The Real Blogger Status

People who setup a post for future publication, and who work on the post for hours or days, may overlook the final step in scheduling a post. To create a scheduled post, there are 3 steps that are essential. Create and edit content. (D'Ohh!). Set "Schedule", with a future date / time selected. Press "Publish". If you spend hours or days repeatedly editing and Saving your changes, it's possible that the final step may elude you. And this may explain, to some folks, why their scheduled posts don't publish.

One Blogger feature, that is occasionally mentioned in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , is the issue of scheduling post publication. Setting up a scheduled post is extremely simple - and that may be part of the problem. Before you publish a post, you give the post a published date / time that occurs in the future. The post date / time becomes the scheduled posting date / time. And there is where one possible problem, with scheduled posts, may start. Long ago, when scheduled posts were first introduced, the wizard for setting the date and time was rather simple. Since this is a new post, I can look under "Post settings", to the right, and see the "Schedule" option. If I expand "Schedule", I can see the selected default of "Automatic". If I select "Set date and time", the fun begins.

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 a naive question, which requests a value comparison between pages (static pages), and posts (dynamic pages). What are the advantages of using a page, instead of a post? That question, worded in that vague way, cannot be answered. The various differences between pages and posts can provide advantages, or disadvantages . To evaluate a page or a post as an advantage, one must know the specific needs of the blog in question.

Since Blogger gave us The New Blogger GUI, in 2012, complaints about the New GUI have been numerous, and impassioned. One complaint, seen occasionally, mentions the date / time setting wizard, in the Post Editor "Post settings" Schedule. In the new blogger interface, it is very hard to backdate content. You have to use the calendar GUI, you can't just type a date it. I have content going back 13 years, do you know how hard it is to click the left-arrow on the calendar 144 times to get to the proper date??? It's a nightmare! This is one person who needs a more flexible date setting wizard, in The New GUI. In criticising the new date setting wizard, we need to understand the reasons for the design. I don't think that Blogger designed the new wizard, and removed the ability to just type the date, simply because they wanted the new wizard to look shiny.

The 21st Century is the beginning of new experiences for mankind. The Internet in general, and Blogger blogging in particular, are providing opportunities unparalleled in history - people of all nations and locations are coming together, casually and freely, to get acquainted. And with the opportunities come many challenges - some major, and others seemingly minor. One seemingly minor issue, with a significance which may not be realised by everybody, is how we write the date. In the USA, we generally write it as "mm/dd/yy", which stands, in computer speak, for "Month / Day / Year". A variation here is "mm/dd/yyyy", which denotes the year entered, and includes the century - which is also an important detail.

Recently, we've seen reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken about some oddities observed when publishing posts with changed dates . I back dated a post, but it won't publish. or I published a post with a scheduled date, and it has already published. What's going on here? If you're observing this problem, please try and help us diagnose its spread. What date / time format is the blog set to? What time zone is the blog set to? What date / time format is the computer, where you setup the blog, set to? What date / time format is the computer, where you published the post, set to? What time zone is the computer, where you setup the blog, set to? What time zone is the computer, where you published the post, set to? What language is the blog published in? What language is the computer, from where you published the scheduled post, set to? Are the two computers - used for setting up the blog, and used for publishing the post, the same? What browser did y...

Scheduling a post, to publish in the future, is not at all a difficult task. Before you hit the "Publish Post" button, simply select the "Post Options" link just above that button, and change the date and / or time to some time in the future. Then, hit the button. If it takes effect, when you hit the button, instead of getting the Your blog post published successfully! screen, you'll see the "Edit Posts" menu, with your new post listed, but shown with the " scheduled " notation besides the date / time stamp. After the indicated date / time, refresh the "Edit Posts" screen, and you'll see that the post is now published. Or refresh the front page of the blog, and the newest post, just published, should be at the top. With dynamic publishing of the blog, you (or another blog reader) will have to do something in the way of reading the blog, to trigger the publishing. If you're like me, and like to publish posts with a ...

When you create a blog, do you just post, endlessly? I don't. For every new post I make, I update, revise, and relink each post to other posts. And the dashboard "Posts" menu (formerly "Edit Posts") is an essential part of that activity. From the Blogger dashboard menu, click on "Posts" - and you're there.

When you write posts in your blog, generally you'll want them to show the date / time when they were written. A blog is a journal, and sometimes you will want to insert posts with a different date. You may want a post to show a future date, to bring it to the top of the blog . You may want a post to show a past date, to reflect a past experience. Or maybe you want to make a new post, and keep it off the main page, as a separate section of the blog. Maybe you want all of the posts to be in forward chronological order, instead of (normal) reverse chronological order.