The Real Blogger Status

We're seeing a number of reports from blog owners, claiming their blogs are now subject to security alerts - and blocked when sharing. Frequently, the reports involve blogs published to "blogspot.com" (not custom domains) - and using the "www" alias. Some services, such as FaceBook, are now requiring "https" for shared URLs - and the "www" alias of "blogspot.com" ("www.whatever.blogspot.com") can't be used, with the "https" protocol.

Not every blog owner understands the effect of a Blogger URL change, in FaceBook - and the resulting popularity of the blog . I am planning on changing my blog name and redirecting my blogger blog to a custom domain. Why would that affect my Facebook followers? A Blogger URL change won't affect your FaceBook Followers directly. Your existing Followers can continue to Follow your blog, under the BlogSpot URL - and under the custom domain URL - as it is Liked, and shared, in FaceBook. The Likes count affects the possibility of a share, of a post in your blog, to attract new Followers.

As both custom domain publishing, and social sharing networks, become normal with many blogs, we see anguish when blog owners change the URLs of their blogs, without planning for the effects of the change . What happened to my Likes? This blog owner - and many others - do not realise that FaceBook counts Likes, based on the URL, not the blog. FaceBook Likes, and Google+ +1s, are counted by URL - and are not controlled by DNS redirection, or simple name changes. If you rename your blog, you get a new URL with a new popularity counter , in FaceBook and Google+.

Some blog owners can't get their new FaceBook gadgets to work, on their blogs. We see the occasional report, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . The blog won't accept the code that Facebook Developer generated for me. Adding HTML gadgets - and HTML gadgets using FaceBook code - can be frustrating. But, it's possible.

Blogger Engineers recently added Blogger template code, to provide images in shares to FaceBook. The added code is included in the standard template header. If you have a custom template, you may need to verify template header content . If you have added the previously recommended Open Graph Code to your blog, to allow Open Graph based post / photo sharing - and you use the FaceBook Developers Debugger tool , you may see a new diagnostic suggestion.

Some blog owners make photos an important part of blog content. When sharing a post to FaceBook, problems are seen with photo content. In some cases, this is because of how the photos were added into the post, when using Post Editor. We've known about problems with photos installed using drag and drop, and post editor, for a few years. Drag and Drop photos, in some cases, are stored as "Base64" content - with the photo content hosted in the post , instead of Google Photos (or Picasa).

There is some confusion, about including "search description" meta content , in blog template code, to provide source for data shares to social sharing sites. In various topics in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , I've seen references to "data:post.metaDescription", "data:post.snippet", and "data:post.pageTitle" used, in providing the blog post source for the FaceBook "og:description" tag. As far as I can tell, none of these exist.

We have a few blog owners, reporting problems with sharing their blogs to FaceBook. When I share my blog on FaceBook, the photo from the blog doesn't appear. Some blurry pencil appears instead. What the blog owner is seeing, is the effect of the FaceBook Share wizard, grabbing an unwanted photo, from the page being shared. You have 2 choices, if you want to share blog content to FaceBook - and have it all look attractive. Publish every post, containing a photo that FaceBook will want to use. Add FaceBook Open Graph code, to your blog.

We've recently seen a few blog owners, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , report their blogs being classified for phishing. Today my blog was locked due to "phishing": Hello, Your blog at http://xxxxxxx.blogspot.com/ has been reviewed and confirmed as in violation of our Terms of Service for: PHISHING. In accordance to these terms, we've removed the blog and the URL is no longer accessible. No, there was no phishing in this blog - and no, I didn't change or add anything to it recently, that could trigger a false detection or report.

How many of you have used your favourite Internet application recently - and received a convenience login suggestion? To continue, please tell us who you are! Login with your FaceBook, Google, or Twitter account. Many small business Internet services, instead of making you setup one more unknown account, are letting you login, and use their product, based on your FaceBook, Google, or Twitter account. This is not a magical concept. It requires a lot of work, to make this happen.

Adding a FaceBook developed gadget is - or should be - just like adding any HTML / JavaScript gadget . Sometime, though, adding a FaceBook gadget just does not produce hoped for results. We see the problem reports in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . The gadget is blank! or The gadget does not update anything! The problems will typically involve gadget code - and the FaceBook Debugger wizard is unlikely to provide any help.

Sometimes, in the progress of integrating a FaceBook Wall with our blog , we may face a problem which involves FaceBook Open Graph code . FaceBook error displays can be as mysterious as Blogger error displays . But, there is hope - provided by FaceBook Developers.

If there is anything more obnoxious than the FaceBook "Like my blog!" popup window , it's a FaceBook "Like my blog!" window, preceded by a generic popup window. It's possible that a blog which starts with two popup windows, one followed by a second, represents a blog owner who honestly wants people to enjoy her (his) blog. Even so, a blog that starts out this way is going to present a security analysis challenge, at best. Seeing the growing popularity of the FaceBook popup (among blog owners, anyway), it's possible that the security scanning processes will, eventually, find a way to bypass the FaceBook code, and continue scanning. This may avoid some spurious malware classifications - if FaceBook developers can find a way to certify a genuine FaceBook popup.

Among blog accessories that are not going to get you good reputation, I can't think of very many more obnoxious than the FaceBook "Like my blog, before you read it!" demand. Currently popular with some WordPress blogs, this is yet another blog accessory that will eventually get the blog deleted, as a possible malware host . Useful Blogger blog readers look for blogs with informative, interesting, and unique content. Hiding a blog behind a "Like my blog!" demand, to help you boost FaceBook popularity before the blog can be read, will not get you useful readers.

Many people who publish Blogger blogs also publish to FaceBook. Some have their own Wall, others post to friends Walls. We see occasional questions, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger , about the desire to combine the two products. How do I publish posts from my Wall to my blog? and How do I link my blog to my Wall? Like any combination of Blogger and non Blogger content, there are techniques to combine a Blogger blog, and a non Blogger website. Some techniques don't work - and others may work, but won't be good for the blog.

Since FaceBook is not a part of Google, they have concerns and problems which only they can deal with. Some problems with FaceBook affect our enjoyment of our blogs. Right now, there is a problem with aggregation of Likes and links , when our blogs are referenced in FaceBook - where all references should be properly "counted" under the common "blogspot.com" URL of each blog, instead of the individual country code aliases. FaceBook does provide a page to " Report a Problem " - and they have a " FaceBook Help Center " community page.

We're seeing a scattered collection of reports, mentioning problems publishing comments, using OpenID authentication. This problem appears to be related to the Blogger rollout of SSL support, for our blogs, which is currently in progress. SSL, or Secure Socket Layer, represents the next step in blog / website security - a step which the Internet community has been taking, for many years. Blogger has been using SSL (aka "HTTPS" login), in their dashboard, for several years. https://www.blogger.com That's a secure Blogger login. The problem with Blogger using SSL in our blogs is that moving to SSL requires care, to avoid confusing our readers. Lack of care will subject our readers to the well known "mixed mode" warnings . This site has insecure content. Only secure content is displayed. Firefox has blocked content that isn't secure. These are several examples of what were normal, years ago, on many websites. Blogger does not want our readers subje...

We're seeing a few questions recently, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , about FaceBook, and their treatment of Blogger URLs that are subject to local country domain redirection. When I share a post on FaceBook, the URL used for my blog ends with "blogspot.in" instead of "blogspot.com". Some people in Europe observe a variation. When I share a post on FaceBook, the URL used for my blog ends with "blogspot.nl" instead of "blogspot.com".

Similar to the Google Authorship feature , FaceBook provides an author identification feature. FaceBook uses " Open Graph " code to accomplish what Google provides, with simple back and forward links. The required FaceBook OG code is added to the blog template, as metadata. To add open graph FaceBook authorship identification to this blog, I added the necessary code to the blog template. You can do the same, with your blog.

This week, we're seeing a few concerned blog owners, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , asking about a mysterious SECURITY WARNING popup box, on their blogs. Like the earlier concern about the transparent boxes covering the blog , this appears to be another broken FaceBook Connect gadget.