The Real Blogger Status

We're seeing a number of reports from blog owners, claiming their blogs are now subject to security alerts - and blocked when sharing. Frequently, the reports involve blogs published to "blogspot.com" (not custom domains) - and using the "www" alias. Some services, such as FaceBook, are now requiring "https" for shared URLs - and the "www" alias of "blogspot.com" ("www.whatever.blogspot.com") can't be used, with the "https" protocol.

One easy way to make a blog more visible is to add a favicon. A favicon makes a blog easy to find, in a typical browser window, with lots of open tabs. Adding a favicon is now just a matter of using one more dashboard wizard. Not so long ago, you would require a pair of files, hosted by a special (non Blogger) service - then you would edit the template, to add the URLs of the hosted files.

The Theme Designer rocks. There are GUI adjustment / selection wizards, for dozens of theme objects, in any given blog. You can make font and color changes, using various GUI wizards - and see results, in real time. And the wizards are logically grouped, by function. If you know what objects you need to change, you can tweak your blog theme, without worrying about CSS coding. But depending upon the browser zoom level, some of the available wizards may not be immediately visible, on some "Advanced" submenus.

Some blog owners are confused about how domain ownership verification works - or should work. The domain ownership verification process involves two challenges. Both accessing the registrars zone editor, and parsing the displayed content, is a challenge - for anybody but the domain owner. Or sometimes, including the domain owner. Blogger uses an intriguing technique, to verify that the blog owner, submitting a blog for domain publishing, is also the domain owner. They give the blog owner a token to add, to the domain - then verify that the token was added, before publishing the blog to the domain.

The Stats "Audience" page is now showing a mysterious entry, in the "Pageviews by Countries" list, for some blogs. The list of the top 10 most active countries, for the "Now", "Day", "Week", and / or "Month" lists, for some blogs, includes a non country name - "Unknown Region". The "Unknown Region" entry appears to be associated with a second Stats oddity, a monochromatic "Pageviews by Countries" map. This oddity is causing some concern, in various forum discussions . Where one would hope to see a familiar Stats multi-shaded Audience map, with various countries displayed in differing shades of green or black, some blog owners are seeing a monochromatic pale green display. The monochromatic display appears to be accompanied by the mysterious "Unknown Region" entry, in the countries list. I am examining the Stats "Audience" page, for this blog - in different time range

Your blog depends upon traffic for its success - and similar to custom domain migration, will suffer a period of lower search related traffic, while being upgraded to HTTPS. Larger blogs get better search reputation, all other details being equal. While your blog is being reindexed, after you enable "HTTPS Redirect", you will have a blog with two different base URLs - and both URLs will reference two smaller blogs, and have lower search reputation. All posts in your blog will not be reindexed under an HTTPS URL, immediately. Some posts will remain indexed under the HTTP URL, as others are re indexed under the HTTPS URL, one by one. While being reindexed, your blog will look like two smaller blogs - and both URLs will suffer from lowered search reputation.

The exciting, new "Responsive" themes are a move forward, for Blogger. Like every move forward, though, there's always a couple steps backwards. The "Responsive" themes are not as easily customised as the earlier "Designer" and "Layout" themes - and they lack some enjoyable features.