The Real Blogger Status

We see some concern about providing email subscriptions, from blog owners in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . How do I provide email subscriptions for my blog? Neither Follow by Email or Subscription Links works, for email! The blog in question is using a dynamic template. In some cases, even "Subscription Links" does not provide a "Subscribe by Email" option - and it appears that the blog owner is really out of luck.

Some blog owners and readers ask about blog feed displays, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . I clicked on this text at the bottom of the blog page: Subscribe to: Posts (Atom) and I got a screen full of gibberish. This is a known oddity, in Chrome.

Whenever you have a problem with FeedBurner - or need to change details, the "Edit Feed Details" wizard is an essential tool. It's a very simple display - just 3 data elements - but it's a pretty useful 3 elements, if you use FeedBurner with your blog.. The FeedBurner "Edit Feed Details" wizard is an essential tool, when researching a FeedBurner problem.

Some people who will enjoy your blog may prefer to follow it using their email . It's not difficult to setup email delivery of the comments or posts - from various source selections. FeedBurner offers a wide assortment of delivery options, for the many sources. Blogger offers the "Subscribe by Email" gadget and service , which delivers the posts newsfeed. That's one feed possibility - and you can have many more, with very little work.

To encourage email subscriptions, and other social connections, some blog owners provide gadget toolbars, with useful links. Some blog owners would like to position their gadgets in fixed screen positions . I want to have a subscribe button hover at the top of the page, while people read my blog. This blog has a hovering AddThis toolbar , which provides selected social sharing options. And, it has a hovering "Top of Page" button .

We see occasional concern about providing email subscriptions, from blog owners in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . How do I provide email subscriptions for my blog? Follow by Email does not work! The blog in question is using a dynamic template - and it appears that the blog owner is out of luck.

Some blog owners use email, to distribute blog content - and like the post summarisation technique, Jump Break. We see occasional hopeful questions, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger , about Jump Break, in emailed post content. How do I use Jump Break, in my posts email subscriptions? This is one need that probably won't be solved, precisely as requested.

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 .

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 .

We've been using FeedBurner Email Distribution for years, to provide a turnkey email based publication distribution . With any email distribution system, the most essential function, in list management, is to add and remove subscriber entries. FeedBurner gives you that ability - if you look, carefully.

FeedBurner Email Distribution takes any Atom / RSS newsfeed, and sends it out, as email , to all subscribed recipients. One FeedBurner feed is generated, when you add The "Follow by Email" gadget, to your blog. Like all FeedBurner Email accessories, email is distributed once daily, as selected by the feed owner.

We see regular signs of confusion, about the various Followers communities, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . My blog still shows 0 Followers. I know this is not correct - because I am one, at a different email address, and so are friends and family. This blog owner does not understand the differences between the communities, and following options.

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.

We see occasional questions from blog owners, and readers, about options for reading posts, from a given blog. The most obvious way to read the posts is to read the blog, as published, online. If the owner of a blog that interests you uses Google+ publicity , reading either online, or in the Google+ stream, may be your choice. For Blogger hosted content, both owners and readers have a few more possibilities.

We see occasional questions from blog owners, and readers, about options for reading comments, and comment updates, from a given blog. The most obvious way to read comments - or replies to comments - is to read the individual posts. If a blog that interests you uses Google+ hosted comments , reading either on the post, or in the Google+ stream, may be your choice. For Blogger hosted comments. both owners and readers have a few more possibilities.

We've been discussing the problem of email filtering , and missing email, for some time. Some blog members / owners are certain that their missing email isn't caused by filters. I looked in "Bulk" / "Spam"! The email isn't there, either - it simply does not get delivered!! These people are certain that Blogger just is not sending the email. In some cases, the problem is not with "Bulk" / "Spam" filters - it is with anti-spoofing filters - and email detected as spoofed, generally, is "bounced".

One devious way of attacking people, before the Internet, was to drown them in mail, such as unwanted magazines. Long ago, people with too much available time would fill out forms in their victims name - and subscribe her / him to assorted unwanted magazines. Nowadays, one might do that with email, to people unwise enough to publicise their account name or email address . Blogger has similar options that may let us annoy people, also - possibly, inadvertently .

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.