The Real Blogger Status

This week, we're seeing a large number of reports of missing Followers, and / or the Followers gadget not showing up on various blogs. The reports don't include a lot of detail, though. Very few reports include even the blog URL. (Update 2011/05/28): Right now, we're all seeing the latest intermittent Followers gadget outage . Blogger Support is aware of this problem, so be patient. If you are one of the folks observing this problem, please provide some diagnostic details to the Blogger Missing Followers Reports form . You may, alternatively, provide diagnostic details here. What is the URL of the blog with the observed problem? Is the blog missing the Followers gadget altogether, or does the gadget show there, with no Followers? If the latter, is the Followers count zero, or non zero? Is the blog in question your blog? If this is your blog, can you look on your dashboard, follow the Followers link for the blog, and see if the dashboard Followers gadget has mi...

Ever since people began blogging, they have been crying that they cannot find their blog. Sometimes, they have a network problem, or a deleted blog . Other times, and as a relatively recent development, it's because of the way that they use their browser. Look at the top of your browser window. Besides the toolbar (where you have your buttons to go forward / backward, go home, reload, etc), and the bookmarks / favorites, you probably have one or two boxes where you type stuff. Depending upon your browser, the boxes may or may not be labeled. And depending upon which box you use to find your blog - or other blogs or web sites - you may or may not find what you are looking for. When browsers were first developed, every browser had one, and only one, such type in box, called the "address" or "URL" entry box. That's where you type the address (URL) of the blog or web site which you wish to access. Some time after the development of browsers came the searc...

As a possible repeat of an episode a couple years ago , numerous bloggers who appear to be customers of Singnet, or possibly of other ISPs in the Singapore region, report that the toolbar area in the post editor is distorted or out of shape, and the buttons don't work. Yesterday, Blogger acknowledged the problem . Occasionally, what is being observed is the toolbar in "Edit HTML" mode, and the problem is resolved by enabling Compose mode . In other cases, the problem may be resolved by bypassing or refreshing browser cache . A few victims of this problem, who are direct customers of Singnet / Singtel , may be able to use the regional Singnet proxy "proxy.singnet.com.sg", as was done 2 years ago . This seems to be a more stable solution than the typical free Internet proxy server, which many use for anonymous or secure access, or to bypass local network controls . For Firefox: From the menu, select Tools, then Options. Click on the "Advanced" tab. Cli...

In every game of poker, there comes the time to call ("show the cards"). So today, we see a question, which I've seen a few times, reechoed recently I am planning to switch my Blogger blog to a custom domain. But before doing that I would like to know all the benefits and drawbacks of switching to a custom domain name.

This blog is The Real Blogger Status , and it's published as " blogging.nitecruzr.net ". You are looking at the blog itself . What you see is a lot easier for you to digest, than for computers to do so. There's another copy of your blog, though, that's designed for computers to digest, so the information can be passed to other places, maybe as part of another web site or blog , or to a reader who is subscribed to your blog, using a newsreader . The other copy is called the blog feed . Before we got Layouts Blogger, in 2006, we had pre 2006 Blogger. The first blog feeds, provided as part of pre 2006 Blogger, were served as part of the published blog. The pre 2006 Blogger blog feeds were continued into Layouts Blogger. For "blogging.nitecruzr.net", we have an pre 2006 Atom feed "blogging.nitecruzr.net/feeds/posts/default", also addressed as "blogging.nitecruzr.net/feeds/posts/default?alt=atom". We similarly have an RSS feed, ad...

Many bloggers who setup team blogs, and anticipate having significant numbers of authors providing significant numbers of posts, eventually start wondering How can I list all of the posts, by author? This is the sort of feature that one would hope to find in any well designed content management system, which is yet one more thing that Blogger is not . I'm sure that this question came up in the AppsSpot Blogger Enhancements forum , I don't recall that it was discussed terribly vigorously. There is a solution for this need, though it's manual, and may have to be enforced by the blog owner. Simply have each author assign a label to each post , using his / her name. You, the blog owner, can verify consistent and proper labels, by checking against the Edit Posts menu , which lists both author name and label membership of each blog post. With each post properly labeled, simply add a labels index - either a Blogger standard one, or a third party one like the Cumulus Multi-Style...

Recently, the political blog "The Girl In Short Shorts" was judged by a number of bloggers to contain objectionable visual content, and was flagged by a substantial number of would be readers. Its readers are now greeted by an interstitial warning, and are forced to click once on a button before being able to view the blog. Many readers of the blog are now protesting in Blogger Help Forum , in ignorance of the reasons for the interstitial warning. Their actions are similar to those of the readers of The Daily Coyote, last year . To the owners of the blog: You need to contact your readers, and advise them to knock it off. You aren't bothering Blogger (this is a weekend) - but you are interfering with other bloggers being helped, because of your Denial Of Service technique (intentional or not). If you don't want your readers to have to click on the interstitial button (once per reader, only), remove the problem pictures. (Update 7/21): Rick Klau, Blogger Product Ma...

The ongoing problem with Internet Explorer issuing "Operation Aborted", when loading various blogs, diminished in intensity recently. It has not, however, completely vanished. You may see the latest reports of this problem, in a consolidated feed . If you are experiencing this symptom - either in a blog which you control, or a blog which someone else controls - help us to help you. Provide your observations, for everybody. What browser version (the complete version number of format "n.n.nnnn.nn" may be significant here) are you using? What operating system (again, name and version, please) are you using? In what blogs(s) have you observed the problem? Is that your blog(s), and if so, did you see an improvement by removing the Follower / Friend Connect gadgets? By changing the comment form option? By removing any other gadgets? Have you made any separate effort to diagnose your problem ? Your report here, of what you are seeing or have seen, may be invaluable. ...

This week, we have various problem reports, from folks with blogs published to various mature custom domains - custom domains that have been online for some time, not ones just setup. All of these reports involve blogs using server "72.14.207.121" in their DNS addresses. Here's an example - "onfiction.ca". onfiction.ca. 10800 IN A 72.14.207.121 www.onfiction.ca. 10800 IN CNAME onfiction.ca. eh-in-f121.google.com (72.14.207.121) 72.14.192.0 - 72.14.255.255 Google Inc. "72.14.207.121" is the third of the original Google Apps servers , replaced by the current 4 servers in November 2008 . The other 2 servers in the original set of 3 have been offline for many months ; and now this server joins the other 2, and is itself permanently offline . If your custom domain uses "72.14.207.121" in its DNS addresses, your blog is probably offline too. And, that's why. You originally had 3 DNS servers providing addresses fo...

In the Blogger distant past, there was always the possibility that some blog owner would, in the process of cleaning up the complement of blog administrators in Permissions, manage to remove herself (himself) from the list. If the blog owner was, as in many cases, the only administrator, you'd soon see his (her) post Help! in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . Sometime later, Blogger fixed that design flaw, and made the Permissions wizard check the list before removing any selected administrator. Now, any account that is the sole administrator cannot be removed from administrator status . There will always be at least one administrator, for any blog.

The goal of a legal system is not to be fair to everybody, it is to be consistently fair or unfair to everybody. Any single law, fair in some instances, will be unfair in other instances. The principle of Precedence is used to make a legal decision consistently fair or unfair over time. The Blogger Help "law": This blog has been abandoned and I want its address , which controls the reissuing of "abandoned" URLs, is not fair - to those who want a URL, that appears abandoned , issued to them. Yet, it is uniformly unfair to everybody.