The Real Blogger Status

We have known, for a while, that every Blogger blog has to have at least one administrator . That rule is enforced by the Permissions wizard, which gives any administrator the choice to demote or remove any administrator, from the Permissions list - but only when there is at least one other administrator in the list. When the Permissions list is displayed, if there are at least two members with administrative authority, each administrator entry, in the list, has a link to demote or remove that member. If there is only one member with administrative authority, there is no such link - and that member can be neither demoted or removed from the list. As long as only the Permissions wizard is used, to demote or remove administrators, this article would be meaningless (see the above link). But, there is another way for administrators to be removed - and this occasionally leaves blogs with no administrator.

Almost daily, we see a confused query in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken I lost ownership access to my blog. Can Blogger restore my access? Not every blog owner realises that the Permissions wizard has a safeguard, ensuring that every blog will always have at least one administrator. Anybody who is the former owner is now a member of a team blog - and at least one other team member is an administrator.

We see this naive question, from time to time, in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? . I added my friend as an administrator, to my blog. He changed permissions, locked me out, and now I don't have access. Can Blogger get my blog back? Here, we have bad news for you.

As I've mentioned before, generally in consumer related issues, a "2 for 1" offer is something that you enjoy, The "2 for 1" offer is not always the case , for Blogger blogs. This week, we have owners of private blogs, who report that their blogs, which previously displayed the "About Me" gadget, now show a "Contributors" gadget. The issue of the "About Me" gadget being replaced by the "Contributors" gadget is not arbitrary though.

Occasionally, we see evidence of subtle confusion about blog member and reader limits, expressed by some blog owners in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? . How can I let more than 100 people read my blog?

A well known adage describes multi-personal issues, in general A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. In terms of blogs with multiple owners, each individual owner becomes one link, in the chain of blog security. Any blog with multiple administrators ("owners") is subject to its abuse by any one of the owners. Whatever the abuse involves Installation of dodgy code. Dodgy installation practices. Addition of untrustworthy members or administrators. Theft of the blog by removing all other administrators. You (the original creator of your blog) absolutely must exercise discretion, in inviting other people to jointly administer a blog with you. Any one administrator can install malicious code , can use an EZ Install procedure to invite a hijacked Blogger account, can add another administrator who can do any of these things, or can even remove all other administrators . Just one person (the "weakest link") can cause chain breakage (a damaged, hijacked, spa...

Occasionally, we have some blog owners who have never considered publishing a blog with multiple owners, or even with multiple authors. A team blog is so easy to setup, yet some blog owners have no idea how to do this. A team blog with multiple authors is the simplest to setup - just go to Settings - Basic, and use Permissions to invite a friend as an author.

One of the best ways to be anonymous is to never be seen. Even if you remove all personal details from your blog, you'll still leave an identifying mark , on the blog.

Many bloggers are confused about how to protect their blogs, both from unauthorised administrative access, and unauthorised viewing. An example of the confusion is the occasional question How do I set a password in my blog, to prevent unwanted viewers? and the correct answer here is simple. You can't set a password. Blogger uses two factor authentication, to protect your blog. If you own a house or a car, you may occasionally wish to provide guest access to your house or car. Maybe you have an extra key, which you lend to your guests, so they may use your house or car at their convenience. If you've done this, you may observe inconveniences caused by availability of a shared key. A key may be lost, necessitating re keying of the locks, and distribution of a new key to all who have access. You may not wish for your guests to have access to the entire house or car, at all times. You may not wish for your guests to have access to the entire house or car, permanently. Your ...

Long ago, Blogger blogs had a very simple membership permissions policy. Each blog had an owner, and members. The owner was the administrator of the blog, and ownership could not be transferred. This simple policy was a problem, because some blog owners would eventually lose interest in a blog, and want to cede ownership to someone else. In other cases, people were known to die suddenly, leaving blogs with no live owners. In both cases, Blogger Support would become involved, and would manually transfer ownership. Later, Blogger developed the Permissions wizard, and added a class of member called "Administrator". The original publisher of a blog becomes the first administrator, who may, at his / her discretion, designate additional administrators.

When you invite a designated reader to your private blog, or invite a member to your private or team blog, you use the Settings - Permissions wizard to send an email to the prospective member or reader. You select the email address to send the invitation to, based upon the known address of your prospective member or reader. The prospective member / reader, upon receiving the email, is free to send it on, to any other email address that he or she uses, and to accept the membership by using any Blogger account - current, or setup at the time of accepting the invitation.

Occasionally, we see a confused query How do I allow access to my blog, and keep my GMail account private to me? or How do I have my friends using my blog, and each person use their own name in publishing posts? These are people who do not understand the concept of team blogs. Team blogs use a separate Blogger / Google account for each member, they do not require everybody to share one Blogger / Google account. You add each team member as an Author, in Settings - Permissions. When you do this, note two cogent details. Each blog is limited to 100 Members (Authors + Administrators + Owners), in total . You can invite members, using the email address that you know. People can accept membership using what email adddress (Google account) they wish . People may be able to accept multiple member entries, which may affect the 99 author limit. If either of those two details are a problem to you, perhaps you should look at Content Management Systems . A CMS may give you more control ov...

We've known for a while that private blogs have limitations, such as latency. If you originally publish your blog as public, and later make it private, cached copies of the blog will be all over the Internet, for anybody to read, after it's supposedly private . This week, we see another, possibly more serious limitation . Why was my coworker able to read my very private, personal, password protected blog yesterday? I had it set to "Blog Author Only" and yet she found it and was able to read the whole thing. It has never, ever been public. I started it last September and set the permissions to "blog author only" at the start for all posts. I have never invited anyone else to read it...and have never, ever logged into it at work.

Many bloggers are confused by the limit of up to 100 (actually, up to 99) readers in a blog. Questions like Is it possible to have more then 100 readers on your blog? - Does that 100 readers include those who subscribe to your RSS feed? are seen regularly in Blogger Help Forum. The limit here starts with the limit of up to 100 designated members of a blog . Designated members include Administrators. Authors Readers (for a private blog) With a public blog, your readers (non designated) are unlimited. There, you can have up to 100 administrators and authors. With a private blog, you have at least 1 administrator (and possibly more administrators and authors), so you can simply have up to 99 designated readers. Only with a public blog can you have a newsfeed, and Following. Private blogs don't have newsfeeds, so using Following on a private blog is a waste of time. That's true for both Following using Google Friend Connect , and for Following using a FeedBurner E...

Occasionally, we see the plaintive query I just changed my blog so only my friends should be able to read the posts. My visitor log shows unknown visitors though. What is going on - has someone hacked my blog? and there we see a question from someone who doesn't know about search engine cache. If you make your blog private , the search engines won't index your newer posts, but what's already indexed will stay in cache. And if someone sees a search page entry, and clicks on it, they'll get (among other things) "View Cached Content", and they'll read the cached posts. The search engines won't care that you made the blog private. This will be similar to a deleted blog - you can delete, or make the blog private, and what's in cache will stay in cache. And you'll keep getting readers, to the cached posts. When you make your blog private, the "robots.txt" file is updated. Here's a copy of the file for this blog, "blogging.nit...