The Real Blogger Status

I've always been an advocate of redundancy, with essential components and features. One essential feature of a website is the ability to remain aware of where your readers come from, and what they are reading , on your blog. Besides Blogger Stats, I've advocated both SiteMeter and StatCounter, in a complementary role to each other. A while ago, SiteMeter decided to add video advertisements to their blog / website agent, that tracks the clicks.

We see occasional reports from owners of blogs with lots of video content. My readers can't view the YouTube videos in my blog, on their cell phones or iPads. YouTube video content, as uploaded through the Blogger Post Editor, uses Adobe Flash embedded code. The native browser, on Apple based mobile computers, doesn't support Flash content. Many non Apple mobile computers may be similarly limited. Before Flash became a part of the Adobe Products multimedia suite, some security experts believed it to cause security vulnerabilities. Some owners of desktop and laptop computers have blocked Flash in their browsers also.

This weekend, many blog owners are discovering a possible change in Google service . I cannot upload videos to my blog, and I get an error message. Sorry, there was an error uploading your video. Please contact support and include the following information: Blog Id:99999999 Video Id: This would suggest that Google finally decided to end the schizophrenic confusion of Google Video vs YouTube, and go with YouTube for non business video hosting.

Video content, like music (audio content), can provide education and enjoyment to your readers, when properly included in your blog. Video, also like music, can be a problem, when improperly included. If played without warning, as part of your blog, video content can be a worse problem than music that plays automatically. Just as it's not in your best interest, as a blog publisher, to include music that plays automatically, it's even less in your best interest to include a video that plays automatically.

One fun and sometimes practical accessory to add to your blog is a video. When added properly , you get a picture, that your readers can click on, and watch a movie, right in front of their eyes. This is called " streaming video ", where the video content is downloaded from the distant server while you watch. Here's a demonstration video that I have used in another post. This is one example of why I prefer to live in California. » www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCoxOReXlHI <object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/YCoxOReXlHI?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/YCoxOReXlHI?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess=...

We've seen a few reports of problems uploading a video, since that option was added to Post Editor. Please contact Support, and include the following information: Blog Id:bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb Video Id:vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv or possibly even Please contact Support, and include the following information: Blog Id:bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb Video Id:FAILED Upon further investigation, sometimes by the blogger and other times by a helper in Blogger Help Forum , we may find that the video is too long (100M is the maximum length), the video is of the wrong format (only AVI, MPEG, QuickTime, Real and Windows Media are accepted), and in one case, the video was detected as copyrighted material and refused. Apparently, the video upload process doesn't provide a lot of diagnostic information. Maybe that's one reason why the new Post Editor didn't include video upload , for a long time. >> Top

A Layouts template, the template in a New Blogger blog, when published to Blog*Spot (or to a Google Custom Domain) is written in XML, not HTML. A lot of HTML based tweaks won't work in New Blogger. If you force HTML into your template, you may end up with one of the new, cryptic error codes bX-lgwej This says that your post template contains invalid HTML . Are you seeing this error? If so, don't despair. Revert the template back to Classic , so your readers can access the blog. Build a test version of the blog , and work on a New Blogger template, while your readers are accessing the production blog. Take your HTML based template tweaks, that made your Classic blogs unique, and add them as HTML / JavaScript page elements. Test everything, carefully, in all available browsers . When you have a New Blogger template for your blog, looking as you like it, Save the template to a known location. Migrate your production blog to a New Blogger template again. Restore the saved templ...

Photos are an easy way to make your posts more interesting . Going one step further, we have moving photos, ie videos. Just Link To The Video, Hosted Externally Including a link to a video is as simple as including a link to a photo , hosted elsewhere. >> The Perfect Plumber &gt;&gt;<a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay? docid=2638976382458360943&q=plumber">The Perfect Plumber</a> >> Top Or Embed The Video In The Post But look at my post in PChuck's Network: Don't Do It Yourself - If You Don't Think About What You're Doing Here we have a Shockwave Flash movie, Embedded in the web page . <embed style="width: 400px; height: 326px;" id="VideoPlayback" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf? docId=2638976382458360943&q=plumber"> </embed><br clear="left"><a href="http://video.google.c...