The Real Blogger Status

We see various problems reported, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , which may involve geographical or network relationships. Why can't I regain access to my blog, that I stopped publishing 5 years ago? and Why can't I see my blog? and Why does my dashboard show up in a language that I can't read? With questions like these, it helps to know how and where the owner and / or readers of the blog get Internet service.

Knowing how to read, and follow, sitemap entries is a useful skill in diagnosing many Blogger problems. The Blogger generated sitemaps, which apply to each blog, index both pages and posts. This blog, like every other blog, has two sitemaps, automatically generated . " sitemap.xml " (posts) roughly duplicates the "Archives" gadget - but has advantages, over the gadget. " sitemap-pages.xml " (static pages) is not redundant, to any Blogger accessory.

An HTTP trace is a very useful tool, for diagnosing and documenting connectivity issues, and many other blog problems. I use the Rex Swain HTTP Viewer , for this purpose. HTTP Viewer lets you package a given display, in the URL, so you can give simple instructions (accompanied by an unavoidably complicated link): Click on the link: http://www.rexswain.com/cgi-bin/httpview.cgi?url=http://klarfamilylife.blogspot.com&uag=Mozilla/5.0+(X11%3B+CrOS+armv7l+7834.70.0)+AppleWebKit/537.36+(KHTML,+like+Gecko)+Chrome/49.0.2623.112+Safari/537.36&ref=http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html&aen=&req=GET&ver=1.1&fmt=AUTO And when the link is clicked, the necessary HTTP trace is displayed. There is no need to provide instructions how to actually enter the necessary values, on the HTTP Viewer home page, to generate the necessary display.

Whether you're setting up or troubleshooting a custom domain , knowing how to read a Dig log is a useful skill. There are hundreds of registrars, serving the Internet community, each with their own dashboard. Blog owners, setting up their domains for their Blogger blogs, must deal with the syntax and terminology used by each different dashboard. A Dig log lets the blog owner identify the DNS addresses for the domain, using a consistent display.

Whenever I answer a problem report in an open forum, in my email, or just in general life, which involves a blog published to a Google Custom Domain, I always start my research with a Dig log. Dig is a very commonly used tool for querying DNS configuration data . Since many custom domain problems involve DNS setup, Dig is my first diagnostic tool. Dig can be run locally (from your computer), or online (from a Dig server). Since Dig accesses online data, I find it reasonable to run it from online servers. For detailed analysis, I use the Kloth.Net Dig utility , which lets you select specific record types to dig for, and lets you specify a DNS server to Dig into .