The Real Blogger Status

If you are trying to make your custom domain published blog work, see my guide Troubleshooting Your Custom Domain Problems . If you want to know how to setup a custom domain properly, from the beginning - and avoid the need for Troubleshooting - read Setting Up DNS Addresses For Custom Domains . Avoid the most basic mistakes made - read The Simplicity Of A Custom Domain Setup . If you just setup your custom domain - and want to minimise the effects of the URL change upon your search engine relationships - read Managing The Migration . If you're just browsing, then read on - but get a good cup of coffee first. And welcome, to Nitecruzr Dot Net.

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.

The literal cause of the error "Another blog or Google Site is already using this address." is that the Google Sites service is mapped to the address in question, in the Google domain services mapping database. Some help articles published on the Internet imply that Sites mappings are the only cause of this error. This misconception creates some of the confusion associated with the error. Sites is not the only service in the services mapping database - but it is the only service with web address mappings. The Sites service contains both service address, and web address, mappings - and both mappings can cause this problem. This oddity creates complexity, and makes a linear check list impossible, when using Google Apps to clear the error - as well as diagnosing the error, in a typical dialogue in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken .

Of all of the problems that are typically reported, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , surely the most frustrating has to be Another blog or Google Site is already using this address. or possibly Key already exists for domain ... One of the reasons for the frustration is that this is not a descriptive error - it's more of a symptom - and this symptom has a number of causes . Since many Blogger blog owners don't understand the principles of problem solving, the solutions for this error may not be obvious.

The Google domain services database lets one or more Blogger blogs, and / or various Google services, be packaged as part of a domain - giving your organisation its own virtual web server. Google Apps is used to manage this virtual web server, as you install and un install various domain services. Sometimes a domain, newly setup in Google after the domain has been purchased from a registrar, will have one or more addresses unexpectedly mapped to various Google services. This will be inconvenient to the blog owner, who may wish to use a given URL for a Blogger blog.

Many network problems that affect your use of Blogger, such as the currently obnoxious "Server Error 1-500" , can be better understood, if we can understand how you are connecting to Blogger. A pathping log, similar to a traceroute log , but easier to read, is very useful in this case. (Note) : A pathping log is easier to read than a traceroute log . Pathping is a new utility, though, and may not be available on all computers. If you try to run pathping, as in the instructions below, and get an error 'pathping' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file. or similar, substitute a traceroute log . Here we have pathping targetting "www.google.com". Choose your target according to your need. Open a command window . Type pathping www.google.com at the command prompt. Observe the output (as in the sample shown below), particularly the "Computing statistics for 200 seconds...". This time period appears to va...

Many network problems that affect your use of Blogger, such as the currently obnoxious "Server Error 1-500" , can be diagnosed, if we can understand how you are connecting to Blogger. A TraceRoute log shows us the path that your connection takes to a given server, and is very useful in this case. On most systems, TraceRoute is run as "tracert". Here we have a tracert targeting "www.google.com". Choose your target according to your need. Open a command window . Type "tracert www.google.com >c:\tracert.txt" (less the "") at the command prompt. Type "notepad c:\tracert.txt" (less the "") at the command prompt. Copy, and paste, the entire log, as displayed in Notepad, into your email or forum post. Please don't munge, or disguise, any details. It really is simple - when you know how. Just be generous - and precise (see the spaces in the commands?). Here's a sample log. C:\>tracert www.google.com Tracing...

One possible reason for the odd distribution of the well known pink warning Could not connect to Blogger.com. Saving and publishing may fail. or similarly Cannot View Webpage may be that it involves several different problems, coming together. It's possible that Pete Hopkins explains one of the problems as a side effect of the cookies generated by Blogger, some of which are used in post editor. Cookies are normally small and unassuming, but there's a bit of unusual behavior in that Blogger automatically saves the first few k of your post in a set of cookies as you're typing. That way, if your browser crashes you can use the "recover post" link to get at least the first part of it back. However, the side effect of using cookies in this way is that even though they're only being used (abused?) for local/offline storage, your browser will send the cookies with every request to a blogger.com server. This might explain why some Bloggers report temporary relief by...

How many people know what etiology is? Wikipedia defines it as ...the study of causation It's a fancy term for cause and effect. Fancy or not, though, it can have useful applications in real life. In the medical world, it might be used in a study of the spread of an epidemic. In computers, we might apply its principles for analysing a chronic network problem, as in deciding if multiple people, reporting the same symptoms, implies the existence of a major, widespread computer problem. Have you ever been to a hospital, and seen many sick people? If you did go to a hospital, would seeing the many sick people there lead you to conclude that there is a worldwide epidemic in progress? Most people are too analytical to lead to that conclusion. They know that a hospital is where sick people are expected to be seen. Oddly enough, though, many folks who wouldn't make an assumption about a medical epidemic, based upon being in a hospital, will visit a technical help forum,...

In my musings about the well known pink warning Could not connect to Blogger.com. Saving and publishing may fail. or similarly Cannot View Webpage I realised a lot of questions. I think we need some idea of the nature of this problem. The answers can only come from those suffering . Describe, for the record, all symptoms observed. What does "Cannot Connect To Blogger" / "Cannot Publish To Blogger" mean for you? Where are you located, geographically? What ISP do you have? What type of Internet service - Cable TV, Dialup, DSL, Satellite - do you have? What speed (down / up, if known)? How does your computer connect - Ethernet, WiFi - to your service? Do you have a broadband router? Have you ever tried Publishing, when the message is being displayed on your screen? If Yes, could you, ever, publish successfully? If not, precisely, what error or problem was presented to you? Do you have more than one browser? If so, Have both browsers ever shown the problem? Hav...

All of the companies that I've worked for in my history, which had computers, controlled everything rather tightly. Businesses do that. Businesses owned the big computers, aka mainframes. We, as programmers, would write code. We would test the code. We would give the code to a computer operator, who would run the code as a job. We would train the computer operators. All code ran on company owned and controlled computers, over company owned and controlled networks, maintained by company trained personnel. Every change was made, and tested, by people working for the company. Very tightly focused, and controlled.

My Blog Is Missing! Oh no! Generally, this refers to a deleted or hijacked blog. Other times, part of the blog is there, and the other part is not. This may be similar to the dropped post / sidebar problem , except there's garbage on the screen, or maybe the screen is blank. Or if you're in the Page Elements wizard, you can't add or relocate page elements. What do I do now? If you're lucky, the last time you published your updated blog, the publishing got interrupted. This will be more often seen when publishing to non-Blogspot blogs, but can happen with Blogspot too, generally with Old Blogger blogs. If that's what happened, you're in luck. Just republish your blog again. And next time you make changes, always test afterwards. If the problem is in using the " Page Elements " GUI to add or rearrange elements, maybe the widgets are corrupt. Try resetting the widgets to default values , first. If the problem is with comments or posts, ...

Long ago, and oh so far away (no, that's a popular song from when I was young), I wrote an article Why Do I Do This? . This is not a rehash of that article. I've had a few folks, (maybe misunderstanding my motives, maybe wanting to interfere with my message, who knows?) tell me, in not so many words but close Chuck, you have your head where it won't see any sun. Of Fables And Blogger : Comment #3. To the Blogger Staff Reading This Group Damn, Down Again, Is There Someone Smart Enough to Fix This Mess? It appears that my pointing out that There are no blog hijacks (in these cases) . There is no major outage of Blogger or Blogspot (right now) . Blogger shouldn't be expected to respond to every complaint immediately (without any work on our part) . ... all of these posts, in general, mean that I am trying to be a shill for Blogger. Simultaneously, though, I wonder whether Blogger might become tired of my prodding them. I prod them to get off their coffee breaks and fix...

Post Body Lorem ipsum vim ut utroque mandamus intellegebat, ut eam omittam ancillae sadipscing, per et eius soluta veritus. And I appreciate your willingness to help.