The Real Blogger Status

One of the most popular third party image hosting services, for Blogger blogs, recently changed their photo hosting service . Photobcket no longer allows embedding of their hosted photos on third party websites, for free accounts. They now require a $399 / year membership, for accounts with photos shared outside their website .

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).

One of the painful experiences, with Blogger blogs, involves people who make blogs based on photo albums. Photos are, historically, a cherished souvenir of lifes passages - even in this modern age where a dozen photos might be taken, as opposed to one or two, 20 to 30 years ago. Sometimes, the souvenirs, part of a Blogger blog, are lost. Even if deleted photos can be restored, a blog may have to be rebuilt - one photo at a time. When restored, photos frequently have a different URL - and the code in the blog post must be updated, to reflect the new URL. For many blog owners, it is simpler to just upload each photo again.

Last month, Blogger launched an improved Page / Post Editor image uploader - Image Drag and Drop . Today, we are happy to announce that users will be able to drag and drop images directly into posts drafts. In the past, users had to click on “Insert image” to upload the file from the posts drafts. However, with the new drag and drop feature, users will have an easier way to add pictures into post drafts. Like many Blogger major improvements, this one comes with challenges.

Some blog owners are not going to be able to provide SSL access to their blogs - even with SSL enabled . Blog owners who prefer to use the "www" alias of "blogspot.com" - and who have chosen to enable SSL access for their blogs - report "Invalid Certificate" errors, when trying to access. And other blog owners report problems, when they have photos, hosted by Google and Picasa, using "http:".

We see occasional signs of concern, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , about photo quality in Blogger. I take high quality pictures with my camera - and when I edit them, using various platforms, they still have the same quality. But the second I upload them to my Blogger post, the quality gets really bad. This is a very civilised comment, not all are so objective. Photo quality has been a concern, for years. There are so many ways photos can be degraded, once they hit the Internet.

An occasional question, seen occasionally in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger , is about cost. Is Blogger free? Too many Internet services are free for the first month, then charge you once you are hooked. The answer here is (should be) good news. Blogger blogs are free - for eternity - as long as you follow the rules. But please, do follow the rules, for best results.

We see some blog owners reporting loss of photos, when used in their blogs, and added using Post Editor. Some blog owners take photos using their camera / phone, upload them to Google+ Photos, and publish their blog posts. Having published their post, they remove the photos from their phones, to save storage space. And once deleted from their cameras / phones, their photos vanish from their blog .

We're seeing a few questions about photo quality, from blog owners using Picasa photo hosting. Why do my photos look brighter? and Why has the background colours on my pictures changed? The recently added Google+ "Auto Enhance" and "Auto Awesome" features do not appear to be painless, for some blog owners. If you have a Google+ account, check out the Settings - Photos section. You'll find two recent additions. Auto Enhance Automatically enhance new photos Learn more Auto Awesome Create awesome new images from photos in your library Learn more Interestingly, these settings appear to be enabled automatically for some blogs, without warning to the owners - including a few blogs that are not associated with a Google+ profile.

An occasional sign of confusion, seen occasionally in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , starts with a simple statement. There's a frog on my blog! Those of us who know about third party templates know what's up, here. Given the right browser, you can find the problem, in a couple minutes.

We see daily evidence of confusion, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , about photo hosting. How much space do I get for photo storage? and What happened to the pictures on my blog? and Why does my blog look weird now? Some of these questions come from photos (pictures) hosted by Google, others from photos (pictures) hosted outside Google - and the uncertainty about hosting leads to confusion about the problems.

The problem of auto pagination, triggering display page segmentation, has been with us since early 2010. Even in the beginning, auto pagination was not 100% popular with blog owners . As more blog owners got used to the inevitability of auto pagination, more scenarios were discovered, where it critically affected blogs. The most recently identified scenario, where auto pagination was involved, was with images hosted as Base64 content - first discovered a year after the initial opposition started.

We've known for some time, about problems with GMail based Google accounts, and reports of disabled accounts with mysterious mention of "unusual activity on your account". This problem gives frustrated Blogger blog owners yet another exercise in frustration, where they spend time getting their Google accounts reactivated. This month, we are seeing reports of another, rather alarming detail, now involving Picasa.

As Blogger blog owner interest in Google+ grows, we're seeing occasional reports in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , about problems involving photo hosting and Picasa. Some Blogger blog owners, who have previously uploaded images or photos in post editor, setup their Google+ accounts, and notice that their photos are disappearing. I just setup Google+, and now all of my photos are gone from my blog!

Auto Pagination has been an accepted part of Blogger life now for just over a year . Almost all blog owners are used to this feature, and complaints about its interference are finally rare. Recently, we've seen a new scenario where it is involved. The best way to look for a problem with auto pagination is from looking at the source code , for the blog page being displayed. Recently, we see very odd code, using the browser View - Source menu option . Note the " ... " snippet, in the example below, represents several hundred lines of similar content, intentionally removed just so this post can be displayed, without triggering auto pagination.

Many blog owners are unsure about the hosting of photos, as published to our Blogger blogs, under Google. We see innocent questions like What happens if I delete my Google account? and slightly frustrated questions The photos on my blog disappeared! and agony I had my Google account, and my blog, restored - but my photos are still missing!! These are examples of real life questions, posted in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken . These questions identify issues that need to be explored.

Picasa has been replaced by Google Photos - and storage limits remain, but with options. The referential Blogger Help: What are the limits on my Blogger account? tells us Number of Pictures: Up to 1 GB of total storage, shared with Picasa Web then Size of Pictures: If you are posting pictures through Blogger Mobile there is a limit of 250K per picture.

For a blog with any history, one of the most cherished features of your blog might be your search engine reputation - the ability of prospective readers to find your blog. Whenever people change blog URLs, that's one of the most anxiously asked questions in BHF: How Do I? . People preparing to move their blog from externally hosted (FTP based) publishing ask this question, too. To satisfy your personal needs for your individual blogs, Blogger offers you three choices when migrating , from externally hosted publishing to Google hosted publishing. To Blog*Spot. To a Google custom domain URL, different from the current domain. To a Google custom domain URL, the same domain host as the current domain.

Occasionally, in Blogger Help Forum , we get the querulous inquiry Is Blogger free, or must I pay for the service? or What upcharges will I have to deal with, after publishing my blog? To answer the question, I'll say Yes, and no. Within limits, and excepting for minor details, you can publish a Blogger blog, and maintain it for a very long time, without needing a major credit card. There are two possible charge items, that I can think of. If you want to publish your blog to BlogSpot, the service is free. Publishing the blog to a non BlogSpot URL will require paying for either Custom Domain publishing , or service from a remote server published using FTP . Both will likely cost you some money, though you will not pay the money to Google. If you publish a blog with photos, and you host the photos using the native post editor upload, you'll be using the Picasa service. Picasa is free, to a limit , then there is an upcharge for additional Picasa storage capacity. For a free se...