The Real Blogger Status

Not every blog owner understands the effect of a Blogger URL change, in FaceBook - and the resulting popularity of the blog . I am planning on changing my blog name and redirecting my blogger blog to a custom domain. Why would that affect my Facebook followers? A Blogger URL change won't affect your FaceBook Followers directly. Your existing Followers can continue to Follow your blog, under the BlogSpot URL - and under the custom domain URL - as it is Liked, and shared, in FaceBook. The Likes count affects the possibility of a share, of a post in your blog, to attract new Followers.

As both custom domain publishing, and social sharing networks, become normal with many blogs, we see anguish when blog owners change the URLs of their blogs, without planning for the effects of the change . What happened to my Likes? This blog owner - and many others - do not realise that FaceBook counts Likes, based on the URL, not the blog. FaceBook Likes, and Google+ +1s, are counted by URL - and are not controlled by DNS redirection, or simple name changes. If you rename your blog, you get a new URL with a new popularity counter , in FaceBook and Google+.

We see some blog owners deciding to change their custom domain URLs - and discovering an unexpected limitation, in re indexing the blog, under the new URL I received email from Google, advising that my previous domain is pulling up a number of 404 errors. I've noticed that these are for individual blog posts. When you change one custom domain to another, you may not see the domain re indexed, transparently.

Blog owners are always changing the URLs of their blogs - then asking why Blogger does not provide automatic redirection, to the new URL. We see the occasional query, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger . How do I redirect my readers, to my new URL? And this is a need that will likely go unfulfilled. If Blogger provided automated redirection, spammers would abuse it, as part of a spam publishing strategy .

Some blog owners start a blog - then discover that they gave the blog the wrong name - or description. Unlike changing the Blog Name (Address) , changing the Blog Description or Name (Title) is not complicated.

Some blog owners delete or rename a blog, without proper planning - and later regret their action. Some spammers track blog name availability - particularly with blog names that contain "English" (and some non English) language words. If a spammer discovers that a given blog name has recently become available, he will publish a stub blog to that name - and later, add spammy content. Why is a spammer interested in recently available names?

Some blogs can't be easily upgraded, from a Classic to Layouts / Designer template. The Classic to Layouts / Designer upgrade can't process all classic templates. Some HTML tweaks, made by the blog owners, just can't be easily translated into CSS / HTML / XML, in the Layout / Designer templates. Remember that before Layouts templates, all accessories and decorations were installed by editing the template. It's likely that some people created some tricky code, to provide interesting features - and some of the tweaks, that are known by the owners, may cause the delay in upgrading.

We see an occasional sign of confusion, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger . How do I let my readers search my entire blog? or Why does my Search not find all of my posts? Both of these questions - and more - are seen, because not every blog owner is aware of the limitations, and possibilities, of each search technique.

Google Domains describes their view of the domain transfer process, in Google Domains Help: Transfer a domain out . The transfer process supports different transfers. From a person with an account at one registrar, to another account at that same registrar. From a person with an account at one registrar, to an account at a different registrar. From one person, to a different person, at that same registrar. From one person, to a different person, at a different registrar. As a project, I found it best to define, size, and assign the complete transfer process in 6 tasks. The project can be adjusted for a domain served by any sending registrar - and targeting any receiving registrar - based upon formalities required by each registrar.

The process of changing one custom domain URL to another is similar to the task of changing the BlogSpot URL . The risk of identity theft is not as great, when you change a custom domain. You will continue to "own" any previously used domain, even when unpublished - but the risk of technical error is just as real. If you care about blog accessibility, you will plan this process , with some care.

Renaming a blog is not difficult - but it can produce unwanted side effects. We've seen a few problem reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . I renamed my blog, last year - and I have had no new visitors, since then! or I looked at the old URL, and it's got my posts, and lots of spam! These blog owners did not plan the renaming process.

Every month, we see a concern about content theft or impersonation, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . I deleted my blog last year! Now, I see it online again, using my name - but it's not in my dashboard! or I renamed my blog, last month! Somebody else is publishing it, this month!! These former blog owners have discovered the unpleasant reality of never ending spammer activity. URL recycling (a feature begged for, by many), plus blog content and feed caching (a reality, with most blogs), can lead to spammer harvesting and resurrection. And in some cases, to identity theft.

As you develop your blog, you may observe that some of the post titles don't encourage viewer attention. Since the post URLs are derived from the post titles, renaming a post involves some planning. The post URL should match the post title. If you change the post URL, all of the existing links to that post will break. So, what to do? This makes renaming a post into a major project. Or, do you think your readers enjoy seeing Sorry, that page does not exist. Even with the blog using a custom "404" page , this isn't going to cut it - if you want your readers (not to mention the search engines) to feel loved. But if you plan, and practice, you can rename a post in a minute or so - and possibly half that time, the post actually may be "404".

When you rename a blog, the most that you can do, to keep the old URL useful, is to setup a stub post , with a clickable link to the new URL. Yo! The blog is now at xxxxxxx.blogspot.com!! Blogger forbids gateway blogs, and similar blog to blog redirections . When you rename a post, you can setup a custom redirect - and automatically redirect your readers to the post, under its new URL. You should take advantage of this option, if you change a post URL.

Sometimes, you have to re publish your blog, to the domain. Maybe, you want to change the BlogSpot or domain URL, or change the blog - or maybe the previous publishing did not complete, properly. If the blog is currently published to a non BlogSpot URL, you can't just publish it, again. You have to start by publishing the blog back to a BlogSpot URL, before you can again publish the blog to a non BlogSpot URL. Given the right planning, and understanding of the tasks involved, you can do all of this in a couple minutes - less time than it will probably take you to read these instructions.

Similar to concerns about using a Google custom domain outside Blogger , we have concerns about using an existing non Google custom domain with Blogger. One of the advantages of the Blogger custom domain feature is that it gives you the option to publish a Blogger blog to an existing domain . The existing domain can be part of a WordPress hosted website, a website hosted by your ISP, or by any registrar - as long as you have access to a domain dashboard (aka "zone editor"), and can add the required DNS addresses. If the need to use the Blogger blog in the domain is strong enough - and if the existing registrar does not provide dashboard access, or the necessary addresses - you may be able to transfer domain hosting, to a more suitable registrar.

As Google+ hosted comments become more common in our blogs, we see more questions about blogs recently renamed, and disappearing comments. Blogs renamed (and URLs changed) from BlogSpot to BlogSpot, from BlogSpot to a custom domain, and from custom domain to custom domain - all become concerns, with blogs that use Google+ hosted comments. This starts with the difference between Blogger, and Google+, hosted comments - and how they reference the host blog. Blogger hosted comments link to the blog - but Google+ hosted comments (aka Google+ stream posts) link to the URL. Any time you change the URL of your blog , you will lose Google+ hosted comments - from your blog. The Google+ stream posts, however, are still out there - and they still link back to your blog.

Many, many years ago, I was called to court, to provide testimony in a case that involved a co worker, during a weekend in question. As part of my testimony, I provided a code listing ("compilation" log), with date and time printed on each page of the listing. The testimony also required presenting of the printed "system console" log, to substantiate my testimony. I endured several hours of intense grilling, by attorneys for both sides, who examined virtually every hour of my day, to verify that the co-worker and I had been physically "at work" on that day. The code listing was but a small part of my testimony. Even then, both the judge and both attorneys were very aware of the possibility that the code listing date / time stamp could not constitute legal evidence, without careful "chain of custody" backup. Anybody knows that a computer can be easily restarted, with the system clock reset, and made to produce a "code listing" / ...

Occasionally, we see concern, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger , about continuing to serve the readers of a blog, after renaming or replacing with a new URL. How do I let my existing subscribers read the feed, with the blog published to a new URL? This blog owner is planning ahead - which is a good idea whenever renaming a blog .

We see an occasional blog owner, having renamed a blog to a new BlogSpot URL, reporting in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue that the Pages gadget stopped working. I changed the URL of my blog, from "myoldblogspoturl.blogspot.com" to "mynewblogspoturl.blogspot.com". All of the links are working fine - except when I click on a pages link, I get Blog not found. Sorry, the blog you were looking for does not exist. However, the name myoldblogspoturl is available to register! Long ago, we observed this to be a problem with static pages . It appears that this is a problem with both dynamic and static pages, for some blogs, when renamed.