The Real Blogger Status

Owners of private blogs have, periodically, lamented the lack of options for distribution of comments and posts. We've seen a few queries, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger . How do I let my readers subscribe to my private blog? There's no good answer, to please everybody, here. You can't use EMail, FeedBurner, or Reading List, for sharing private blog content. FeedBurner requires the blog comments / posts newsfeeds - and private blogs don't produce newsfeeds .

We see occasional concern about providing email subscriptions, from blog owners in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . How do I provide email subscriptions for my blog? Follow by Email does not work! The blog in question is using a dynamic template - and it appears that the blog owner is out of luck.

Some blog owners have reported in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , about broken email distribution. There are various ways to distribute Blogger blog content, to email . For those unable or unwilling to use FeedBurner Email Distribution , one popular alternative is Google Groups.

Some blog owners use email, to distribute blog content - and like the post summarisation technique, Jump Break. We see occasional hopeful questions, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger , about Jump Break, in emailed post content. How do I use Jump Break, in my posts email subscriptions? This is one need that probably won't be solved, precisely as requested.

Sometimes, blog owners need complicated and conflicting feed setups, for multiple uses. One blog owner asks I want a email blog posts feed, using snippets of the posts, so my email subscribers will click on the snippets and read the blog itself. I would prefer that newsfeed readers have the option to read the entire post, in their readers. At first glance, this is an impossible request. FeedBurner can't do two things, with one feed. Fortunately, FeedBurner, like most Google services, is free - and there's no limit to the number of feeds that you can make.

We've been using FeedBurner Email Distribution for years, to provide a turnkey email based publication distribution . With any email distribution system, the most essential function, in list management, is to add and remove subscriber entries. FeedBurner gives you that ability - if you look, carefully.

FeedBurner Email Distribution takes any Atom / RSS newsfeed, and sends it out, as email , to all subscribed recipients. One FeedBurner feed is generated, when you add The "Follow by Email" gadget, to your blog. Like all FeedBurner Email accessories, email is distributed once daily, as selected by the feed owner.

We see regular signs of confusion, about the various Followers communities, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . My blog still shows 0 Followers. I know this is not correct - because I am one, at a different email address, and so are friends and family. This blog owner does not understand the differences between the communities, and following options.

We've seen a few reports in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , mentioning mysteriously resurrected posts, appearing in email or on peoples desktop displays. When investigated, the blog owner will observe that a new post, which had been originally published after the one mysteriously appearing, was recently deleted. Further investigation shows that the mysterious post, that just re appeared, was the 26th most recently published post.

We're seeing a few problem reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , mentioning problems with the blog feed. I try to claim my blog in BlogLovin, but they tell me that my feed is invalid! or My subscribers stopped getting my posts by email!! Both BlogLovin, and the FeedBurner "Follow by Email" service, depend upon the blog posts newsfeed.

We see occasional questions from blog owners, and readers, about options for reading posts, from a given blog. The most obvious way to read the posts is to read the blog, as published, online. If the owner of a blog that interests you uses Google+ publicity , reading either online, or in the Google+ stream, may be your choice. For Blogger hosted content, both owners and readers have a few more possibilities.

We see occasional questions from blog owners, and readers, about options for reading comments, and comment updates, from a given blog. The most obvious way to read comments - or replies to comments - is to read the individual posts. If a blog that interests you uses Google+ hosted comments , reading either on the post, or in the Google+ stream, may be your choice. For Blogger hosted comments. both owners and readers have a few more possibilities.

If you use GMail for your email, you may have seen the opportunities in GMail Settings, which let you manage and use multiple email accounts. GMail lets you use both GMail, and non GMail, email accounts from one - or from different - GMail desktops. This lets you manage multiple email identities from one single GMail account - and gives you opportunities to cause yourself various problems.

We've been discussing the problem of email filtering , and missing email, for some time. Some blog members / owners are certain that their missing email isn't caused by filters. I looked in "Bulk" / "Spam"! The email isn't there, either - it simply does not get delivered!! These people are certain that Blogger just is not sending the email. In some cases, the problem is not with "Bulk" / "Spam" filters - it is with anti-spoofing filters - and email detected as spoofed, generally, is "bounced".

One devious way of attacking people, before the Internet, was to drown them in mail, such as unwanted magazines. Long ago, people with too much available time would fill out forms in their victims name - and subscribe her / him to assorted unwanted magazines. Nowadays, one might do that with email, to people unwise enough to publicise their account name or email address . Blogger has similar options that may let us annoy people, also - possibly, inadvertently .

One very useful FeedBurner service is the Email Distribution feature. Email Distribution is virtually a turnkey subscription management . Email Distribution has one limitation, which not everybody understands, however. FeedBurner delivers any new posts once daily, based on a chosen distribution time. Depending upon what distribution time you choose, for any FeedBurner Feed, you can have anywhere from 0 hours, to 24 hours - of delay, between publishing a post, and having that post distributed by email.

Those of you who have been Following this blog, in the past, may have recently noted a new gadget in the sidebar. Just below the "Follow Me" gadget, you'll see "+Follow Me". The latter gadget looks similar to the former - but has some subtle differences. Some differences are visible, others not so visible. And some differences are not visible to the eye - but will still affect your access to this blog.

Some blog owners don't always think about the various email settings, which are part of their Blogger blogs, and the possible effects to their email - or somebody else's email. There are several settings, where a blog owner may enter an email address. Email posts to Comment Moderation. Comment Notification Email. These settings don't require acceptance by the recipient, making for some interesting possibilities for causing problems in other people's email , as well as one's own email.

One constant activity in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken involves blog owners whose blogs were deleted - either righteously or spuriously - as part of the ongoing battle against spam , in Blogger blogs. Generally, the problem comes directly from the blog content . Sometimes, the problem is more subtle. When I tried to login to Blogger, I got a screen that said my account needed to be verified, due to "unusual activity on my account". Having verified my account, I see that my blogs have been deleted. This is part of one of the more intriguing episodes, in the never ending fight against hacking and spam , in Blogger.

Ever since Blogger gave us the ability to have team blogs , blog owners have been asking How do I track what my authors are posting? as if Blogger blogs have an audit trail option. The unfortunate truth is that Blogger is a website publishing platform - it is (or was, at one time) called Blogger One Button Publishing Blogger, quite simply, is not a Content Management System . However, even if Blogger does not provide a packaged audit trail, which would be a standard feature in any CMS, this does not mean that we cannot set one up, with very little work. If you publish a team blog (or a single owner blog), you already have this option.