The Real Blogger Status

Whenever dealing with any problem with a blog, you should verify the URLs involved. Some of the most baffling problems, with blog connectivity, identity, or ownership, can start from simple typographical errors. This possibility will involve both native "blogspot.com" and custom domain URLs. The Publishing wizard window, in the Blogger dashboard Settings - Basic page, is essential for identifying errors. Whether you paste or type a URL into the registrar's zone editor, the Publishing wizard, or the browser address window, you can make a mistake. Checking the Publishing wizard is as important as examining a Dig log extract - or as viewing an HTTP trace .

The "Forgot?" blog control recovery wizard is sensitive to team blogs - and to the access level owned by the existing members in the team blogs. If the team has only one administrator, that one administrator cannot delete or demote himself , using the dashboard Permissions wizard. If the one administrator deletes his Blogger / Google account, on the other hand, a team blog is left with no administrator. You can't have a blog for long, without an administrator. So when a team blog member requests recovery, "Forgot?" checks the team blog members - and if no administrator is found, sends recovery email to all of the authors .

Occasionally, we have a would be blog owner, becoming confused about blog access, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . I can look at the dashboard Posts page - but there are no posts listed. or I can't access the Template Designer (edit the template, add users to the blog, ... ). or maybe Why is Settings so small? These are bloggers who are confused over a blog where they are an Author , or have no access - as opposed to a blog where they are an Administrator . Along with knowing how to identify yourself , knowing what access you have to a given blog can be a key detail, when you are dealing with identity confusion - such as inadvertently created duplicate accounts , or possibly duplicated blogs .

We see questions of naivete, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , about blog ownership recovery. I accidentally deleted my administrative access. How do I get my access back? There is only one legal answer. Have another administrator restore your access. But this story does not end well. The other administrator is on long term vacation! I really need to have my access back!! There is no easy answer here .

Not all Blogger blog owners know that the ability to comment is a privilege which they control. Like the ability to publish and read posts , it is also a responsibility which they need to control, carefully. Any blog owner who wishes to publish a blog, and not be subject to frequent deletion of the blog, as a suspected malware or spam host, needs to understand the responsibilities, and the risks.

Almost daily, we see a confused query in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken I lost ownership access to my blog. Can Blogger restore my access? Not every blog owner realises that the Permissions wizard has a safeguard, ensuring that every blog will always have at least one administrator. Anybody who is the former owner is now a member of a team blog - and at least one other team member is an administrator.

We see this naive question, from time to time, in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? . I added my friend as an administrator, to my blog. He changed permissions, locked me out, and now I don't have access. Can Blogger get my blog back? Here, we have bad news for you.

Long ago, Blogger blogs had a very simple membership permissions policy. Each blog had an owner, and members. The owner was the administrator of the blog, and ownership could not be transferred. This simple policy was a problem, because some blog owners would eventually lose interest in a blog, and want to cede ownership to someone else. In other cases, people were known to die suddenly, leaving blogs with no live owners. In both cases, Blogger Support would become involved, and would manually transfer ownership. Later, Blogger developed the Permissions wizard, and added a class of member called "Administrator". The original publisher of a blog becomes the first administrator, who may, at his / her discretion, designate additional administrators.

We see these horror tales, occasionally. I made my blog private, and only invited a few friends. The next day, I checked my visitor logs, and saw evidence of people that I did not invite, still viewing the blog. or My friend was a second administrator of my blog. I decided that I did not want him administering the blog, so I removed him from Permissions. To my dismay, the following day, he was still able to make changes. With Blogger, membership / permission for any blog is checked only when someone initially accesses a blog. Ability to access a private blog , or to administer or post to any blog, is provided in a cookie based token. If someone does not clear cookies, or close the browser after clearing cache, access to the blog will continue, until the cookie expires. If someone tries to access the blog, and he has a cookie permitting him to do so, he will continue to get access - even if the access is revoked. So once again, I urge you to grant access to your blog with care and...

The ability to designate readers for a given blog is a popular setting. Either "Only blog authors", or "Only people I choose" can be used to restrict readership to a limited, more appreciative audience, for any blog that's published to either BlogSpot or to a custom domain . Some bloggers, recently, are finding difficulty in making their blogs public ("Anybody"), after having had the blog published as "Only people I choose". They can use the Settings - Permissions wizard, and supposedly make the change to "Anybody", but the public still can't view the blog. The owner of "x-everlastinglove12.blogspot.com" states that the Permissions wizard is set to "Anybody". The URL suggests that we might have a "content warning" interstitial that's applicable here. If your blog is having this problem, please provide some details, to help Blogger see a possible pattern. What is the URL of the blog? Does th...

In the Blogger distant past, there was always the possibility that some blog owner would, in the process of cleaning up the complement of blog administrators in Permissions, manage to remove herself (himself) from the list. If the blog owner was, as in many cases, the only administrator, you'd soon see his (her) post Help! in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . Sometime later, Blogger fixed that design flaw, and made the Permissions wizard check the list before removing any selected administrator. Now, any account that is the sole administrator cannot be removed from administrator status . There will always be at least one administrator, for any blog.

Those of us who carefully control access to our blogs - whether granting read access to only certain friends, or providing author or alternate administrator status to our most trusted friends - use the Settings - Permissions wizard to grant and monitor the access. Not everybody knows how our friends are granted access though, and that may be part of a major flaw in controlling access. Take a look at the email, that your friends get, when you grant access to one of your blogs. In it, you'll find a message with a clickable link (details masked here, to protect the innocent) The Blogger user xxxxxxxxx has invited you to read the private blog: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. To view this blog, visit: http://www.blogger.com/i.g?inviteID=nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn&blogID=nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn You'll need to sign in with a Google Account to confirm the invitation. If you don't have a Google Account yet, we'll show you how to get one in minutes, or you can view the blog as a guest for up to 30 ...

In a corporate network, you have one or more teams of employees, whose duty is to assign and maintain authentication and authorisation information. Authentication validates who someone is, and authorisation validates what ability that person should be granted, when accessing corporate resources on the network. Each employee gets one and only one identity, and has one specific list of access rules (authentication / authorisation). This restriction can (must) enforced, because each employee provides proof of identity, when registering as an employee. With Blogger (Google), as with most Internet services, there is no real proof of identity required. In the online world, many people maintain multiple identities. That is one of the features of online life, called "freedom". Freedom to be who you want to be, or at least to seem to be. So you, and I, can have as many Google accounts as we wish. Google accounts are free, and if you have multiple lives, or interests, you can ha...

Occasionally, you see bloggers becoming confused about what access they have to their blog. I can look at the Edit Posts menu, but there are no posts listed. or I can't access the Template Designer (edit the template, add users to the blog, ...). These are bloggers who are confused over a blog where they are an Administrator, vs a blog where they are an Author. Let's look at my dashboard , and at a pair of blogs which we see there. Here's my dashboard. Among the many entries, you'll see one blog listed where I am an Author, and a second where I am an Administrator. Let's first look at a blog where I am an Author. Let's look at "Edit Posts". I'm an Author in this blog, and I haven't created any posts. There are plenty of posts in the blog, just none that I've created. I have no access to any posts that I haven't created. Let's look at "Settings". I'm an Author in this blog, so all of the Settings that I...

We see the occasional query How do I have a single post, and only let my closest friends view it? or How do I keep people from commenting on some posts? or even How do I make a linklist / poll / whatever visible to a select few? and the answer is - you can't. If your blog is open to everybody, all portions of that blog are open to everybody. Unlike WordPress (which has a few limitations too, just not this one), you can't set permissions in just a portion of that blog . But, you can make portions of another blog visible to a selected audience. Make a separate blog, with permissions that suit your need . Put the restricted content into the second blog. Include or link the second blog to your current blog. Blogs are free. Setup another, with the restrictions that you need. And another, and another. >> Top

The ability to view blogs, and web sites, and only view those that have been recently updated, is a useful feature that NewsFeeds provide. Some people take NewsFeeds for granted, and every so often you see an anxious query Why can't my readers use a newsreader to read my blog, when I make the blog private? This is as if newsfeeds are just another content protocol.

This is a welcome improvement from the old ability to remove our own administrative ability , without knowing. Let's see if it works. See an improvement? "grant admin privileges" is way more obvious than "admin". So click on the link, and get a warning. So, we'll select "Grant Admin Privileges". Now, we have 2 administrators. Click on the link again. And now, the second and the key warning. Here, I hope that the default selection is "Cancel". Having observed the warning, we'll select "Revoke Admin Privileges". And now, we have one administrator again. A welcome improvement here, folks. >> Top

One of the features requested by many, provided finally with New Blogger 2007, was the ability to restrict readership to a blog. Not only do you need membership to post in a given blog, you need membership to read some blogs . This is an excellent improvement in blogs, where the prospective readers know how to contact the owner. What if you wish to read a given blog, and you don't know how to contact the owner? You're out of luck, if you don't feel like doing some detective work to identify a contact point. Maybe not, if the blog owner has some foresight.

Typically, a blog is for you to share - with your friends, or with one special friend. It doesn't have to be though. It's just as normal to have a blog that only you can read.

A blog is for you to share - with the world, with your friends, or with one special friend. We see many examples of this diversity, when we go " Next Blog " surfing. If you don't want the world seeing your blog, so you can share your private thoughts with your special friends, you can keep the world out. Just as the ability to post in your blog requires permission, you can make your blog require permission for anybody to read , too.