The Real Blogger Status

We have seen a significant number of reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , again mentioning inability to post to our blogs using EMail / Phone / SMS. The problem appears to have started several days ago - but was quiet for a while, and has been rather noticeable today.

The sport of ocean surfing has been described as something like "constantly falling down an ever advancing wall of water", while trying to stay upright and ahead of the wall of water (aka the "wave"). Publishing a Blogger blog, and dealing with hijackers, pirates, and spammers, is similar to surfing. I am frequently advising people, who complain about the constant waves of spurious spam classifications, blog clones (aka "content thieves"), and referer spam, to keep looking ahead - and keep publishing their blogs. Like ocean surfing, you want to keep looking ahead and remain standing - don't fall down, and let the wave behind wash over you. The latter leads to drowning.

One of the odder examples of naivete, seen occasionally in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? , involves the custom domain purchase. How do I buy a domain from Blogger? or alternately How do I have Google host my domain? The immediate answer, properly stated, is simple. You cannot buy a domain from Blogger. Neither Blogger, nor Google, is a registrar. The full answer, however, is a bit more complex.

We've been asking for the ability to have post URLs that differ from the post titles , for some time. Now, we have the Custom Permalinks feature, available in the New Blogger GUI Posts Editor, for new posts. Some people would like to use custom permalinks for existing posts - and for pages. We can do that, too - but not by using Custom Permalinks. Custom Permalinks only works for new posts - and not for pages.

We've been asking for the ability to have post URLs that differ from the post titles , for some time. Up to now, we had a workaround, to do this. Publish a post, with a title worded to give the desired URL. Edit the previously published post, and change the title. That was a clumsy procedure - and it had side effects.

In the latest round of blog hijacks, from misbehaving or miswritten accessory gadgets, we have reports this month in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken about blogs redirecting to "kunoichi . info". My Blogger site, xxxxxxx . blogspot . com, with over 8 years of blog posts archived, has been redirected without my permission, to "kunoichi . info". I see my blog for a few seconds before it goes to the new site.

The question of disposition of blogs, left behind by deceased blog owners, comes up in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? , from time to time. As Blogger blogs - and similar Google products - become mature, and as more people who publish Blogger blogs become susceptible to old age and death, this problem will become more critical. As recently as 2010, in order to assume control (or request deletion) of such a blog, Blogger required only a faxed copy of the death certificate. In 2013, Google refined the recovery process, and added additional requirements for account recovery.