The Real Blogger Status

Some blog owners install an email based "Contact Me" form on their blogs - then worry if the contact attempts are getting to them, when sent by their readers. Occasionally, blog readers may wonder if their contact forms, which they submit, are actually being read. In both cases, besides the chance that the messages are not being read because of a full email Inbox, there is the chance that the messages just are not getting to the email Inboxes. The Blogger supplied "Contact" form uses email for contact delivery - and this is where many contact delivery problems start. Whether you are a blog owner, or reader, these are issues which involve you.

Blog owners add the Blogger supplied Contact Form, then wonder about the details, and what options are available. The Blogger supplied "Contact Form" gadget provides a very basic form, with few options. There's not a lot to do or see.

When it comes to encouraging visits to your blog, by people who need help, a properly presented "Contact" form is a very useful feature. Some time ago, I used a comment form, and a specially written post, " Contact Me " (titled "Leave Comments Here"), to provide private contact . For this blog, with comment moderation before publishing, I simply read the unpublished comments published against my post "Contact Me", without publishing them. Time moved on, however - and various changes made by Blogger made my unpublished comments based contact form less useful.

Every day, we get various impassioned pleas from blog owners (active, former, and would be), in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? , requesting assistance. How do I get access to my blog, that I published 10 years ago? and How do I keep my blog from being visible in Google? and How do I contact the owner of a blog that was published 10 years ago (and never updated)? All of these are valid concerns - and answering one question sometimes involves referring to various other concerns .

In a recent statement in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? , Blogger has confirmed our right to publish our blogs anonymously . Our policies aren't pro-stalker, they are pro-respecting the privacy of user information. We simply can not release information without due process. Since this is a legal issue, you'll have to follow appropriate legal channels. Sorry we don't have an easier answer at this point, but I hope you can understand where we are coming from in terms of the importance of respecting privacy.

One way of providing a contact procedure for your readers to use, other than the suicidal "mailto:" link, is a picture with your email address on it . But there's a simpler contact form, available as a native Blogger tool, if your blog uses inline comments. Just write a post, designated as " General Comments ". Setup a link to the comment form under the post, and make the post a static page in the blog. See the right most entry in my menu bar above? Contact <a href="http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2005/06/leave-comments-here.html#comment-form">Contact Me</a> Now, enable either comment moderation (which you should use, anyway), or comment notification (if you're daring enough to not moderate), and provide your email address in the setting. Your email address absolutely won't be visible, anywhere, to the public. And you'll be contactable through comments, that you can publish or not, as you (or the reader) wish. If you ...

Many times, you'll see an interesting blog, and want to contact the owner. In other cases, you'll be unable to even see the blog, because it's private. Or maybe a popular blog, that you're used to seeing, has been deleted, or is now private. Or maybe you want to use a given URL, but that URL is already in use. How do you contact the owner then? In other cases, maybe somebody has left comments on your blog, you want to read his blog, but he's not providing any link. And, his profile doesn't show any published blogs. Can you figure out if he's actually published any?

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.

If you're a fan of the classical rock group Rolling Stones, you may remember their 1960's hit You Can't Always Get What You Want . Regardless, many Bloggers may decide to setup a blog based upon their favourite rock star (porn star, TV show, whatever). But when they select the URL of their choice, they see Oh noooooo! What do I do now?? So what to do now? Well, the obvious solution, for many, is to get into the Blogger Help Forum, and whine . there are tooo many users who sign up with blogger, and chose some url, which i wanted to use, and yet, they left the pages blank.. this led me to the final resort of choosing a very silly url for myself. Unfortunately, they are wasting time, as Blogger has explicitly stated in the Google Blogger Help database . Blogger accounts and Blog*Spot addresses do not expire. and again in Google Blogger Help online forum FAQ People claim blogs after years without use more often than you would think. That's whether any given blog was crea...