The Real Blogger Status

As most of us know, Blogger HTTPS support does not include custom domain publishing . The advantages offered by HTTPS access are widely advertised - and have led to envy between blog owners who publish to custom domains, and native BlogSpot blog owners proudly advertising their new HTTPS connectivity. Long ago, we saw possibly malicious code which helps our readers avoid using country code aliases , to read our blogs from an aliased country. Recently, there was dodgy code which blocked HTTPS mode , to read a customised blog. Now, we have custom code to force HTTPS access, for BlogSpot published blogs.

There are millions of Blogger blog owners - and each owner has their own idea, how their blog should look. Not every blog owner is willing to settle for using a Blogger supplied template. Some blog owners design their own templates - and others choose templates provided by non Blogger developers. Some blog owners - even those with no technical background - choose third party supplied templates, and demand instructions in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger . Not every blog owner can be supported, according to their personal level of need.

We see occasional frustration, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , involving broken or unreliable custom domains. I setup the Custom Domain properly, following the Google directions . For some of my readers, my custom domain is not opening. I can see it is going in an infinite loop in the browser - and after a long time, it's throwing errors. My domain is setup, properly. Why do I have to deal with this? And we will investigate - and in many cases, we find the domain is setup properly .

One of the most useful features of Blogger is the ability to add many different accessories, to a blog. There are accessories, for every blog - and for every owner preference. The "Add a Gadget" wizard, in the Blogger dashboard, is the best procedure for adding accessories , to customise a blog reliably. Using "Add a Gadget" is a simple process. It will be most useful, in the long term, if used cautiously, however.

With Blogger now providing (optional) HTTPS, on all blogs, we're seeing a few anxious reports in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . I'm getting an error, on one of my plugins. This content is not yet available over encrypted connections. What can I do? The answer won't be encouraging. Don't enable "HTTPS Redirect", on your blog.

Many popular accessories start with raw HTML / JavaScript code, from different third party services. One of the advantages of publishing a Blogger blog is the abundance of available accessories . With Blogger being in the top 3 of Internet publishing platforms, every third party service wants customers who publish using Blogger. There are plenty of abusive or malicious accessories , that should not be installed, even when offered - and there are ways to best install the accessories, that can be safely installed.

Some third party templates come with extra features - that not everybody appreciates. How do I get rid of the "lorem ipsum" nonsense, that's part of my signature? This blog owner just got a shiny "free" third party template, for her blog. Some custom template providers publish free templates that contain odd, irrelevant details. When I click on the "Read more" link on my blog, it opens up the post - but has added in a odd kind of signature. It displays my name but is using an image that isn't me, and the "lorem ipsum" text. I have no idea where to edit this?

Last week, Blogger turned off their workaround from June 2015 , that was allowing Windows Live Writer, and other third party editors and auxiliary Blogger services, to access Blogger. All week, we saw various reports of problems, reminiscent of the problems that we saw in June 2015, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . Yesterday, Blogger Engineering provided a status announcement . We would like to let all users of Windows Live Writer know that Microsoft has made the application open source and it’s now a different application called Open Live Writer ( you will need to download it here ). A few months ago, the Windows Live Writer and Blogger integration stopped working for a few days due to improvements in Google’s authentication systems. We agreed to keep the old authentication systems for a few more months but starting December 11th, they will be retired and Windows Live Writer will stop working. The Open Live Writer team is now working on making OLW use ClientLogin a...

If you have a malicious or misbehaving gadget in your blog, one of the easiest blog cleanups is removal of a malicious HTML gadget . Unfortunately, this does not work, for every gadget on every blog. Depending upon how a gadget is installed, malicious code may, or may not, be visible - and if visible, may, or may not, be easily removable.

A few folks have asked me about my social media toolbar, that I added a couple months ago. It took very little work, to develop and install this gadget. I just went to the AddThis website , registered, selected the options, and got the code. Then, I added one more HTML gadget, to my blogs.

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It appears that Scribfire is one more third party product, that needs upgrading to use OAuth 2.0 authentication . We have a report in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . I use Scribefire to post to my blogs. It works fine with WordPress, but I have not been able to set it up with my Blogger Blog. And later, I have already enabled the "Less secure apps" option. Still no go. This blog owner is patiently trying to diagnose a problem, over which neither he nor we have any control.

In 2010, we learned about the mysterious Post Template - and the problems that can be caused, when it is corrupt or out of date. We developed magical ways of correcting the problems . Revert the widget templates. Reset the post template. Add or tweak specific template code. It's now 2015, and Blogger Engineering has rewritten the Template Editor , and given us new possibilities for correcting problems with the post template - and other gadgets.

Ever since Blogger Engineering completed the emergency upgrade to support Windows Live Writer , we've seen demands from people who use similar offline editors, and other third party products. The "ClientLogin" protocol (aka OpenID 2.0) was replaced by OAuth 2.0 (aka OpenID Connect) , last month. As the problem with Live Writer was diagnosed, in a joint effort by Blogger and Microsoft, we saw evidence that Live Writer was not the only offline editor , that needed attention. The problem is not with Microsoft is with ALL external soft. Do not work with Zoundry Raven, BlogJet, Post2Blog, PowerBlog Personal Client, W.Bloggar, Windows Live Writer, etc. Blogger is about personal choice, however - and some Blogger blog owners use offline editors that are not produced by Microsoft.

This week, we have a multitude of complaints about Windows LiveWriter, and similar third party editors, unable to login to Blogger. Blog owners who use LiveWriter, and similar third party products, to compose and publish posts, have reported authentication problems. I have used Windows Live Writer, to publish to my blog, for years. I now cannot publish, and the message I get is that the ID and password are not correct.

One interesting question, which we see occasionally in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger , would be about making the blog easier to read - if the blog were static. How do I number the pages, in the blog? This blog owner does not quite understand the concept of dynamic content.

We see various questions about getting advice and non standard accessories / code, from blogs and websites advertised outside Blogger / Google control - generally in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . Why can't I see my blog? Every time I click on "View blog", I get a face full of ads! and Where can I get accessories, gadgets, and templates for my blog?? and How do I know what accessories, gadgets, and templates are safe, for my blog? and Why did Blogger lock my blog, as a malware host? All of these folks are discussing the same issue - blog content security. Some are asking properly , before they cause their problems - but others are not .

Recently, we've had several reports from naive blog owners, with blogs locked for malware or phishing, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken . Some owners have found accessories, such as email address collection or even a convenient login gadget, offered by helpful third parties. Installing the new gadgets, they have later received the well known (automated detection) notice, from Blogger Support.

From time to time, we see evidence of anxiety, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken . Why do my posts have hashtag suffixes? and from some, more anxiety How do I know what hashtags to add, when referencing my posts? These blog owners don't understand the purposes of the suffixes.

This week, we're seeing a new stream of problem reports, from blog owners whose blogs are, once again, mysteriously redirecting their readers to unknown destinations . When I open my blog, it automatically directs to another search engine display. This appears to be yet one more gadget, willingly installed by many Blogger blog owners, which is now redirecting uninterested viewers. The target of the redirection, this week, is a parked domain website (ie, "search engine display") - for a product which was apparently installed, willingly , by the blog owners.