The Real Blogger Status

We see questions of naivete, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , about blog ownership recovery. I accidentally deleted my administrative access. How do I get my access back? There is only one legal answer. Have another administrator restore your access. But this story does not end well. The other administrator is on long term vacation! I really need to have my access back!! There is no easy answer here .

We see evidence of naivete, about responsibilities of Blogger custom domain publishing, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . Why does Google not support the blog owners properly, with a telephone number to call, so they can fix domain publishing problems? Some blog owners don't understand the concept of third party products, and Blogger. Just as your Blogger (and Google) account is your own property , so is your domain manager account.

THis month, we have several reports in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue from owners who make backup blogs. Why was my blog deleted, by Blogger, as spam? Some blog owners innocently create multiple blogs, to back up their main blog. Unfortunately, having multiple blogs with the same content may make the blogs look like a spam blog farm - and Blogger detects and deletes spam blog farms.

Among the cases which involve the hopeful, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger , we see an occasional query about proactive spam review. I am worried that my blog, like so many others, may be deleted by Blogger! Is there any tool or service, by which I can scan or analyze my blogspot blog, to see if it's breaking any of Google rules? And the answer here, simply, has to be "No.". For any such service or tool to be helpful, a positive review of a blog would have to be accompanied by a certification that the blog is free of any TOS violation. The blog would then be frozen, to prevent any further changes. How many blog owners would want their blog frozen, for eternity?

We see the signs of naivete, periodically, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger . How do I require my readers to enter a password, to keep my blog safe from public view? This blog owner does not understand the realities of setting up a private blog. Long ago (very long ago), a computer system might have "private" files, and a shared password, known by everybody, for each file. Nowadays, a private Blogger blog uses team blog access - or team blog ownership - and each team member gets to choose her / his own Blogger account , with a password that he / she decides to use (and hopefully, remember).

Blogger blogs are starting to become a regular website publishing platform - not just a blogging platform. Long ago, a Blogger blog was just an online journal, with posts, and text. Then, Blogger added labels , later static pages - and then the ability to replace the home / main page , with dynamic or static content of your choice. Recently, the original limitation of 20 static pages / blog was relaxed (we are not yet certain that the limit has been eliminated completely, however). Now, you can practically publish a static website, without even having posts, using a Blogger platform. But, is this a good idea, with Blogger "One button" Publishing?

One of the most easily overlooked details, about Blogger blog content , is that GPT / PTC / PTS Content is not suitable, for Blogger blogs. Blogger Content Policy has a section which describes GPT / PTC / PTS Content, in passing . Spam: Spam takes several forms in Blogger, all of which can result in deletion of your account or blog. Some examples include creating blogs designed to drive traffic to your site or to move it up in search listings, posting comments on other people's blogs just to promote your site or product, and scraping existing content from other sources for the primary purpose of generating revenue or other personal gains. Unfortunately, spammers have been imaginatively subtle, in their description of various make money fast programmes - and not so many blog owners think it necessary to contact a lawyer, to interpret the Content Policy document, when planning their new blog.

This month, we're seeing an interesting collection of problem reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , about custom domain setup. Why is my blog offline - occasionally? And Why do some (just some!) of my readers tell me they can't see my blog? Investigating the problem, we see that the domain is, indeed online - some of the time. Investigating the DNS addressing, robustly, we find an all too frequently seen set of name servers: mydomain.com. 14400 IN A 216.239.32.21 www.mydomain.com. 14400 IN CNAME ghs.google.com. What we see here is a domain, setup by someone who thought that one server would be 'good enough' to get by .