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.

Occasionally, we see a request from somebody who wants to publish a blog with historically significant dates, which precede Blogger compatible dates. In one case, we see a request in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger , about writing a blog, as "published" in the 1960s. I'm doing a History project, and I'm blogging as if I was in the 1960's. I was excited to see that I could change that date - but soon realized that it won't let me go back further than 1970. Unfortunately, blog dates will go back no farther than 1970.

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" / ...

Long ago, a renamed blog post would automatically receive a new URL, to match a change in date or title . Blog owners would happily rename posts - and see a new URL, with no problem. Those blog owners who monitored search engine activity, however, later became concerned by the "404"s, shown in the search engine activity logs, in Webmaster Tools - or from various test searches.

If there's one question, seen occasionally in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger ?, that confounds me, its a simple one. How do I change the order of my posts? or Why does my blog display the newest post first? Where is the option, to change to oldest post first? It is very difficult to respond both correctly, and helpfully, to both questions, equally well. Blogger does not provide a dashboard setting, to change the post display sequence. Post sequence is only changed, by altering the date and time of the posts .

Not all new Blogger blog owners understand why they are asked for their birthdate, when they setup a Blogger or Google account. Some folks see this as a violation of their right to privacy, and enter a fake birthdate. Some real serious privacy enthusiasts might enter "01/01/01", just to get through the setup process - maybe intending to correct it, later. Nobody entering "01/01/01", for one's birthdate, suspects that claiming such a birthdate makes them - in 2013 - appear to be 12 years of age. Unfortunately, 12 years is below the minimum age for owning a Blogger blog. Since Blogger / Google tries to protect the young people on the Internet from inadvertently exposing themselves - or their families or friends - to unknown dangers, people who may appear to be of insufficient age are subject to having their Blogger / Google accounts, and Blogger blogs, deleted or locked.

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.

Yesterday, Blogger Support delivered one long awaited improvement to our blogs - two level commenting . It was eagerly awaited - and as soon as the Buzz announcement hit the Blogosphere, people were busy checking out the new feature. Predictably, problem reports have been rolling in, all day today, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken . One noticed problem report concerns the date / time stamp on the comments. All of the comments on my blog, even on previous posts, now show an incorrect time. I double-checked my setting, it is correctly set my local time. The general consensus appears to be that all comments are now posting as Pacific Time (USA), regardless of the blog time zone setting. This problem, along with several others, has been reported to Blogger Support - and they are now looking into this issue. Watch this space for updates. >> Top

Mobile blogging is becoming more and more popular - and it's creating an interesting challenge. Many blog owners, freed from the daily use of the home computer, are publishing multiple smaller posts, throughout the day - instead of a few larger posts, at the end of the day. Also, they are using mobile computers, and emailing or messaging the posts using Mail-To-Blogger, rather than composing the posts using the GUI Post Editor. Lately, we're seeing more and more problem reports,in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken . Why are my posts not publishing? Many of the people reporting problems are mobile bloggers, not understanding about the unavoidable limitations.

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 a few reports of apparently missing content in some blog posts. At the top of all of my blog posts it says "undefined undefined". Frequently this will be reported after having changed templates, possibly for a third party template . The portion of the blog where the problem is reported will be typically part of the post or comments area. The most likely candidate for the problem, then, is the post template. A good thing to check first would be post template corruption, so refresh or reset the post template . If that's not helpful, then look for a problem with the date setting . >> Top

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...

A blog, by tradition, is an online journal. We write the posts, and when we enable post titles, we choose the post titles. When we enable post pages and post titles, the URLs of the posts are a function of the dates, and the titles, of the posts. We can choose the titles of the posts, but the Blogger post editor chooses the URLs. This is a key component in the Blogger Infrastructure . The static page editor ("Edit Pages") uses the same engine as the Post Editor, and Static Pages (aka "Pages") use a similar basic URL structure.

Like the language problems which plague bloggers from time to time, we occasionally have problems with the times in our blog posts and in other places. Like the language issue, too, the time settings can be found in various places, and any one of them may affect you . First, each blog has a setting for Time Zone. From Settings - Language and formatting, check "Time Zone". Secondly, each blog owner has a Google account. Your Google account, too, has a Time Zone setting. From your dashboard, select "My Account" on the right. Then, under "Personal info & privacy", select "Edit", and there, too, check "Time Zone". Finally, your computer has a clock, and that too must be maintained, using an applet provided by the Operating System. This will vary by Operating System, and it too will include Time Zone. And check the clock too. If you have a problem with time keeping, anywhere, remember to check all 3 settings.

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.