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.

People reporting a problem with blog access / performance, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , will be frequently advised to diagnose their problems using affinity / differential testing . Some diagnostic advice starts with simple instructions to " clear cache, cookies, and sessions ". Some people, alternately, advise "use a different browser" - and test as a reader. These different strategies, seemingly redundant, will frequently lead to different results.

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.

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 .

People worry about the Quick Edit icons - sometimes, needlessly. I was logged out - but I can still see the edit tools! or My visitor logs show people clicking on the "rearrange" links!! Fortunately, no matter what can be seen - or may be clicked - only administrators will get any result. I use the "rearrange" links for many blogs, frequently. The links are unbelievably useful, when instructing a blog owner how to remove a misbehaving gadget on her / his blog .

Every month, we see a concern about content theft or impersonation, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . I deleted my blog last year! Now, I see it online again, using my name - but it's not in my dashboard! or I renamed my blog, last month! Somebody else is publishing it, this month!! These former blog owners have discovered the unpleasant reality of never ending spammer activity. URL recycling (a feature begged for, by many), plus blog content and feed caching (a reality, with most blogs), can lead to spammer harvesting and resurrection. And in some cases, to identity theft.

Even after being able to find a deleted post in cache, and retrieve the BlogID / PostID , some blog owners may find themselves unable to restore a deleted post. Until Blogger gives us an actual recycle bin / trash can for deleted pages and posts, some deleted pages and posts just may not be re publishable. It appears that all deleted content is not retained consistently, similar to the legendary "90 days" for deleted blogs.

One of the easiest disasters, that you can make with a Blogger blog, is to delete a post. Every week, we see the anguish, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . I deleted my post, by mistake. How do I get it back? It's so easy to just hit "Yes", instinctively, after you hit "Delete" - and once it's done, you're done. Unlike many computer processes, Blogger has no recycle bin / trash can, for deleted pages or posts. Hit delete, then "Yes" - and it's gone, Jim. But maybe, not.

One popular Stats related accessory, which displays pageview information to the public, is the "Popular Posts" gadget. Popular Posts identifies from 1 to 10 of the most popular posts in the blog, by comparing Stats pageview counts. Optional parts of the display of each post are a snippet of text, and an ever popular thumbnail photo. Like many Stats features, blog owners have found imaginative uses for "Popular Posts" - and overlook the limitations of the gadget. Both the dynamic nature of Stats, and the timing of the various pageview count recalculations, create confusion, when Popular Posts is examined.

I've previously provided instructions for recovering a deleted page (static page) or post (dynamic page) . Retrieval of a deleted page / post involves editing the deleted page / post, using a URL which contains the BlogID, and the PageID / PostID. It's easy enough to get the BlogID - the source listing for any blog page will have multiple places where the BlogID can be found - but where can one find the PageID / PostID? The PageID / PostID can be found - given a small amount of effort, for any well indexed blog. Any cached copy, of the deleted page or post, will provide the PageID / PostID - once you know what to look for.

In some blogs, a popular accessory is a dynamic "similar posts" index, with image captioned links to other posts. Sometimes, the links can rival the usefulness of label lists. "Similar Posts" is not a Blogger feature - but there are several third party services which provide this feature, generally used in blogs which consistently use photos in the posts. This feature will be more useful, with photo rich blogs - and less useful, with label rich blogs, and blogs which link to other posts in text (like this blog).

Some blog owners like to validate their Stats displays, using third party visitor logs like StatCounter. Since Stats displays aggregated page view counts - not individual visitors - a blog owner will find many discrepancies between Stats and StatCounter. One observation might involve Stats indicating periods of no activity, where StatCounter shows an interesting visit. A visit, registered by StatCounter - but not by Stats - indicates an apparent problem with Stats. Or, so the blog owner might think.

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.

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" .

Occasionally, someone may publish a blog as private, invite / accept readers, then later decide that results are not as positive as desired. It's easy enough to change a blog, from Private to Public. Just go to the Permissions wizard, in the dashboard menu Settings - Basic, and change Blog Readers from "Private" to "Public". Unfortunately, this may not leave everybody able to access the blog. I made my blog public, last week. Some of my friends are now seeing Your current account does not have access to view this page. Why is this still an issue? The blog owner, in this case, is seeing the effect of cache, and authentication. In many cases, simple instructions to " clear cache, cookies, and sessions " may resolve this problem. This does not always work, however - and the mystery why it does not always work may frustrate us, almost as much as the original symptom.

Most of us, as we surf the Internet, are going to surf some websites, repeatedly. Everybody has favourite websites. When we surf the same website, over and over, some of what we do and see may not change a lot. To keep us from wasting our time, and generating unnecessary network traffic, our browsers keep track of the websites that we visit over and over, save records of what we do and copies of what we see, and note what has changed. The website content, stored locally, is known as "private" data.

One of the more intriguing subjects of confusion, about feed gadgets, involves gadgets with more feeds in the list then they are set to display. Occasionally, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , we see the petulant query Why does my blog disappear from (feed gadgets on) other peoples blogs? This confusion starts with the question of how often and when we update our blogs , as opposed to how often and when the other blog owners update their blogs. It continues with the little known effect of the difference between how many feeds are in the gadget list, as opposed to how many feeds the gadget is set to display.

Occasionally, in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? , we see a plaintive query How do I remove my blog from using Draft Blogger? Some blog owners use Draft Blogger because of a specific problem - then discover later, that use of Draft Blogger, in general, is not a good idea .

One of the stranger confusions, seen occasionally in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , refers to the posts feed, from our blog, displayed on other people's blogs. I just published a new blog post - but it does not show up on my friends blogs. Is there a problem, with my feed? When we investigate, the blog feed shows no problem. We display the feed in the browser, and compare with the blog main page - and everything on the main page is in the feed. It just does not show up on our friends feed gadgets. So, what's the problem here? Were we imagining a problem? No, it's not imagination.

For some time, we've been seeing reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , about blogs using blogs using dynamic views, which display incompletely , and lack specific features. Various blog owners have developed, and reported, a workaround to the problem, which involves using an unpublicised Blogger setting found in the template HTML code. This workaround sets a loading delay, known as Timeout . There are several different causes of the dynamic view problem - some varying by the different blogs, others varying by the blog viewers - and some, varying by the Blogger / Google infrastructure. None of the causes will be universal in effect. This will result in varying success, when using a static Timeout setting as a workaround for the problems.