The Real Blogger Status

Earlier this month, we watched in horror, as thousands of Blogger blogs were classified, en masse , as possible spam hosts. My blog has been missing for more then 2 weeks now. I was hoping that it would be restored automatically after you had some issues with "disabled blogs" a couple of weeks ago. However, the things are unchanged. Blogger later declared the issue officially closed . This specific issue affected users whose accounts were temporarily suspended due to suspicious login or hijackings. Accounts in this state can be easily restored via SMS or other verification methods, but after verification, a bug on our end prevented the blog from being restored along with the account. We've corrected the underlying issue though, and have made sure that all blogs who were taken down as a result of suspicious account activity are now back online. If your blog is still inaccessible, then you were not experiencing this specific issue and you should start a new thread to follo...

A few blog owners are reporting problems, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , with posting to their blogs, using Mail-To-Blogger. Several days after sending my post, I get an error text stating that Blogger is not responding. I personally have tested Mail-To-Blogger using my email client, and there is no problem, in general. From the reports received, the problem appears to be related to use of MMS / SMS from cell phones and smart phones. We have a rollup discussion , in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , where the problem is being explored. If you are experiencing any problem with posting photos and / or text using email, MMS, or SMS, please provide your details in the rollup discussion . Help Blogger Support focus on the problem. (Update 1/8): A suggestion from one blog owner suggests that the problem appears to be related to use of an address book entry to address the messages. The workaround, in this case, may involve using the native Settings - "Em...

Many blog owners have been asking for a selection of less boring fonts for their blogs. It would be so nice to have more default font styles. I know that you can edit them in your HTML, but that is a tedious template editing process. Blogger has been listening, and recently, Blogger responded . The Web has traditionally been pretty limited when it comes to font selection, especially for non-Latin alphabets such as Cyrillic and Greek. But great strides have been made in this arena by our friends on the Google Web Fonts team, and finally there are more choices out there than just Arial and Times New Roman. You'll find an improvement to the typical Font list, in the Template Designer Advanced wizard - accessed using the "Customize" button, on the "Template" dashboard page . Boring! Better! If you like, you can even add wizards to the Template Designer - and improve colors, fonts, and other settings even more.

Many blog owners see commenting as a major community building technique in the life of their blogs. Some blog owners want to know more about their commenters, like their names, where they live, what they do for a living, what they like to do in their spare time, and so forth. They see commenting like a big party, where everybody should introduce themselves. Unfortunately, Blogger native commenting requires no commenter information, beyond the basic authentication used - when we require authentication. And what authentication that we might require isn't going to provide any definitive identity information. Blogger commenting provides 4 possible levels of authentication. Anyone - includes Anonymous Users Registered Users - includes OpenID Users with Google Accounts Only members of this blog The top level of authentication - "Only members of this blog" - is applicable to private blogs , where hopefully we knew the blog members in some way, before we invited them ...

Occasionally, blog owners, confused and weary from uncertainty after trying to get their custom domain working, when not purchased from a suitable registrar , ask for a solution that they are just not going to get How do I transfer domain hosting to Blogger? This frequently comes even after we have stated, repeatedly, that Blogger does not register domains, and Blogger / Google does not provide DNS services . What Blogger does is provide a domain setup with eNom or GoDaddy, when the " Buy a domain " wizard is used for the purchase of that domain. Part of the domain setup includes adding standard DNS addresses - the well known 4 x "A" + "CNAME" address configuration.

For some time now, Blogger has supported use of mobile devices, for posting to our blogs. Picture blogs, containing photos taken with your camera phone, are a popular activity for many bloggers. Mail-To-Blogger , which used an email client instead of the browser based Post Editor, sent in many different formats and protocols, was the beginning. Now, we have the ability to post directly from our smart phones. You can enable Mobile Posting, for your blog, from Settings - Email & Mobile - Posting Options. Blogger provides detailed instruction, in Blogger Help: How does Blogger Mobile work? . Recently, Blogger added mobile client support, so your readers can enjoy your blog from their mobile devices. Now, new templates will include special formats designed to work better with small mobile screens. In Draft Blogger , under Settings - Email & Mobile, we have Mobile Template, where you can now enable use of a new mobile template for your blog. To make you comfortable befor...

Some blog owners see commenting as a community building tool, as important as Following, or maybe Stats. They see various forums, and other blogging platforms, and wonder why Blogger doesn't provide formatted, quoted, and threaded commenting, like Google Forums, or maybe WordPress. There, to reply you hit a button "Reply", compose your reply, and "Publish". Blogger doesn't track individual comments. You have to publish a comment for a given post - and there's no threading, to indicate the comment to which you're replying. When you moderate comments , and you see one that deserves a reply, you Publish the comment in question. Find the comment in question, in the "Published" folder. Click on the post title presented with the published comment. Click on "Post a Comment". Post your reply to the comment, as a comment. This is a complex procedure - though before the new comment moderation system, it was even more complex. I...