The Real Blogger Status

Google makes changes to their software environment, constantly. This week, they deprecated the Google Feed API . Unfortunately, many Blogger gadgets require that feature to display feed content, on our blogs. This week, numerous reports about broken feeds, in various gadgets, are being seen, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . The broken feeds are a direct result of the deprecated API.

We're seeing a few queries recently, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , about a little used option in mobile blog publishing. Is "go.blogger.com" down? I'm trying to claim a mobile token, but having no success. This blog owner, like a few others, is trying to use a dying Blogger feature. "go.blogger.com", and MMS / SMS , was the Blogger solution for blog publishing using "mobile" phones, provided several years ago. SMS is a protocol used for sending text messages between computers, that was used on "mobile" phones, before most "mobile phones" became just pocket sized computers using "cellular" (3g, 4g, etc) networking.

One sign of confusion, seen occasionally in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? , involves the use of FTP - and options for updating our blogs. How do I publish my posts using an FTP desktop program? and How do I upload a custom home page (sitemap, .htaccess, etc)? People who are used to publishing a website see these options as a normal feature in any website maintenance process. Blogger, however, is a blogging platform - and provides none of these options.

Some Blogger blog owners have been confused about the role of FTP, in the Blogger world, for some time. Here's yet another instance where Blogger is different from many other website hosting services, on the Internet. With many website hosting services, you develop (and even debug / test) a website offline, then upload it to the hosting service, using File Transfer Protocol . That's what FTP is - a network protocol for moving files from computer to computer. And a website is a bunch of files. Blogger provides an online development and test environment. With Blogger, you create your entire website using Post Editor and accompanying utilities ("Settings", "Template Editor", etc). When you're done, your website is there, hosted in Google. No need for using FTP, to upload a website , after you created it.

Occasionally, it appears as if not all blog owners have gotten the message, just yet. For the record, here's my statement. FTP Publishing ended, in March 2010 . If you have a blog that is hosted externally, that you used to publish using FTP Publishing, your only option is to migrate to BlogSpot, or to Custom Domain Publishing . If you're interested in the search engine reputation, which is the product of most well maintained blogs with any history, you'll want to carefully consider the several options for migration . If you own a domain, and you have DNS control, then you can publish any Blogger blog to a non Blogger / Google URL, using custom domain publishing . >> Top