The Real Blogger Status

This week, we're seeing a large number of reports of missing Followers, and / or the Followers gadget not showing up on various blogs. The reports don't include a lot of detail, though. Very few reports include even the blog URL. (Update 2011/05/28): Right now, we're all seeing the latest intermittent Followers gadget outage . Blogger Support is aware of this problem, so be patient. If you are one of the folks observing this problem, please provide some diagnostic details to the Blogger Missing Followers Reports form . You may, alternatively, provide diagnostic details here. What is the URL of the blog with the observed problem? Is the blog missing the Followers gadget altogether, or does the gadget show there, with no Followers? If the latter, is the Followers count zero, or non zero? Is the blog in question your blog? If this is your blog, can you look on your dashboard, follow the Followers link for the blog, and see if the dashboard Followers gadget has mi...

Ever since people began blogging, they have been crying that they cannot find their blog. Sometimes, they have a network problem, or a deleted blog . Other times, and as a relatively recent development, it's because of the way that they use their browser. Look at the top of your browser window. Besides the toolbar (where you have your buttons to go forward / backward, go home, reload, etc), and the bookmarks / favorites, you probably have one or two boxes where you type stuff. Depending upon your browser, the boxes may or may not be labeled. And depending upon which box you use to find your blog - or other blogs or web sites - you may or may not find what you are looking for. When browsers were first developed, every browser had one, and only one, such type in box, called the "address" or "URL" entry box. That's where you type the address (URL) of the blog or web site which you wish to access. Some time after the development of browsers came the searc...

As a possible repeat of an episode a couple years ago , numerous bloggers who appear to be customers of Singnet, or possibly of other ISPs in the Singapore region, report that the toolbar area in the post editor is distorted or out of shape, and the buttons don't work. Yesterday, Blogger acknowledged the problem . Occasionally, what is being observed is the toolbar in "Edit HTML" mode, and the problem is resolved by enabling Compose mode . In other cases, the problem may be resolved by bypassing or refreshing browser cache . A few victims of this problem, who are direct customers of Singnet / Singtel , may be able to use the regional Singnet proxy "proxy.singnet.com.sg", as was done 2 years ago . This seems to be a more stable solution than the typical free Internet proxy server, which many use for anonymous or secure access, or to bypass local network controls . For Firefox: From the menu, select Tools, then Options. Click on the "Advanced" tab. Cli...

In every game of poker, there comes the time to call ("show the cards"). So today, we see a question, which I've seen a few times, reechoed recently I am planning to switch my Blogger blog to a custom domain. But before doing that I would like to know all the benefits and drawbacks of switching to a custom domain name.

This blog is The Real Blogger Status , and it's published as " blogging.nitecruzr.net ". You are looking at the blog itself . What you see is a lot easier for you to digest, than for computers to do so. There's another copy of your blog, though, that's designed for computers to digest, so the information can be passed to other places, maybe as part of another web site or blog , or to a reader who is subscribed to your blog, using a newsreader . The other copy is called the blog feed . Before we got Layouts Blogger, in 2006, we had pre 2006 Blogger. The first blog feeds, provided as part of pre 2006 Blogger, were served as part of the published blog. The pre 2006 Blogger blog feeds were continued into Layouts Blogger. For "blogging.nitecruzr.net", we have an pre 2006 Atom feed "blogging.nitecruzr.net/feeds/posts/default", also addressed as "blogging.nitecruzr.net/feeds/posts/default?alt=atom". We similarly have an RSS feed, ad...

Many bloggers who setup team blogs, and anticipate having significant numbers of authors providing significant numbers of posts, eventually start wondering How can I list all of the posts, by author? This is the sort of feature that one would hope to find in any well designed content management system, which is yet one more thing that Blogger is not . I'm sure that this question came up in the AppsSpot Blogger Enhancements forum , I don't recall that it was discussed terribly vigorously. There is a solution for this need, though it's manual, and may have to be enforced by the blog owner. Simply have each author assign a label to each post , using his / her name. You, the blog owner, can verify consistent and proper labels, by checking against the Edit Posts menu , which lists both author name and label membership of each blog post. With each post properly labeled, simply add a labels index - either a Blogger standard one, or a third party one like the Cumulus Multi-Style...

Recently, the political blog "The Girl In Short Shorts" was judged by a number of bloggers to contain objectionable visual content, and was flagged by a substantial number of would be readers. Its readers are now greeted by an interstitial warning, and are forced to click once on a button before being able to view the blog. Many readers of the blog are now protesting in Blogger Help Forum , in ignorance of the reasons for the interstitial warning. Their actions are similar to those of the readers of The Daily Coyote, last year . To the owners of the blog: You need to contact your readers, and advise them to knock it off. You aren't bothering Blogger (this is a weekend) - but you are interfering with other bloggers being helped, because of your Denial Of Service technique (intentional or not). If you don't want your readers to have to click on the interstitial button (once per reader, only), remove the problem pictures. (Update 7/21): Rick Klau, Blogger Product Ma...