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Showing posts from February, 2007

Schizophrenia When Logging In To Blogger

If you're like me, and someone asks you for the URL to login to Blogger, you'll be like DUH. http://www.blogger.com . Who is buried in Grant's tomb, anyway? But, you would be wrong. With new Blogger, you are much better off logging in to https://www2.blogger.com/login.g . The latter is secure, and it uses the scripts written for New Blogger ("www2.blogger.com"). If you don't login thru the latter, consistently, you could have problems that come and go. Problems that you solve, temporarily, by clearing cache and cookies . Problems that you solve, partially, by checking security on your computer . Problems that you solve (when using Internet Explorer), maybe, by permitting cross-frame scripts from "Blogger.Com" (and specific Trusted web sites ). For best results, bookmark https://www2.blogger.com/login.g - and use it - consistently, after you clear cache and cookies . Also, see Help! My Blog Is Gone!: Login Problem for login problems of general ...

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A quiet evening at home? Not Tonight. We're sorry, but we were unable to complete your request. When reporting this error to Blogger Support or on the Blogger Help Group, please: Describe what you were doing when you got this error. Provide the following error code and additional information . bX-sp4hmm Additional information uri : /2006/12/connecting-two-dissimilar-networks.html host : nitecruzr.blogspot.com This information will help us to track down your specific problem and fix it! We apologize for the inconvenience. So much for using PChuck's Network for giving advice tonight. And I'm apparently not alone , either. Looks like it started about 17:35 PST . Doesn't affect all blogs, either - PChuck's Network (my exemplary victim, here) is down, but The Real Blogger Status is up. Both are New Blogger with Classic templates. The Real Blogger Status - Beta , New Blogger with Layout template is also up. 3 hours later, nothing in Blogger Status . And I don...

Status 503 - Servlet NewFrontend is currently unavailable

A few months ago, we would be getting Error 500. Now, it's Status 503. HTTP Status 503 - Servlet NewFrontend is currently unavailable Type: Status report Message: Servlet NewFrontend is currently unavailable Description: The requested service (Servlet NewFrontend is currently unavailable) is not currently available. The solution is the same as previously - Clear your Blogger cookie . At any time, the individual Blogger server, thru which you are accessing your blog, may become extremely busy, or may go off line for some, unexplained, reason. This is an unfortunate reality in the server world. By clearing your Blogger cookies, you can force Blogger to "randomly" assign you to another server. Sometimes, you may get the same server back; other times, you may be assigned to yet another broken server. So you might have to try clearing your Blogger cookies repeatedly. If the problem is with a cluster of servers, or if you're reassigned the same server as before, you m...

Another Day, Another Blogger Script Update

So I was happily updating this blog, The Real Blogger Status . I had just finished a labourious update to Image Test , and hit Publish. But instead of the old, familiar Your blog post published successfully! I got a surprise. What?? Why Now??? Time to login again? OK OK So I logged in again, and eventually, the post seems to have published. Blogger is many things, but seldom boring. It looks like they just pushed another script update. For some, this may mean a cache and cookies clearing exercise . And after you clear cache and cookies, check browser settings and security on your computer . In particular, make sure that " *.blogger.com ", not just " www.blogger.com ", is a trusted web site. And finally, update your bookmarks, and make sure that you login to Blogger properly . Now Blogger makes changes to its code frequently, and too often causes problems when they do this. Sometimes, they admit to causing problems . And sometimes, you can cause your own prob...

Internet Explorer And Cross-Frame Scripting

Many large websites, Hotmail for instance, make money by selling space on their website to other websites (domains). The content from the other domains may be advertisements, demonstrations, tutorials, or numerous other types of content. The sky is the limit here. Rather than Hotmail accepting and processing each advertisement from the other domains, and manually inserting them into their webpages, they simply lease space to other domains. They have discretely defined spaces in their webpages - frames - filled with content from other domains, which your computer picks up, directly, from servers in the other domains. Hotmail can't always validate the content of every website from which they display content. A large website, like Hotmail, might sell (lease) a frame on their page to an advertising aggregator, who might sell (sub lease) that space to several companies who serve advertising content. Hotmail has no way to tell that content provided by any of the latter companies mi...

Blog Login State When Browser Is Restarted

Here's a new Blogger behaviour, that seems to have started recently. Whenever I restart my browser, I stay logged in to GMail with no problem. Not so with Blogger. My first view When I start up the browser, this is what I'm always confronted with. So I hit Sign In. A familiar sight The old familiar Blogger Login screen pops up for a few seconds. And now the dashboard And quickly fades to the Dashboard. Now, I have to find the blog that I should have started with, and select View Blog, again. And finally I can get to work After selecting the blog from the dashboard, I am left in the right state to work on the blog. I can open any additional browser windows, and I have administrative access to any other of my blogs, too. As soon as I close the browser, it's back to the top of this post, again. Apparently, Blogger creates a session cookie, from your GMail account status, but doesn't act upon it until you "Sign In". And having finally signed in, you must aga...

Setup Your Google Custom Domain Name Properly

To let you have your blog using a custom domain name (not myblog.blogspot.com), but without most of the drawbacks of a New Blogger blog published externally , Blogger now provides custom domain names , where you can have, besides myblog.blogspot.com, mydomain.com. To setup a custom domain name, you simply Setup DNS (at your expense) to point your blog's URL to a Blogger server. Setup your blog to publish to the custom domain . Like all Blogger products, this one needs careful consideration when being setup. Don't Cause A Redirect Loop Wait Until DNS Points To Google A Possible Problem With The .Info TLD? Don't publish straight from FTP to Custom Domain . Blogger Plus blogs can't be used with a Custom Domain . Don't Cause A Redirect Loop If you currently have your blog hosted as myblog.blogspot.com, and you republish it as yourblog.com, Blogger will even maintain myblog.blogspot.com for you, and forward all traffic to myblog.com. And there is one problem. If you o...

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Hey Guys, Bloggers work, and blog, 24 x 7. Supporting them on an 8 x 5 basis isn't right. Strolling in to work casually today, to find thousands of panicked posts in Google Blogger Help , isn't cutting it. The Blogging world isn't all located in California USA. Your product is used worldwide, and you need to recognise that. Get your act together, please. This was more than a few minutes outage, and an inconvenience . This was a major malfunction . Don't keep doing this. This is not the first time we have had a similar major problem affecting millions of people . (Edit): But thank you for at least providing me a foundation for a nice succinct post title . >> Top

Custom Domain Names Hosted By Blogger

Up to now, if you wanted a blog (web site) named myblog, you had 2 choices. Setup myblog.blogspot.com, hosted by Blog*Spot, and with all of the shiny features of New Blogger 2006 . Setup myblog.com (myblog.org, ...), hosted by a host of your choice (and extra cost in most cases), but with less features than a Blog*Spot hosted blog . Now, there is a third choice. Setup myblog.com (myblog.org, ...), hosted by Blog*Spot . You pay for the DNS listing, which tells your reader's computers where your blog is. You setup a DNS entry, pointing "myblog.com" to "ghs.google.com". You setup Blogger to publish to the custom domain. For a description of a packaged version of this process, see my chronicle Using The "Buy A Domain For Your Blog" Wizard . If you setup your domain using "Buy A Domain", or using Google Apps directly, you'll automatically get a Google Apps account for your domain. If you buy your domain through a third party DNS host, you ca...