The Real Blogger Status

This week, I added a gadget that's been needed, on this blog, for some time. You may see my new "Top" button, at the lower right corner of this blog. If you have a normally wide browser window, with wallpaper showing on either side of the posts / sidebar section, you'll see the new gadget floating on top of the wallpaper. If you have squeezed your browser window to save horizontal space, you may see the new gadget floating on top of the sidebar (but beneath the sidebar gadgets).

I've written about the simple procedure of transferring a blog from one Blogger account to another, and how simple it should be . Sometimes reality steps in - and the normal transfer procedure won't work. Maybe you don't want your EMail (GMail) address known by the current blog owner. Maybe the two EMail addresses are thoroughly tangled - you invite the second EMail address as a blog member but just don't get the email - even in "Bulk" or "Spam"! What to do? Maybe you opened the invitation email under one account, but were logged in to Blogger using the other account . This can happen if you execute the transfer, using just one browser . Sometimes, having ignored one or two basic (to me) rules of Blogger account existence , you just can't send a membership invitation to a second Blogger account.

Ever since Blogger launched its Following product, in September 2008, enthusiasm has been ever increasing. Last month, when Blogger Following and Google Friend Connect were integrated, a lot of confusion was generated. It used to be really easy to become a Follower, I would just click on the "Follow publicly" selection, and that was all there was to it. But lately when I try to Follow, it doesn't end up listing the site I'm Following in my "Blogs I Follow" section on my site, and it doesn't list my blog on my Follower page. Back in August, when Following was first launched, some of us were concerned about several privacy issues . Maybe the choice to selectively display some (or all) blogs as Followed, to our other Followed and Followers, or even to the Blogosphere in general, would be good. We appear to have choices now, in visibility. We can choose To Not Be Seen , in various options. This will mitigate some previously anticipated issues . If we wan...

Last year, Blogger announced an exciting improvement in Blogger blogs - the ability to export and import blog content (comments / posts) between Blogger blogs (as long as you have administrative access to both blogs). At the time, that was interesting, but not so useful, as only Blogger blog content was supported by the process.

For a long time, blog owners have been asking for the ability to transfer blog contents - comments and posts - from blog to blog. Last week, Blogger announced that feature recently added to Production Blogger. Today’s release features a brand new graduate from the Blogger in Draft testing ground: Import and Export for Blogger blogs.

A few days ago, I witnessed a transient implementation of a feature that many bloggers have been asking Blogger for, for quite a while. With any blog of any decent size, almost everybody has a few posts that really should be removed. But who has the patience to delete each post, one at a time? Until today, that would be how you would delete multiple posts - one post, then another, and another. Not now. I select 3 posts to be deleted. I hit the "Delete Selected" button, and get a simple yet serious warning. I hit the "OK" button, and now they are gone. Quick, and easy. >> Top

I was just routinely loading a short list in my "Edit Posts" screen, and in this case a list that didn't fill up the entire screen. This left the bottom of the screen visible. And, I spied two new bits of colour at the bottom, that I never saw before. It didn't look like an April Fools joke. But before I could try it out, it was gone. Watch your screens - I bet it will be back. It's just not here, right now. Thanks for the rush, Blogger. (Update 12/10): I was right - it came back . Looks permanent, now. >> Top

Scheduling a post, to publish in the future, is not at all a difficult task. Before you hit the "Publish Post" button, simply select the "Post Options" link just above that button, and change the date and / or time to some time in the future. Then, hit the button. If it takes effect, when you hit the button, instead of getting the Your blog post published successfully! screen, you'll see the "Edit Posts" menu, with your new post listed, but shown with the " scheduled " notation besides the date / time stamp. After the indicated date / time, refresh the "Edit Posts" screen, and you'll see that the post is now published. Or refresh the front page of the blog, and the newest post, just published, should be at the top. With dynamic publishing of the blog, you (or another blog reader) will have to do something in the way of reading the blog, to trigger the publishing. If you're like me, and like to publish posts with a ...

Look in the sidebar to the right. See the new accessories? This morning, I observed activity on both Blogger Support web pages Blogger Status and Known Issues for Blogger , so I added those feeds to the sidebar here. You are welcome to browse both sites in detail, and see the relative improvement that both show, as of yesterday. Being not born yesterday, I won't predict that we will see a complete immediate improvement in problem reporting. But this is a start. Let's hope that this continues. >> Top

One giant leap for Blogger kind? The answer to that question remains to be seen. However, it appears that Blogger is starting to do something about one problem - the frequently reported porn associated with the "Next Blog" link in the Navbar. Eventually, Blogger will be able to relax its heuristic spam blog detection, which will lighten the load of complaints about falsely detected blogs . With less complaints, Blogger Anti-Spam Team can focus on the real problem . Not bad for a Friday, especially considering yesterday's Wildfire . Thanks, Pete. Of course, we all know that this is just one symptom removed. The real problem remains. Blogger Support, apparently, being able to block all spam blogs from the "Next Blog" link is a start. It implies that they can identify the unwanted blogs. Individually identified false positives, unfortunately, will never happen. How many non-spam blogs will be blocked from "Next Blog" too? Since the "Next Blo...

This is a welcome improvement from the old ability to remove our own administrative ability , without knowing. Let's see if it works. See an improvement? "grant admin privileges" is way more obvious than "admin". So click on the link, and get a warning. So, we'll select "Grant Admin Privileges". Now, we have 2 administrators. Click on the link again. And now, the second and the key warning. Here, I hope that the default selection is "Cancel". Having observed the warning, we'll select "Revoke Admin Privileges". And now, we have one administrator again. A welcome improvement here, folks. >> Top

In the recent past, bloggers have complained of an inability to access Blogger, because it was displaying in a "foreign" language. The language seen would generally be the native language for that locale. Even advice to adjust the Profile Languages setting in the Dashboard was useless, because they didn't know the "foreign" spelling for their language. In one case, with a gentleman complaining from Thailand, I had no recourse but to suggest that he head to the nearest Thai Internet cafe, where he could hopefully find a friendly Thai native to show him the selection for "English", written in Thai. Some time later, I observed that this advice was not quite so necessary.

Any time you transfer a blog between administrator accounts, you always have at least one administrator . You will have to have both the source and target owning accounts active, for some time. Don't start this project, if you've lost the account name, or forgotten the password , on one of the accounts. Plan this process with some care.