The Real Blogger Status

We see this question, in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? , a couple times / year. Can I keep using a Classic template on my blog - or must I upgrade? Right now, Blogger won't require anybody to upgrade. You can stay with a Classic template, if you want. That said, there is no guarantee that the next major Blogger problem will not leave Blogger Engineering deciding to cut their losses, and move forward. If we can get Blogger back online with Layout and better today - as opposed to Classic templates, next week - let's drop Classic templates, and bring it back, today. They've moved forward, this way, in the past - and next week, they could, again. Eventually, this will happen. One day, Blogger will come back online - but without your blog.

One of the saddest answers given in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken starts with the naive query My domain registration expired last month, and my blog is now offline. How do I redirect the domain back to the blog? The answer here is simple, and does not provide a lot of promise , to the blog owner. If possible, you may be able to publish the blog back to BlogSpot - but the blog will have to be re indexed from the beginning. Once the domain registration expires, you cannot use the domain address for reputation or traffic source. Any search engine hit entries, to the domain URL, will be 404 - and there is nothing that you can do, if you no longer own the domain .

New Blogger and the Layouts template, while a great improvement over the Classic template, is just a little rough around the edges. We've all learned that over the past year, though some have had a worse time than others. Some folks have had enough . Maybe they can't take the problems or suspense . Maybe the promised features just aren't there. Maybe there are incompatibilities with some essential tweaks. Maybe the selections of third party templates, for New (Layouts) Blogger, aren't inspiring enough. Maybe they want to setup a blog that publishes by FTP . Whatever. Well, if you can't work with the Layouts template, you can use a Classic template. Select Template. Select Edit HTML. Select Revert to Classic Template. This will give you an old template, with the unfortunate limitations. You'll lose any tweaks that you made to the New template. You won't have new features like GUI template editing, or page elements. You'll still use your Google account f...

New Blogger - what I will call here "New Blogger 2006" - has been with us now for one year , give or take a few months. This time last year, I had just previously written about the impending migration to Blogger Beta (aka "New Blogger 2006"). Now, we are completing the migration. I say "completing the migration" because there are, currently, folks seeking guidance on how to complete the migration of their blogs. All blogs are now under New Blogger - that's not the issue - Old Blogger was laid to rest some months ago. Not all blogs are using Layouts templates, however. Some blogs, which are published using FTP to external servers, will always be using Classic templates. Yet there are some blogs which can be migrated to Layouts, that haven't. Anybody who has been posting, or helping, in any of the Blogger Help Group forums has seen this query. I just finished entering a post into my blog. I previewed it - and it looked fine. Then I publishe...

An old joke from Virginia, USA (when I lived there long ago). Q: How many Virginians does it take to change a light bulb? A: At least 3. One does the work, the others reminisce how great the old bulb was. And so will go the updated one. Q: How many Bloggers does it take to migrate a blog to the New Template 2006? A: At least 3. One does the work, the others reminisce how great Classic Blogger was. All joking aside, there are still those who need to move their blogs into New Blogger 2006. To do this, simply use the " Claim your blog: Get started with the new Blogger " Legacy Claim wizard. And, having moved your blog into the future, you probably should look at the template. If you've been admiring the shiny XML based gadgets on many Blogger blogs, you're going to want a blog with a layout template . And after migrating the blog to a layout template, you'll want to check out the new Designer Templates , currently in Draft (Blue) Blogger . But there will, for a ...

The migration to New Blogger 2006 is in its final stages. If you haven't gotten the monolithic demand, you will any day. Move your account to use the new Blogger No "Please", no "Soon". You may, for a limited amount of time, have one last chance. There are two possible web site addresses, to login from. http://www.blogger.com/home , where you are forced to migrate. http://www.blogger.com/ , where, if you have an unexpired cookie, appears to still lead to your Classic dashboard. Let's see how long the latter remains operational. And don't logout, or you're done. If you have a blog with team relationships, you would be very much better off migrating NOW, while you can plan the migration properly . But before you get to this point, please organise your accounts - make sure that all account names and passwords are up to date. You won't even be able to migrate your blog to WordPress , if your account / password isn't up to date. Now, some of ...