The Real Blogger Status

Earlier this year, Blogger upgraded their dashboard - and eliminated the opening "My blogs" / "Reading List" page . They changed from a dashboard home page, listing all blogs owned by a given Blogger account - to a home page, showing the dashboard for the most recently updated blog. To the dashboard menu for the blog displayed, they added a pulldown blog selector list. If you want the dashboard for a different blog, or need a different important "My blogs" function, you use the selector list.

When we use Blogger Following, we create a link to our profile, from each blog that we Follow. That's the primary purpose of Following - to see, and to be seen. We also create links from our Followers profile, to each Followed blog. That's the purpose of having a profile - to describe ourselves, by the blogs that interest us. Everybody does not want other people knowing about every blog that we Follow, though. To let us Follow blogs without being seen, we can Follow anonymously - or hide a blog, from our profile on other blogs.

When you Follow a blog, the blog feed is added, as a subscription, to your dashboard Reading List. This lets you read the blog content, conveniently, using the newsfeed. Separately from the Reading List, you can choose whether to have your personal Followers icon displayed , in the icon cloud on the blog display. Besides maintaining anonymity in Following , you can hide any number of blogs, in the Reading List index, to make the index manageable.

Some Google products contain features that have limited usefulness, when applied to Blogger blogs. FeedBurner has a feature, "Password Protector", which may be useful, to newsfeed readers that support HTTP authentication. Within FeedBurner, we have the "Email Subscriptions" service - which does not support feed authentication. Your readers will be required to use newsreader or aggregator software that supports authentication to view your feed. Some Google, and non Google, services will have a problem, with a FeedBurner protected feed.

If you did not use a Blogger / Google account when you Followed this blog, years ago, you are probably not Following now . During the past month or so, this blog has gone from 5,300 to 4,800 Followers . Owners of other blogs have reported similar reductions. Look at the Reading List, in the Blogger dashboard - if you use Blogger. Is this blog listed? If so, you are Following this blog, using a Blogger account. If not, you may want to add this blog to your Reading List .

Blog owners use many techniques for getting new readers - and for keeping existing readers happy. Some blog owners use techniques which work inconsistently, because they are not designed to work the way they are being used. Some blog owners becomes concerned when their blogs, listed in blogrolls on other peoples blogs, don't seem to be updated as regularly as they would expect. Blogrolls are good tools for getting new readers, in a casual manner. They may not be as good, for predictable, scheduled visitor activity.

We see new blog owners ask the obvious question, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger . How do I help people Follow my blog? There are several tools for community building , or Following - and different people will make different choices, which to use. The choices depend upon the community that any blog serves - and the purposes for following .

Some blog readers wonder about how to follow blogs, recently turned private by their owners. We see some concern , in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . I Follow a blog which was recently made private. Its entry in my dashboard Reading List froze, and I can't get it working by removing and re adding! This would be reader does not realise the results of making a blog private. Private blogs do not publish blog feeds . When a blog is made private, the feed stops - and the Reading List and all other feed subscriptions - comments and posts - stop updating. With no feed published, a blog cannot be added to Reading List - though the members picture icon may remain visible, in the Followers cloud.

Some blog owners have found out, to their dismay, that the blog feeds contain details about them, that they supposedly blocked from their blogs. Blog owners, who are trying to publish blogs anonymously , have to work hard, to stay anonymous .

One of the more perplexing problems, in Blogger owner / reader life, involves layered security issues , and filter changes. Many Blogger features are vulnerable to security filters. The ability to use Blogger commenting , the EU cookie advice banner won't display or won't go away, the infamous Reading List , the Blogger Stats "Don't track ..." option - all require cookies and scripts , that are subject to filtering.

This week, we're seeing a noticeable increase in reports about problems with reading list content. People are, once again, reporting empty reading lists - and many deny the suggestion that computers used by the readers might have anything to do with the problem. Neither filtered cookies / scripts, nor using the wrong Blogger account, appears to be involved in some of this weeks problems. One account owner reported having cleaned her Reading List - and after having removed just one entry from the list, the Reading List content became visible, again. This suggests that the owner may be following too many blogs - or possibly, following one blog which recently increased feed size. Either could be true, based upon the common complaint. I didn't change anything! It just stopped working, last week, on its own!!

Last year, we saw a number of reports from Blogger account owners with empty Reading Lists. When first reported, the common observation mentioned "one entry". Recently, we found out what the one entry was. All I get is Blogger Buzz - which I could care less about! The account owner does not know that Blogger Buzz is automatically a part of every Reading List. The fact that Blogger Buzz is being seen indicates that the personal portion of the Reading List is actually empty. This is similar to problems removing Reading List content , and suggests that the account owner is not being recognised.

We've been seeing suggestions, for years, that the Reading List is unreliable . Many Blogger account owners have reported the mysterious disappearing Reading List . A few have reported a second problem - inability to remove blogs from the Reading List . Few account owners connect the two problems. The two problems may each affect different account owners. Of the few affected by both problems, not many are likely to see them as having a common cause.

One question, that I have never seen specifically asked, is about our following, reading lists, and blog subscriptions in general. Why do I have to login to Blogger, to maintain my Reading List? The blog follower / owner has asked a question that is involved in various problems, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue - but with this question so easily overlooked.

Thanks to the recently added Google "One account" login , all Blogger features are now vulnerable to "third party" cookie filters. Long ago, many people who used Blogger would login to Blogger using a link in the navbar - or a similar Blogger login wizard. http://www.blogger.com Now, that login redirects to the Google "One account" login. http://www.google.com When referenced from a Blogger login, the latter URL becomes magnificently complex. https://accounts.google.com/ServiceLogin?service=blogger&passive=1209600&continue=https://www.blogger.com/home&followup=https://www.blogger.com/home&ltmpl=start

One long known mystery, reported from time to time in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , involves the dashboard Reading List, and panic from disappearing entries. Where are the blogs, in my Reading List? Some Blogger blog owners and readers can spend days setting up their Reading List complement - and see their work vanish, in seconds. One of the reasons why this problem has not been solved is that it is not reported in consistently high volume, and has no obvious pattern. Another is that many people who use the Reading List - as opposed to a third party NewsFeed Reader - are not of the highest in technological skill level, and do not have the patience to provide coherent and relevant details about the problem.

This week, we're seeing a few reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , mentioning a badly shortened dashboard Reading List. When I want to read the list of the blogs I follow, I can only see 1 blog, instead of the usual 30. When I click on "Show more", nothing happens. A brief affinity analysis , of current forum reports, suggests that the affected blog owners are using Draft Blogger.

One of the stranger confusions, seen occasionally in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , refers to the posts feed, from our blog, displayed on other people's blogs. I just published a new blog post - but it does not show up on my friends blogs. Is there a problem, with my feed? When we investigate, the blog feed shows no problem. We display the feed in the browser, and compare with the blog main page - and everything on the main page is in the feed. It just does not show up on our friends feed gadgets. So, what's the problem here? Were we imagining a problem? No, it's not imagination.

We're seeing an occasional report, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , about inability to manage the Reading List, using the dashboard "Manage Blogs I'm Following" wizard. Clicking on the dashboard "gear" icon to the right of "Reading List", one should expect to see a list of Followed blogs, in the familiar menu. In some cases, what is seen will be bad news. We are unable to load your FriendConnect data at this time. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please try again shortly. Upon trying again, the same error is frequently seen, repeatedly.

Occasionally, we see an odd problem report about Reading List content, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken . How did this blog get into my Reading List? I did not Follow this blog! Most people will not, knowingly, Follow a spam blog. This is one reason why Following is so popular - each blog owner, and blog reader can easily bypass, and actively block - spam . Spammers have, however, found devious ways to convince people to Follow them .