Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from November, 2006

Blog Ownership Stuck With The First Google Account? Don't Delete It

Under Classic Blogger, it was possible to transfer a blog from one administrative account to another, by adding the second account, then deleting the first . Incorrectly done, though, you could end up with a blog with no administrator, and no way to add an administrator. And another trouble ticket for Blogger to resolve. So Blogger changed the possibility, with Blogger Beta. Under Beta, you can add a second (or third, or ...) adminstrator, but you can't delete the first administrator . That takes care of the possibility of having no administrator. But it creates a second problem (which apparently Blogger doesn't find important) - you can end up with an account that has no need to administer a blog, but having been the first administrator, is stuck with that ability none the less . Having accepted that fact, one bright person came up with the idea OK, what if I delete the first account? A drastic, but seemingly effective way to resolve the problem. But today, it appears that pro...

Including A Video In Your Post

Photos are an easy way to make your posts more interesting . Going one step further, we have moving photos, ie videos. Just Link To The Video, Hosted Externally Including a link to a video is as simple as including a link to a photo , hosted elsewhere. >> The Perfect Plumber &gt;&gt;<a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay? docid=2638976382458360943&q=plumber">The Perfect Plumber</a> >> Top Or Embed The Video In The Post But look at my post in PChuck's Network: Don't Do It Yourself - If You Don't Think About What You're Doing Here we have a Shockwave Flash movie, Embedded in the web page . <embed style="width: 400px; height: 326px;" id="VideoPlayback" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf? docId=2638976382458360943&q=plumber"> </embed><br clear="left"><a href="http://video.google.c...

Use Post Pages When Advertising Your Blog

In one Microsoft help forum, some time ago, one wanta be helpful guy would answer dozens of help requests daily, by copying his entire library - 800+ lines of technical information - into each post. This should take care of you. If it doesn't, post back here with your questions. Now, read my entire compilation of experience. Your answer is in here - somewhere. Now that Blogger provides its easy to build online web sites, anybody can do the same using a blog. Blah blah blah. The answer is somewhere in my blog. >> http://myblog.blogspot.com Possibly this is done from ignorance. He doesn't know about addressing his posts. This is how spammers and trolls operate too. Want advice? Check out my web site - it's in there somewhere. Genuinely helpful folks, when they give advice, make their advice complete and relevant . The easiest way for you to do this is to link directly to the right article. To do that, your posts need to be individually addressable. Go to Sett...

Registering An Address For An Externally Published Blog? Be Careful!

When you register an address for a Blog*Spot blog, it's a pretty simple process. Setup a new blog, give it a Title, and a URL. The URL will be something like xxxxxxxx.blogspot.com, where "xxxxxxxx" must be unique. There is only one way to check for availability of any "xxxxxxxx", and only one way to register your choice for "xxxxxxxx", and make it unavailable for someone else. Enter the blog Title. Select an available URL. Select a template. Add a post to the new blog. Publish the new blog (this step only necessary for a Classic blog). When you publish your blog externally, it's a bit more complicated. Hire a service to host the blog / web site. Register your URL. Hire a service to provide you a directory (DNS) entry. You may hire a package deal, where all 3 components are provided by the same service, maybe even your ISP. You may get all 3 components for free, ie no actual hiring involved. But you will have to spend some ti...

The Page Cannot Be Displayed (Error 404)

This is a very popular error message, being seen recently. And by popular, I don't mean well liked, as in Chuck is a popular guy. I wish. I mean we are seeing it a lot, recently. Or it's being reported a lot. Or maybe, it's always around, but the other problems are down a lot, so this one is visible. The problem here is, it's used so much we don't know what it means. It could be anything like Your computer won't connect to it. We don't know where it is We know where it is, but we won't let you connect. In Microsoft Windows Networking, it might be a combination of the old Error 5 aka Access Denied and the Error 53 aka Name Not Found . Both of these are very popular (and again not well liked) errors in Windows. So how do we fix it? That's the bottom line. You start by identifying who's responsible for it. The message itself is coming from your computer. Start with a little basic troubleshooting . If the problem is just you connecting to ...

Migration From Blogger Classic To Blogger Beta - Planning The Process

We've been seeing mixed experiences with the migration from Classic to Beta. Some folks are just closing their eyes and jumping - and landing softly with no problems. Others are finding it a bit of a rough landing. If you spent any amount of time adding custom components to your template, when you set the blog up originally, it's possible that the migration process won't easily convert your custom template. You might want to do a little planning, and experimentation, before you migrate. Most standard template objects can be created in the Page Layout editor. Try setting up a Google account, with a new Beta blog, using a template similar to yours. Add your custom features, and see how well it works for you. When you get the invitation to migrate your account, first make a test copy of your blog , using a copy of the template in your Classic blog. Then migrate your account, and convert the test blog first. If you like, you can easily copy the template from the Beta blo...

Changing The Post Date

When you write posts in your blog, generally you'll want them to show the date / time when they were written. A blog is a journal, and sometimes you will want to insert posts with a different date. You may want a post to show a future date, to bring it to the top of the blog . You may want a post to show a past date, to reflect a past experience. Or maybe you want to make a new post, and keep it off the main page, as a separate section of the blog. Maybe you want all of the posts to be in forward chronological order, instead of (normal) reverse chronological order.

Post / Sidebar Alignment Problem In IE - A Cure?

I've written about differences between Firefox and Internet Explorer , and about one specific symptom which seems to result from this difference. One of the challenges here has been that not all blogs exhibit this symptom. Most likely because not all blogs (not many most likely) try to cram page elements into spaces where they don't fit. But occasionally, you run across blogs that seem to be impervious to this symptom, even though they appear to be inviting it. And today, I ran across a possible reason why some blogs don't have this problem. And it's not hard to make your blog, too, be impervious to the symptom. Just find the stylesheet code, and insert the portion in red. /* Page Structure #outer-wrapper { width:740px; margin:0 auto; text-align:left; font: normal normal 100% 'Trebuchet MS',Verdana,Arial,Sans-serif; } #main-wrap1 { width:485px; float:left ; margin:15px 0 0; padding:0 0 10px; color:#333333; font-size:97%; line-height:1.5em; word-wrap: brea...

Squashed Navbar - And Only In IE

Not a major problem, but a trend. At least, two blogs identified with the problem. In Internet Explorer, the Navbar is squashed into a box, in the upper left corner of the screen. This is visible only in IE V6 and previous. IE V7 seems invulnerable to the problem. This appears to come from a miscoded template - in both cases (below) the template has multiple <body> tags. blogger toolbar goes to left in IE Open 11/9 navbar has shifted to the left!!! Open 11/4 >> Top

A Problem Resolved, Or A New Mystery Begun?

So today, Blogger Support, represented by Buzzie , reported in Blogger Help Group: Publishing Trouble 24 hours of no posting, no commenting, no nothing , at 11/4 12:00 We have fixed the problem. Again, sorry for the inconvenience. if you still have trouble don't forget to mention your blog url. The above quote was in response to yet another report of We're sorry, but we were unable to complete your request. an often reported problem recently. Slightly earlier, at 11/4 11:57 we see a similar message We have fixed the problem. Again, sorry for the inconvenience. if you still have trouble don't forget to mention your blog url. This for todays problem, after 12 hours of hell , Your post was not saved due to a database error. An engineer has been notified. So what happened here? Did they fix two problems in one day, or was one problem present for the past week, and got fixed in 30 minutes ? Was this yet another 30 minute fix ? For a livelier viewpoint, see Roberto's Repor...

An Improvement In Problem Resolution?

So here's the latest glitch, as chronicled in Blogger Help Group: Publishing Trouble , in PST. First report 11/3 22:10 . I am getting this bizzare when trying to publish my posts: "Your post was not saved due to a database error. An engineer has been notified. Please copy your post to your computer and try again later. You can check Blogger Status for information about known problems with Blogger." A dozen or so other victims replied, during the next few hours. Increased concern, and discussion all night, about how long this outage would last. The suspense mounts. The latest Google lamb, Buzzie , shows up at 11/4 11:33 . I am sorry to hear that you guys have problems. Can you tell me the urls for the blogs that give you trouble, so we can figure out what's going on? An interim report 11/4 11:47 . we have identified the cause for the publishing problem and it is getting fixed as we speak. I post back, when we all clear on our end. Problem fixed 11/4 11:57 . We have ...

500 Internal Server Error

Everybody has seen this error. The more that you publish to your blog, the more that you will see it. This server is currently experiencing a problem. An engineer has been notified and will investigate. Sometimes, if you wait a few minutes and try again, you'll be able to publish. Other times, you could be an hour - or more - with the same thing. You cannot say what works or doesn't, as you can't ever reproduce the problem analytically. You may be able to work around the problem, by using a different Blogger server . Of course, by the time you clear cache, and shutdown and restart the browser, Blogger might have fixed the problem. So you can't really tell, can you? Of course, you could report the problem . Right. >> Top