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.

We see panic, exhibited by many blog owners, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken . I used the W3 Template Validator, and got hundreds of errors! Is my blog broken? This blog owner, like many others, does not understand the differences between W3 Standard HTML / XHTML, and Blogger HTML / XML. The unpleasant truth is that, ever since Blogger released the Layout class templates , in 2007, Blogger has been providing templates that can't be successfully validated using HTML / XHTML standards. Blogger has a lot of features that don't validate, according to public standards.

Sometimes, researching a problem, with a custom domain published blog, involves a Who Is lookup, to determine key domain details - like DNS server namess, purchase date, registrar name, and others. Starting with the properly spelled domain name is essential, to getting a useful Who Is lookup. In cases where the blog / domain owner can't spell the domain name consistently, you can start even more basically. To determine the details about a domain purchase, when you have any doubt, ask for a copy of the invoice or receipt. If the transaction was conducted electronically, copy and paste of the key information is most useful. If the transaction involved a paper trail, have the receipt scanned, and a picture posted somewhere that you can view.

An occasional sign of confusion, seen occasionally in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , starts with a simple statement. There's a frog on my blog! Those of us who know about third party templates know what's up, here. Given the right browser, you can find the problem, in a couple minutes.

So many problems with custom domain publishing start with incorrectly setup DNS addresses. Sometimes the problems start with misunderstanding about the rigid requirements of DNS addresses , other times misunderstanding about how to use the Domain Manager tools provided - and sometimes the registrar gets involved , and causes problems. Many times, I'll offer advice in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , and the reply will indicate the confusion. Here's a screenshot of my settings - I can't see a problem! or I just got my registrar to setup the DNS addresses, as you gave me. Surely, they are right? But we diagnose the problem, and find that the addresses are still wrong. In business, we learn of the importance of using well known, standard testing procedures. People setting up a custom domain would do well to learn this concept, also.

If you have a car, and drive it frequently - and sometimes under stress - you may have experienced the embarrassment of depleting the petrol level, unexpectedly, at an inconvenient time. This experience is called, in the vernacular, "running out of gas". Like the experience of running out of gas, which is embarrassing and inconvenient, people who publish their blogs to non BlogSpot URLs may occasionally experience the horror of having their custom domains "run out of gas", or expire. Like having your car run out of gas, it is extremely necessary to confirm when your domain has expired.

As I wrote earlier , when I'm diagnosing a problem with a custom domain - and occasionally, with other blog and network problems - my most frequently used tool is a Kloth online Dig . With Dig being an important diagnostic procedure, it's a good idea to have more than one Dig utility available. The Kloth server may be down. The Kloth server may not offer the right options. It's good practice to occasionally (and sometimes, intentionally) cross check results against another server. For many Dig investigations, I like to use a second online Dig service - WhoIs, provided by All-NetTools . The All-NetTools WhoIs Dig actually provides more than a standard Dig. A WhoIs Dig, for a domain, provides much valuable information about the domain / registrar relationship. Here, for instance, we can see an All-NetTools WhoIs Dig for this domain, nitecruzr.net . http://www.who.is/whois/nitecruzr.net/ REGISTRY WHOIS FOR NITECRUZR.NET Domain Name: nitecruzr.net Registrar: GODADD...

If I publish a blog in which I concentrate on content and information, I want to make the content and information easy (yet inviting) to read. This blog, The Real Blogger Status , is marginally easy to read - and looked boring - before I upgraded to a Designer template , which has a more complex background. Then, I added my floating background , to make the text easier to read. Recently, I redesigned this blog, and published using a new Blogger supplied Responsive template .

Similar to Google Webmaster Tools , we have a tool which helps us develop and maintain our relationship between our blogs and the Yahoo search engine spiders. Yahoo Site Explorer helps us develop a sitemap to initially make our blogs more visible to the Yahoo search engines, it provides us with tools to measure our visibility, and it provides us with helpful hints on how to improve our visibility. You can use Yahoo Site Explorer for any active URL that you administer. If your blog is published to BlogSpot, you use the "xxxxxxx.blogspot.com" URL; if the blog is published to a custom domain or externally using FTP, you use the primary URL for the domain. Using Yahoo Site Explorer for any web site requires that you are the administrator of the web site. Like Google, Yahoo doesn't want anybody who's not the administrator, of any web site, accessing search engine diagnostics for that web site. The meta tag provided in the verification process is a token, and it must mat...

Whenever I answer a problem report which involves a blog published to a Google Custom Domain, I always start my answer with a Dig log . A Dig log tells me what's behind the behaviour of the Custom Domain. Having looked at what's behind the scenes, I look at the front scenes. One very common front scene is (guess what?) Server Not Found Error 404 and I'll report to someone You have the well known "Server Not Found Error 404". and to a select few that will be news. Great, Chuck, what do I do now? but to many bloggers Great, Chuck, tell me something that I don't know. So, how do you describe the old "404", so you can diagnose it? For analysing the sequence of events that lead to the "404", and various other browser related events, I use the Rex Swain HTTP Viewer . This is a free (what else?) online service, that produces an online text log (suitable for copying and pasting) of the contents of an HTTP conversation between a web client (such...

As a Google customer, we have access to a very useful set of tools, which help us develop and maintain a healthy relationship between our blogs and the Google search engine spiders. Google Webmaster Tools (now Search Console) provides us with tools to measure our visibility , and it provides us with helpful hints on how to improve our visibility.

Any time you examine a blog - either yours or a friends or strangers - you look at the content, and maybe the template. The content is obvious - you read what the blog has to say. Then you look at the template, and at the accessories and decorations. How about the links? Any blog of any size has links - usually within the blog, and outside the blog. Maybe links to other blogs produced by the same person, to the close friends of that person, and to acquaintances and strangers. OMG, Chuck, that could take days. I don't have time for that nonsense. But that nonsense can be a key to finding a contact to a friend or stranger, or a problem in your own blog. And maybe you do have time, if you automate your research. IT-Mate provides a free useful product - vURL Desktop Edition - that walks through any blog or website, extracts each link, and presents you with an alphabetised and normalised list of all links found. You can look at the list presented to you, and find other links wit...