Ever since AutoSave was developed, and added to posts being edited, people have been having problems when editing un published posts.
We see periodic cries of anguish, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue.
I've been warning people, for a long time, that Blogger is not a Content Management System.
Blogger provides neither Draft mode edits, nor team membership, as compared to a CMS. Both Draft editing, and team blog membership, provides potential for loss of content, that only you (the original blog owner) will be able to recover.
AutoSave, And Editing A Draft Post
We've known about AutoSave, and it's ability to destroy carefully edited posts, for years. AutoSave is known for it's tendency to cause the entire post to be highlighted - and, after you just pressed delete, to save a newly deleted, empty post.
If you, as the author, have been working on a post for days - or weeks, and you save an empty post, your work is now gone. And Draft mode provides no consistent ability to recover previous versions of the post.
Team Membership
Team membership provides either authors (who can only edit their own posts), or administrators (who can edit, and destroy, everything). There is no middle ground.
If you want to have people able to collaboratively edit a post, you have to make them all administrators. When you do that, every team members absolutely must be someone whom you can trust.
If one team member takes it upon herself (himself) to take over the blog, and remove the other members (and you), this is a problem that you must handle - since you made the decision to give control of the blog, to that person. Blogger Support cannot get involved, legally, since it is (was) your blog.
And, even if team members play by the rules, two people, editing the same post, can easily interfere with each other. The Blogger post editor provides no ability for two team members to edit the same post, simultaneously.
Use Google Drive For Collaborative, Long Term Editing
Having noted the limitations, Google has provided a solution. Google Drive provides a real, Content Management System approach to long term, group development of documents, with version based recovery.
Just start a document, and invite people to help you edit the document. When the document is ready, embed it into your blog. You, and your team, can work on the document - and your only very trusted blog administrators can work on your blog.
If you don't like the embedding options, you can download the document as Rich Text or Plain Text, then copy the text into a new blog post and format the post as you like. If AutoSave misbehaves, you have the original Drive document, as a backup.
You can keep the blog, and the document, separate. When you embed the document, you can let some people continue to edit, while others can read the blog / document, as developed - and the general public can, as you like, be unable to view either one. And your trusted administrators / webmasters can develop the host blog.
Blogger and Google Drive, together, provide interesting possibilities. Imagine the possibilities. Use Google Drive, For Team Document Development Use Google Drive, To Develop Important And Group Documents Use Google Drive, To Develop Important And Group Documents
We see periodic cries of anguish, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue.
I had been working on this post, for weeks! Just as I selected a portion to delete, AutoSave kicked in, highlighted the whole post, and saved an empty post!!and
I was working on this post, along with another member of the team. We keep making changes, and erasing each others changes!!!Blogger allows long period editing of un published posts - and they provide team blog ownership - but you'll do better to not use either possibility, with any important projects.
I've been warning people, for a long time, that Blogger is not a Content Management System.
Blogger provides neither Draft mode edits, nor team membership, as compared to a CMS. Both Draft editing, and team blog membership, provides potential for loss of content, that only you (the original blog owner) will be able to recover.
AutoSave, And Editing A Draft Post
We've known about AutoSave, and it's ability to destroy carefully edited posts, for years. AutoSave is known for it's tendency to cause the entire post to be highlighted - and, after you just pressed delete, to save a newly deleted, empty post.
If you, as the author, have been working on a post for days - or weeks, and you save an empty post, your work is now gone. And Draft mode provides no consistent ability to recover previous versions of the post.
Team Membership
Team membership provides either authors (who can only edit their own posts), or administrators (who can edit, and destroy, everything). There is no middle ground.
If you want to have people able to collaboratively edit a post, you have to make them all administrators. When you do that, every team members absolutely must be someone whom you can trust.
If one team member takes it upon herself (himself) to take over the blog, and remove the other members (and you), this is a problem that you must handle - since you made the decision to give control of the blog, to that person. Blogger Support cannot get involved, legally, since it is (was) your blog.
And, even if team members play by the rules, two people, editing the same post, can easily interfere with each other. The Blogger post editor provides no ability for two team members to edit the same post, simultaneously.
Use Google Drive For Collaborative, Long Term Editing
Having noted the limitations, Google has provided a solution. Google Drive provides a real, Content Management System approach to long term, group development of documents, with version based recovery.
Just start a document, and invite people to help you edit the document. When the document is ready, embed it into your blog. You, and your team, can work on the document - and your only very trusted blog administrators can work on your blog.
If you don't like the embedding options, you can download the document as Rich Text or Plain Text, then copy the text into a new blog post and format the post as you like. If AutoSave misbehaves, you have the original Drive document, as a backup.
You can keep the blog, and the document, separate. When you embed the document, you can let some people continue to edit, while others can read the blog / document, as developed - and the general public can, as you like, be unable to view either one. And your trusted administrators / webmasters can develop the host blog.
Blogger and Google Drive, together, provide interesting possibilities. Imagine the possibilities. Use Google Drive, For Team Document Development Use Google Drive, To Develop Important And Group Documents Use Google Drive, To Develop Important And Group Documents
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