The Real Blogger Status

The problem of last week , with Stats, was fixed late yesterday, and our Stats displays once again are showing Posts pageview counts and enumerating individual Posts. Now, we have a perceived problem, being reported by newer blog owners. My Stats display does not show my newer posts! This concern is visually valid - but it's not real. It's most common with blogs that have just over 10 posts, which are owned by people who are not aware of the Stats display limitations , as we have explored.

In terms of Blogger problems, which occur seemingly randomly and have no obvious user solution, I can't think of too many that bring more dread into peoples hearts than 403 Forbidden That message is actually where I started this blog - many, many years ago . It's come up, in discussion, several times . The message "403 Forbidden" is literally a response by a computer somewhere, saying that you are not permitted to access this computer . For Blogger / Google customers, it generally has a slightly different origin.

For several days now, we've seen various reports from anxious Blogger blog owners, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , lamenting the lack of detail information in their Stats logs. My Stats logs does not show the page views for particular posts. This is just one example, of the many ways that blog owners perceive, and report , the ongoing problem.

This morning, we're seeing a number of questions in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken . Why are my Stats displays showing No stats yet, check back later. yet again? and more interestingly "blogging.nitecruzr.net" is showing multiple hits in my Stats log! And none of this is really surprising, personally.

Anyone is free to publish a Blogger blog, discussing any subject. The Blogosphere is full of many blogs, some discussing the same subject as others. A blog on any subject can have any title desired by the owner - and the title can be identical to the subject, or it may differ from the subject, as desired. This leads to many blogs having the same title - and this is OK. Unfortunately, though many blogs may have the same subject and title, each blog must have a unique URL . Some blog owners have a problem with this policy, since they believe that their subject, title, and URL must match. Not every blog owner understands why not every blog, ever written, can have a matching subject, title, and URL .

Today, we're seeing a significant number of reports in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , from worried blog owners My blog reloads in peoples browsers, and causes high pageview counts! and My blog crashes my readers browsers when loading!! When a resource monitor is run while the reported blogs load, you can watch memory usage increase rampantly, as the main page of the blog, in question, loads.

Not all blog owners understand the need for people to post anonymous comments, against our blog posts. Periodically, in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? , we see the naivete expressed by some. How do I find out who is posting anonymous comments to my blog? These people do not understand the need for anonymous commenting.

This week, we're seeing signs that Blogger is about to push the New Blogger GUI (2011) a step closer to reality . In about two weeks from today, all Blogger accounts that haven’t yet made the switch will be upgraded to the new user interface. You will be able to opt-out at any time by clicking the “Switch back” link; however, all accounts will eventually be permanently upgraded. For all the optimism, the New Blogger GUI (2011) just is not ready.

Last week, blog owners discovered a new problem with commenting on their blogs. I keep enabling comments on my pages, but Blogger keeps disabling them! From having observed the reports of the problem, it appears to affect all blogs - both varying template type, and use of the different GUIs (Classic and New 2011), appear to be referenced. Blogger Support has acknowledged the problem . Thanks everyone for your patience, we're hoping to have a fix rolled out shortly. (Update 10/19): This has been corrected. (Update 11/09): Today, we see a new problem with static pages and comments - this one involving dynamic views. >> Top

The new dynamic views , a truly innovative feature recently developed for Blogger blogs, are still receiving mixed reviews. Not everybody, able to use them, likes them - and not everybody, liking them, is able to use them. The reasons behind the decisions to use them - or not use them - are fascinating, when examined in proper context.

In October of this year , Blogger made a major change to the display of images and photos, in our blog posts. As we've seen a few times, this change was not provided as an option - and was not received graciously by all blog owners. After receiving a significant amount of complaints, Blogger removed Lightbox from our blogs image display. Last week, having redesigned the Lightbox feature, Blogger released it for a second attempt . Thanks to your feedback, we turned Lightbox off temporarily, and we’re re-launching it today with the option to disable it, along with a handful of fixes to bugs that you reported. As with any Blogger feature, it now deserves a closer look.

Almost daily, we see a confused query in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken I lost ownership access to my blog. Can Blogger restore my access? Not every blog owner realises that the Permissions wizard has a safeguard, ensuring that every blog will always have at least one administrator. Anybody who is the former owner is now a member of a team blog - and at least one other team member is an administrator.

As the dynamic templates continue to be installed on various Blogger blogs , more and more blog owners are noticing problems with their visitor logs. I installed a dynamic template on my blog, and my Stats display shows No stats yet, check back later. and StatCounter shows no traffic, now that my blog uses the dynamic views. These reports come from people who don't realise how the new templates work - and why they don't seem to work, in these cases.

The problem of auto pagination, triggering display page segmentation, has been with us since early 2010. Even in the beginning, auto pagination was not 100% popular with blog owners . As more blog owners got used to the inevitability of auto pagination, more scenarios were discovered, where it critically affected blogs. The most recently identified scenario, where auto pagination was involved, was with images hosted as Base64 content - first discovered a year after the initial opposition started.

Now that the new dynamic templates have been available for several weeks , and people are actually using them on their favourite blogs, some folks are disappointed that they can't use them. I'm trying to install the dynamic template on my blog, and I'm seeing Sorry, dynamic views aren't available for this blog. Why me? What did I do wrong?? And these people simply have no idea how the new templates work - and why they don't always work.

Blogger blog owners have been suffering from the onslaught of referer spam, in their Stats logs, for over 6 months now . Some blog owners, who use third party visitor logs / meters like FlagCounter, Sitemeter, and StatCounter, have started to wonder. How do SiteMeter and StatCounter manage to filter out the referer spam, yet Google cannot do anything about it? This would be quite a magic trick indeed - if this was happening.

Like the Designer Templates from earlier this year , the Dynamic Templates being now offered by Blogger provide a significant change from the Layouts templates offered to us in 2007. Unlike the Designer templates , the Dynamic templates are easier to try out - both to apply to our blogs - and should we decide, to remove from our blogs.

One odd feature of the dynamic templates - giving your readers the choice how they want to view your blog - is a detail that not everybody seems to get. In the ongoing discussion What do you think of Dynamic Views? , we see some dissenting opinions. I don't like the fact that readers can change the way they view my blog. I want things to be viewed the way I set them up, and not have them be changeable by the viewer. Personally, as long as each view lets some people view my blog, I'm happy to let anybody select the template that lets them view the blog, as it pleases them.

We've been observing the ongoing problem with referer spam since the beginning of the year - yet we see that some blog owners still haven't heard of the problem. Some folks who are advised later, to be more cautious Don't click on the links! come back with anxious queries I already clicked on the link! What will happen now? Have I been hacked? Here, there's no authoritative answer.

Many Blogger blog owners continue to ignore the need for third party cookies, in Blogger . Confusion in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken continues daily. Even with the difference between Blogger and BlogSpot - and the need for cookies to be created under one, and read under the other - explained, some people see cookies and scripts as an equal threat. This is where problems with various Blogger features start.

When Auto Pagination was introduced , many blog owners, who preferred to display their blog as one long main page, were insulted. If I design my blog to display all of my articles on the front page, my readers should see my blog on the front page! They were unable to see the need to segment the main page display . If your blog uses one of the new dynamic templates, you may have noticed that there is no Archives link (nor an Archives gadget). With a Dynamic Template, there is no Archives link, because there are no archived posts, period.

Now that support for "legacy" Blogger accounts (accounts created before 2005, without Google account association) ends after this month , blog owners are trying to catch up. Some blog owners are reporting that, when trying to use the "Forgot?" wizard , they are seeing bX-2uckqc Blogger Support has accepted responsibility of the problem, and announced yesterday We're investigating reports of users seeing bX errors when using the recovery form found at http://blogger.com/forgot.g (Update 10/13): This code has been resolved . I was finally able to recover my blogs. >> Top

Recently, we're seeing signs of Blogger blog owners who are tired of seeing references to referer spam, in their Stats displays . Why doesn't Blogger put an end to referer spam? Some are angrier, and tragically so . Why can't Google put an end to referer spam? I'm moving my blog to WordPress! There are several options, to ending referer spam - but not any option will be 100%, immediately, effective.

Some people have decided that Blogger One Button Publishing, though a somewhat free service, is simply not to their liking. Some such opinions are possibly tragic, or misguided . Other similar cases, however, may be quite reasonable. I want a URL that's not available. It's inactive, but nobody will help me claim it, so I'm moving my blog to WordPress!