The Real Blogger Status

Recently, we've been seeing a number of reports in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , from people suddenly unable to login to Blogger and maintain or publish their blogs. It appears that more and more private network owners are converting their email and office applications suites, to use Google Apps / Docs. This gives the various employers and schools the ability to block people, using their email, from also using extraneous / unnecessary services like Blogger and YouTube - and encourages the employees and students to spend their time more productively. People with Blogger accounts, that are based on the converted email domains, are seeing problems accessing their blogs.

Recently, we've been seeing a number of reports in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , from people suddenly unable to login to Blogger and maintain or publish their blogs. It appears that more and more private network owners are converting their email and office applications suites, to use Google Apps / Docs. This gives the various employers and schools the ability to block people, using their email, from also using extraneous / unnecessary services like Blogger and YouTube - and encourages the employees and students to spend their time more productively. People with Blogger accounts, that are based on the converted email domains, are seeing problems accessing their blogs.

In some cases, the earlier provided procedure , for accessing the limited access domain administrator account, may not work, for your Google Apps domain. If you have trouble with providing both the account name and password, you will need to reset the password using the Google administrative reset. Instead of the wizard at " accounts.google.com ", you will need the administrative reset wizard, at " https://admin.google.com ". A Google Apps administrative account reset uses the same set of initial displays, as the previously discussed limited access account reset - and it offers the same opportunities for confusion . Be prepared to add the appropriate Google account (whether GMail, or non GMail based) to the login menu, as necessary.

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We've know, for a while, of the downsides of having a Blogger account that's based on an email address that's provided by a Google Apps based domain . Some people are unknowingly using email that is based on Google Apps administered service - and they are not even the administrators. A few would be blog owners - or members (of a private or team blog) - are using Google Apps administered domains for their email. The dangers of using this ( obscure ) option never becomes relevant to them, until they try to join or setup a Blogger blog. When I click on the invite link, and try to set up a new Google account, I get the message. Blogger has not been enabled by the administrator of the domain xxxxxxx.edu. What do I do, now?

The discussion about Blogger account and blog access recovery, and authentication requirements, never ends. Account / blog ownership recovery is not at all a simple issue. Occasionally, we see the extreme cases, and the frustration . I made two blogs for school in im pretty sure 2009, so three years later I am no longer at that school, and it was registered with that school email, therefore I have no access to this email anymore, and the email account has most likely been deleted. I really need to delete these blogs because there are photos of people on there and they dont want them there. My personal opinion is that the solution is obvious. If you cannot maintain either primary access (account name and password) or secondary access (access to a working email account) to your Blogger account , you should not publish a Blogger blog. My opinion is not always well received, in Blogger Help forum. Some people have criticised me for my apparent lack of compassion, for the improvident ...

One subject which generates some frustration, as reported in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? , concerns blog ownership - and specifically, "How do I take over ownership of a blog which I need to control?". In some cases, this is because the blog was owned by someone who just died , or maybe somebody optimistically chose the wrong "friend" to co-administer a blog . As Blogger blogs become a more common website platform for small businesses, we are seeing a third scenario How do I get control of the blog about my business? The employee who setup the blog has left the company. Like similar issues about blog ownership , this is not as simple as it may appear.

One of the more intriguing Blogger problems, seen daily in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , involves control or ownership of our blogs. I can't manage my blog! or My blog isn't on my dashboard! Can Blogger give me my blog back? Besides the constant possibility that this is yet another locked or deleted blog, caused by spam classification (righteous or spurious) , there are several possible scenarios here. The most commonly seen scenario, besides the already mentioned spam classification, involves past inadvertent creation of a second Blogger account (worse, a third, or fourth ...), by the blog owner - with the blog owner currently having access to the wrong account. The person reporting the problem needs to recover access to the other Blogger account - preferably after clearing cache, cookies, and active sessions , and restarting the browser. A second scenario, seen occasionally (but not publicised, for several reasons) may involve a blog, stolen by an unknown ...

Everybody makes mistakes, and Blogger knows that. Some time ago, Blogger gave us the ability to recover deleted blogs - and later, to recover deleted Blogger accounts . Neither recovery procedure is trivial - and both procedures require that some amount of proof of ownership be provided. As blog owners, we are promised some degree of protection , as long as we maintain proof of ownership.

One of the saddest problem reports, seen in BHF: Something Is Broken , starts with Help me! My email address changed last month, and now I can't sign in to my blog! Those of us who help blog owners, regularly, with this problem report know to read the fine print. Help Me! I never bothered to remember my password - I used the Forgot Password wizard to reset my password every time I wanted to sign in to my Blogger account. My email address changed last month, I can't get the email from the Forgot Password wizard, and now I can't sign in to my blog!

Long ago, Blogger blogs had a very simple membership permissions policy. Each blog had an owner, and members. The owner was the administrator of the blog, and ownership could not be transferred. This simple policy was a problem, because some blog owners would eventually lose interest in a blog, and want to cede ownership to someone else. In other cases, people were known to die suddenly, leaving blogs with no live owners. In both cases, Blogger Support would become involved, and would manually transfer ownership. Later, Blogger developed the Permissions wizard, and added a class of member called "Administrator". The original publisher of a blog becomes the first administrator, who may, at his / her discretion, designate additional administrators.

Every week, we see the anguished cry of blog owners, who don't have access to maintain, or publish to, their blogs. Help me! My email address changed last month, and now I can't sign in to my blog! But, if you look at the fine print, you see the full story Help Me! I never bothered to remember my password - I used the Forgot Password wizard to reset my password every time I wanted to sign in to my Blogger account. My email address changed last month, I can't get the email from the Forgot Password wizard, and now I can't sign in to my blog! As I have repeatedly advised folks, Blogger lets us maintain our blogs anonymously , and promises anonymous access and ownership for eternity . There is no magic token attached to our blogs, that let us conveniently email Blogger and ask for a second back door access to our accounts.