The Real Blogger Status

As blogs are being increasingly used by ordinary people, to make their mark in the world, they are also being used by people to annoy or assault others, mock others, and other attacks of varying severity. In Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? , we regularly get questions like How do I get a stalker's defamatory blog removed? or How long does it take to resolve an impersonated blog complaint? or Someone has created a fake blog using my name - how do I get Blogger to remove this, or do I just sue?

Possibly the hottest issue this week, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , is the Auto Pagination feature , which was introduced last week . Auto Pagination automatically helps people to limit the sizes of their archive / label / main pages , as downloaded from Blogger servers. Before the Blogger post editor "Jump Break" solution was provided, there were at least 3 known variants, for auto summarising posts. One was provided in Blogger Help: How can I create expandable post summaries? ; and at least 2 others were provided as third party suggestions. It's possible that any of these 3 variants are present in some blogs, where the owner has not seen fit to remove them, in favour of deploying the "Jump Break" in new post editor.

Occasionally, somebody in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? wonders Why don't I have a Layouts (or Template) link in my dashboard? or How do I setup additional team members, without the right link in Permissions? and the first question is Are you logged in as the blog administrator / owner ?

The latest significant change to Blogger - Auto Pagination - is causing some concerns in the blogger community. Early reports were focused on inability for readers or search engines to find all posts I need to display 12 posts on the every page. Please give a way to disable auto pagination. Not everyone needs this feature. and Auto Pagination doesn't help me! As you can see in my blog, "Auto Pagination" doesn't help. I need at least 45 post in my front page. Doesn't help people reading my posts. Can anyone help me with this? are probably among the more objective problem reports seen this morning. Looking at the problem reports in detail, we can see at least 3 classes of problems. People with blogs with classic templates , who need to move to layouts and use "Newer Posts" / "Older Posts". People who are using "Newer Posts" / "Older Posts", and simply perceive the need to decide their own page size. People who are seei...

For Christmas (End Of Year) 2009, I went back to Virginia again, for a brief visit. What I found, besides the snow (and there was too much of that) were some positive notes. The State Of Virginia USA really is moving into the future . For us Californians (Yes, I consider myself a Californian) they now have a Frys Electronics, a Trader Joes (2 of them in the Richmond area!), and an In-N-Out Burger (No, they don't have that yet!). OK, I'll settle for 2 out of 3. The point is, Virginia really is moving ahead, into the future. And this month, some bloggers are feeling the need to do that. Two changes in Blogger - Auto Pagination , and the approaching end to FTP Publishing , will both hasten the end to classic templates, and make the move to layout templates more natural. Owners of blogs with classic templates have, for a long time, been asking about how to get "Newer Posts" / "Older Posts" links for their blogs. That's not a feature that can be provid...

Recently in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? , we've had direct contact with a few confirmed spammers . These are people who have submitted to the noxious 4 step spam confirmation protocol , and who have been given the full benefit of the doubt .

One of the promises of Blogger , which makes a Blogger blog such an asset to the masses of the world, is the freedom to publish without being forceably identifiable. Anonimity is a major advantage, for many who publish Blogger blogs. But there are a few downsides to anonymity - and one may be seen when we try to edit our blogs. Some bloggers load a blog in the browser window, then click on the "Sign In" link in the navbar, in the expectation that they are signing in to that blog. For folks who only maintain a single Blogger account , and who have enabled the proper security settings , this will appear to be what's happening. But, it's not.

In the American game of baseball, each player while performing in the offensive role has three chances to swing the bat and hit the ball. If he does not connect with the ball in any way, on the third chance, he is "out" and goes to the bench. As a blogger, and when your blog is detected as hosting possible spam content , you have three strikes, too. An automated spam classification process, performed by a Blogger bot , inspects your blog, possibly with a few other blogs , and locks or deletes your blog. A manual review process, performed by people , inspects your blog again, and objectively asks whether or not it is actually hosting spam. This is done after you complete the sometimes hated 4 step review process . A second manual review process, performed by people , inspects your blog for a third time, and carefully asks whether the first two processes were correct. This is done after the review process, and is generally referred to as "escalation". This is the ...

Long ago, when custom domain publishing was first offered as an option by Blogger, there was a noticeable design deficiency . If you published your blog to the root of the domain ("xxxxxxx.com"), you'd have no content for the "www" alias ("www.xxxxxxx.com") - and if you published to the "www" alias, the root would, similarly, lack content. It was a significant day for many custom domain bloggers, when this discrepancy was eliminated .

This Sunday, many bloggers will celebrate another important holiday in the year - the holiday of celebrated relationships, aka Valentine's Day. Some bloggers will decorate their blogs, using a Valentine's Day standard - falling hearts. Incautiously chosen relationships cause pain and suffering - some even known as "the gift that keeps on giving", aka an STD. Some incautiously chosen falling hearts decorations have recently been found to cause another "gift that keeps on giving". At least one falling hearts variant, provided free by a hacker, has been reported as causing a blog hijack, noted by several bloggers in Blogger Help Forum as a "sendptp.com" hijack . Like STDs, the blog hijacks being discovered recently don't always show up immediately. Normally, when people write in to the forum reporting I´m being hacked! Every time I type the address to my blog, I´m getting redirected! we advise them to remove any recently installed third party...

For many months, bloggers have been asking for the ability to add static pages - pages that do not contain dated posts, and that do not show up in the archive index, or in the main page display - to their blog. Before this year, only the latter possibility existed - posts that would not show up on the main page could be created by publishing posts back dated to appear before the earliest post on the main page . This created "static" pages that still appeared in the archives index - a messy workaround. In January 2010, as a belated Christmas present , true static pages were added to the new post editor . In June 2010, the new post editor was moved into Production Blogger. It's not difficult to make a static page. In the Classic Blogger GUI, dynamic pages ( aka "posts" ) are accessible in the post editor under two tabs - "New Post" and "Edit Posts". Static pages are accessible under one tab - "Edit Pages". On "Edit Pag...

One of my most intriguing subjects (to me, anyway) examines the differences between the "root" alias of a BlogSpot blog, and the "www" alias (ie, "bloggerstatusforreal.blogspot.com" and "www.bloggerstatusforreal.blogspot.com"). The fact that they are separately stored in browser cache will cause mysterious results, when the blog is viewed alternately using the two different aliases . This is not a terrible problem for your readers, when they simply read the blog. It can cause problems with the search engines, though, as they index your blog based upon inlinks from your readers.

As a savvy consumer, you likely love to hear about offers for 2 for the price of 1, of something that you buy frequently. That's a great deal, normally. It's not for blog posts, though. When you start to see double in your blog, chances are that you duplicated the Blog Posts entry in the template. It's not hard to fix, fortunately. Edit the blog template , using the dashboard Template - "Edit HTML" wizard. Do not expand or unfold any widgets . If you unfold either 'Blog1' or 'Blog2', you will have to find the end of the unfolded gadget section, which could be hundreds of lines later. If you delete 1 too many, or 1 too few, unfolded lines, you will get a syntax error. Error parsing XML: ... The element type "b:section" ... Deleting just one line (see below) is way easier, believe me. Look for two lines, in the Body of the template, which may or may not be immediately next to each other in sequence: <b:widget id='Blog1...

This week, we are seeing a few reports from anxious bloggers that their blogs are redirecting to mysterious URLs containing the domain "sendptp.com". This is somewhat reminiscent of the "searchinvented.com / smashingfeeds.com" hijacks of January 2010 . I can log in to my blog, but then in a few seconds the page goes blank, and in the URL it says..sendptp.com/ramk2.html...at the bottom it says redirecting and flashing back and forth... Immediate reports suggest a "falling snow" decoration, apparently acquired before Christmas 2009, as one known culprit. Other reports mention a possible variant, "falling hearts" (Valentines Day?). http://everything-u-need-is-here.blogspot.com/2008/12/snow-effect-widget-for-blogger.html http://h1.ripway.com/anand2360375/snow.js In one case, the "searchinvented.com" / "smashingfeeds.com" redirect is being found on a blog that has a "falling snow" gadget. I wouldn't bet that this is...

When you create a new blog, the first essential task is to decide upon the BlogSpot URL. You want to do this right, because this is one of the most challenging changes, successfully , after the blog becomes mature and gets a reputation. What is the one most important characteristic that your new blog URL has to have? Uniqueness. The blog name has to be available - not in use, in any way, by another blog. Many bloggers start their new blog by picking a name. How do you find out if the name of your choice is available? And there is really only one way to tell, and it's not obvious. Here are three blog names. anavailableurl perryfx anavailableurl2 Only one of these three is available. Which one is that? "anavailableurl.blogspot.com" was apparently deleted by Blogger or by its owner. The URL is not available. "perryfx.blogspot.com" was possibly deleted by Blogger, as a suspected spam blog. Review and restoration is (was) pending. The URL is not ava...

Money is a popular artifact used in magic tricks - everybody loves looking at it, and playing with it. The disappearing quarter - which starts out in your hand, and is found behind your ear - is intriguing. Equally as intriguing is the magician who can take two 50 cent pieces, and turn them into a dollar bill.