The Real Blogger Status

In a separate project, I was updating this blog - and in previewing my changes, I observed the familiar demur We're sorry. This gadget is configured incorrectly. ... In the sidebar, underneath "Follow Me". That sight made me wonder if the Followers gadget, when viewed in the live blog, would again work properly - when recently, I had begun wondering if the gadget would ever work, again . And, when I investigated, I found my musings were correct.

Last week, Google turned off the long deprecated Google Feed API . Among many Blogger features that were affected , were 4 identified gadgets. Feed Newsreel Slideshow Video Bar Several days after the API was turned off, Google realised their mistake, and turned it back on again. The Newsreel gadget, unfortunately, remains out of service - and we have seen many reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue .

Most of us who compose pages and posts in HTML mode are accustomed to the annoyance of the (Page / Post) Editor HTML syntax checker. Proper HTML syntax depends upon correctly paired HTML tags. You enter an opening tag, without a closing tag - and within seconds, the syntax checker pops up and alerts you to your mistake. You then enter a closing tag, and all is well. This might be a normal event, when formatting the page / post title . Until this week, the syntax checker gave us a brief one or two line advice, at the top of the page. Now, we see a full screen page of random text - and in some cases, no way to continue. The error message fills the screen, and we can't see the editor window - so we can't finish what we were doing.

We are seeing an increasing number of reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , about problems accessing various dashboard features. Recently I have faced a problem on my blogs dashboard. The problem is Invalid Security Token Error 403 How do I solve this? This blog owner faces the latest variant of the long feared monolithic error, "403 Forbidden".

The Stats "Don't track ..." option continues to draw complaints. Various blog owners have recently complained, anew, that the previously reported low level problem is now affecting their blogs. The two problems, though having a common primary symptom, appear to have different victim populations. The previous problem seemed to primarily affect custom domain published blogs, this problem may be BlogSpot only. This problem, according to a majority of the blog owners reporting, appears to have started during the last two to three weeks. It may be wise, therefore, to treat this as a new problem.

This week, we have a number of reports , in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , from blog owners who like to monitor the Google+ +1 counts, for their posts, using the dashboard Posts list. The ability to observe, at a glance, the +1 count for any given group of posts is useful - and popular with some folks. I use it, myself, with newer posts in this blog. Unfortunately, my Posts list shows no +1 counts for recent posts, for some Posts lists.

We have numerous problem reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , about a problem with the "Deleted blogs" section of the dashboard. I can't restore my deleted blog! and I can't request spam review! These owners are concerned, because the "Restore" and "Review" buttons appear to be broken. Nothing happens, when clicked.

This week, we're seeing a few reports from anguished blog owners, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . My blog was deleted for spam, and I can't request review because the dashboard button doesn't work! This blog owner is being hit by a double whammy - first, a spurious spam classification; and second, inability to request review of the blog, falsely accused, using the dashboard.

We are seeing an abrupt flood of reports from Blogger blog owners who have accepted Google+ Comments, in their blogs. It appears that Blogger has fixed the observed problem with the Comment Count not displaying - and has possibly at the same time, broken Google+ Comments, in general.

We have seen a significant number of reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , again mentioning inability to post to our blogs using EMail / Phone / SMS. The problem appears to have started several days ago - but was quiet for a while, and has been rather noticeable today.

In February, we observed that various blog owners were reporting problems with updating label and link lists . We setup a problem rollup in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , where we observed a small but significant number of reports from unhappy blog owners, unable to update the gadgets on their blogs. Last month, Blogger Support supposedly resolved the reported problem, and the volume of problem reports dropped significantly. The problem, however, has not been eliminated.

The problem of publishing our blog posts to FaceBook, initially observed several days ago , has generated some controversy - and much confusion, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken . Suggestions about its base cause are numerous - and variant. Initially and at first glance, it appeared to involved posts containing lots of pictures. Some folks have suggested that it involves use of the New GUI Post Editor. Other folks insist that it's the result of a FaceBook decision, that may have targeted Blogger as a spam host. Still others insist that it results from use of the Share button in the blog, vs the "Update Status" wizard in FaceBook itself. One blog owner gave a very interesting explanation involving FaceBook, and Open Graph. The problem has been reported to Blogger Support - though no response, to my report, has yet been seen. My asking, a few times, whether anybody has successfully reported the problem to FaceBook Support, has either been ignored or vigou...

During the past weekend, we started seeing a number of reports in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , from blog owners who participate in FaceBook, and who can't publish their blog posts to their FaceBook Wall. The problem appears to be common to both publishing using the "Share to FaceBook" button in the blog post (within Blogger), as well as the Wall posting wizard (within FaceBook).

Today, we're getting a few reports in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , from blog owners who setup blog clusters , with the cluster members linked using tabs in the Pages gadget - who suddenly found their clusters unlinked. The different page tabs on my blog redirect to my same blog!

For several days now, we've seen various reports from anxious Blogger blog owners, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , lamenting the lack of detail information in their Stats logs. My Stats logs does not show the page views for particular posts. This is just one example, of the many ways that blog owners perceive, and report , the ongoing problem.

Last week, blog owners discovered a new problem with commenting on their blogs. I keep enabling comments on my pages, but Blogger keeps disabling them! From having observed the reports of the problem, it appears to affect all blogs - both varying template type, and use of the different GUIs (Classic and New 2011), appear to be referenced. Blogger Support has acknowledged the problem . Thanks everyone for your patience, we're hoping to have a fix rolled out shortly. (Update 10/19): This has been corrected. (Update 11/09): Today, we see a new problem with static pages and comments - this one involving dynamic views. >> Top

Now that support for "legacy" Blogger accounts (accounts created before 2005, without Google account association) ends after this month , blog owners are trying to catch up. Some blog owners are reporting that, when trying to use the "Forgot?" wizard , they are seeing bX-2uckqc Blogger Support has accepted responsibility of the problem, and announced yesterday We're investigating reports of users seeing bX errors when using the recovery form found at http://blogger.com/forgot.g (Update 10/13): This code has been resolved . I was finally able to recover my blogs. >> Top

We've seen a few reports today, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , from blog owners who can't login, or load their dashboard. What does bX-1tj3ze mean?

After several anxious weeks of uncertainty, many people who publish blogs that use non Roman characters are happy to see that the Transliteration feature has been restored to availability. From the Classic Blogger GUI, Settings - Basic - Global Settings, we see a full array of supported languages. Alternatively, from the New Blogger GUI, the menu is at Settings - "Language and formatting".

Owners of Asian language blogs have been recently asking, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken Why can't I publish in Hindi (Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, ...) any more? (Update 2011/07/20): The Transliteration feature has been returned to availability .