger Employee, why don't you stop posting useless comments like that in here and get over there and fix the friggin' problem? We're all aware of the issue, and you can take your apology and stuff it until you get everything running right. - From Simple recipe for keeping Blogger users happy, Marsh writes
When the problem has been identified, update the Status page with a brief description of the problem (hardware failure, denial of service attack, etc), who is affected, and give a conservative estimate of the time for a fix (and triple it). A range might be useful too, like 8-24 hours. - From Simple recipe for keeping Blogger users happy, Blogger Employee writes
Thanks to everyone for their honest feedback, it is truly appreciated. We do our best to keep you folks in the loop, and to make Blogger as reliable as possible. Unfortunately, as noted in my earlier post, despite the efforts made yesterday, Blogger is a bit sluggish today.
Additionally, some folks may be experiencing intermittent outages. I assure you that our engineers are doing everything in their power to get Blogger up and running normally again ASAP. - And, in addition to the pain and anguish shown above, Blogger Status suggests
...we are also planning to make additional changes this evening.
- And for the last quote, in blogger sluggish today?, MaryK writes
Okay, Blogger Employee - this is helpful information for the 10 people who read this group. How about updating your OFFICIAL Blogger Status page for your other 10 million members?
The last post is the most telling. Let's look at the most current Blogger Status post, as of today - Friday, June 06, 2006:
Thursday, June 08, 2006
For many users, Blogger will have been extremely slow or down for most of the morning. We continue to work on fixes for this problem and hope to have it resolved as quickly as possible.
Update (4:45p): We are planning another infrastructure overhaul to address the significant problems we've been having in the past several days.
Update (6:59p): We've made another change that has improved performance, but we are also planning to make additional changes this evening.
Posted by Jason at 11:14 PDT
That is symptomatic of the same problem - ongoing lack of communication. We see the same, stale, content that we saw there, yesterday evening. If we see a problem today (Friday), how do we know if it's the same problem, returned? Or a new, unrelated problem? Or maybe a problem caused by the final changes made last night (if any were made)?
Blogger Employee: We appreciate that you are willing to take 10 minutes out of your busy day of playing frisbee and napping on the couch to post a few words of comfort (identical content, pasted into half a dozen threads), but you are (were) replying to people in real pain.
Jason speaks in the highest overview - "...infrastructure overhaul..." and "...another change that has improved performance...".
These words mean very little to the typical Blogger. We see the post editor - or the photo upload - up right now. Here's an immediate decision to be made. Will it be up for 2 more hours, or just 10 more minutes? Should I rush and finish this post now, or maybe take a shower now, and do some better work after I am refreshed? Decisions to be made, constantly - and your vague status reports don't help us with those decisions.
And this morning's content, which is unchanged from last night, provides no sense of closure. Was anything actually done last night ("...additional changes this evening")? Or will you maybe make an unplanned improvement sometime today?
And here's a thought. If you find using Blogger Status to be less than useful when Blogger (or Blogspot) is down, mirror Blogger Status on another service. This blog, The Real Blogger Status, is being mirrored this weekend. Watch this blog (or its mirror) during the next Blogger / Blogspot outage (NOTE the truthfulness of this statement depends upon how long it is until the next major outage).
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