The Real Blogger Status

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...

Some blog owners report a problem with editing posts, in post editor. With any changes made to a published post, an attempt to update shows another monolithic error. An error occurred while trying to save or publish your post. Please try again. But the mystery does not end there. Even seeing the error, a curious blog owner, refreshing the post as displayed, may find a surprise. Even with the mysterious error displayed, repeatedly, the changes just made may be visible in the post.

Recently, we've been seeing queries from some anxious blog owners Why should I have to sign out a total of three, four, or more times? With blogs that use a template that shows the navbar, the owner may logout, using the "Sign out" link - but the navbar may continue to suggest that they remain loggedin. This problem may start with how we connect to Blogger, as part of the mysterious Internet cloud .

One of the most obscure Blogger error messages - next to "Another blog ..." - is the monolithic advice seen on main page display of some blogs. No posts. or maybe There's nothing here! What can you say, to a blog owner who has started a new blog, and spent days publishing blog content - only to view the blog, and see "No posts." - or "There's nothing here!"?

I recently updated an old post, to add a link to a newly published post - and experienced panic. Adding a link to an old post, Deleted / Locked Blogs Have Several Causes , I discovered an oddity which caused extreme heartburn for several hours. Maybe you have experienced this, also. Editing my post, and adding a simple single sentence, with embedded link, at the end of the post, I refreshed the display (always test your changes - no matter how minor!), and watched as the paragraphing scrambled itself.

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.

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.

One of the more interesting details about Blogger is the way Page / Post Editor generates URLs. Long ago, I wrote my post Blogging - The Directory and URL Structure . Blogging - The Directory and URL Structure http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2009/08/blogging-directory-and-url-structure.html See the differences, between the title, and the URL? This difference bothers some blog owners, who want the Title and URL to match, word for word.

If you like to multi task when using Blogger, you probably keep a few windows and tabs open, in the browser. If you have lots of tasks running simultaneously, and you try to Share to Google+ from the dashboard Posts page, you may click on the "Share" link, the "Share on Google+" window pops up, you watch the window load - and just as the window is almost complete, it vanishes.

Occasionally, we see signs of confusion, in in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . Where are the buttons, in the toolbar? or Why don't I have a Colour / Font / Jump Break / Video Upload / whatever selection, in my post editor? The reason is very subtle - and not easy to spot. Blogger page / post editor is very elegant, with no feature being colourfully different. Most people compose their posts in Compose mode - and don't use HTML Mode, except for specific needs - or maybe by accident. And the people who don't use HTML mode, intentionally, can't always spot the difference, in the mode selector buttons.

One subject of mystery, in Blogger lore, concerns the infamous "bX" codes . One forum personality, long ago, compiled a blog listing several hundred known codes, and their supposed "diagnoses" - and would later use the blog as a reference, when advising how to solve a given "bX problem". That same person showed complete lack of understanding, in a single sentence. It's disheartening to see that the bx error code problems are still existing. The "bX" codes are not problems - they are simply symptoms of problems , identified using a canonical code structure.

Some blog owners report various discrepancies, and oddities, with Stats and its various components . A few owners find that the Popular Posts gadget, that supposedly will display any selected number (1 - 10) of the most popular posts for a blog during a given time period, is sometimes short the number selected. With only 6 posts displayed out of 8 posts selected, it is possible that the desired 8 posts may be displayed - if 10 posts are selected, and the display is refreshed. On the other hand, with only 9 posts displayed out of 10 posts selected, it's not possible to increase the selection to 11, to compensate for the "missing" post.

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.

We've been seeing occasional reports of problems, vaguely described in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , referencing posts being overwritten by other posts. I have been working on my post, for days. This morning, I opened it, to edit - and discovered that it now contains material from another, newer post! How do I recover my older post? The answer is simple. You can't. Blogger is not a Content Management System - and when you destroy a post, it's gone. This report is a bit annoying. We can suspect that there is a problem - but we get no clue how to prevent the same disaster from destroying our own blog.

Occasionally in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , we see a report of template inconsistency, in the Tabs Menu. Most of the tabs links work fine - the pages pop right up. The two tabs on the far right, you can't click them and they don't act as links. When we check the published blog code , the pages gadget looks normal - the two tabs reported just, mysteriously, refuse to operate.

A few blog owners become concerned about how their blogs are indexed - and why the search hit lists, that point to their posts, point to archive or main pages - instead of the individual post pages. "www.mydomain.com/2015_01_01_archive.html" , "www.mydomain.com/2014_12_01_archive.html", and similar URLs are part of the same URL structure as "www.mydomain.com" - and as "www.mydomain.com/2015/02/whatever.html". They aren't harmful to the blog search engine reputation. They are annoying, though. When I setup this blog, long ago - and would find my posts listed in index pages, they used to annoy me, too.

This week, we're seeing a noticeable increase in reports about problems with reading list content. People are, once again, reporting empty reading lists - and many deny the suggestion that computers used by the readers might have anything to do with the problem. Neither filtered cookies / scripts, nor using the wrong Blogger account, appears to be involved in some of this weeks problems. One account owner reported having cleaned her Reading List - and after having removed just one entry from the list, the Reading List content became visible, again. This suggests that the owner may be following too many blogs - or possibly, following one blog which recently increased feed size. Either could be true, based upon the common complaint. I didn't change anything! It just stopped working, last week, on its own!!

Everybody who has owned or read a Blogger blog, for more than a week, surely knows about the infamous bX codes - and has probably asked how to fix one. Some people have fixed one - but immediately, seen another. Others have seen theirs go away, then later discovered that the blog is broken. Some folks see the errors as major problems, others minor annoyances . it's disheartening to see that the bx error code problems are still existing. Not everybody realises that the codes are not the problems - they are simply a method to identify the problems. Many Blogger problems cannot be identified easily in language.

We're seeing the occasional evidence of concern, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , from people who spend too much time examining their StatCounter logs. Why do I see "62.210.181.15:3130", in my StatCounter logs, as a referring site - reported as unknown "pool IP proxy" - and showing full BlogSpot.com and other sites' content? This sounds scary - but it's not.

Sometimes, when diagnosing a problem which involves cache, you may be advised to "clear cache" - or possibly, "clear cache, cookies, and sessions". Instructions, to do either, may vary according to the problem being diagnosed. Unfortunately, clearing "cache" or clearing "cache, cookies, and sessions", for problems which involve cache, may not always solve the problem at hand. If you have a problem when viewing your blog - or if you wish to immediately refresh your personal view of your blog, you might clear "cache" . If you have a problem with your Blogger dashboard - maybe when switching between Draft and Production Blogger, on the other hand, you would want to clear "cookies". Whenever you clear cookies, you should clear cache, also - so, if you have a problem when maintaining or publishing your blog , you will be advised to clear "cache, cookies, and sessions" .