The Real Blogger Status

People in Western nations have been arguing this topic , for years. Should the roll be hung, with the paper falling over the top, or underneath? Both choices have their logical reasoning. When this question is politely debated, the discussion goes on endlessly - and when the question is freely debated, the discussion generally degenerates into ad hominem insults and name calling. It's likely that this question will never be answered, authoritatively. Blogger has a similar question, resembling the toilet roll controversy. Should new list items be added over the top (as the top entry), or underneath (as the bottom entry)? Until this month, the only option, provided by Blogger, was "over the top".

We've known about the Transition period , which has applied to domains purchased through Blogger , for a few years. Under Transition, domains purchased using "Buy a Domain" were only partially published, immediately after the domain purchase - with the publishing process completed, several days later. The Transition period allowed for the domain, newly setup by "Buy a Domain", to become fully visible on the Internet , before blogs subject to Transition were re published.

This week, we're seeing a few reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken from blog owners, trying to publish their blogs to custom domains. I'm trying to use the Publishing wizard - and I'm seeing a new error. This operation failed. Try again later. If the problem persist, please file a post on the help forum. What has Blogger changed, recently?

We see occasional reports from owners of blogs with lots of video content. My readers can't view the YouTube videos in my blog, on their cell phones or iPads. YouTube video content, as uploaded through the Blogger Post Editor, uses Adobe Flash embedded code. The native browser, on Apple based mobile computers, doesn't support Flash content. Many non Apple mobile computers may be similarly limited. Before Flash became a part of the Adobe Products multimedia suite, some security experts believed it to cause security vulnerabilities. Some owners of desktop and laptop computers have blocked Flash in their browsers also.

We're seeing a few questions about photo quality, from blog owners using Picasa photo hosting. Why do my photos look brighter? and Why has the background colours on my pictures changed? The recently added Google+ "Auto Enhance" and "Auto Awesome" features do not appear to be painless, for some blog owners. If you have a Google+ account, check out the Settings - Photos section. You'll find two recent additions. Auto Enhance Automatically enhance new photos Learn more Auto Awesome Create awesome new images from photos in your library Learn more Interestingly, these settings appear to be enabled automatically for some blogs, without warning to the owners - including a few blogs that are not associated with a Google+ profile.

Occasionally, we see a perplexed blog owner asking a popular question about custom domain setup. Does my domain really need four servers? Some even seem to think that newer domains, with less readers, can get by with less - even one - servers. Won't one server do - at least, for newer blogs? Theoretically, yes. But not one server is going to be 100% reliable, or last forever. Every computer ever made, like every human born, will die, one day. Your blog (and your domain) depends upon DNS, to resolve its address . Address resolution is an essential part of helping your computer (your readers computers) connect with the computer where your blog is stored.

For over a week, we've had anxious blog owners unable to create or update the Text gadgets on their blogs. The "Save" button is not working, on my Text gadget! or maybe I see Javascript void(0) when hitting Save! Blogger actually fixed this problem, earlier this month - and it broke again, shortly afterwards. Not everybody understands that seeing "javascript:void(0);" is a symptom of the problem - not the problem itself. This problem, fortunately, has a reasonably effective workaround.

Occasionally, in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? , we see the naive query How do I merge my two blogs, using Export / Import? When given the simple advice Use the "Export blog" and "Import blog" wizards, both in the dashboard Settings - Other menu. the immediate response is I don't have that menu item! This person has, most likely, lost control of the Blogger account. In order to avoid encouraging scraping of blog contents, both the Export and Import wizards are only available to blog administrators. Not everybody wishing to use "Export blog" has blog ownership, however.

We see some people, posting in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , who have problems with blogs under team ownership, and abuse classification. My blog was deleted as spam but I don't spam! BTW, one of the other administrators of my blog recently had his Google account blocked. We've observed, a few times, that team blog relationships create interesting complications, with various Blogger issues - and this appears to represent yet one more complication.

Many blog owners spend hours - or days - composing a new post. Occasionally, we see the complaint in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken I had been working on my post, for days. Just as I accidentally erased everything, AutoSave kicked in, and saved my empty post. Now, I have to spend days rewriting! Given the right reflexes, and presence of mind, recovery is simple. Most browsers provide an "Undo" command, which will back out the erasure of the contents - as long as you react properly. Just hit "Undo" - and you're back in business. If using "Undo" is a problem for you, avoid AutoSave . As soon as you have a basic post written, publish the basic post. Then, edit what you just published.