The Real Blogger Status

A few blog owners, who publish blogs published to custom domains, are becoming impatient , waiting for Blogger Engineering to finish the Blogger upgrade to support HTTPS / SSL. If I get a domain through Google Domains, will I be able to get HTTPS? Unfortunately, no. HTTPS / SSL is simply not available, to blogs published to custom domains .

We periodically see hopeful - yet naive - requests from blog owners, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger , asking about comment moderation improvement. How do I add a disruptive commenter to a killfile list - and never see his/her nonsense ever again, without moderating every comment, being published? This would be a popular feature - if it could be provided, in any way that would achieve results .

Some Blogger blog owners are confused by the ability to use AdSense, with various Google and non Google services. I monetized my YouTube videos - but when I try to sign up for AdSense, it says I need a website. So I went to Blogger to make one - but it says that I now have to buy a domain. How do I start? The blog owner has an AdSense account - but it's Hosted by YouTube. And you can't use a YouTube Hosted AdSense account, with native Blogger.

Some people are victims of a offensive blog, want the offensive content removed - and find the Blogger Help: Report inappropriate content and the Google Help: Removing Content From Google forms inadequate. How do I supply details of a blog which includes harassment or bullying content? I need to show the offense. Some Blogger / Google forms, which are intended to feed Google Legal, simply allow us to state the URL of an offensive blog. There is not place to state exactly why a blog may be offensive, for all form selections. There will be some cases where we may have to take action, ourselves - and start with court action .

AdSense uses various techniques to protect their content quality - and when they take action, they don't always give you a lot of clues about their actions, or warnings before taking action. Both AdSense and Blogger use fuzzy analysis to classify unacceptable content and practices . Neither AdSense or Blogger can publish definitive policy advice, each time they classify or suspend an account.

We see occasional concern about providing email subscriptions, from blog owners in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . How do I provide email subscriptions for my blog? Follow by Email does not work! The blog in question is using a dynamic template - and it appears that the blog owner is out of luck.

People who speak (read / write) languages, that do not use Roman character sets, need to publish in their native language - and the Internet now supports that need . Some registrars will register domains which use non Roman character sets, in the URL. Not all Internet services will accept non Roman characters, however. My favourite online DNS diagnostic services, DigWebInterface , and intoDNS , and Rex Swain's HTTP Viewer , only use ASCII. One cannot use non ASCII ("non Roman") characters, with either service.

Of the many Blogger Mysteries that confound blog owners and readers, none are more obscure than the many bX codes. Some problems, reported in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , start so innocently. As I edited the Template HTML, I saved my changes - and the bX error suddenly appeared. Each different bX code refers to a different problem, with Blogger in general. Of the bX codes that refer to template corruption , each different bX code may refer to a different template corruption problem.

Some blog owners would like their readers to view the entire blog in one page. A small blog, with very limited size, can theoretically fit on one page. If you intend to publish a blog with any future, and page rank , you will have to publish content periodically - and the size of the blog will increase, steadily. And eventually, thanks in part to main page limitation by auto pagination , older posts in your blog will be forced into archive pages.

Some blog owners don't understand the need to identify themselves , when commenting on our blogs. We see an occasional question, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , about comment authentication. Why, if I've selected "Anyone - including Anonymous Users " under comment settings, for "Who can Comment?", do my visitors complain of having to login? This blog owner, like many others, does not understand the Blogger spam mitigation policy, in Blogger Comments.

Some blog owners can't get their new FaceBook gadgets to work, on their blogs. We see the occasional report, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . The blog won't accept the code that Facebook Developer generated for me. Adding HTML gadgets - and HTML gadgets using FaceBook code - can be frustrating. But, it's possible.

We see unhappy blog owners, in AdSense Help Forum: Blogger / Host Partners , asking about the ads which they should have, on their blogs. Please let me know why ads are not showing, on the blog - or how much time it will take more in showing ads. Sometimes, the answer(s) are simple - but will not satisfy the owner.

Blog owners do not always understand the reasons behind the mysterious blog security check (following "suspicious" / "unusual" activity account lock). We see periodic complaints about deleted blogs and locked accounts - and the inconvenience involved, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . I get the security and all - but I don't get how a blog is just deleted. This blog owner, like so many, does not understand how Blogger is trying to keep our blogs under our control - even after detection of "suspicious" / "unusual" activity.

Blogger Engineers recently added Blogger template code, to provide images in shares to FaceBook. The added code is included in the standard template header. If you have a custom template, you may need to verify template header content . If you have added the previously recommended Open Graph Code to your blog, to allow Open Graph based post / photo sharing - and you use the FaceBook Developers Debugger tool , you may see a new diagnostic suggestion.

Some blog owners make photos an important part of blog content. When sharing a post to FaceBook, problems are seen with photo content. In some cases, this is because of how the photos were added into the post, when using Post Editor. We've known about problems with photos installed using drag and drop, and post editor, for a few years. Drag and Drop photos, in some cases, are stored as "Base64" content - with the photo content hosted in the post , instead of Google Photos (or Picasa).

Some blog owners have reported in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , about broken email distribution. There are various ways to distribute Blogger blog content, to email . For those unable or unwilling to use FeedBurner Email Distribution , one popular alternative is Google Groups.

We see too many problem reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , about locked accounts and deleted blogs. My Google account was suspended because of 'suspicious activities'. Last month, I realized that my two connected blogs, to that account, were also put offline! Somebody else was unable to use the supplied account / blog recovery tools - and tried guessing what could not be remembered .

We see evidence of occasional confusion, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , about blog content responsibility. One of my blog posts disappeared. I have tried every known recovery procedure. There is no way to actually contact anyone from Blogger Support. Long ago, Blogger Support would provide assistance, in recovery of deleted posts. That service ended some time ago .

Everybody who uses a computer - and expects to use their computer for any amount of time - has one or more protective products on their computer. Anybody who publishes a blog, with an audience that has any need for security , is going to receive occasional reports from would be readers. I can't read your blog! My computer displays an "Unsafe website!" warning! All computer security products, unfortunately, will occasionally generate false positives. Analysing false positive malware reports is as much a part of every security product, as identifying the actual malware.

We're seeing a few reports of bX codes, that are not solved by simply resetting the template - and do not involve the mysterious "500 Internal Server Error" . In some cases, the blog owner may see a bX code when trying to use "Configure Blog Posts", or another Layout gadget wizard. If the blog itself can be viewed, and Template HTML Editor is usable, the bX error may come from use of a "0" Alpha color setting. Blogger Engineering is aware of the problem, and has suggested that a fix is being developed. While we await the necessary fix, we may need to work around the problem.

Blogger recently redesigned the Stats "Don't track ..." option - and removed third party cookies from the picture. The "Don't track ..." wizard is now accessed from the blog URL. The wizard still produces cookies - but they are ordinary first party cookies , which are much less feared than third party cookies. But, every silver lining has a cloud.

One of the least understood Blogger features is the Stats visitor counters , and the various displays. We see the confusion, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , periodically. The "weekly" Stats numbers don't add up, properly! or Why is "Popular Posts" so out of touch, with reality? Magic is fun to watch, when it's just for amusement. When your numbers seem to have magical quality - changing from day to day, or display to display - it becomes annoying.

Every different browser and operating system, when supported by Blogger, requires more unique code - makes Blogger more complicated to maintain - and makes Blogger features less stable. Right now, Blogger Engineering is refocusing their efforts on more popular browsers and operating systems - and simplifying Blogger features. This will require that some Blogger components be discontinued.

Sometimes, advice provided in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , comes too late. Telling people to avoid use of MS Word , for composing posts, is one example of "too late". But maybe this delinquency can be repaired.

The new Stats "Don't track" option is an improvement, to many blog owners. "Manage tracking your own pageviews", as before, starts from the Stats dashboard page. The wizard now runs from a sub directory of the blog managed by the dashboard - and uses a normal (first party) cookie. Now, blog owners no longer must enable third party cookies , to make Stats ignore their page views. This is an improvement - but it can still present a challenge, for some blog owners.

We see an occasional suggestion, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger , about archive convenience. Some blog owners, presumably ones who do not publish so often, would like to archive posts on a yearly basis. It would be great, if you would add the option of "Yearly" under the Archive gadget "Archive Frequency". This blog owner may not know why posts are archived on a weekly or monthly schedule.