The Real Blogger Status

We have a small number of blog owners reporting problems using Blogger. My Blogger dashboard shows Oops! You don't seem to have a suitable Google+ Profile. You can go to Google+ to configure your profile, or switch to a limited Blogger Profile for use with Blogger. If you use a Google+ Profile, please ensure that it meets the Google+ Community Standards . I have a very active Google+ Following, Why is my profile not acceptable?

One of the more irritating Blogger problem codes is seen a lot by people who use some versions of Internet Explorer (and oddly, by some users of Chrome and Firefox). I keep getting this, any ideas?? Whoops, that's an error! (bX-w7tr63) Recently, we see the suggestion, that there is an end in sight.

This week, we're seeing a few reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , mentioning a badly shortened dashboard Reading List. When I want to read the list of the blogs I follow, I can only see 1 blog, instead of the usual 30. When I click on "Show more", nothing happens. A brief affinity analysis , of current forum reports, suggests that the affected blog owners are using Draft Blogger.

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 .

Right now, we have several different problems, being reported in quantity, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken . Image / video upload. Stats, and the "Don't track your own pageviews" option. Some specific bX codes, and miscellaneous network issues. Recently, the problems with image and video uploads were reported to Blogger Support - and eventually, we got a monolithic response Use draft.blogger.com. In other cases, we've been told Stop using Draft Blogger! The contents of Draft Blogger, and its differences from Production Blogger varies, at the convenience of Blogger Engineering.

We're seeing a number of blog owners, reporting a new problem with their Blogger dashboards, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken . I am seeing an new error in the Live Preview section of the Template Designer. The following errors were found: isExperimental : Required field must not be blank Upon examination of the URL window in the browser, the source of the problem is seen. draft.blogger.com /blogger.g?blogID=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx#templatehtml It appears that we are seeing one more reason why routine use of Draft Blogger is not a good idea.

Occasionally, in answering a problem report in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken which involves custom domain publishing , or the Post Editor , or maybe template editing , we'll start by simply advising the blog owner to revert to the Classic GUI . Click on the Gear icon, and select "Old Blogger interface". Even when reverting to the Classic GUI is an acceptable - and effective - solution, we may not always get a positive response. Where is the Gear icon? or I don't have a selection for "Old Blogger interface"! Sometimes, this is not purely from the blog owner, balking at the unwanted change.

Ever since Google+ was released, blog owners have been asking how to post blog updates to Google+. Previously, there was only the possibility of publishing from Google+ to our blogs - and that option was not well designed . Last week, Blogger released this option , in Draft Blogger. Today we’re excited to announce the first way you will be able to leverage Google+ -- by making it possible to replace your Blogger profile with your Google+ profile. In addition to giving your readers a more robust and familiar sense of who you are, your social connections will see your posts in their Google search results with an annotation that you've shared the post.

As people are starting to use the New GUI (2011) , we're seeing questions about apparent restrictions on labels, in the new post editor. Why can't I use an apostrophe in my labels? and Why can't I have a label "Red & Blue" any more? Not all blog owners appreciate the special nature of certain characters, in HTML. Nevertheless, we are all affected by how these special characters are treated.

The New Blogger GUI (2011) has been publicly available for less than a month , and we are seeing signs of confusion, in various queries in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? . People asking for help are not always sure which GUI version they are using - and many answers needed are dependent upon the version in use being known, for proper help to be provided.

Many blog owners have been asking for a selection of less boring fonts for their blogs. It would be so nice to have more default font styles. I know that you can edit them in your HTML, but that is a tedious template editing process. Blogger has been listening, and recently, Blogger responded . The Web has traditionally been pretty limited when it comes to font selection, especially for non-Latin alphabets such as Cyrillic and Greek. But great strides have been made in this arena by our friends on the Google Web Fonts team, and finally there are more choices out there than just Arial and Times New Roman. You'll find an improvement to the typical Font list, in the Template Designer Advanced wizard - accessed using the "Customize" button, on the "Template" dashboard page . Boring! Better! If you like, you can even add wizards to the Template Designer - and improve colors, fonts, and other settings even more.

For some time now, Blogger has supported use of mobile devices, for posting to our blogs. Picture blogs, containing photos taken with your camera phone, are a popular activity for many bloggers. Mail-To-Blogger , which used an email client instead of the browser based Post Editor, sent in many different formats and protocols, was the beginning. Now, we have the ability to post directly from our smart phones. You can enable Mobile Posting, for your blog, from Settings - Email & Mobile - Posting Options. Blogger provides detailed instruction, in Blogger Help: How does Blogger Mobile work? . Recently, Blogger added mobile client support, so your readers can enjoy your blog from their mobile devices. Now, new templates will include special formats designed to work better with small mobile screens. In Draft Blogger , under Settings - Email & Mobile, we have Mobile Template, where you can now enable use of a new mobile template for your blog. To make you comfortable befor...

Now that the designer templates have been available for a couple months , and they are becoming "just another option" that's used by some (maybe not all) bloggers, we are starting to see some confusion expressed. The CSS code in designer templates, used in defining colors, fonts, and template objects, is considerably more complex. One of the first discoveries made was that "Fonts and Colors" can't be used to adjust font and color settings, for Designer template blogs. Not all functionality is available, in any one wizard, however. Fonts and Colors have to be changed, using the Template Designer - Advanced wizard. New Gadgets have to be added using "Page Elements", because the Template Designer - Layout wizard lacks the "Add a Gadget" link found in "Page Elements". Gadgets can be re positioned on the screen, using either the "Page Elements" or "Template Designer" - Layout wizards. Right now, it looks l...

The new Designer Templates were released over a month ago , and still not everybody knows how to access them. Almost daily, we see the plaintive query Where in my Blogger settings can I access the new Blogger template designer? and to be sure, it seemed, at one time, a bit tricky. (Update 2010/06/10): The Template Designer is now a production Blogger feature . The Template Designer is now part of Production (Orange) Blogger, and is accessible from the dashboard "Template" page - or the navbar "Design" link. If you click on "Design" from the navbar, you get the "Template" page, where you find the "Customize" button. There it is - "Template Designer". Just login to Blogger , click on "Template", and hit the "Customize" button. You can't miss it.

One point of contention , repeatedly echoed in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , is Bring back spell checker! and Where is the video upload icon in new post editor? I've been explaining these omissions for a while, and sometimes feel like Sisyphus as I do so. Well recently, I learned that this may be history sometime soon. If you are able to use Draft (Blue) Blogger , you can now enjoy both spell check and video upload, and new post editor , together. Just remember that the Draft features are only seen if you use the dashboard. If you use the "New Post" link in the navbar, you will get the features of Production (Orange) Blogger - either classic post editor with old photo capabilities, or new post editor without spell check / video upload. >> Top

As many bloggers discover the new and shiny features offered in New Blogger June 2008 , currently being tested in Draft Blogger, some decide This is all that I need! and don't look back. They go to their Draft Blogger dashboard , and select Make Blogger in Draft my default dashboard. Some of the latter decide later that the grass is not quite so green, after all. Unfortunately, getting back into the other pasture with the main herd isn't always possible. Although I unchecked the box, it will not go back to the normal Blogger dashboard. This I find very frustrating. There may be a workaround to the problem , though. If you go into Draft Blogger and click on View Blog....when your blog opens...right up at the top right hand side...click on New Post and it should open in Blogger. Essentially, load the blog from the "View Blog" link in the dashboard. From there, you can get into post editor using The "New Post" link in the navbar. The Customize ( - Posting) l...

Most web pages that you will view on the Internet are written in HTML. HTML, or Hypertext Markup Language , was designed long ago to enhance simple text, giving it ability to display more than simple letters, numbers, special characters, etc. What you're looking at is mostly simple text. Here, on the other hand, is an example of bold text . And here, italicised text . And here, red text . Are you interested yet?

For years, bloggers have complained about the inability / complexity of displaying HTML code in a blog post. Being told to display "<" as "&lt;" and ">" as "&gt;" confuses many folks - it's not easy typing "&lt;" and "&gt;" - and it's still harder to type "&amp;lt;" and "&amp;gt;", which is how you display "&lt;" and "&gt;", respectively. Don't ask me to go any deeper.

I use "<pre> ... </pre>" blocks in my posts a lot, as a way to highlight code examples and log outputs. Unlike blockquotes, preformatted blocks preserve indentation in the material highlighted, and with both code and log listings, indentation (horizontal spacing) is as an important part of the display as is line spacing (vertical spacing). Earlier this month, I showed how the corrected (finally!) vertical line spacing issue had been corrected, and how easily you can tweak the line spacing for elements like pre-formatted blocks. At that time, vertical line spacing for pre-formatted blocks was predictable, and could be tweaked. Since that time and just before the (mostly Draft) New Blogger June 2008 release, vertical line spacing changed. You can see the problem, in Blogger Spacing Issue Fixed - June 2008 . When I wrote that post, the code displayed, as I describe farther down in the post as tighter vertical spacing (1.2em) Now, it's not tighter. Coming jus...

It appears that, in their push to launch (in Draft, mostly ) New Blogger June 2008, Blogger overlooked one significant challenge. This month, Mozilla released V3.0 of their popular browser, Firefox. Various bloggers are reporting odd problems using Blogger, and seem to connect the installation of the new version of Firefox with the start of their problems. Several bloggers have complained that the links that switch between "Compose", "Edit HTML" , and "Preview" modes are inoperative. Other Bloggers are missing toolbar buttons, or find that some toolbar buttons don't do anything. These are scripting problems, that have been observed from time to time . Note that Firefox V3.0, like V2.0 before it, was a major update. The Firefox V3.0 install doesn't require any complicated procedures - it just goes right over V2.x. Anybody with any experience with computers - either programming, software support, or user support, knows that installing one versio...