The Real Blogger Status

Every week or so, you'll see a complaint from someone. Hey everybody - report http://somehateblog.blogspot.com - it's being used to spread lies about me (my employer, my girlfriend, etc). And right now, there's an ongoing problem with abusive network activity, and the way that Google is protecting itself, that's generated some nasty side effects . Each day, we see a few complaints It's been a week and I am still getting the sorry message: We're sorry... ... but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can't process your request right now. The only way to BlogSpot for some readers, right now, may be PKBlogs, and other anonymising proxy servers. PKBlogs was previously developed to provide access to Blog*Spot web sites, when the Pakistan government had a block against "*.blogspot.com" . PKBlogs stepped up, and provided that access, as a public service. But they can be us

With the coming of New Blogger , logging in to the right account (Old / New) should be more straightforward. Clear cache and cookies , and restart your browser. Login using the new, improved Blogger Login screen . You'll have separate, well defined choices. Old Blogger, using your Blogger account. New Blogger, using your Google account. Make the choice wisely. Blogs using the old template may or may not be visible and accessible from New Blogger, and vice versa. If you login, and your blog isn't listed, or if listed isn't accessible, then logout, and login again carefully. But the first time that you use the new login procedures, be sure to clear cache and cookies , first. Blogger appears to be reusing addresses, cookies, and scripts, even though they are providing a new set of servers ("www2.blogger.com", instead of "beta.blogger.com", for instance). If one of your cookies continues to point your browser to "beta.blogger.com", guess what w

Beta Blogger is now called New Blogger 2006 - and this is an Old Blogger blog. And now, we have The Real Blogger Status - New . Does anybody remember New Coke ? Well, New Blogger 2006 is substantially improved over Old Blogger . The improvements are substantially more significant than New Coke over Classical Coke. And now, you can see my improved blogs. Chuck's Kitchen , benefiting from Labels (Food Categories). Martinez UMC , with a spiffy sidebar, and with colour and layout changes pending.

but the game remains the same. I just wish that I knew what the rules are. Pete, in Blogger Buzz: The New Version of Blogger , writes The new version of Blogger in beta is dead! Long live the new version of Blogger! So this is now "New Blogger", not "Beta Blogger". Well, I will call it "New Blogger 2006", as I know that, in 2007, 2008, or sometime in the future, there will be a second New Blogger. And New Blogger 2006 replaces "Classic" or "Old Template 2006" Blogger. Even though this is now "New Blogger 2006", and it replaces "Old Template Blogger 2006", you will find numerous references to "Classic" and "Beta" Blogger here and there. This blog will be titled and addressed as The Real Blogger Status , at least for a while. (Edit 12/20): And in commemoration of the new name, we now have Real Blogger Status - New . (p.s.) Does anybody remember New Coke ?

Here are three major players in the Internet / IT world. Google. Microsoft. Mozilla. I'll wager that none of the three have any executives who play golf (throw a Frisbee?) with each other, regularly. Each company released some software, recently. Google released Blogger Beta on August 14. Microsoft released Internet Explorer V7 on November 14. Mozilla released Firefox V2 on October 24. Consider those dates, then tell me how likely is it that Google tested Blogger Beta to work with either Firefox V2, or Internet Explorer V7? I'll bet better than even money that neither Firefox V2, nor Internet Explorer V7, was part of the Blogger testing platform. That being the case, maybe we can't blame Blogger for all of the problems with Blogger Beta, or with Blogger in general. If you upgraded to Firefox V2 or Internet Explorer V7 recently, and you're having problems with Blogger, maybe you need to look at your computer , before you complain to Blogger. You probably (better) have

According to Blogger Help This blog looks abandoned, can I have its address? Blogger accounts and Blog*Spot addresses do not expire. That's good news - if you're the blog owner. Short of your blog being hacked , what you publish will remain online - and your property, forever . Of course, your ability to maintain your blog and URL will be subject to your ability to maintain the account that administers the blog. And the future online status of the blog will be subject to how it's published, and its future after you're gone .

And now, another feature that will make Blogger Beta look a small bit shinier. Blogger based BlogRolls are now hidable , similar to MultiStyle Label Lists . Just a small step to reclaim some sidebar space.

If you're publishing to an external host (not Blog*Spot) by FTP (or SFTP), you may be seeing any of several errors in the log Error 550: Access is denied. Error 550: Requested action not taken: file unavailable. Error 550: The system cannot find the path specified. If so, you may want to check your FTP Publishing setting . The FTP Path setting points to the location of your blog, relative to the root folder in the FTP server. If the value for your FTP Path is "/", you should change it to ".", or possibly vice versa. Some servers require a setting of "/", which points to the absolute path of the root folder on the server; others require relative paths, such as ".", which points to the FTP root. This issue is discussed in Blogger Help Group: Publishing Trouble Bizarre Blogger Publishing Problem, help!! , and in my article Path Variances When Publishing By FTP . We've noted in some discussions that, after you change the path to ".&

One of the frustrations of dealing with the word verification aka captcha, when a blog is falsely identified as a spam blog , is that only the person that owns the falsely accused blog can truly experience the problem. Those of us who try to help cannot, in any way, reproduce the problem. Any other problem - whether a dropped sidebar , or maybe a squashed navbar , or even an improperly centered snippet of code , we can either reproduce in a test blog, or examine in the blog in question. By carefully examining the blog, or the page source, we can sometimes see what's wrong, or at least see enough of a clue to tell the blog owner what to try next. Or maybe we can get an idea what additional diagnostics might be useful. The problem of an inoperative captcha - where either the captcha text window shows up blank, or where the blog owner carefully types the answer, hits Enter, and nothing happens - sound to me like another problem with cookies or scripts. If this is being seen more

The Problem History In the olden days, long before Microsoft even came up with Internet Explorer, a browser was simply a program to display text. HTML was just text files, with links ("anchor links") to other text files. Surfing the web meant reading text, and clicking on links to read more text. Then someone decided to add colour to the text, and someone else decided to put pictures in, to make it all less boring. That was just the beginning. Fast forward to today. Now, we have music and movies, delivered as both complete files and files played while you download ("streaming" content) - I listen to streamed music, like XTC Radio London . And we have various files which appear to be either interactive movies, or video games, where you can control the movie elements / players with your mouse. Some games download to your computer and are played there, others may run from a game server. And we have still more code and scripting that nobody knows what it does. We

With Blogger Blogs, not everybody can do everything with every blog. Blogger doesn't provide anything as simple (or as obnoxious) as Simple File Sharing under Windows XP . They don't call it Simple Blog Access, but the choices that they do provide aren't a lot more granular. Except for Authors, who have access only to their own posts, all access is against the entire blog. If you truly have a need to have different levels of access for different portions of your blog, consider splitting the blog into two or more different blogs, each with the components with differing access needs. You setup blog membership and permissions from the Settings - Permissions wizard. It's a pretty simple wizard. You will need a current and operational email address (and not to an address that requires sender verification either) for each prospective member. Administrative access is at blog level. Anybody with access to any part of a blog has equal access to the entire blog. You have

As you surf the web, and read various web sites, you'll occasionally notice oddities. Following one link, you'll see one version of a web site; following a second link, you'll see the same web page, but with different content. Obviously, the web page was updated, between the first time that you visited it, and the second time. Nothing odd there. But here's the oddity. You visit the web site a third time, using the first link, and you see the same, older content. Then you check the second link again, and it shows the newer content again. What's going on here?