Blogger Alert 12/6: Publishing By FTP Requires Firewall Checked On Your Server

As pointed out by Paul in Blogger Help Group: Something Is Broken Blogger Beta Publishing / Connectivity Issue Solved, if you're publishing to an external server (FTP / SFTP), and your firewall is filtering by IP address (as you well should be), you'll need to check your filter. Apparently the Blogger servers publishing can use any IP address in 64.233.166.0/24 (subnet mask 255.255.255.0).

One would hope that when they change IP addresses, they would post a big note somewhere, but if they did, I don't think a lot of folks noted it.

Of course, issues like restrictive firewalls are something that we should know about anyway. Layer 5 of a layered defense strategy involves periodic checking of logs, even when no problems are being experienced. If your FTP publishing fails, you have to check logs as part of the diagnosis. This is a routine Responsible Practice.

Don't paint yourself into a corner - stay aware of what's happening, at all times.