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Thursday, November 30, 2006

Blog Ownership Stuck With The First Google Account? Don't Delete It

(Edit 6/13): This is no longer an issue. Note: deleting the owner account is still a bad idea. But you shouldn't even get that far in frustration, because we now have the ability to transfer blogs from one account to another.

Under Classic Blogger, it was possible to transfer a blog from one administrative account to another, by adding the second account, then deleting the first. Incorrectly done, though, you could end up with a blog with no administrator, and no way to add an administrator. And another trouble ticket for Blogger Support to resolve.

So Blogger changed the possibility, with New Blogger 2006. Under New Blogger, you can add a second (or third, or ...) administrator, but you can't delete the first administrator. That takes care of the possibility of having no administrator. But it creates a second problem (which apparently Blogger doesn't find important) - you can end up with an account that has no need to administer a blog, but having been the first administrator, is stuck with that ability none the less.

Having accepted that fact, one bright person came up with the idea

OK, what if I delete the first account?

A drastic, but seemingly effective way to resolve the problem.

But no, that's not an answer at all. When you delete the original administrative account, the blogs associated with that account disappear. This is stated by Blogger Employee, in Blogger Help Group: Something Is Broken Since switch my blogs aren't on dashboard Help blogstars or Employee.
...the problem appears to be that you deleted the Google Account that these blogs were registered with. Be aware, when you delete your account, your blogs go with it.

In other words, do not delete an account having any blogs associated with it. And keep the account, and email address, current - and do not lose the password.

Removing the owner account from administrative status won't have the same effect as deleting that account - your blogs aren't going to vanish. But it won't force a second administrator to become the new owner, either. And if the second administrator isn't properly setup, you could end up with a blog with no administrator.

This advice comes too late for some. Let's hope that Blogger produces a workaround for the ownership transfer problem very quickly - expecting for any one account to remain as the owner of a given blog, for eternity, makes no sense at all. People do change names, and identities, and blogs do change ownership.

So, did you just delete your blog? Better get to work, now. And, whether you're reading this too late, or if I caught you in time, tell Blogger that this needs to be changed.

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7 comments:

Michael said...

Thanks Chuck -- I found this blog by way of a Groups posting on this topic. I have my own thread going on at How Do I? on this same point. (Search for "ownership Person A" under How Do I? and you'll find it.) I also find at least 5-6 other recent threads on this point. Each one is inevitably screaming something akin to "Google! Whyfore dost thou forsaketh me?!?!" -- Since there's been absolute silence on this from all of the Google-ites in all of the threads. And, it's coming to the foreground more and more now that we're all being shoved over the cliff into new Blogger.

Lucky for me the true 'owner' is still alive and cooperating, so I'm not in a crisis of any kind. But, it does seem like a huge hole they've ignored, particularly for those folks who are finding out there's an 'owner' out there that may not exist or who won't cooperate and so forth.

(I haven't tried this yet -- Since I'm an Admin on my team blog, I wonder if I could remove the Admin privileges held by the owner? Would Google automatically reasssign ownership?)

Anonymous said...

I really hope Google fixes this problem too. I can't understand why, in the age of multiple e-mail addresses and changing addresses so quickly because of spam, that Google makes admin privileges permanent for blog creators.

Robert Kelly said...

Google's silence on this flaw is deafening, given that it's nearly a half-year since it first arose.

Similar to others, I'm on a team blog in which the owner is no longer interested. He's cooperative and quite willing to transfer ownership to me but, of course, it still isn't possible.

Has anyone heard whether Google/Blogger marketing and engineering have taken ANY position about correcting this? It's just software, after all.

Chrissy said...

this is incredibly stupid. i was the blog admin for a roller derby league i no longer skate with. i desperately want to cut my ties with that league, but now i'm stuck as their blog admin? SO FRUSTRATING!

usually i love blogger, but sometimes...

Nitecruzr said...

Chrissy,

Was my Edit of 6/13, at the top of the post, not visible?

Izes Calheiros said...

Has BLOGGER found a solution for this problem yet? Does anybody know it?

Nitecruzr said...

Chrissy / Izes,

Please, note the first sentence at the top of the article:

(Edit 6/13): This is no longer an issue. Note: deleting the owner account is still a bad idea. But you shouldn't even get that far in frustration, because we now have the ability to transfer blogs from one account to another.