The Real Blogger Status

I've written a few posts about editing post content - and discuss clearing cache after editing, to see updates. Generally, my posts reference cached posts content. Sometimes, blog owners need to clear cached feed content, in addition to / instead of clearing cached post content. There is a difference between post content, and newsfeed content - and how both are cached. Newsfeed cache is not as frequent a concern.

Occasionally, we see a blog owner in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger , asking about newsfeed formats. Which is better, for my readers - Atom or RSS? How do I choose, what to provide, in my blog? The competing newsfeed formats - Atom and RSS - have been a part of Internet life, for many years. Both formats have their devotees - and this is why there are two formats. Both formats have their own advantages - and disadvantages .

Private blogs affect other Blogger features - and the combination of results are inconsistent. With dynamic templates, the private blog selection causes an inoperable display. Conversely, with Google+ Comments, enabling Google+ Comments disables the private blog (designated reader) selection - and vice versa, in the various Blogger dashboard pages. The two interactions - and differing mutual exclusiveness - contribute to some interesting diagnostic sessions, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue .

Some people who will enjoy your blog may prefer to follow it using their email . It's not difficult to setup email delivery of the comments or posts - from various source selections. FeedBurner offers a wide assortment of delivery options, for the many sources. Blogger offers the "Subscribe by Email" gadget and service , which delivers the posts newsfeed. That's one feed possibility - and you can have many more, with very little work.

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.

In BlogLovin, the ownership verification process is termed "claiming your blog". Claiming your blog involves installing a BlogLovin link, with embedded token, on your blog where it can be seen, by the BlogLovin claim verification process. Getting the claim link, from the BlogLovin dashboard, is not an obvious process.

When you use the BlogLovin supplied instructions to claim your blog , you will get a BlogLovin link, with an embedded token, which you install in your blog. Paste this text into a new blog post ... In some blogs, it's necessary to put the code at the top of the blog post. BlogLovin would have you publish a new post, and put the link / token at the top of the post. This ensures that the claim link displays at the top of the page, in the blog.

We see occasional reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , from Blogger blog owners who want to share their blogs using BlogLovin. Why can't I claim my blog? BlogLovin is somewhat monolithic. They use the blog feed, and a BlogLovin URL with embedded token, to process / validate blog claims - and their diagnostics, when a claim is a problem, are not always effective. Some blog feeds can be validated, yet not be found by BlogLovin. And other feeds won't validate.

We deal with a lot of "lost blog control" complaints, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . Lost blog control complaints, that involve blogs published using a dynamic template, are not easily resolved.

We see occasional evidence of confusion, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , about reading newsfeed content. I click on the link at the bottom of the page, and I get a screen full of gibberish. When we check the problem report, and verify browser involved, it will almost always be for users of the Chrome browser .

Google makes changes to their software environment, constantly. This week, they deprecated the Google Feed API . Unfortunately, many Blogger gadgets require that feature to display feed content, on our blogs. This week, numerous reports about broken feeds, in various gadgets, are being seen, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . The broken feeds are a direct result of the deprecated API.

Several owners of large blogs (500 posts and up) are reporting problems with indexing, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . I have over 2500 posts, in my blog. Each sitemap page, which should contain 500 posts, shows only 150 posts. This reduces my indexed posts tremendously! This blog owner did nothing to cause this problem. Upon investigation, we have discovered that both blogs using the classic feed based sitemap , and the current automatically generated sitemap , are missing sitemap contents, equally.

Blog owners use many techniques for getting new readers - and for keeping existing readers happy. Some blog owners use techniques which work inconsistently, because they are not designed to work the way they are being used. Some blog owners becomes concerned when their blogs, listed in blogrolls on other peoples blogs, don't seem to be updated as regularly as they would expect. Blogrolls are good tools for getting new readers, in a casual manner. They may not be as good, for predictable, scheduled visitor activity.

Sometimes, blog owners need complicated and conflicting feed setups, for multiple uses. One blog owner asks I want a email blog posts feed, using snippets of the posts, so my email subscribers will click on the snippets and read the blog itself. I would prefer that newsfeed readers have the option to read the entire post, in their readers. At first glance, this is an impossible request. FeedBurner can't do two things, with one feed. Fortunately, FeedBurner, like most Google services, is free - and there's no limit to the number of feeds that you can make.

Many blog owners rely upon FeedBurner, for publicising blog updates . Feed delivery in general - and FeedBurner feed delivery in particular - are all subject to problems. FeedBurner provides the "TroubleShootize" tab, with common sense diagnostics.

We've been using FeedBurner Email Distribution for years, to provide a turnkey email based publication distribution . With any email distribution system, the most essential function, in list management, is to add and remove subscriber entries. FeedBurner gives you that ability - if you look, carefully.

We've seen a few reports in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , mentioning mysteriously resurrected posts, appearing in email or on peoples desktop displays. When investigated, the blog owner will observe that a new post, which had been originally published after the one mysteriously appearing, was recently deleted. Further investigation shows that the mysterious post, that just re appeared, was the 26th most recently published post.

Some blog readers wonder about how to follow blogs, recently turned private by their owners. We see some concern , in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . I Follow a blog which was recently made private. Its entry in my dashboard Reading List froze, and I can't get it working by removing and re adding! This would be reader does not realise the results of making a blog private. Private blogs do not publish blog feeds . When a blog is made private, the feed stops - and the Reading List and all other feed subscriptions - comments and posts - stop updating. With no feed published, a blog cannot be added to Reading List - though the members picture icon may remain visible, in the Followers cloud.

We're seeing a few problem reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , mentioning problems with the blog feed. I try to claim my blog in BlogLovin, but they tell me that my feed is invalid! or My subscribers stopped getting my posts by email!! Both BlogLovin, and the FeedBurner "Follow by Email" service, depend upon the blog posts newsfeed.

We see occasional questions from blog owners, and readers, about options for reading posts, from a given blog. The most obvious way to read the posts is to read the blog, as published, online. If the owner of a blog that interests you uses Google+ publicity , reading either online, or in the Google+ stream, may be your choice. For Blogger hosted content, both owners and readers have a few more possibilities.