The Real Blogger Status

Not every blog owner understands the effect of a Blogger URL change, in FaceBook - and the resulting popularity of the blog . I am planning on changing my blog name and redirecting my blogger blog to a custom domain. Why would that affect my Facebook followers? A Blogger URL change won't affect your FaceBook Followers directly. Your existing Followers can continue to Follow your blog, under the BlogSpot URL - and under the custom domain URL - as it is Liked, and shared, in FaceBook. The Likes count affects the possibility of a share, of a post in your blog, to attract new Followers.

As both custom domain publishing, and social sharing networks, become normal with many blogs, we see anguish when blog owners change the URLs of their blogs, without planning for the effects of the change . What happened to my Likes? This blog owner - and many others - do not realise that FaceBook counts Likes, based on the URL, not the blog. FaceBook Likes, and Google+ +1s, are counted by URL - and are not controlled by DNS redirection, or simple name changes. If you rename your blog, you get a new URL with a new popularity counter , in FaceBook and Google+.

We see some blog owners deciding to change their custom domain URLs - and discovering an unexpected limitation, in re indexing the blog, under the new URL I received email from Google, advising that my previous domain is pulling up a number of 404 errors. I've noticed that these are for individual blog posts. When you change one custom domain to another, you may not see the domain re indexed, transparently.

Some blog owners setup a new blog - and want to know if the blog title and URL may - or (alternately) should - be the same. There is no policy for Blogger, about blog title and URL - either that the "words" in each can, or cannot, be the same. Some SEO experts suggest benefits from having relevant words, in the URL - and some blog owners confuse this advice, as suggesting having identical titles and URLs. Be wary of advice that references websites, in discussions about blogs. There are subtle, but real, differences between dynamic blogs, and static websites . Rules that may be important for websites may not be relevant, for blogs.

Blog owners are always changing the URLs of their blogs - then asking why Blogger does not provide automatic redirection, to the new URL. We see the occasional query, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger . How do I redirect my readers, to my new URL? And this is a need that will likely go unfulfilled. If Blogger provided automated redirection, spammers would abuse it, as part of a spam publishing strategy .

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 .

One hot Internet topic, these days, involves specialised ("vanity") domains. The hot names seem to change, by the week. This week, enom is hyping ".family", ".live", ".rocks", and ".social" . Other registrars may have other recommendations. The blog Address (Name) is a key blog identity element , in a well designed blog. It's visible both to people, and to search engine crawlers. The requirement that addresses must be unique is a supposed benefit of vanity top level domains - but vanity TLDs, alone, will not provide blog uniqueness. There will always be competition for some names, in any useful Top Level Domain.

Not all blog owners can successfully add a conditional display of a template object, to their blog. Some owners carefully copy the conditional code that I provide , add it to their blogs - and it does not work (for them). In some cases, it may work, for me, when I check their work. Conditional code, that involves people in countries subject to the country specific domain redirect, won't always be comparing against "blogspot.com". People in the UK may see their blog as "blogspot.co.uk", for instance.

Over half of the problem reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , which mention custom domain URLs, start with improperly setup domains. A handful of the domain setup problems involve improperly chosen registrars - either registrars who can't provide the necessary services, or registrars who won't do their job properly. The vast majority of the setup problems start with bogus DNS addresses. And bogus DNS addresses start with the blog owners.

We see confusion, from time to time, about label searches in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . Why don't my labels work, consistently? or Why don't all of my pages work? Looking at a blog with the problem, we'll frequently see lack of consistency in label case - some labels appear in lower case ("label"), some in upper case ("LABEL"), some in sentence case ("Label"). This might seem like an insignificant personality issue - but it's not.

This blog is " blogging.nitecruzr.net ". If I wanted to dress up the URL slightly, I might tell you it's " Blogging.Nitecruzr.Net ". Either URL should work, for reading the blog, equally well - with the domain setup properly. Both blogs published to "blogspot.com" - and to non BlogSpot (aka "custom domain") - URLs are subjected to unexpected mixed case variations , from time to time.

Occasionally, we see odd questions about Stats, and the history of someone's blog (or maybe, the URL of someone's blog), in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . If I started my blog last year, why does my Stats display show pageviews from 2, or even 3, years ago? and If I rename my blog to a better URL, how do I carry the Stats numbers to the new URL? Neither blog owner shows an accurate understanding of the historical nature of Stats pageview counts.

Sometimes, we see odd confusion in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . I deleted my blog - can somebody help me restore it? I worked so many days writing it! or alternately I am trying to write a new blog, but it says my url has already been taken (by me). If the first owner is kind enough to include the URL of the deleted "blog", we may use our favourite online diagnostic tool - and discover that the blog is still online, and not deleted! In the second case, we may find a new blog, with one post. Investigating further, we discover that the problem here involves terminology. This article that I am writing, "Blogger Terminology - Blogs Vs Posts", is a post, which is part of my blog, "The REAL Blogger Status" (which right now is actually The ONLY Blogger Status - but that is another tale ). The terminology here is pedantic, to us - but it's very real, to the blog owner who has just deleted an important post. Or to the owner who has publi...

The first task in starting a new blog involves taking an available blog name (aka "URL"). The rules for picking a blog name are reasonably simple. Pick a blog name. If "Create a blog" gives you that name, it's yours . Continue with #4. If "Create a blog" shows "Sorry!", pick another name, and continue with #2. Setup your new blog. Some folks need even simpler rules. If "Create a blog" gives you the name of your choice, it's yours. If "Create a blog" does not give you that name, you have to pick another. Which ever rules you wish to go by, the "Create a blog" wizard has the final say .

Long ago, Blogger blog owners would publish a blog as part of an existing website. With the website published as "www.mydomain.com", they would create a website subdirectory "www.mydomain.com/myblog", and publish the blog there. The option to publish a blog as "www.mydomain.com/myblog" required an externally maintained domain / website - and the Blogger feature "FTP Publishing". In 2010, Blogger, with many man hours spent fixing a constant stream of problems, retired "FTP Publishing" , in favour of "Custom Domain Publishing".

We see signs of naivete, in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? , from blog owners concerned with malware / spam deletions, and with other unexplained disasters in Blogger. How do I backup my blog, to protect the contents against unfair spam deletions? Not many concerned blog owners realise the first principle of backups, known by any experienced network administrator. Never plan a backup, without first planning the restore. How you backup your blog depends upon several details. What problem do you expect, to require a backup? How do you plan to recover, from a problem?

This blog is (for those of you not familiar with it) "The Real Blogger Status". The URL of this blog is currently "http://blogging.nitecruzr.net". As long as I publish the blog properly (as "blogging.nitecruzr.net"), I am allowed to advertise the blog using any combination of lower case and upper case letters, that I like. This blog can be accessed as "blogging.nitecruzr.net", "Blogging.Nitecruzr.Net", or even "BlOgGiNg.nitecruzr.net". We say that Blogger URLs are case insensitive. Even with my readers allowed to use any combination of lower and uppercase letters, to access this blog, I don't want the search engines to index (and determine page rank) my blog using the exact URLs, as typed by each different reader. Even with this blog being addressed as "blogging.nitecruzr.net", "Blogging.Nitecruzr.Net", or even "BlOgGiNg.nitecruzr.net", the search engines index this blog as "blog...

We see periodic evidence of confusion, in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? , about deletion of our blogs. I deleted my blog last year - can I get it back? and I deleted my blog last month - when will I be able to use it with my new Blogger account? and I deleted my blog, but it's still visible, on the Internet! Not everybody is fully able to understand the "90 day" deletion policy.

Anyone is free to publish a Blogger blog, discussing any subject. The Blogosphere is full of many blogs, some discussing the same subject as others. A blog on any subject can have any title desired by the owner - and the title can be identical to the subject, or it may differ from the subject, as desired. This leads to many blogs having the same title - and this is OK. Unfortunately, though many blogs may have the same subject and title, each blog must have a unique URL . Some blog owners have a problem with this policy, since they believe that their subject, title, and URL must match. Not every blog owner understands why not every blog, ever written, can have a matching subject, title, and URL .

Identifying Blogger blogs, as with identifying people, is an exercise in futility - or at least, complexity. As a person, you are addressed in number of ways, which will be contextually significant. Depending upon how / where you live, you may have: First name. Last name. Nickname (one, or many). Government identifier (" Social Security Number ", and others). Home address. Business address. "Phone" number. How many phones do you have? Email address. How many email addresses do you have? SMS address (which may or may not be same as one or more "phone" numbers). Website address. How many websites do you publish? I'm not going to take all day writing this - give me a break! Your blog has a number of ways of addressing it, too - and it may be to your benefit to consider each identifier, canonically.