The Real Blogger Status

One of the more perplexing problems, in Blogger owner / reader life, involves layered security issues , and filter changes. Many Blogger features are vulnerable to security filters. The ability to use Blogger commenting , the EU cookie advice banner won't display or won't go away, the infamous Reading List , the Blogger Stats "Don't track ..." option - all require cookies and scripts , that are subject to filtering.

Occasionally, a new blog owner will want to make a blog part of his website. Long ago, before custom domain publishing became a Blogger option, it was normal to publish a blog into a website subfolder. FTP Publishing let anybody publish a blog as "www.mywebsite.com/blog". But FTP Publishing ended, shortly after custom domain publishing replaced it. And now, publishing to a subfolder is not an option.

This week, we're seeing a noticeable increase in reports about problems with reading list content. People are, once again, reporting empty reading lists - and many deny the suggestion that computers used by the readers might have anything to do with the problem. Neither filtered cookies / scripts, nor using the wrong Blogger account, appears to be involved in some of this weeks problems. One account owner reported having cleaned her Reading List - and after having removed just one entry from the list, the Reading List content became visible, again. This suggests that the owner may be following too many blogs - or possibly, following one blog which recently increased feed size. Either could be true, based upon the common complaint. I didn't change anything! It just stopped working, last week, on its own!!

Some blog owners don't care much for the mobile template. A few blog owners simply think that the mobile template is just too plain looking. Where are all of the gadgets? These blog owners express a concern which is not too hard to resolve. If you want gadgets to be visible on a mobile display, make the gadgets visible. Of course, it's up to you, to not add too many gadgets, and make your blog impossible to read.

We've had some photo / video blogs under review recently, and confirmed as TOS Violations. The citations were first seen late last year, and associated with the "Jennifer Lawrence" / "Anna Kendrick" celebrity leak photos scandal . We're asking Blogger Support for details of the policy - but right now it appears that Google is now forbidding any "nude celebrity" photos or videos, after their public relations problems surrounding the Jennifer Lawrence photos.

This blog is " blogging.nitecruzr.net ". If I wanted to dress up the URL slightly, I might tell you it's " Blogging.Nitecruzr.Net ". Either URL should work, for reading the blog, equally well - with the domain setup properly. Both blogs published to "blogspot.com" - and to non BlogSpot (aka "custom domain") - URLs are subjected to unexpected mixed case variations , from time to time.

Not all blog owners, publishing a blog to a custom domain, will be required to verify domain ownership. Originally, this was not the case. When ownership verification was added to custom domain publishing , in 2012, every use of the Publishing wizard - even for domains previously purchased using "Buy a domain" - would require a new "CNAME". Since many registrars limit the number of address entries / domain, the new "CNAME" meant half the maximum number of hosts / domain. Of course, most blog owners patience ran out long before the magical maximum - but there was always that spectre hanging over every custom domain.