The Real Blogger Status

We're seeing a new sense of frustration, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken . How do I prevent the constant offer to Mention people in your posts with Google+? in Post Editor? This is a new Blogger / Google+ feature. Like many Google+ features, this one can be refused. Many blog owners, seeing this offer, refuse it - and are never bothered by it, again. Their refusal is retained, by Blogger, in a Blogger cookie. If you refuse the offer properly, Blogger Post Editor will remember your refusal, and not bother you again - if your browser / computer does not unwisely block cookies and scripts.

Similar to the Google Authorship feature , FaceBook provides an author identification feature. FaceBook uses " Open Graph " code to accomplish what Google provides, with simple back and forward links. The required FaceBook OG code is added to the blog template, as metadata. To add open graph FaceBook authorship identification to this blog, I added the necessary code to the blog template. You can do the same, with your blog.

Too many Blogger blog owners ask what is allowed, when they publish a Blogger blog. Asking what is allowed is a waste of time . We have explained, repeatedly, that whitelisting of blogs is not possible . It would be better to ask what is required, when requesting advice or assistance, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken . Since the purpose of publishing a Blogger blog is to have content for people to read, what is required is unique content , that is composed to satisfy the targeted reader population .

This weekend, a few owners of blogs published to custom domains are reporting problems viewing their blogs. We are seeing various reports, such as unhappily reporting CANNOT VIEW MY BLOG! If we view the blog ourselves - or maybe if the blog owner uses one or more proxy servers to view the blog, the blog will be seen with no problem. Apparently the blog is actually online, regardless of the original observation. Now what? In many cases, the blog in question uses GoDaddy hosted DNS, and a specific set of GoDaddy servers, to provide domain addresses to the blog readers.

In 2011, Blogger announced their new browser support policy . Starting next month Blogger.com will only support modern browsers. This change, while seemingly dismissive and terse, appears to be necessary . With some browsers, however, a two version (the newest version, plus the version in use right now) support policy will cause problems. Support for Internet Explorer updates will provide a challenge, for several reasons. Each new version of Internet Explorer includes many changes, which makes the new version extremely incompatible with previous versions. With the scope of the version changes being so broad, it takes Blogger Engineering longer to update Blogger code, to support the new versions. The longer it takes Blogger Engineering to update Blogger to support each new IE version, the more blog owners are likely to accept the new version onto their computers - and to find that they now can’t use Blogger, because it’s not supported. This month, Blogger Engineering, in addition ...

Google has been providing single login access, to (almost all) Google services, for many years. Properly maintained, we can have one Google account, which lets us access all services, using one login. The single login approach is a convenience, when all of the services, which we use, are part of the same Google account. The single login approach becomes a challenge, when some of the services, which we use, are part of different Google accounts . As owners of Blogger blogs, there are some scenarios, where we have to deal with two different Google accounts simultaneously. Accessing non Blogger applications, like Google Apps . Recovering account / blog control . Transferring control of a blog . When we have to deal with two Google accounts, simultaneously, the single login approach becomes a problem.

People who publish blogs which are relevant to a specific country may be able to focus search engine attention, for their blog - and better target readers in the country in question. Google Webmaster Tools provides the "Geographical target" setting, which lets a blog owner select a single country. The setting increases search engine attention, for their blog, in the country selected.