The Real Blogger Status - Beta

If You Ever See This Message

2007-05-10T13:44:00.000-07:00

As I wrote so long ago, Labels are probably the most significant feature of (New aka Beta) Blogger.

But everything good has its limits. If you use Labels enthusiastically, as I have, you will discover them (they will find you) periodically.

You have too many labels, or the total length of your labels is too great.

You are limited to a total of 200 characters, in the Labels string, for any post. I believe that this includes all commas and spaces between labels.

Look at my example.

Labels for this post:
Label1, Label2, Label3, Label4, Label5, Label6, Label7, Label8, Label9, Label10, Label11, Label12, Label13, Label14, Label15, Label16, Label17, Label18, Label19, Label20, Label21, Label22, Label23, Label24, Label25, Label26, Label27, Label28, Label29, Label30, Label31, Label32, Label33, Label34, Label35, Label36, Label37, Label38, Label39, Label40, Label41, Label42, Label43, Label44, Label45, Label46, Label47, Label48, Label49, Label50, Label51, Label52, Label53, Label54, Label55, Label56, Label57, Label58, Label59

Like limiting the size of your main page, you really have to exercise some judgement about labels. A blog of any appreciable size, with 200 characters of labels in some posts, would have a rather large label list. The above example, with 59 labels, is waaay to many. Think of your readers, please.

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Custom Domains Aren't For Everybody #2

2007-04-24T15:26:00.000-07:00

Some Bloggers claim that the simple process of publishing to a custom domain can't be reversed.

>> Forum thread links: bX-*00035

>> Copy this tag: bX-*00035

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Custom Domains Aren't For Everybody

2007-04-22T12:30:00.000-07:00

OK, maybe you tried your custom domain, and decided it's not for you.

Go to Settings - Publishing, and select

Switch to: • blogspot.com

That's all that it takes, normally. Well, that and refreshing cache afterwards.

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The Profile Page Element

2007-04-10T07:23:00.000-07:00

This is a nice accessory, to give your blog readers a chance to see you, as a person. Or, if you have a blog with multiple contributors, to see each contributor.

It's a pretty simple page element, with limited possibilities.

If the blog has multiple contributors, it will show a list of the contributors, with links to their Google profiles.
If the blog has just one contributor, it shows a few things.
- The picture, from the Google profile.
- A few basic facts, that you can change at will.
- A link to your Google profile.

What you can change is pretty limited.

You can remove the page element itself.
You can prevent it from showing a page element, if there is only 1 contributor.
You can add a few details about yourself, to show if there is only 1 contributor.

If you need more granularity, say you don't want your photo, or the link to your Google profile, just remove the page element, or turn off "Share my profile".

If you just want your picture, and a short caption, add a Picture page element.
If you just want text, you can add either an HTML / JavaScript, or a Text, page element.
If you want your picture, and some text about yourself, add an HTML / JavaScript page element, and arrange the text above, beside, and below the picture.
If you just want text, you can add either an HTML / JavaScript, or a Text, page element.
If you want links to other web pages, HTML / JavaScript will do fine there, too.

Use your imagination. The standard Profile page element is just a start. With an HTML / JavaScript page element, there are endless possibilities.

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HTML In A Layouts Template Blog

2007-04-03T14:02:00.000-07:00

The template in a Layouts blog is written in XML. You can't use HTML in a Layouts template.

For those of us who are used to HTML, that's a major problem. But it shouldn't be.

You don't have to edit the template at all. Just add a Page Element, of HTML/JavaScript. Put the HTML into the Content portion of the new page element. You can add as many HTML/JavaScript page elements as you wish (within reason!), and position each where you like - the header, main area, sidebar, or footer will all hold HTML/JavaScript page elements.

Whatever you could do under Old Blogger, you can do in Layouts Blogger, but you don't edit the template. An very few examples:

Hidden linklists.

Linklists with pictures.

Multi-Style Topics.

Videos from Google Video, or YouTube.

Visitor meters.

And since you don't edit the template, if you want to change to another template, just select Pick New Template. All page elements that you setup in this template will work equally as well in the next.

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Google Custom Domains - Elegant Yet Unreliable

2007-03-29T20:05:00.000-07:00

Google Custom Domains are a simple solution for providing non-Blog*Spot URLs for blogs published on Blogger servers. They are very elegant in their design, which uses nothing special, just industry standard DNS referrals ("CNAME") to a load balancing DNS server. Neither the "CNAME" entry (on the server provided by the DNS registrar), nor the load balancing ("ghs.google.com") are anything innovative.

And that's what makes them so elegant.

But, there's a downside - they don't work, consistently. And the cases where they don't work are inconsistently similar to those cases where they do work.

The DNS provider is one major weakness which is not, totally, Google's fault. Not all DNS registrars support "CNAME" referrals - some only support "A" referrals. Not all support staff, working for the registrars, know how to implement "CNAME" either. GoDaddy supports it, and their "Total DNS Control" wizard will let you create a "CNAME". But the process is confusing, and more than one hopeful Blogger has reported being told, when contacting GoDaddy personally, to use an "A" record.

When attempting to publish a blog, after the proper "CNAME" referral has been setup and verified, the Blogger may see the monolithic error
Another blog is already hosted at this address.

After publishing the blog successfully, to say "mydomain.com", the Blogger will frequently find that "www.mydomain.com" won't respond with the same content (generally, a 404 error is observed). This is in spite of the fact that
- With normal publishing to Blog*Spot, "www.myblog.blogspot.com" will, reliably, equal "myblog.blogspot.com".
- With Custom Domain publishing, "myblog.blogspot.com" will redirect to "mydomain.com", and "www.myblog.blogspot.com" will show the same content as "mydomain.com" (though remaining on "www.myblog.blogspot.com").

Even when none of the above problems are observed, the various blog aliases publish asymmetrically, in a way that must be demonstrated, to be effectively explained.

With the asymmetric publishing results, many Bloggers have found their search weights, and Page Ranks, dramatically reduced. This does not make them cooperative for further analysis.

Having observed some or all of the above symptoms, some Bloggers try using a version of URL referral, sometimes when recommended by their DNS registrar. URL referral produces even more bizarre results, and still worse search weights and Page Ranks.

Not all Bloggers experience all of the above. Some Bloggers do, successfully, publish to a Custom Domain, with all 4 aliases showing identical content, though the "www.myblog.blogspot.com" irregularity is still normal. It's seldom that these cases are identified, though, as Bloggers with no problems seldom post in Google Blogger Help.

This needs to be fixed - tell Blogger that this is stupid.

>> (Update 6/6): Blogger is aware of our concerns, and may be working on the problem.

>> Forum thread links - Inconsistent or unsuccessful: bX-*00023

>> Forum thread links - Complete success: bX-*00024

>> Copy (either of) these tags: bX-*00023 bX-*00024

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New Blogger: My 6 Month Evaluation

2007-02-26T12:13:00.000-08:00

I posted my first article in this blog, my first New Blogger (then "Beta" Blogger) blog, on August 16, 2006. This is my 6 month evaluation of New Blogger (OK, I took a week + to get around to it).

My 3 week evaluation of Beta Blogger covered most of the exciting new features. Since then, the most significant feature added was Google Custom Domains, which lets you have a blog addressed with a non "xxx.blogspot.com" address, but with all of the shiny features of New Blogger.

One major limitation of New Blogger, and one that badly needs to be changed, is that ownership of any blog will always be based on the account that was used when the account owning the blog was migrated. If you haven't migrated yet, be aware of this limitation!

The bottom line? If you haven't migrated yet, and you have the opportunity, do so now. If it's still optional for you (it's not optional for a lot of people), plan the migration, and do it soon.

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Deleting Your Blog? Do It Right!

2007-02-20T13:13:00.000-08:00

As I've said before, if you want to get rid of your blog, make it into a stub first. Once the search engines update their databases with the stub, then delete the stub.

If you don't, you could end up like Sir Richard Francis Burton

I have deleted the blog... at the painel configurations I selected
to exclude the blog...

Then, later I tried to enter at the site only for making sure.. but it
is still there!

In an earlier thread, Blogger Employee tells us

... there's a small bug in the old version of Blogger, which sometimes causes a hiccup in fully deleting an old blog.

The solution, in another case, is monolithic, starting with the usual observance

... we can't do anything w/o your blog's URL :)

and after the URL is provided, continuing (concluding?) with

Don't worry though, the content no longer appears online.

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Publishing Externally? Republish To Blog*Spot Before Publishing To A Custom Domain

2007-02-14T15:26:00.000-08:00

If you're currently publishing your blog externally, because you want to use a non-Blog*Spot address, you may have looked at your friends who are now publishing to a Google Custom Domain, and envied all of the shiny features in New Blogger that they can now use.

(Note): This post has been migrated to (and improved in) The Real Blogger Status: Publishing Externally? Republish To Blog*Spot Before Publishing To A Custom Domain.

Now publishing externally was how you got to use a non-Blog*Spot address for your blog, under Old Blogger. But with New Blogger, and the HTML served dynamically, blogs published externally couldn't use all of the features. So Blogger developed Custom Domains, where the blogs could be published to the Google servers (enabling dynamic HTML), and use externally hosted DNS to point a non-Blogger domain into the Google servers (enabling non-Blog*Spot addresses).

Let's say that you have a blog, published to a section of your website, as "mydomain.com\blog".

Setup the rest of your website, to point to your blog as "myblog.mydomain.com".
As I describe in Custom Domain setup Step2, point "myblog.mydomain.com" to "ghs.google.com".
Republish your blog back to Blog*Spot, let's say as "myblog". Go to Settings - Publishing, select Blog*Spot Address, and provide "myblog" for the Blog*Spot Address.
As I describe in Custom Domain setup Step3, now publish your Blog*Spot blog "myblog" to "myblog.mydomain.com", on Google servers.

If you only have your blog, and nothing else, the task is a bit simpler.

Republish your blog back to Blog*Spot, let's say as "myblog". Go to Settings - Publishing, select Blog*Spot Address, and provide "myblog" for the Blog*Spot Address.
As I describe in Custom Domain setup Step3, now publish your Blog*Spot blog "myblog" to "myblog.mydomain.com", on Google servers.

The key step here is that your blog has to be hosted on Blog*Spot, before a Custom Domain forwarding can be successfully setup. Your Blog*Spot URL ("xxxxxxx.blogspot.com") will forward, automatically, to your custom domain. This saves those with an established blog at "xxxxxxx.blogspot.com" from losing that address to sploggers.

Complicated? Not really. Just take it one step at a time. Just pray that you don't get the old monolithic error

Another blog is already hosted at this address.

>> Forum thread links: bX-*00028

>> Copy this tag: bX-*00028

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Google Custom Domain - The DNS Server Definition

2007-02-11T13:22:00.000-08:00

Of the confusion surrounding definition of Google Custom Domains in DNS, second only to the confusion about the DNS Referral definition, is the DNS Server definition.

(Note): This post has been migrated to (and improved in) The Real Blogger Status: The Google Custom Domain Setup - The DNS Server Definition.

Google does not provide the name servers needed for Google Custom Domains to work - the name servers must be provided by your registrar. The name servers are indicated by "NS" records, pointing to 2 - 8 servers owned by the registrar. You do not change the "NS" records.

The "NS" records point to the DNS servers provided by your DNS hosting company. You pay for the DNS hosting service, and the DNS hosting company sets up the "NS" records, on your behalf.

The name servers, provided by your registrar, are where the domain definition records, such as "A" (Address), "CNAME" (Canonical Name), and "MX" (Mail Exchange), among others, are stored. You have to provide a "CNAME" record on those servers, with that "CNAME" record pointing to "ghs.google.com", for your blog to be referenced as part of a Google Custom Domain.

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A Tale Of Two Domains

2007-02-09T09:24:00.000-08:00

Blogger rolls on, and upgrades their product in silence. Here we see another example of that process.

We're going to examine two blogs - MartinezUMC and ToaCx4. We'll start with excerpts from the ever useful DNS Report, provided (free) by DNS Stuff.

martinezumc .org

The relevant portion of the DNS Report for the domain for my church blog, previously examined in my Case Study #2.

toacx4 .info

The relevant portion of the DNS Report for the domain for JaceMan's blog "toacx4".

Next, the ever available "ping" command, to test name resolution.

C:\>ping martinezumc.org

Pinging ghs.l.google.com [64.233.179.121] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 64.233.179.121: bytes=32 time=92ms TTL=244
Reply from 64.233.179.121: bytes=32 time=92ms TTL=244
Reply from 64.233.179.121: bytes=32 time=94ms TTL=244
Reply from 64.233.179.121: bytes=32 time=92ms TTL=244

Ping statistics for 64.233.179.121:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 92ms, Maximum = 94ms, Average = 92ms

C:\>ping www.martinezumc.org

Pinging ghs.l.google.com [66.249.81.121] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 66.249.81.121: bytes=32 time=94ms TTL=244
Reply from 66.249.81.121: bytes=32 time=92ms TTL=244
Reply from 66.249.81.121: bytes=32 time=93ms TTL=244
Reply from 66.249.81.121: bytes=32 time=93ms TTL=244

Ping statistics for 66.249.81.121:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 92ms, Maximum = 94ms, Average = 93ms

C:\>ping toacx4.info
Ping request could not find host toacx4.info. Please check the name and try again.

C:\>ping www.toacx4.info

Pinging ghs.l.google.com [66.249.81.121] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 66.249.81.121: bytes=32 time=93ms TTL=244
Reply from 66.249.81.121: bytes=32 time=92ms TTL=244
Reply from 66.249.81.121: bytes=32 time=106ms TTL=244
Reply from 66.249.81.121: bytes=32 time=93ms TTL=244

Ping statistics for 66.249.81.121:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 92ms, Maximum = 106ms, Average = 96ms

Finally, we'll load all 4 aliases for each blog.

We see a major difference in functionality here. The first, "martinezumc.org", loads its custom website properly for the root only, but not for "www.martinezumc.org". The second, "toacx4.info", loads the website properly for both the root and "www.toacx4.info".

martinezumc .blogspot .com

http://martinezumc.blogspot.com/, which redirects to http://martinezumc.org/

www .martinezumc .blogspot .com

http://www.martinezumc.blogspot.com/

martinezumc .org

http://martinezumc.org/

www .martinezumc .org

http://www.martinezumc.org/ is a 404 at Blogger

toacx4 .blogspot .com

http://toacx4.blogspot.com/, which redirects to http://www.toacx4.info/

www .toacx4 .blogspot .com

http://www.toacx4.blogspot.com/

toacx4 .info

http://toacx4.info/, which redirects to http://www.toacx4.info/

www .toacx4 .info

http://www.toacx4.info/

So why did I refer to The Silence, here? Because less than a week ago, we were told that .info TLDs cannot be used with Custom Domains.

(Edit 2/9 21:00): In custom domain with 1 & 1 hosting, we see the same situation with Cool Looking Stuff as with Martinez UMC.

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Google Custom Domain - The DNS Referral

2007-02-09T07:28:00.000-08:00

Of all of the instructions in the process of setting up a Google Custom Domain for your Blogger blog, none seems to generate so much confusion as setting up the DNS Referral. The instruction itself is so simple,

Add a "CNAME" record. Point "www.yourdomain.com" to "ghs.google.com". And leave the "NS" records to be maintained by your DNS provider.

(Note): This post has been migrated to The Real Blogger Status: The Google Custom Domain Setup - The DNS Referral.

But why a "CNAME" record? And why "ghs.google.com"?

The host "ghs.google.com" is a load balancing server array. When the reader's DNS client asks for the address of "ghs.google.com", it gets the address of whatever server is available right now.
In order for you to refer DNS traffic for "yourdomain.com" to "ghs.google.com", rather than to "64.233.179.121" (among many possibilities), you have to use a "CNAME" record. An Address ("A") record will only point to an IP address; to point to a host name you must use a Canonical Name ("CNAME") record.

When a reader of your blog points his browser in your direction, he is referred to "ghs.google.com".

The host "ghs.google.com" then provides a specific IP address, pointing to the single server that will be used to serve your blog to this reader. Another reader for your blog will be accessing it thru a different IP address, using another server. This is called "load balancing". If one readers accesses your blog thru server "D", another reader may access it thru server "F", and a third thru server "G". If server "B" is down, "ghs.google.com" won't offer it for referral. Other readers of other blogs may be using servers "A", "C", and "E" at the same time.

Google provides a load balancing server array, to give your readers the best possible experience. Use the array, not a single server, nor a URL referral. Or prepare for complaints

Gee, your blog performance sucks.

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Custom Domains And URL Forwarding - A Bad Idea

2007-02-08T05:22:00.000-08:00

If you're trying to get your Custom Domain setup to work, and are frustrated (as I am) by the fact that you can't get both "www.yourdomain.com" and "yourdomain.com" to forward properly, you may have complained to your DNS provider, suspecting that the problem is one which they must resolve.

And in some cases, your DNS provider may not know how to setup a "CNAME" record. Some providers only use "A" records.

Some DNS providers will convince you to use URL forwarding, where your domain is redirected to the DNS providers servers. They set their servers to simply load any portion of the desired website ("www.yourdomain.com" or "yourdomain.com") from your Blog*Spot website ("yourblog.blogspot.com").

This will indeed load the content, as desired. There are several downsides to this "solution", though.

Your DNS provider may have to set this up in their servers, it's possibly not a DNS setting that you can make.
As the reader views your redirected blog, the content of the address bar in the browser will constantly indicate "www.yourdomain.com" or "yourdomain.com", with no detail about the actual URL being viewed.
We're unsure about how well search engine spiders, and other robotic visitors, will react to URL forwarding.
URL forwarding bypasses the load balancing provided by "ghs.google.com", and this is bad for everybody.

Blogger has admitted that Custom Domains needs work. Let's wait for them to figure out how it should be setup, at their end. Try and avoid using URL Forwarding, unless you are really desperate.

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Google Custom Domain - Case Study #2

2007-01-31T14:20:00.000-08:00

I've been working with Google Custom Domains for several weeks now, first on other peoples domains, then some on my own, and finally on more of other people. In very few cases can someone get a custom domain to work completely.

We'll take my church blog as an example here, as we did with Case Study #1. This blog has 4 aliases.

Current DNS settings

Simply one "CNAME" pointing to "ghs.google.com". No "A" record, as discussed in Google Custom Domain - The DNS Referral.

Let's test what we have now.

C:\>ping martinezumc.org

Pinging ghs.l.google.com [66.249.81.121] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 66.249.81.121: bytes=32 time=124ms TTL=244
Reply from 66.249.81.121: bytes=32 time=126ms TTL=244
Reply from 66.249.81.121: bytes=32 time=123ms TTL=244
Reply from 66.249.81.121: bytes=32 time=143ms TTL=244

Ping statistics for 66.249.81.121:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 123ms, Maximum = 143ms, Average = 129ms

C:\>ping www.martinezumc.org

Pinging ghs.l.google.com [66.249.81.121] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 66.249.81.121: bytes=32 time=126ms TTL=244
Reply from 66.249.81.121: bytes=32 time=124ms TTL=244
Reply from 66.249.81.121: bytes=32 time=126ms TTL=244
Reply from 66.249.81.121: bytes=32 time=122ms TTL=244

Ping statistics for 66.249.81.121:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 122ms, Maximum = 126ms, Average = 124ms

Both "martinezumc.org" and "www.martinezumc.org", verified by pinging, pointing to "ghs.google.com".

I can publish to martinezumc .org with no problem

I cannot publish to www. martinezumc .org.

And once again, the infamous

Another blog is already hosted at this address

And here, for reference, is a DNS Report for martinezumc.org.

(Edit 2/7): Blogger Employee promises us

We're working on a fix for the current problem some users experience when switching between custom domains and Blog*Spot.

(Edit 2/12): Blogger Employee understands the frustration.

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Monolithic Errors #2

2007-01-31T07:25:00.000-08:00

Setting up a blog, published to a Google Custom Domain, is a two step process.

You setup DNS pointing to the Custom Domain server "ghs.google.com".
You publish your blog to the custom domain.

And some folks have been able to do just that.

But many others can't. And we all get one error, consistently.

Another blog is already hosted at this address.

What does this error mean? I suspect that Blogger is validating the DNS pointer, before setting up the relationship between the Blog*Spot blog (which is what we currently have) and the Custom Domain. And, if the DNS doesn't point to "ghs.google.com", then the custom domain must be in use somewhere else.

An alternate possibility is that there is a pointer somewhere in the Blog*Spot blog that points somewhere already. Or maybe the Blog*Spot blog can't be found.

Either way, Blogger needs to fix this problem. At least, add a few "bx-" codes, to let us know what the hell is going on, and so we can enumerate the problem in the forums.

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The Trinity, and Your Web Site

2007-01-27T17:16:00.000-08:00

The power and majesty of the trinity has been a part of mankind for years, before the Internet. From religion (the Christian nature of the supreme being - The Father, The Son, and The Holy Ghost), to properly robust systems, using triple redundancy (as in Robert Heinlein's science fiction - "I tell you three times that this is so"), the number three has always had almost mystical significance.

And with your web site, there is a trinity too. You are using, and may be paying (directly or indirectly) for 3 different services.

Registration.
DNS Hosting.
Content Hosting.

If you have a domain purchased thru GoDaddy, and hosted on their services (maybe a blog published using FTP), you may have a package deal, with all 3 services on one yearly bill. Or you could purchase (register) your domain from any of dozens of registrars, have DNS provided by another company, and host your web site on a third, like Blogger. That's your choice, based upon your needs.

All Internet service companies don't provide all 3 services. GoDaddy does. Blogger / Google provides only content hosting, if you publish your blog to a Google Custom Domain.

You can register domain names from any of a number of different registrars, and you can use .com, .org, .net or any other valid addresses. Remember: you only need to get the domain name; you don't have to pay extra for hosting service.

Registration
When you purchase your domain, you want to know beforehand that nobody is already using it. And you want to ensure that, in the future, nobody uses it. You pay for the uniqueness of your domain name.

DNS Hosting
When you pay for DNS (directory listing), you want to know that your domain can always be located. Redundant DNS servers, geographically separated, is important for high visibility web sites. You pay for the address listing of your domain name.

Now this little detail may not be important to you.

Chuck, this doesn't matter to me. I pay my ISP for service, and they tell me to configure "ns1.myisp.com" and "ns2.myisp.com" (or their IP addresses) as my DNS servers. Why do I care about whatever DNS server Google uses?

Well, I'll ask you to think about this. You use your ISPs DNS servers so you can access websites. You pay for DNS hosting so your readers can access your website. Both your ISPs DNS servers, and your readers ISPs DNS servers, have to ask your DNS host for the address of your website.

You write your blog for your readers. Your readers DNS servers have to find out the address of your web site. How many repeat readers do you expect to have, if they try to access your web site and see

404 Server Not Available

or a similar error?

Content Hosting
When you pay for Content Hosting, you want to know that your web site itself will always be online. Whereas a DNS retrieval is a small (but significant) amount of traffic, and of server space, your blog (web site), as it grows, will use increasingly larger amounts of server space, and generate increasingly larger amounts of traffic. Your content host needs a large and reliable connection to the Internet, as well as reliable server hardware. You pay for the hosting of the web site itself.

If you have a blog hosted on Blog*Spot, you pay nothing at all. If you have a blog hosted on a Google Custom Domain, you pay nothing for the Content Hosting, just for registration and DNS.

The latter 2 services are generally billed yearly, and at a fixed rate. Content Hosting is generally billed by the month, and will be tiered based upon the amount of storage required (size of blog), amount of bandwidth generated (number of readers * size), and various server services required.

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Now, It's Gone For Good

2007-01-25T19:06:00.000-08:00

The invitation, that is.

There's no invitation here.

I had to update an article in The Real Blogger Status (Classic), but I had just restarted my computer. Upon starting, I went to login to my dashboard, and that is what I saw.

No warning.

Just as I predicted, not so long ago (but didn't really believe would be this soon).

OK, I got it done. Some warning would have been polite, but accusing Blogger of being polite is never necessary.

So now, I have to update all of my newly migrated blogs with the shiny New Blogger template features, when I'm not busy helping with the stampede, that is.

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Editing The Template In A New Blogger Blog

2007-01-20T15:39:00.000-08:00

The template in a New Blogger blog, when published to Blog*Spot (or to a Google Custom Domain) is written in XML, not HTML. A lot of HTML based tweaks won't work in New Blogger.

If you force HTML into your template, you may end up with one of the new, cryptic error codes

bX-lgwej

This says that your post template contains invalid HTML.

Are you seeing this error? If so, don't despair.

Revert the template back to Classic, so your readers can access the blog.
Build a test version of the blog, and work on a New Blogger template, while your readers are accessing the production blog.
Take your HTML based template tweaks, that made your Classic blogs unique, and add them as HTML / JavaScript page elements. Test everything, carefully, in all available browsers.
When you have a New Blogger template for your blog, looking as you like it, Save the template to a known location.
Migrate your production blog to a New Blogger template again.
Restore the saved template, developed above, to your production blog.

XML is not as user friendly as HTML was. But 90% of the HTML based tweaks can probably be copied into HTML page elements in the GUI Page Elements section of the Template. Forget about raw XML, and use Page Elements.

XML is not as forgiving as HTML. You may have to learn some discipline, when coding New Blogger template entries, and even posts.

Most HTML tags, like the Anchor tag, come in pairs.

<a href="http://bloggerstatusforrealbeta.blogspot.com/
2007/01/editing-template-in-new-blogger-blog.html">
http://bloggerstatusforrealbeta.blogspot.com/
2007/01/editing-template-in-new-blogger-blog.html</a>

is an anchor link to this article. Notice the

<a...> ... </a>

pair.

Some HTML tags, like the Break tag, don't come in pairs.

<br>

is a tag that I use a lot. There is no sequence

<br> ... </br>

A Break tag, in strict HTML, is better written as

<br />

The requirements of strict HTML you will probably have to learn from experience. An Object tag can't be written as the Break tag is written.

<object />

isn't valid. Nor is a simple

<object ... >

Here's how I got an embedded video object to work, in my Miscellaneous Musings post More Bumper Cars

<span style="text-align: center; display: block;"><object height="350" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/z9tKWzxSZ5E"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/z9tKWzxSZ5E" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="samedomain" height="350" width="425"></embed></object></span>

Note the Embed and Param tags, too. The Param didn't require pairing. The Object and Embed tags did - you'll get errors when publishing with them unpaired. I got an error when I tried publishing Object as

<object ... />

The only solution was to publish it as

<object ... > ... </object>

Apparently all tags aren't as versatile in formatting as the meta tag is. Life isn't fair, nor is strict HTML easy. Deal with it.

>> Top

New Blogger - And The Confusion

2007-01-17T14:23:00.000-08:00

I have two Google (New Blogger) accounts, and half a dozen active Blogger (old Blogger) accounts, that I use for maintaining my collection of a couple dozen Blogger blogs. Thanks to the New Blogger owner account policy, that's not likely to improve in the near future.

Or at least before I finish migrating my blog collection.

On the computers I use the heaviest, I'm not likely to log out for days, or maybe weeks. Windows XP is stable, and one computer stays powered up 7 x 24 x never-off. So I don't frequently log in or out of Blogger, Old or New.

Thankfully, when I do login, I have my array of blogs to see in my dashboard. Sometimes, I login, by intention, to Old Blogger, and the login script grabs an old cookie and logs me in to New Blogger. Other times, vice versa. But whenever I do get logged in to the wrong version of Blogger, and see the wrong blogs, I know what's happened.

Those folks who don't have a huge array of blogs, maintained by an array of accounts, will get confused when they login to one account and get another. They see no blogs listed, and think

Oh No! My blog is gone!

Fortunately, it's not gone, you're simply in the wrong account.

But were it not for the folks who have reported the confusion, I know that the times I have logged in to the wrong account, I would have panicked too. It's not a great feeling. It's kind of like being at work very early in the morning, before getting coffee, your mind in a fog, and walking in to the wrong restroom. And then you have to pray that there is nobody else at work, in the room, when you walk in. In the wrong circumstances, you can be in trouble, so I've heard.

And when it happens to you, recovery is simple.

Log out.
Clear cache and cookies.
Log in again.

If it happens again, or repeats later, look for a security or software problem on your computer.

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Your Custom Domain Blog, And AdSense

2007-01-16T08:31:00.000-08:00

The whole idea of Google Custom Domains for Blogger blogs is great, as it gives us most of the benefits of an externally published blog, plus the New Blogger Layouts Templates features. But there's a major flaw currently in there.

If your blog is accessed as both "www.myblog.com" and "myblog.com", this won't work. AdSense appears to be sensitive to this problem. Tell Blogger that this is a major problem.

New Domain Issue: AdSense

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Google Custom Domain - Case Study #1

2007-01-15T21:28:00.000-08:00

OK, Chuck. Time to put your money where your mouth is.

I've been writing about Google Custom Domains for almost a week now.

So, it's time to test what I've learned.

(Note): This post has been migrated to The Real Blogger Status: Google Custom Domain - Case Study #1, and has been substantially expanded in The Real Blogger Status: Diagnosing Problems With Custom Domains, and in the series The Real Blogger Status: Custom Domains Diagnoses.

This case study uses my church website, martinezumc.org, with DNS service provided by GoDaddy. So, I logged in to the GoDaddy control panel, and followed the Google GoDaddy instructions (instructions for other hosting services are also in that document). Steps 1 - 4 were on target. So, I document below Steps 5 - 7 of the instructions, which became my steps 1 - 8.

Note that GoDaddy is simply the example that I use here. Blogger provides How do I create a CNAME record for my custom domain?, which provides instructions for half a dozen different popular DNS Hosting companies.

Step 1

The Default GoDaddy Settings

Here we see all DNS entries created by GoDaddy, when "martinezumc.org" was setup originally. All entries point to GoDaddy, using an "A" record equating "@" (the domain root) to "68.178.232.100".

Step 2

Just 2 Quick Changes

I deleted the "A" record pointing the domain to GoDaddy.(See Note 2, below)
I added a "CNAME" record equating "www" to "ghs.google.com".

For more detail about DNS records, see PCMagazine Definition of: DNS records, or FAQs.Org: How DNS Works.
(Note 1): This example is for a domain setup for the ".org" TLD, and using GoDaddy as the registrar. All experience so far indicates that the different TLDs (.com, .info, .net, .org, ...), and the different registrars (like GoDaddy) have different rules. Be careful here, and ask questions in Blogger Help Group: How Do I?, if anything here is not completely clear to you. We are still learning the details, and I suspect Blogger staff is too. If you have any doubt about the effectiveness of your DNS setup, execute Step7 below, and proceed only when you get similar results.
(Note 2): If you have an existing website with other content, and just want to add the blog as "blog.mydomain.com", don't delete the "A" record. Just add a "CNAME" record equating "blog" to "ghs.google.com".

Step 3

I Setup Blog Publishing

I went into Settings - Publishing for the blog currently published at "martinezumc.blogspot.com", selected "Switch to: Custom Domain", and set it to publish to "martinezumc.org". Note that it clearly warns us

martinezumc.blogspot.com will redirect to your custom domain.

with no mention of www.martinezumc.blogspot.com. This makes it unlikely that we should expect "www.martinezumc.org" to work.

Step 4

I Tested martinezumc .org

Success!

Step 5

I Tested www .martinezumc .org

Here we see just what I predicted, in Step 3, above.

Step 7
And to verify the GoDaddy setup (and diagnose the 404), a simple set of ping tests.

C:\>ping martinezumc.org

Pinging ghs.l.google.com [64.233.179.121] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 64.233.179.121: bytes=32 time=94ms TTL=242
Reply from 64.233.179.121: bytes=32 time=92ms TTL=242
Reply from 64.233.179.121: bytes=32 time=94ms TTL=242
Reply from 64.233.179.121: bytes=32 time=94ms TTL=242

Ping statistics for 64.233.179.121:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 92ms, Maximum = 94ms, Average = 93ms

C:\>ping www.martinezumc.org

Pinging ghs.l.google.com [66.249.81.121] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 66.249.81.121: bytes=32 time=94ms TTL=242
Reply from 66.249.81.121: bytes=32 time=93ms TTL=242
Reply from 66.249.81.121: bytes=32 time=93ms TTL=242
Reply from 66.249.81.121: bytes=32 time=96ms TTL=242

Ping statistics for 66.249.81.121:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 93ms, Maximum = 96ms, Average = 94ms

And there is a demonstration of the dynamic name resolution of "ghs.google.com".

64.233.179.121: hs-in-f121.google.com
66.249.81.121: bx-in-f121.google.com

And, seeing as "www.martinezumc.org" resolves properly, in this example to "66.249.81.121", we can conclude that the 404 above is coming from Google, not GoDaddy.

The host named "ghs.google.com" is a load balanced server array. It's provided to give your readers the best performance possible, when visiting your blog.

And, last but by no means least, the DNS Report for "martinezumc.org".

Please follow me now to the next post in this series.

>> Top

Your Blog, And Its Dual Personality

2007-01-12T22:10:00.000-08:00

When I write a blog post, like this one, Your Blog, And Its Dual Personality, it has a known URL - http://bloggerstatusforrealbeta.blogspot.com/
2007/01/your-blog-and-its-dual-personality.html. It also has a second URL - http://www.bloggerstatusforrealbeta.blogspot.com/
2007/01/your-blog-and-its-dual-personality.html. Try the two links, and see for yourself.

(Note): This post has been replaced by (and substantially rewritten, to reflect major changes to the custom domain product) The Real Blogger Status: Schizophrenia and Custom Domain URLs. You may also find insight in The Real Blogger Status: Your Browser Cache, and Web Sites With Dual Addresses

That's real, but it's not terribly useful. I advertise this post as http://bloggerstatusforrealbeta.blogspot.com/
2007/01/your-blog-and-its-dual-personality.html, not as http://www.bloggerstatusforrealbeta.blogspot.com/
2007/01/your-blog-and-its-dual-personality.html, intentionally. This blog is "bloggerstatusforrealbeta.blogspot.com" - "www.bloggerstatusforrealbeta.blogspot.com" is not necessary.

But what if this blog was "bloggerstatusforrealbeta.com"? That would make this post http://bloggerstatusforrealbeta.com/
2007/01/your-blog-and-its-dual-personality.html. If properly setup, it should also be addressed as http://www.bloggerstatusforrealbeta.com/
2007/01/your-blog-and-its-dual-personality.html.
(Note): Since I haven't setup a domain "bloggerstatusforrealbeta.com", don't expect to click on any of the latter links, and get anything useful. Sorry.

The point here is that "bloggerstatusforrealbeta.com" and "www.bloggerstatusforrealbeta.com" should be synonymous - for a domain that only contains a blog. For other domains, this may vary.

For many domains, the "www" prefix will be synonymous with the root - but not for Google Custom Domains.

I pay for the DNS listing, which tells your computer where my blog is.
I setup a DNS entry, pointing "bloggerstatusforrealbeta.com" to "ghs.google.com".
I setup Blogger to publish to the custom domain.

From what I see, redirecting "bloggerstatusforrealbeta.com" to a web site on a Google server involves two address records.

A CNAME record at my DNS service, forwarding "bloggerstatusforrealbeta.com" to "ghs.google.com".
A pointer at "ghs.google.com", forwarding "bloggerstatusforrealbeta.com" to the actual physical website.

http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=55373

Google hosts lots of blogs, so we have to make sure the right one is associated with this domain.

My guess is, when I tell Blogger to publish my blog to "bloggerstatusforrealbeta.com", and to host the content on their server, they do three things:
1) Create the content, with links using "bloggerstatusforrealbeta.com" as the base URL.
2) Copy the content to the web server, in the proper location.
3) Create a pointer, on "ghs.google.com", indicating where the content was copied.

The result is that I have a pointer indicating the location of "bloggerstatusforrealbeta.com". I'd bet that also setting up a pointer for "www.bloggerstatusforrealbeta.com", indicating the same location, was a detail that Blogger overlooked.

The bottom line? I can setup a pair of CNAME records in my DNS service, both pointing to "ghs.google.com" - "bloggerstatusforrealbeta.com" and "www.bloggerstatusforrealbeta.com". But, without a pointer on "ghs.google.com", indicating the server where "www.bloggerstatusforrealbeta.com" is located, I'm out of luck for addressing this post as http://www.bloggerstatusforrealbeta.com/
2007/01/your-blog-and-its-dual-personality.html.

(Edit 1/15): Using "martinezumc.org" as a publishing target for "martinezumc.blogspot.com", I see complete agreement with the above.

>> Top

Custom Domain Names and the DNS Settings

2007-01-10T16:22:00.000-08:00

The Google Custom Domains, and the possibility of having a non-Blog*Spot address without the lack of functionality from setting up an external published blog, are a major improvement over plain old Blog*Spot to some folks. But be aware - some technical expertise is required.

Setting up a DNS entry is not a normal task for Bloggers. The draw of Blogger One Button Publishing is that you

Choose a Blog*Spot address.
Choose a template.
Post and publish (and for New Blogger, forget the "publish" too).

So what's up with setting up DNS?

There's some occasional confusion in the forums.

The site says to create a CNAME for example.com.. CNAMES are not for DOMAIN NAMES, they are for subdomains.. i.e, www, pages, users. DOMAIN NAMES use A records to point to an IP address.

But the difference between an A record, and a CNAME record, is pretty simple.

An A DNS record directly equates a hostname to an IP address.

A CNAME DNS record does not directly resolve to an IP address. Instead, it refers to a relative or absolute hostname.

When a DNS query is made for a CNAME, the hostname that is pointed to is used to obtain the actual IP address. The pointed-to hostname may itself be another CNAME, or it may directly provide the IP address using an A entry.

As an example, let's look at Google Apps for Your Domain: Creating Your Canonical Name (CNAME) Record: GoDaddy.com.

Click Add New CNAME Record. If you've already created a CNAME record for your website's address with Google Apps, click Edit next to the existing CNAME record.
- Enter the part of your website's address that you picked in your Google Apps control panel. For example, if you picked urban.mydomain.com as your address, enter urban for step one.
- Enter ghs.google.com as the host name.
- Leave as default selection.

Not too much confusion there. As long as you decide upon your domain names before you start, it's just another recipe. Mix a, b, and c, and serve.

(Note): For some detail about DNS records, see PCMagazine Definition of: DNS records. For still more technical detail, you can see FAQs.Org: How DNS Works. Or see my case study, Google Custom Domain - Case Study #1

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Monolithic Errors

2007-01-09T08:03:00.000-08:00

Long ago, on a computer that exists only in the memory of its users, you might be running a program and everything would come to a screeching halt. And the system console would print a brief and fearsome message

MLTP EAC

And what that cryptic message told you was that you were done. You had done something so stupid, that the computer, with even its infinite (!!) wisdom, could not recover. There were only 2 actions possible now.

Power the computer off, and back on, and restart. And pray.
Call the IBM Service Engineer.

And neither action was guaranteed to be 100% effective. But for a MLTP EAC, those were the choices.

Later, when Microsoft Windows was just becoming the dominant operating system on personal computers, it was even more unstable than it is now. If you had just installed new code, or tweaked the system settings to unacceptable values, occasionally the system would likewise throw up its hands in anguish and refuse to go any farther.

That was called a Black Screen Of Death. Unlike its predecessor, the MLTP EAC, the BSOD provided a puzzling series of letters and numbers, that could be translated by your super geek in residence (were you so lucky to have one) to indicate that your hard drive had died, or that you had loaded a bad driver for the latest installed accessory card.

In the newer Windows, Windows NT, 2000, XP, and now Vista, the black screen of death was replaced by something just a bit more user friendly, the Blue Screen Of Death. Using the official colour Microsoft Blue, you're told, in a more friendly way

Your're Done.

With Blogger, we are recently seeing two monolithic errors too.

404 Page Not Found.
We're sorry, but we were unable to complete your request.

This puts us in mind of the old

MLTP EAC

If there's anything in the Blogger experience that causes FUD, it's these two errors. When you see one, there's nothing you can do but fill out yet another problem report, and join the gang at Google Blogger Help - Troubleshooting.

Doing the former, you fill out a form, and wait for botmail in your Inbox. After you reply to the botmail, you wait some more. Maybe one day things will start working again, and maybe not. After a while, you move to the latter.

In Google Blogger Help - Troubleshooting, troubleshooting is slightly more interactive. There, you describe your problem, and one of the Google employees who occasionally enters the forum will ask a few questions to diagnose the problem. If you're lucky, an answer may be in the latter article.

If you are lucky, a Google employee will later reply in your thread

You're good to go.

Another monolithic response for sure.

You check your blog, and it's working.

Now, both the Black Screen Of Death, and the subsequent Blue Screen Of Death, offered just a small bit of detail. Detail that let you diagnose the problem, and at least decide whether you might have caused the problem by installing a bad driver, or a memory module just went belly up. At least save you the time spent downloading and installing a new driver, when you should be traveling to the nearby computer store for another memory module.

With the current "Page not found / unable to complete your request" messages, we're back to the MLTP EAC level. Nothing to do but call the engineer.

We need the ability to figure out what we are doing wrong. Without knowing whats going wrong, any of us may be subject to either problem, at any time. And that is the FUD.

Let me put this briefly.

We need to know what is going on, so we can avoid causing the problem.

Right now, all we know is

We are using Blogger as a web site.

And the only way to predictably avoid the problem is

Don't use Blogger as a web site.

As solutions go, this one sucks. Please give us just a bit more diagnostic detail, instead of

I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

Come on, Blogger, admit the errors, so we can avoid making the same ones over and over. Don't make Blogger like the Sword Of Damocles.

(Note 2/1): Please tell us that the below mentioned fix wasn't the one applied 1/31 late evening!!??

(Note 1/11): Blogger Buzzer states

Your blog is affected by a bug that hit others also and it is being worked on. Expect a fix in the next few days.

>> Top

Another Cache Refresh Needed?

2007-01-08T19:30:00.000-08:00

From some of the problem reports in Blogger Help Group: Login Issues, it appears that some login scripts may have been changed again.

As in Blogger Alert 12/2: Missing Toolbar Buttons, if you're having any problems logging in, or if you're missing your blogs in your dashboard, you might want to try clearing cache and cookies again.

(Edit 1/31): The bX-68tbuv problem with image uploads, which appears to be related to this issue, has been fixed. Here's a definition of the lack of uniformity of the problem - this specific problem was unique to sessions starting from "beta.blogger.com".

This has been fixed. Regardless, use www.blogger.com and not beta.blogger.com.

>> Top

Blogger Maintenance January 9 Morning

2007-01-08T17:49:00.000-08:00

In Blogger Help Group: Scheduled Blogger Outage Tuesday, January 9th, 2007, Helper warns us

Just wanted to give you all a heads-up that the old Blogger will be down for a couple hours tomorrow (Tuesday, January 9th, 2007). This scheduled outage applies to the old Blogger from 7:45am-9:45am PST. You will not be able to post to old Blogger blogs or access any old Blogger blogs on Blog*Spot during this time. We also will not be allowing any new accounts or new blogs to be created on the new Blogger during this outage. Google Groups will be also be undergoing planned maintenance on Tuesday the 9th. Accordingly, some features may be temporarily unavailable (including the Blogger Help Group).

Old Blogger, New Blogger, and Blogger Help Group all down at the same time. Might be a good day to take off.

>> Top

Setup Your Google Custom Domain Name Properly

2007-01-06T11:51:00.000-08:00

To let you have your blog using a custom domain name (not yourblog.blogspot.com), but without most of the drawbacks of a New Blogger blog published externally, Blogger now provides custom domain names, where you can have, besides yourblog.blogspot.com, yourblog.com.

(Note): This post has been migrated to (and improved in) The Real Blogger Status: Setup Your Google Custom Domain Name Properly.

To setup a custom domain name, you simply

Setup DNS (at your expense) to point your blog's URL to a Blogger server.
Setup your blog to publish to the custom domain.

Like all Blogger products, this one is a little Beta still.

Don't Cause A Redirect Loop
Wait Until DNS Points To Google
A Possible Problem With The .Info TLD?
Your blog may not be addressed both as "yourblog.com" and "www.yourblog.com".
Don't publish straight from FTP to Custom Domain.
Blogger Plus blogs can't be used with a Custom Domain.

Don't Cause A Redirect Loop
If you currently have your blog hosted as yourblog.blogspot.com, and you republish it as yourblog.com, Blogger will even maintain yourblog.blogspot.com for you, and forward all traffic to yourblog.com. And there is one problem.

If you observe my advice for transferring your blog to external publishing, you'll create a stub blog as yourblog.blogspot.com, and you'll setup a forwarding from the stub blog (either a manual link, or an automatic redirect) to yourblog.com.

In some cases, you might try the reverse. Maybe put your blog on yourblog.blogspot.com, and forward traffic from yourblog.com to yourblog.blogspot.com. This, however, is not a good idea. If you setup an automatic redirect from yourblog.com to yourblog.blogspot.com, then publish a second blog to your custom domain yourblog.com, your readers will watch their browsers try to load yourblog.com, which will redirect to yourblog.blogspot.com, which will then redirect to yourblog.com. And so on.

So, if you are going to publish to a Google Custom Domain, forget about the stub blog. Blogger will handle that for you.

Custom Domain Issues

Wait Until DNS Points To Google
In Blogger Help: How do I use a custom domain name on my blog?, we see

It appears that Blogger checks out your domain name, and if it points to somewhere other than "ghs.google.com", responds with

Another blog is already hosted at this address.

If you get that response, verify the IP address of your domain, by pinging. If the ping comes back with

Pinging ghs.l.google.com [64.233.179.121] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 64.233.179.121: bytes=32 time=93ms TTL=245
Reply from 64.233.179.121: bytes=32 time=111ms TTL=245
Reply from 64.233.179.121: bytes=32 time=116ms TTL=245
Reply from 64.233.179.121: bytes=32 time=116ms TTL=245

or the like, your domain is ready. Otherwise, you need to wait until it is ready. Or face getting

Another blog is already hosted at this address.

A Possible Problem With The .Info TLD?
Jon Anderson writes

In a nutshell, it doesn't work with the TLD (top-level domain) of .info. More than one person is experiencing, and writing about, this problem.

Maybe a timing issue with the .Info TLD servers? I hope this one isn't just solved in silence.

(Edit 2/4): Blogger Buzzer states that

Currently .info doamins are disallowed due to the large number of spam blogs on these kind of domains.

Don't republish straight from FTP to a Custom Domain.
When you republish your blog from Blog*Spot to a custom domain, the blogspot URL of the blog is forwarded to the custom domain. So the blog starts out with the "xxx.blogspot.com" address.

When you have a blog published to an address outside of Blog*Spot, using FTP, then republished to a custom domain, you don't have a corresponding Blog*Spot URL - just the external address that you have just forwarded to "ghs.google.com". So what gets forwarded? Apparently nothing, and that may be a problem.

So, before you publish to a custom domain, take your FTP blog, and publish it back to a Blog*Spot URL. Blogger will forward the Blog*Spot URL to the custom domain, when you republish the blog to the custom domain.

Blogger Plus blogs can't be published to a Custom Domain.
Blogger Buzzer explicitly states that

Unfortunately currently there is a limitation that plus blogs cannot be converted to be served from a custom domain.

>> Top

New Blogger Image Test

2007-01-05T14:01:00.000-08:00

A new test

This is a new version of my Old Blog post Image Test.

<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/
_iIC50Wn48vI/RZ7LHeuVPWI/AAAAAAAAAB8/qc5E_qN9tZ8/
s1600-h/Check+This+Out+2.gif"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/
_iIC50Wn48vI/RZ7LHeuVPWI/AAAAAAAAAB8/qc5E_qN9tZ8/
s200/Check+This+Out+2.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5016670364304227682" /></a>A new test
<br clear=left>
This is a new version of my Old Blog post <a href="http://bloggerstatusforreal.blogspot.com/
2006/07/image-test.html"><span style="font-style:italic;">Image Test</span></a>.

>> Top

Custom Domain Names Hosted By Blogger

2007-01-05T09:16:00.000-08:00

Up to now, if you wanted a blog (web site) named myblog, you had 2 choices.

Setup myblog.blogspot.com, hosted by Blog*Spot, and with all of the shiny features of (now) New Blogger.
Setup myblog.com (myblog.org, ...), hosted by a host of your choice (and extra cost in most cases), but with less features than a Blog*Spot hosted blog.

Note: This post has been migrated (and significantly enhanced) as The Real Blogger Status: Custom Domain Names Hosted By Blogger.

Now, there is a third choice. Setup myblog.com (myblog.org, ...), hosted by Blog*Spot.

You pay for the DNS listing, which tells your reader's computers where your blog is.
You setup a DNS entry, pointing "myblog.com" to "ghs.google.com".
You setup Blogger to publish to the custom domain.

(Note): Set the domain up carefully.

This solution has its good, and its bad, points.

The Good:
- Save money. No need for an extra cost hosting service.
- All of the shiny features of New Blogger.
- None of the unstable publishing problems, reported of late.
- Your current Blog*Spot address will continue to work, and to forward to your new, custom domain.
- No more abandoned Blog*Spot address, and no more subsequent splog hijackings.
The Bad:
- If you opted for external publishing to get away from Blog*Spot hosting, this isn't for you.
- If your domain contains more than a blog - ie maybe a chat room or FTP server, this may be a problem. You have two possibilities here.
  - Have two named domains - one inside Blog*Spot, the other outside, and links between the two.
  - Setup a subdomain DNS record, pointing to "ghs.google.com". Make sure that all of the links between the website and the blog are absolute, ie "http://myblog.mydomain.com", rather than "/blog".

(Note 1/16): There's a lot of theory here. See Google Custom Domain - Case Study #1 for an actual exploration of the facts. And see Setting Up A Custom Domain? Here's Advice, for a review of the essential steps that you must follow.

>> Top

Another Cookie Issue

2007-01-03T15:27:00.000-08:00

Previously, we discovered a possible problem with Blogger and third party cookies. That could, potentially, affect all Bloggers, but only temporarily. As everybody adjusts to New Blogger, so should their computers, and the problems should go away.

But login problems, frequently looking like they might involve cookies, surface daily. New Blogger was publicised on 12/19, and two weeks later, the login problems don't seem to be going away all that quickly.

Maybe there's another problem, and maybe it involves the wording in instructions about permitting cookies.

Jordan, in login trouble - wont remember me, provides a long forgotten link to Known Issues for the New Blogger: The “Remember Me” login option will not work, where we are advised, when configuring Internet Explorer, to

...add google.com to the list of allowed sites under Internet Options > Privacy.

I wonder how many folks added "www.blogger.com", rather than "blogger.com", based upon the Firefox and Internet Explorer wizards

Type the exact address of the website...

I know that I become confused by that instruction.

Now, the article The “Remember Me” login option will not work specifically mentions Internet Explorer V6 as a problem, and Firefox is implied to be free from this problem. The date of that article is 9/5/2006. Firefox V2, and Internet Explorer V7, came out almost 2 months later.

FF V1.5 and IE V6, by and large, used "permit by default, deny on demand" security strategies. FF V2 and IE V7, on the other hand, use "deny by default, permit on demand" strategies, and are more likely to present a problem with incorrectly permitted cookies.

In short, for both Firefox and Internet Explorer, check your Cookies permissions. Make sure that you are allowing "blogger.com", rather than "www.blogger.com", to add cookies to your computer.

For more insight into the cookie issue, see Roberto's Report: Another Cookie, anyone?.

>> Top

Publicising Your New Blogger Blog

2007-01-02T16:40:00.000-08:00

Publicising your blog, in general, means submitting it to the search engines. There are some significant differences between Old Template and New Template (Layouts) Blogger blogs.

Get Indexed By The Search Engines
As with an old template blog, there are 3 default Blogger values, which describe your blog to any search engine spider.

$BlogPageTitle$
$BlogMetaData$
$BlogTitle$

In a new template blog, they're found in roughly the same place, but coded differently.

<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>
<b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/>
<b:skin><![CDATA[/*
<div id='header-wrapper'>
<b:section class='header' id='header' maxwidgets='1' showaddelement='no'>
<b:widget id='HTML4' locked='false' title='' type='HTML'/>
</b:section>
</div>

What you'll end up with, at the top of the blog, will be roughly similar.


    <title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>
    <meta content='The Real Blogger Status: What Blogger
 Won"t Tell You' name='description'/>
    <meta content='Blogger, Blogspot, blogger.com,
 blogspot.com, outage, maintenance, inconvenience...
 Permission Denied,' name='keywords'/>
    <b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/>
    <b:skin><![CDATA[/*

>> Top

Third Party Cookies Used To Migrate From Beta Blogger To New Blogger?

2006-12-30T18:51:00.000-08:00

Complaints in the Blogger help forums about "Blogger won't remember me" are becoming pretty common. My general advice is to clear cache and cookies, and start over.

Maybe we're seeing a way out of the fog.

Joel, aka Far Outliers in Clicking "Remember Me" is Useless, may have found a clue.

At work, I was getting redirected successfully, but at home I wasn't--that is, until right now, when I unchecked the box in Firefox that allows 3rd-party cookies.

It makes sense that third party cookies would be part of a migration.

Cookies created by one server ("beta.blogger.com"), and read by another ("www2.blogger.com") might look like a third party relationship, to the browser.

Now, it's up for someone to verify this. If you're blocking third party cookies, and you haven't yet successfully gotten Blogger to recognise your login state from browser session to browser session, check your third party cookies filtering in your browser.

And if you find a setting that, when corrected lets you login properly, let us know.

For more insight into the cookie issue, see Roberto's Report: Another Cookie, anyone?.

(Edit 1/3): Besides the third party cookies problem, there's an interesting possibility to explain first party cookies, and how they could present a problem in both Firefox and Internet Explorer.

>> Top

Still Waiting?

2006-12-30T08:50:00.000-08:00

You can only migrate your Blogger account, and Old Template blogs, to a Google account and New Template (Layout) blogs, when you receive the invitation. And even if you see the invitation today, that's not to guarantee that you will see it tomorrow.

From discussions in the forums, it appears that the secret ceremonies continue.

And, even if you do get the tap on the shoulder, and it lasts during a convenient time for you, your blog(s) might take more than a few minutes to migrate.

Help required for accessing my blog

>> Forum thread links: bX-*00031

>> Copy this tag: bX-*00031

Reduce The Stress - Don't Migrate All Of Your Blogs At Once

2006-12-29T13:09:00.000-08:00

Here are a couple interesting (hypothetical) pleas for help in the forums.

I need the features of New Blogger 2006 in my first blog, but I don't want to migrate my second blog. What do I do now?

I need to migrate my blogs, but I don't want them to end up under the same account after migration. I don't want folks seeing my first blog from my second blog or from my third blog. Help!

I went to migrate my blogs, and it said "The following blogs are owned by someone else". How can i migrate now??

Well, I can sympathise. I started my migration by looking at my collection of blogs, and found at least a dozen which I value a great deal. Knowing that, once a blog is migrated, it will be owned by the account that it's migrated into, for eternity, I decided that I would have to migrate some blogs to one Google account, and others to a second Google account.

Then I noted that some blogs are owned by other people too. And in a couple cases, neither of us was sure who was the original owner.

I decided that I would be better off migrating a few blogs at a time, than migrating all of them at once.

But the migration process doesn't let you do that, does it? You migrate an account, and all blogs attached to the account. No choice to do some now (to this account), and others later (to another account).

There is, thankfully, a way around that. You can move selected Old Template blogs from one Blogger account to another, then migrate either account at your convenience. As long as the first account retains no ownership of the blog moved, the second account becomes the new owner of the blog. Even in a team blog relationship, if all but one account is removed from a blog, the remaining account assumes full ownership of the blog.

Setup a new Google email account for migration.
From the original Blogger account, send an invitation to the new Google email account, offering blog(s) membership.
From the new Google email account, accept the Blogger invitation, and create a new Blogger account, for blog(s) membership.
From the original Blogger account, grant administrative authority over the blog(s) to the new Blogger account. The new Blogger account (please don't confuse this with a "New Blogger" account!) is now a joint owner of the blog(s).
From the new Blogger account, remove the other Blogger account(s) from blog(s) membership. The new Blogger account is now the sole owner of the blog(s).
From the new Blogger account, execute the migration. Create a new Google account, or use an existing one, remembering that the account targeted becomes the owner of the blog, for eternity.
Remember, as soon as the account, and the blog, is migrated to Google authentication, the current team members will lose access. They'll have to setup Google accounts, and you'll have to invite those accounts again. If they have any remaining blogs owned by their current Blogger account, they can migrate that account and blogs to their new Google account, when they are able.

If you have multiple blogs, and want some blogs to be owned by one Google account, and others by another, repeat the above procedures.

I will tell you from experience, there's no way in heck that I would be migrating all 12+ of my blogs at once. Not until the last week possible, and even then I would not do it willingly.

Just do 2 or 3 at a time. Way less stressful, and easier to separate the team relationships.

Team Blog Migration? Take Precautions!

2006-12-28T23:17:00.000-08:00

Quite a few complaints about badly migrated blogs appear to involve team blog relationships. My guess is that trying to migrate a blog, while somebody is working on it, is a good way to cause problems. In IT terminology, it's called contention. Two processes (in this case, the migration plus one attempted administrative task or maybe posting) running against a blog, simultaneously, is a possible way to cause corruption somewhere.

I've been told that most migrations should run in 3 to 6 hours. And then there's Jordan's famous statement

....spread the word that account migrations sometimes takes longer than a few minutes :)

My earlier recommendation was for a migration monitoring tool, so we could see where each migration was, periodically. Any software install includes some sort of progress meter, and for a process that can take 3 to 6 hours, this doesn't seem unreasonable.

That request was denied.

...thanks for your suggestion/request for a "progress indicator" but I don't think that's a scalable option for us to include right now.

So, if we can't have a tool to watch what's going on, let's see if we can think of ways to maybe make it go quicker and smoother. A good way to start is with careful planning.

When I migrate my blogs, I remove all team memberships before starting. Once a team blog is migrated, all members will need New Template 2006 (Google) accounts anyway, so getting rid of all extraneous account relationships before starting migration makes sense. Let's migrate the blogs themselves, with no extraneous relationships. Add the team relationships back, later.

Conduct a careful audit of each blog, and document all team relationships. Identify all team members, by name and current email address.
Designate the master computer, from which to conduct the migration.
Designate one source (Blogger) account, to start the migration. Make sure that account has administrative authority over the blog(s) being migrated.
Designate the target (Google) account, to receive the migration. Remember, that account will have ownership of the blog(s) being migrated, for eternity. If you want some blogs to be owned by one account, and other blogs by another, split the migration.
Make sure that both source and target accounts have up to date email addresses and passwords. Don't complicate things by having to resolve a forgotten password, or non current email address, after the migration starts and the blog is out of action.
Log off all Old Template 2006 (Blogger) accounts that have administrative access to the blog(s) being migrated, excepting the master computer.
Close the browsers on all computers which host administrative activity for the blog(s) being migrated, excepting one browser, on the master computer.
Remove administrative relationships, for all Old Template 2006 (Blogger) accounts, for the blog(s) being migrated, using that one browser on the master computer.
Open a GMail session and / or a GTalk client, for the target account, on any accessible and convenient computer. This will show the completion notification, when the migration completes.
From the designated source account on the master computer, start the migration.
After the migration completes, and the blog is carefully tested, invite all previous team members to the newly migrated New Template 2006 blogs. The team members will have to create new, or identify existing, Google accounts anyway. Do that after the migration, and I'll bet you'll have a more relaxing migration (and maybe it will go quicker too).

Complicated? Maybe. Extraneous and / or redundant steps? Probably. Make your own decision which steps you will take.

The above plan follows established IT principles. Maybe it will save you stress in the long run. I don't see this as excessive thinking anyway.

Migration Log

2006-12-28T20:54:00.000-08:00

2006/12/18: Martinez United Methodist Church
2006/12/26: Chuck's Kitchen
2006/12/28: Martinez Music Forum Gift to the Community; CACroll Small LANs; Charlotte's Brazilian Stories; Charlotte's Russian Stories; MySpace and More; Mom's Trip To Russia
2006/12/29: Martinez CA Park Walk; Miscellaneous Musings; Nitecruzr As A Hacker; Crooked Spire; The Sounds Of Words; Cal First Mortgage
2007/01/01: Nitecruzr Alpha Beta Test; Baseline Test; Nitecruzr Demo; Nitecruzr Demo 2; Stub Blog
27/01/24: PChuck's Network; PChuck's Network News; Today's migration complete maybe 10 minutes before the latest 502 downtime started.
2007/01/25: The Real Blogger Status; The Real Blogger Status SpamBlock; And we're done.

Publishing Externally? Here's What You Get

2006-12-28T04:57:00.000-08:00

Every day now, you see the question

I just upgraded my account and blog to New Blogger. Where is my Layouts template / my Label list / my link to Upgrade my template?

and you look at the blog URL (when it's included), and it's not yourblog.blogspot.com.

And the answer is always that, when you publish externally (aka FTP publishing), you don't get any of those features. New Blogger 2006 requires publishing to blogspot.com, for maximum benefit.

The New Blogger 2006 Blog*Spot servers publish the blog as the reader retrieves each page. They don't publish static HTML, they publish dynamic XML. When you publish by FTP, Blogger is copying old static HTML code to your FTP server. HTML won't get you

Improved Archives, with multiple selectable views, and individual titles.
New Layouts template, with GUI configured page elements.
- Feeds.
- Labels.
- Linklists.
Improved Main Page view, multi-paged, with each page limited in size by the "Show days / posts" setting.
Improved Template editor, with scripted save and restore of template code.
The ability to require authentication, and to designate readers, to view the blog. Any blog published by FTP is open to view by all.

What it will get you is

Authentication by Google account.
Labels for the posts. You can use the labels in various ways, without the Layouts template based Label page elements.
- Make your own Label lists, from the labels shortcuts after each post.
- Select a label shortcut after a post, and view all posts with that label, in a single page Main Page view.
Improved Edit Posts menu, again with labels.
The new, more stable Blogger.
The shiny new Navbar (that you can continue to turn off).
The continued spinner of death, when you publish (sorry, but static publishing will continue to have this).
Your own, externally published website, that you can control (though not protect) as you see fit.
A domain name that you can choose. This may not be exclusive to external publishing.

Nor can you have private blogs. See Settings - Publishing.

Hint: If you want to publish to an external FTP server, you will need to Set 'Blog Readers' to 'Anybody' and use a Classic Template.

Now, if the above issues are a problem for you, but you don't want your blog hosted on Blog*Spot, check out Google Custom Domains. Read my case study, and read about the possible complications, too.

Logging In To Blogger

2006-12-26T11:09:00.000-08:00

With the coming of New Blogger, logging in to the right account (Old / New) should be more straightforward.

Clear cache and cookies, and restart your browser.
Login using the new, improved Blogger Login screen.

You'll have separate, well defined choices.

Old Blogger, using your Blogger account.
New Blogger, using your Google account.

Make the choice wisely. Blogs using the old template may or may not be visible and accessible from New Blogger, and vice versa. If you login, and your blog isn't listed, or if listed isn't accessible, then logout, and login again carefully.

But the first time that you use the new login procedures, be sure to clear cache and cookies, first. Blogger appears to be reusing addresses, cookies, and scripts, even though they are providing a new set of servers ("www2.blogger.com", instead of "beta.blogger.com", for instance). If one of your cookies continues to point your browser to "beta.blogger.com", guess what will happen?

No, I can't say for sure. But I'll bet that you're not as likely to see your dashboard, when it does.

Start cleanly, and clear cache and cookies, before you login to The New Blogger for the first time.

Migration Testing #4

2006-12-24T19:05:00.000-08:00

Started from current test set.

Upgraded template on old template blog Migration Test 1.

Migration Testing Test Set

2006-12-24T18:56:00.000-08:00

Current test set as of 12/24 19:00.

Migration Test 1 - new template blog - owned by Nitecruzr68.
Migration Test 2 - old template blog - owned by Nitecruzr67.
Nitecruzr68 - new template blog - owned by nitecruzr68@gmail.com.
Nitecruzr67 - old template blog - owned by Nitecruzr67.
Migration Test 3 - old template blog - owned by Nitecruzr66.
Migration Test 4 - old template blog - owned by Nitecruzr66.
Nitecruzr66 - old template blog - owned by Nitecruzr66.

Migration Testing #3

2006-12-24T17:49:00.000-08:00

Started from my test set.

Created new gmail account, nitecruzr66.
Created 2 old blogs, Migration Test 3 and Nitecruzr66.
From account Nitecruzr, made nitecruzr66 a member of Migration Test 3 and Nitecruzr66.
Accepted blog Migration Test 3 with nitecruzr66@gmail.com, creating new Blogger account Nitecruzr66.
Accepted blog Nitecruzr66 from Nitecruzr66.
From account Nitecruzr, made account Nitecruzr66 administrator of blogs Migration Test 3 and Nitecruzr66.
From account Nitecruzr66, removed account Nitecruzr from membership of blogs Migration Test 3 and Nitecruzr66.
Setup new Old blog, Migration Test 4, owned by account Nitecruzr66.
Updated blogroll.

Online Support By Blogger Not Available 12/22 - 12/26

2006-12-22T14:47:00.000-08:00

Blogger is on Christmas holiday, 12/22 - 12/26. Jordan, in Happy Holidays!

Blogger Buzzer and I will be off enjoying the holidays for the next 5 days and won't be making any posts during that time.

This is not a time when I would, personally, recommend any exciting activities like migrating your important blogs. Roberto, in Roberto's Report: Blogger ! You are joking!, has a less objective viewpoint.

(Edit 12/30): Though no announcement to the effect was seen this time, it appears that New Years weekend is being treated the same way. I would expect no support 12/29/2006 - 1/2/2007.

When Should I NOT Migrate #2

2006-12-22T10:36:00.000-08:00

My last thoughts, about when I would want to migrate MY blogs, was that I would give it a go mid week.

The previous weekends activities should be wound down.
The problems from the previous weekend should be resolved.
Starting Tuesday or Wednesday of the week should allow a day for the migration to go (or not).
If not were the operative word, 2 days for me to attract the attention of Jordan or Buzzie, and hopefully they could fix my problem as they have fixed others.

But, it is Christmas, and Blogger is on a Christmas break. Possibly following that, one would bet, comes New Years, and a similar break.

And right now, my migration is OFF. So my bet is some folks will try migrating in the next week or so, possibly following my previous advice. But it's the holidays, folks, so unless you need a New Blogger blog for the holidays, and you are willing to chance losing it for a few days, give it a rest. I will anyway.

Blogging And Your Gmail Account

2006-12-21T11:45:00.000-08:00

With New Blogger, Google lets you use your Google account to access your blog, and your friends blogs. They do this for your convenience.

Not everybody wants convenience. Some folks see using their email account for Blogging as an invasion of privacy. Others are afraid of losing their email account, and losing Blogger access at the same time.

The good news is that Google accounts are free, and you can set up another, or as many as you like.

Go to your GMail main window.
In the lower left of the window, find "Invite a friend".
Enter your email address (yes, the address displayed).
When you get the invitation from yourself, open and accept it.
Choose any new Google address that pleases you (and that's available).
Log out of your current GMail account, and into your new account.
Transfer your blogs to your new Google account.

Remember, though, you can move your blogs to any Google account that you wish, but the first Google account will always be the owner of the blog. Treat that account with extreme care.

Until the world is 100% migrated to New Blogger, though, don't forget about Old Blogger. If you're invited to contribute to an Old Blogger (pre-Layouts Template) blog, remember that you will need a Blogger account for that activity. You may be able to use a Blogger account name (subject to availability), but when you look on the dashboard of your newly created / resurrected Blogger account, don't get panicky about not seeing your New Blogger blogs there.

Help, my blogs have gone missing!

And don't get confused when you find that you have to login periodically, to either your Blogger, your New Blogger, your Google Email, or your Google Groups, sessions. Many Bloggers (myself included) have found that the various Google cookies used tend to be confused by the various activities.

>> Top

How Long Should Migrating A Blog Take?

2006-12-20T11:51:00.000-08:00

My baseline test set, Nitecruzr68, which is basically a stub blog, took close to 2 hours. Other Bloggers are reporting longer times, some days.

I'll bet that size of blog will make a big difference. So if it takes 2 hours to migrate a stub blog with 1 post, how long will it take to migrate PChuck's Network?

Jordan, you're going to need a migration estimation tool of some sort, and some sort of progress indicator. Try importing a blog (any blog) from Blogger to WordPress, and see what I'm talking about.

Please.

The need for a migration time estimation, and / or a migration progress indicator, is now added to my wishlist. Let Blogger know that a Migration Support tool is needed.

Migration Support Tool: Provide an estimate of time required for any blog to be migrated (before migration starts), AND a migration progess indicator (while migration is in progress).

http://help.blogger.com/?page=wishlist

Here's a 10 minute thread sample from Blogger Help Group: Something Is Broken - several very unhappy Bloggers.

Blog In Migration - 6 Hours?
Blogger Support Request (Hey, Jordan - look here) (2 Bloggers reporting in here, and neither happy).
One week and counting

(Edit 12/20 15:00): My bud just asked me, in email

Well, I can't recall that Blogger has given out any numbers, so how does one know???

And my answer was

That's so easy. Go "Next Blog" surfing.

Just hit "Next Blog" a couple dozen times. I did, and counted about 10 Old, and 10 New, blogs. And 2 with NO Navbar (assholes).

Now of those 10 New Blogger blogs, how many were migrated, and how many were started as Beta / New blogs? I'll bet as many were started as Beta, as were migrated. And of those migrated, how many are large and complex blogs? See my migration discussions, and see Roberto's migration discussions.

I don't think we've even seen the tip of the iceberg yet. And Jordan says

...spread the word that account migrations sometimes takes longer than a few minutes :)

Well no shit Sherlock!

Migration Testing #2

2006-12-20T11:43:00.000-08:00

Started from my test set.

Migrated account Nitecruzr68, almost instantaneously. Migrated one blog, Nitecruzr68, a stub blog, which took close to 2 hours.

The Name Has Changed

2006-12-19T19:29:00.000-08:00

but the game remains the same. I just wish that I knew what the rules are.

Pete, in Blogger Buzz: The New Version of Blogger, writes

The new version of Blogger in beta is dead!
Long live the new version of Blogger!

So this is now "New Blogger", not "Beta Blogger". Well, I will call it "New Blogger 2006", as I know that, in 2007, 2008, or sometime in the future, there will be a second New Blogger. And New Blogger 2006 replaces "Classic" or "Old Template 2006" Blogger.

Even though this is now "New Blogger 2006", and it replaces "Old Template Blogger 2006", you will find numerous references to "Classic" and "Beta" Blogger here and there. This blog will always be titled and addressed as The Real Blogger Status - Beta.

(Edit 12/20): And in commemoration of the new name, we now have Real Blogger Status - New. (p.s.) Does anybody remember New Coke?

Another Complication In Migration - Team Blogs #3

2006-12-19T10:34:00.000-08:00

In Another Complication In Migration - Team Blogs #2, we noted a thread by Buzzer, where a problem with team blogs was, supposedly, solved.

We modified our migration algorithm to handle this case correctly so other users don't fall to the same trap.

Today, in Will I ever be able to access my Blog?, we see a report of a team migration attempted on 12/12, a day after the forum post, quoted above, was made.

I don't think that we're out of the woods yet, folks. Looks like the extra effort, as described in my systematic migration procedure, may be worthwhile after all.

The Last Spinner

2006-12-18T21:31:00.000-08:00

I just watched the last Spinner Of Death, or at least for Martinez CA UMC, anyway.

Emboldened by the success of my bud, AMR, I separated my Martinez CA UMC blog from all of the others, by moving it to my church email account. With the church email account now the only administrator, and the church blog the only blog owned by that account, migration was simple.

I migrated the account.
I migrated the blog.

Migrating the account was practically instantaneous. Migrating the blog took a few minutes, and included an animation that reminded me of the above mentioned spinner. I watched it with a few minutes of dread, anticipating filing a Blogger Help: Something Is Broken trouble report.

Having gone back to my other computer to get some work done, a few minutes later I was relieved to see

Welcome to the new Blogger beta.
Congratulations! Your move to the new Blogger is complete.

pop up in my GMail.

Since my Martinez CA UMC blog is (currently) not my most active blog, I was not too anxious to setup and test the template before the migration. I simply migrated, picked the Beta equivalent of the Classic template, and patched in a few custom objects.

I made a couple small improvements in the page layout, which should balance out a few small glitches which I found. The new page layout is cleaner in some places, and clunkier in others. I doubt that the current readership will notice anything, as this blog gets much less traffic than my tech blogs. Having gotten the migration out of the way, I am ready now to work on its contents, in preparation for the Christmas season. And later, I will plan the migration of the other blogs.

I won't so casually migrate my larger blogs; they have steady readers (several hundred daily). Having one of those blogs out of action for an hour or two (based upon their proportional sizes, against the results from my baseline test) would inconvenience more than a couple readers. Those blogs, and the account that owns them, I will migrate very deliberately. This blog, I migrated simply to test team blog migration, and to get an idea how long I might want to allow for one migration.

Note: The account used to execute the migration, as defined in this process, will become, under Beta, the permanent owner of the blog(s) migrated. Choose this account, if a choice is necessary, carefully. Consider the strategy below. Plan a team blog migration, carefully.

Log all secondary administrator accounts out of Blogger.
On your computer, close all browser windows except your single Blogger session.
Migrate the account.
Migrate one or more test blogs, if available.
Migrate the blog.
Pick the new template, or upload a tested template, if available.
Patch in all custom features, and test.

The above procedure may seem anal, and some steps may be excessive, but I think it will go a long way toward reducing migration failures. Of course, YMMV.

Another Complication In Migration - Team Blogs #2

2006-12-18T15:06:00.000-08:00

During a very interesting online conversation with a bud, AMR, she pointed out that the team blog problem was resolved a week or so ago, according to a post by Blogger Buzzer in Blog 'in migration' for 5 days. Is that normal?

We modified our migration algorithm to handle this case correctly so other users don't fall to the same trap.

So, I guess we will see if the currently reported problems are related to migrations started before 12/11.

I haven't seen anything in Blogger Buzz, or Known Beta Issues, about this. Kudos to AMR for spotting the forum thread!

Ahyway, AMR asked me for my opinion about the good news from Buzzer, as her church blog was in the same jeopardy. Having read the article, I suggested that maybe it would be safe for me to attempt my migration (subject to my invitation reasserting itself). And a couple minutes later, she reported that hers was done. As you can now see, she is a happy Beta Blogger, and of a rocking good blog, too.

So now I shall see if my church blog can be migrated as successfully, being as the original owner account, of mine, was separated from the blog just recently.

When Should I Migrate (When Should I Not Migrate)

2006-12-17T23:07:00.000-08:00

The handwriting on the wall suggests that Blogger is trying to get everybody (every account anyway) onto Blogger Beta before the end of the year. This doesn't give us much time, though.

The last week of the year, which starts one week from tomorrow (on Christmas Day, yet), will probably be a 4 day work week. Some companies may even observe 3 days of work, and maybe less work will actually get done. Your access to Blogger won't be subject simply to Bloggers stability.

I wouldn't try migrating then. Particularly if the bulk of the unmigrated accounts get migrated the last week, the load on the Blogger infrastructure could be interesting. I wouldn't want my migration job depending upon servers that are overworked right now (supposedly, one of the original reasons for migrating).

And another complication. If last years observations repeat, you'll see Internet stability drop during the last week of the year. Think of all those lucky folks who see their first computer under the Christmas tree, next Monday. Think of what happens as all of those computers get connected for the first time, and all of the new bots get added to the bot population.

If Jordan et al are expecting to get this project finished before the end of the year, they better have coffee, by the gallon, ready for the final week. They are going to be stuck in the office for some grueling long hours.

That leaves this week. Period. And unfortunately, that is subject to the invitation being available.

This is the 2006 Holiday Season. I am surely not the only webmaster who seriously wants his / her website up and running, 7 x 24, during this season. See Roberto's Report: Yo! Ho! What's the Go?, for more thoughts on this issue.

Jordan et al:

If you think some of the bitching in the forum this weekend was annoying, wait til next week, and the final week, if you keep hinting that we will be forced to migrate before 2007.

Please stop The FUD.

Please.

(Note 12/22): I would probably not migrate this weekend, period. And with this issue in mind, I would limit my migration window next week to 12/26 - 27, no more.

I'm Nervous About Migration

2006-12-17T17:21:00.000-08:00

Aside from the Now You See It, Now You Don't migration invitation, I am nervous.

I just spent a couple hours doing my weekly update of my church website. It's not a large website, but it is important to my church. My church is not large either, but it is important to me.

So I do not want to mess up.

While updating the blog, I realised that I had used another account to make the original key posts in the blog. An account that I removed, last week, when contemplating the team blog situation in general. It's quite likely that I removed the original owner of the blog.

Now, under my advice of

Do not migrate when you need your blog

I would have to decline migrating my account for the next 2 weeks. Why?

My church blog is / was a team blog.
Look at the calendar.

This week, I await my pastor sending me his monthly message for the blog, a monthly message that is about one of the two most important days in the Christian year. And, there will possibly be other changes made to accomodate holiday events.

In short, this is not a week when I should be contemplating migration, if any chance exists that I might lose the ability to update the church blog, until after the New Year has passed.

And the team blog problems, documented or not, are sufficiently threatening to me.

(Edit 12/18): I am now cautiously optimistic about migration, pending use of some discretion and planning.

Beta Evaluation #2

2006-12-15T11:53:00.000-08:00

OK, this should be #4, if I was anal and did one each month. So my bad.

But today is December 15. I started this blog on August 16, so this is my four month evaluation. And I guess that it's time to look at the handwriting on the wall (crayon scribblings, some might say). Pete, in Blogger Buzz Switching with team blogs and getting out of beta warns us

At this point, the pieces are in place:
The new Blogger is feature complete
All new accounts are created on the new version
Known issues on the new Blogger are few and getting fewer
(Almost*) all users are able to move their blogs to the new Blogger

This all means that we’ll be removing the “beta” from the new Blogger very soon! At that time, we’ll begin the process of requiring that users of old Blogger move to new Blogger.

So, if you have gotten the tap on the shoulder, you should at least do a dry run migration. Decide when it would be most convenient for your blog to be out of action for a few hours, or a day or so (hopefully not at all, but you cannot tell).

Planning now beats scratching your head later.

But how about a bit of cold water reality for Pete and the gang. I'lll bet that you've read my series of posts about Migration and Project Management. Maybe you could also read advice from AMR: beta blogger: not for everyone, and from Roberto: What Does Migrating Involve?.

These are real people, guys. Real people who work for you (though unpaid in cash). And real people, with real concerns. Maybe (Almost*) all users are able to move their blogs, by your standards. Does that mean at any time, or just occasionally?

Blogger Alert 12/14: Blog In Limbo

2006-12-14T22:51:00.000-08:00

Here's a commonly seen scenario in the Blogger Help Group forums. You just migrated your Blogger account to Google authentication (Blogger Beta). You own a portion of a team blog, and you're hoping to migrate it too.

You have access to the blog, but it's annotated with
This blog is still on the old version of Blogger.
You go to post to the blog, and now you get
The blog you were looking for has moved to the new Blogger.
And not all of the other team members can access the blog, to post or make comments.

From Pete Kennedy: beta switch - can't post - yes me too...HELP, a subsequent reply by Jordan aka Blogger Employee: Can't access team blog from any account, and Blogger Help: What happens when team blogs switch to Blogger in beta?, we learn the current rules of the game:

Beta blogs can be accessed only from Beta accounts. Beta blogs will acknowledge only members with Beta accounts (migrated, or native).
After the owner of a blog migrates it to Beta, all team members will see the blog in their dashboard but be unable to access it, until they too migrate to Beta.
If a team member migrates their account to Beta before the owner of a team blog does so, that person will see a Beta dashboard. Clicking on the team blog will lead to a Classic posts, settings, and template editor.
If you delete or remove the original owner account of a blog, the blog will be owned equally by all remaining administrators.
All owners will have to migrate their accounts, before the blog can be migrated.
Once the original owner account has been removed, that account has lost ownership. Re adding / reactivating that account leaves it in equal status with the other owners.

In other words, if possible:

Migrate all member accounts to Beta before migrating any team blogs.
If any team members can't migrate their account to Beta (because of other team membership relationships), they can setup a Beta account for accessing Beta blogs, while continuing to use their current Classic account to access Classic blogs.
Before migrating your Blogger account to Blogger Beta, make sure that your account is eligible to migrate any key blogs.
If you have any team blogs where the original owner account is not available for migration first, pick one account and make it the new owner.
- Remove all other accounts from the blog.
- Migrate the new owner account.
- Migrate the blog in question.
- Re add all secondary administrator accounts.

If you're going to migrate a team blog, organise the migration. It's far better for you, in the long run.

Another Complication In Migration - Team Blogs

2006-12-14T20:10:00.000-08:00

As I describe below, migration is a two step process - first you migrate the account, then you migrate the blogs in the account. First the account, then the blogs. That's simple.

Or is it? If you're the only administrator, maybe. But what if you have multiple administrators?

It appears that the primary owner (generally the person who started the blog) of a blog determines its eligibility to be migrated. When the primary owner migrates his / her account to Beta, the blogs of which she / he is the original owner are eligible for migration. Only people with Beta accounts will be able to access a Beta blog; those who haven't migrated will see it in their dashboard but won't be able to access it.

What happens if the person who started a blog no longer has an active account? When he / she transferred the blog to a new owner, did primary ownership transfer too? In Blogger Alert 12/14: Blog In Limbo, we see that this may not be possible. If you delete or remove the original owner of the blog, all administrators may become joint owners. And all administrators must then be migrated, before the team blog can be migrated.

Having active accounts with up to date email addresses, for authentication in case of migration problems, is essential.

If you have team blog(s) pending migration, plan the migration. Any blog that is important enough to have multiple owners is important enough for careful planning. Make sure that the accounts, and email addresses are all active and current. If your account is the primary one used for blog administration, make sure that it's the actual blog owner, before you start migration.

All I know is, when I migrate my account and blogs, I'll make sure that each blog has one and only one owner.

Transfer Ownership of a Team Blog? Open 12/14.
Can't access team blog from any account Open 12/13.
span style="font-style:italic;">beta switch - can't post - yes me too...HELP Open 12/13.

>> Top

Leaving Comments On Other Peoples Blogs #2

2006-12-14T12:19:00.000-08:00

The issue of folks using Classic Blogger accounts, or Beta Blogger Google accounts, to identify themselves when making comments on Beta, or Classic blogs, respectively, was supposedly fixed in September 2006.

Both scenarios seem to be active again. We do have one Blogger acknowlegment of the problem, though I don't see it as equalling the scope of what's been reported.

Why can't I comment on Beta Blogs Open 12/14.

Now You See It - Now You Don't

2006-12-14T10:14:00.000-08:00

I got the tap on my shoulder last Friday, 12/8. I took a picture of my dashboard the following morning.

It's a rule of thumb, in IT, to avoid making major system changes on the weekend, when you depend upon other organisations for support. Unless you can get some performance guarantee from them, anyway.

So I spent the weekend thinking about my migration. And I studied the Blogger Help forums, and observed the many duplicated experiences therein. And I asked myself several questions.

What was the change in FTP path? Why all of a sudden are folks being told to change "/" to "."? Enough folks do it, and it works, so we know that's a fix. But they add "I've had this account for over a year - why am I changing it now?".
What was the "Clear cache and cookies" bit to revive the post editor and photo upload scripts? It's good that clearing cache and cookies is a working solution, but remember that people do access other websites besides Blogger / Google. Clearing cache and cookies affects access to all websites (short of clearing just Blogger / Google cookies under Firefox - and we won't even start the FF / IE debate just now).
What's with the repeated "I just migrated my account, and now my blogs aren't in my dashboard", followed by the online procedure:
- What is your account and your blogs?
- OK, the problem's fixed - you're good to go.
What was fixed there? Is this another episode of The Silence?
What's with the team blogs, where the order of account migration seems to affect blog accessibility? Does it relate to the original owner account being migrated first or last? How does the original owner of a Classic blog affect migration overall?

Too many questions. I'll migrate during the week - when the problems surfacing during the past weekend have been identified and laid to rest.

And that's where my fun started. Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday - I did my regular work, and updated my blogs. Repeatedly. And each time I published a change, I would see the normal

Your blog published successfully.

with a twist.

Now, you can do even more with your blog!.

In other words, I got the tap on the shoulder. I was being initiated into the secret invitation only Beta migration.

OK.

From my schedule, I concluded that Wednesday would be the best day of the week to migrate.

Tuesday, I prepared for the migration.

I froze changes to the blog contents (a standard business precaution).
I removed all non-essential administrators from each blog (no team blogging to confuse issues).
I backed up my blogs.

And I got up Wednesday morning, and looked at my dashboard. And it was as it had been a week ago. No Beta notice.

The tap had disappeared. No migration this week.

(Edit 12/13 23:00): It's back.
(Edit 12/15 17:00): It's gone, again.
(Edit 12/16 12:00): Still gone. Added the pinned Migration Status indicator at the top.
(Edit 12/17 12:00): Still gone. And, noting a Comment below, I don't appear to be the only one being played.
(Edit 12/17 18:00): Still Off. And apart from this game, I am nervous about migrating with Christmas coming.
(Edit 12/18 13:00): It's ON! Had a very interesting chat with AMR, and she clued me in on this post from Buzzie a week ago, too.
(Edit 12/20 23:00): It's OFF!
(Edit 12/21 08:00): Still OFF.
(Edit 12/23 14:00): It's back - ON again!
(Edit 12/25 08:00): OFF again.
(Edit 12/26 10:00): ON again!
(Edit 12/30 08:00): Still ON for me, though discussion in the forums suggests that it's not on for everybody.
(Edit 1/17 08:00): OFF again.
(Edit 1/17 10:30): ON again!
(Edit 1/25 18:00): Now, It's Gone For Good and the stampede has started.

Waiting For The Tap On The Shoulder

2006-12-14T10:10:00.000-08:00

I'll be honest here. I was a nerd in college (and I am one even now). So this story is one that I've only seen in movies - neither I, nor my friends ever got this far.

College Secret Societies
Some of them have no name even. There are no published entrance rules - membership is by invitation only, and rules are communicated by word of mouth. And the initiation process starts like this:

The prospective members are blindfolded, and led to a dark room.
The prospective members are put into a circle, in silence.
The prospective members wait, for what will happen, they are told nothing.
Periodically, one prospect will feel a slight tap on the shoulder. In silence, he / she will be taken by the hand, and led into another room where they will join the elite.
And eventually, those who don't get elected will open their eyes, remove the blindfold, and find herself / himself in a small group of rejects, all waiting (hopelessly) for that tap. The tap that never comes.

And that's what we are waiting for, to migrate to Beta (New Blogger). The tap on the shoulder. For some of us it comes. For me, it comes and goes. And finally came back, and now I am done. My sympathies to all of you still waiting.

And Now For Something Completely Different - Hidden BlogRolls

2006-12-11T22:54:00.000-08:00

To complement the MultiStyle Topics, we now have Hidden BlogRolls, aka a Hidden LinkList. This is just a start towards reclaiming the sidebar, or letting the reader decide how he wants to view our blogs.

Note Migration Is A Two Step Process

2006-12-09T12:29:00.000-08:00

I've been seeing these odd questions recently.

I just converted my blog to Beta. Where is this Labels feature?

I just migrated my blog. Where is the Page Layouts editor?

How do I migrate - I don't see a link!!??

As I pointed out earlier, Blogger appears to have put a little thought into the migration process, and separated it into two steps. With any simplified procedure, though, there is confusion. Be alert when you migrate, and remember that migration is by invitation only! Plan the migration!

You migrate the Blogger account, to use Google authentication. Any blogs, previously accessed from the dashboard of the Blogger account, will be accessible from the Google account. You have to be signed in to the Google account, not to the Blogger account.
You migrate each blog, one at a time, to use a New Blogger 2006 template.

(Note): Before you start this process, you may want to do a small amount of planning.

Review your security components, and make sure that your computer is setup to trust the new Blogger servers.
Make sure that all essential blogs will migrate under your current account.
Think about what you're doing, and take precautions before starting.
Be aware that the invitation may come and go, so be flexible and prepared to move decisively when necessary.

Step 1 - Migrate The Account

Account migration is by invitation only.

When you're invited, accept the invitation by clicking on the link. When this is complete, your blog will have a New Blogger Navbar and improved Dashboard, but it will still have a Classic template, and lack the shiny New Blogger features like the Page Layout editor, and drag and drop template redesign.

Step 2 - Upgrade The Template

Template upgrade is at your convenience.

After a blog is migrated to use the New Blogger, if it's published on Blog*Spot, you can change it to use a New Template. Go to Template - Customize Design for the blog, and select UPGRADE YOUR TEMPLATE. When this is complete, you'll be able to use the shiny new features.

For blogs published externally (using FTP / SFTP), you're stuck with the Classic template. If you can make it work for you, look at publishing your blog to a Google Custom Domain.

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

2006-12-06T15:11:00.000-08:00

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.

Blogger Alert 12/2: Missing Toolbar Buttons

2006-12-02T12:58:00.000-08:00

We are advised by Blogger Buzzer in Blogger Help Group: Something Is Broken I can't post pictures to my blog, that we should clear our browser cache, if any toolbar buttons are missing from the Post Editor screens. Note that there are 3 different techniques for clearing cache, and each has advantages and disadvantages.

According to Pal at Blogger Status, this also affected photo uploads.

This leaves us with open questions.

What changed in the Post Editor (and Photo Uploads), that we are refreshing?
Why was no announcement made about what problem was fixed?

So what else is new?

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

2006-11-30T21:09:00.000-08:00

(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.

>> Top

Backup Your Blog - Beta

2006-11-29T17:36:00.000-08:00

I use, and recommend, HTTrack to mirror your blog. HTTrack is very versatile, and will copy any number of blogs, or other websites, in one job, making the contents of each website accessible as if it was an online access, from any mirrored website.

Unfortunately, HTTrack mirroring may be problematic with Blogger Beta. When I started using HTTrack, I could back up a couple of my blogs in 5 - 10 minutes. I added more blogs to the backup job, and backup time went up to 1/2 hour or so, and used 100M or so of disk space. Still a neglible amount of time and disk space, considering the results.

As I started developing this blog, and especially when I started using labels in my posts, backup time and disk space increased dramatically. The last mirror that I ran was 2 weeks ago - it took 14 hours, and used 3.7G of disk space.

Today, in a comment for Backup Your Blog, I see

Well, i tried to use HTTrack but unfortunately it goes looping and tries to download over 200 MB of content, which my blog never has, as i only have 80+ posts.

I went searching for a solution, and in the HTTrack forum, I found one query, Blogger Beta Problems

i try to mirror my Blogger Beta blog but somehow there are some problems related to this task. If i just mirror it without any additional settings then it starts downloading about 200MB worth of sites, mirroring the index file many times but with different number codes (e.g. index25987.html), also there is a folder 'feeds' which keeps growing during the process, filling up quickly.

followed by

i too am having problems, only since i upgraded to beta blog. now it takes up to 90 minutes, & still is not complete, the no of files updated gets to a certain % then startes to decrease instead of increase & i am getting virtual memory errors.

I don't think that this is, necessarily, a design problem in HTTrack. I did spend some time looking thru the Options in the HTTrack job, and I am fairly certain that there is a setting in there that will be relevant to the problem. Finding that setting, though, could be easier with an HTTrack expert.

I hope that one becomes available soon.

Another Blog Hijack?

2006-11-27T19:22:00.000-08:00

Two recent discussions of blogs apparently hijacked by a 301 Redirect, to dothomesearch.info. A third case, earlier, to a different domain.

Missing blog - http://blogger-tricks.blogspot.com/ Opened 11/27
Anyone likes a challenge... Opened 11/26
System Doctor 2006 ... huge problem Opened 10/23

From a brief Google search:

Drivecleaner.com Pest

Using Background Images

2006-11-27T14:36:00.000-08:00

Background images make the blog so much more colourful than plain old solid colour backgrounds. A background image

Is not clickable.
Shows up only where no foreground content is present.

(Note): This post has been migrated to (and improved in) The Real Blogger Status: Background Images In Your Blog.

Look at using a background image under the text title, for instance. Note that this is the opposite from replacing the text in the title with a picture. If you put a picture in the title, no background will be visible, unless you intentionally make the picture too small for the title space, or use a transparent .gif file for an image.

We do this using CSS rules. Look in the template for

#header-wrapper {
width:660px;
margin:0 auto 10px;
border:0px solid $bordercolor;
}

Change that to

#header-wrapper {
width:660px;
margin:0 auto 10px;
border:0px solid $bordercolor;
background: url(http://whatever.wherever.com/what.gif) no-repeat 0px 0px;
}

The CSS object "header-wrapper" is the Beta standard name for the screen area which will contain the text blog title and blog description. If you have, separately, tweaked your header, any of the above settings may differ. Just add the "background" rule.

If you have a Classic blog, your template may or may not use a CSS rule to define the header. It may or may not use a CSS object "header-wrapper". Be aware of the possibilities. You could, conceivably, have a <div> tag, with all of the rules defined there in the HTML.

<div style="width:660px; margin:0 auto 10px; border:0px solid $bordercolor;"> ... </div>

if so, change that to

<div style="width:660px; margin:0 auto 10px; border:0px solid $bordercolor;background: url(http://whatever.wherever.com/what.gif) no-repeat 0px 0px;"> ... </div>

You can apply a background image to any area in the blog, not just the header.

body {
...
background: url('whatever.wherever.com/what.gif');
...
}

With any large screen area, your image will probably be smaller than the area being covered. You'll probably not use "norepeat", so your background image gets reused, repeatedly, in a checkerboard pattern, over the entire area.

For more information, see the W3Schools tutorial: CSS Background

Migrating A Custom Object In The Classic Template

2006-11-27T08:01:00.000-08:00

Most custom objects in your Classic Blogger template are coded in plain old HTML / JavaScript.

Migrating a custom object like that is easy. Just create a new HTML / JavaScript page element, in the Page Layout editor, and copy the code, word for word. Place and size it as you like, and you're done.

But watch out! Some custom code comes in two, or more sections. I've seen some custom code with variable definitions at the top of the template, and the actual HTML at the bottom. Make sure that you find all of the code required! And minimise the stress - test your code before you migrate the production blog!

A single object, say SiteMeter, could be dropped right into a new HTML / JavaScript page element, as is, right from the SiteMeter wizard. Here's a few examples.

OK, I shortened a few lines, with "********", and inserted line breaks, to prevent the old post / sidebar alignment problem.

<script src="http://s26.sitemeter.com/js/counter.js?site=********" type="text/javascript"></script><noscript><a href="http://s26.sitemeter.com/stats.asp?site=********" target="_top"><img border="0" alt="Site Meter" src="http://s26.sitemeter.com/meter.asp?site=********"/>
</a></noscript>

If I want to get fancy, I use nested tables, and put the SiteMeter and StatCounter code side by side.

<table border="0" align="center"><tr><td><table><tr><td width="33%"><script src="http://s26.sitemeter.com/js/counter.js?site=********" type="text/javascript"></script><noscript><a href="http://s26.sitemeter.com/stats.asp?site=********" target="_top"><img border="0" alt="Site Meter" src="http://s26.sitemeter.com/meter.asp?site=********"/>
</a></noscript>
</td><td width="33%"><script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">var sc_project=********; var sc_invisible=0; var sc_partition=16; var sc_security="********"; </script><script language="javascript" src="http://www.statcounter.com/counter/counter.js" type="text/javascript"></script><noscript><a href="http://www.statcounter.com/" target="_blank"><img border="0" alt="website hit counter" src="http://c17.statcounter.com/counter.php?
sc_project=********&java=0
&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;
security=********&invisible=0"/></a> </noscript><br/><a href="http://my.statcounter.com/project/standard/stats.php?
project_id=********&guest=1"
>View My Stats</a></td></tr></table></td></tr></table>

Here's how to make a 3 object page element, in the footer, like the one in Googolians - The Blog.

<table border="0" align="center"><tr><td width="90%"><table><tr>
<td width="33%">(whatever you want, in the left cell)</td>
<td width="33%">(whatever you want, in the centre cell)</td>
<td width="33%">(whatever you want, in the right cell)</td>
</tr></table></td></tr></table>

I know there are other possibilities. Try them. Have fun.

For more information about Tables, see the W3Schools tutorial HTML <table> tag.

Editing Labels

2006-11-26T20:14:00.000-08:00

I know that I've said this before, but the Labels feature in Beta Blogger totally rocks. Having said that, though, I will note one problem. There is no way to edit a label, short of editing each post, one by one, and changing the label field. Change the problem label, by retyping it.

That's slow and tedious.

But - that's not the only way to change a label. From the Post Editor menu, that under Classic Blogger just listed the posts, and let you view or edit one, you can now also

Identify all posts with a given label.
Select all, or some posts listed.
Add a new label to posts selected.
Delete a label from posts selected.

In Blogger Help Group: How Do I? Add and Delete Labels, we see the question

I have three "label" categories on my blog and for some reason I had two of them capitalized and one lower case. Not a big thing, but it was bugging me. I picked the label with the fewest posts in it and went back to write the label in properly, but it kept reverting to the lower case label. I finally figured out to go back to those posts, delete the label (the lower case one that was bugging me) and republish. Luckily I had only one post on that label. I checked the blog and the offending label was gone. Then I went back and edited the post again typing the label correctly and it appeared correctly on the blog. If anybody knows an easier way to do this, it is bound to help somebody.

Actually, using the Post Editor labels list, you could edit any label in a couple minutes, irregardless of how many posts used that label.

Identify all posts with the problem label.
Add a new temporary label to all posts identified.
Identify all posts using the temporary label.
Delete the problem label from all posts identified.
Add the corrected label to all posts identified.
Delete the temporary label from all posts identified.

Sound complicated? Maybe, but it will take maybe a couple minutes to do all of it, with no risk of missing even one post. Each of the above steps involve simple mouse clicks, with minimal typing, and are done once only, in that sequence. If you have lots of posts with a given label, this will automate the process, and do it with way less stress and irritation.

Help! My Blog Is Trapped Inside My Navbar!

2006-11-25T10:10:00.000-08:00

This is the same problem as Help! My Dashboard Is Under My Blog!, just another way of viewing the symptom.

Help! My Dashboard Is Under My Blog!

2006-11-25T09:59:00.000-08:00

We're seeing this recently, as folks get Internet Explorer V7. It's unique to this specific combination - Blogger Beta and IE V7, and it's another description of Help! My Blog Is Trapped Inside My Navbar!.

And, it's a known issue, which implies that Blogger is working on the problem.

(Edit 12/5): And now, it's a closed issue.

So while Blogger works on the problem, what are our options?

Immediate Procedural Solution
As recommended in Blogger Known Issues, if you want to view a Beta blog in IE V7, right click and select "Open in new window", when selecting any Navbar links.

Use a Bookmark / Favourite
As recommended by several readers (see comments), do the obvious. Setup a bookmark / favourite to (or just type in the address bar) http://beta.blogger.com, or even to the blog, as in http://bloggerstatusforrealbeta.blogspot.com/. Now, you're back. Sometimes, the easiest solutions are right in front of our eyes.

Blogger Needs To Fix Their Templates
We're going to have to be patient, and encourage Blogger to fix the problem properly. I'll bet that this will involve a template fix, and this will present a challenge.

Blogger has to develop the solution, and make the solution work in all templates, for all browsers.
Blogger has to issue new editions of all templates.
Blogger has to issue a template patch, for those who have customised their templates, and don't wish to "Pick New Template".

Use Firefox
And it may be another reason to use Firefox, at least until either Blogger corrects their blog code, or Microsoft fixes their rendering inconsistencies. Those of us who use Firefox only heard of the problem when IE users started complaining.

Workarounds
Some workarounds to this problem, of questionable legitimacy and originality, have been proposed in various forums. I'll try and provide links to articles describing those workarounds, as time permits.

The Final Solution
Microsoft needs to produce a browser that doesn't have non-standard quirks.

Spacing Changes In Blogger Beta - 3

2006-11-24T14:04:00.000-08:00

A new post starts out with wide vertical spacing. Look at what we have here, from line to line. Nice and wide vertical spacing. Clean and easy to read. The perfect look for a blog, right?

(Note): This post has been migrated to (and improved in) The Real Blogger Status: Spacing Changes In Layouts Templates #3.

Now, let's throw in a quote.

In the past, and looking at my example shown in Spacing Changes In Blogger Beta, you'd start seeing the problem here. My immediately previous article Spacing Changes In Blogger Beta - 2 suggested an obnoxiously tedious workaround to this problem, which involved surrounding each indent element, such as

<blockquote> ... </blockquote>

with an extra span set to give

<span style="line-height: 1.2;"><blockquote> ... </blockquote></span>

This was fine - it made my blog posts look neat and tidy again - but it had its drawback. It was a major pain in the ass to use - any of my blog posts, of any length, would include 2, 3, or more formatting elements, which I would have to surround each one.

So today, whilst browsing Blogger Help Group: Something Is Broken, I come across Blockquote problem w/ Minima template, with a better workaround.

Go to the Template | Edit HTML tab. In the CSS (top) section of your template code, find the post section. In this section, under the ".post p" heading, find the line that says: line-height:1.6em. Move this line to the ".post" section.

So, let's see what we have in my template.

.post {
margin:.5em 0 1.5em;
border-bottom:1px dotted $bordercolor;
padding-bottom:1.5em;
}

...

.post p {
margin:0 0 .75em;
line-height:1.6em;
}

and change it to

.post {
margin:.5em 0 1.5em;
border-bottom:1px dotted $bordercolor;
padding-bottom:1.5em;
line-height:1.6em;
}

...

.post p {
margin:0 0 .75em;
}

Move the one line of code, in red. Save, and View Blog.

Simple, but still a workaround.

It's one change / template setup in the blog (remember if you change templates, you'll have to repeat this one change). Not one change / page element in each post, for eternity.
When installed, you lose spacing differences in indented elements (<blockquote>, <ol>, <ul>).

The blog is neater now, but it's not as readable. Let Blogger know that this needs to be fixed properly.

Which Migration Experience Would You Prefer?

2006-11-23T09:01:00.000-08:00

Here are two migration scenarios, brutally simplified.

Unplanned Migration.

Accept the migration invitation, and let your account, and blogs, be migrated.
After migration, select your blog, select and accept a Beta template, and convert the blog to Beta status.
Get email or read blog comment
Dude, your blog looks like crap.
Look at blog.
Go into forum, and write
I just migrated my blog, and now it's broken. What do I do now? HELP.
Repeat as necessary.
- Field complaints from readers.
- Accept advice from other victims.
- Patch blog, and test, repeatedly.
Vow to never do this again.

Planned Migration.

Plan the migration, as outlined in my article Don't Stress Yourself - Convert The Template By Hand Before Converting The Blog.
Accept the migration invitation, and let your account, and blogs, be migrated.
Select your test blog, select and accept a Beta template, and convert a test blog to Beta status.
Carefully test the test blog in multiple browsers, and note that it looks like crap.
Go into forum, and write
I just migrated my test blog, and now it's broken. What do I do now? Please help.
Repeat as necessary.
- Be thankful that your readers aren't affected by the test.
- Accept advice from other victims.
- Patch blog, and test, repeatedly.
When testing is successful, migrate production blog.
Maybe get email or read blog comment
Dude, your blog looks great. And what is this new feature?

You choose for yourself. I have already made my choice.

Planning The Migration To Beta - Multiple Blogs, Two Stages

2006-11-23T06:56:00.000-08:00

It appears that Blogger Support has thought the migration process thru just a bit. There are two key processes involved in migration.

Account migration - from a Blogger account, to a Google account.
Template migration - from a Classic template, to a Beta template.

Each of the above processes will go better, if planned properly. Dividing the migration into two steps, if you have multiple blogs, makes it easier to plan.

Your Blogs are migrated, together, from Blogger to Google authentication.
Each blog is migrated separately, from a Classic to a Beta template.

Barbara, aka Flounder, makes a very useful migration description in Blogger Help Group: How Do I? Can I Sign for Blogger Beta.

What we do is upgrade them one at a time. I'm working here from a defective memory, but here goes, I will try. I have upgraded 7 so far and have 3 to go. Yes, each one needed work, but at least they didn't all fall apart once they crossed into Beta. They were intact, and I could work on them one at a time starting with my old classic practice blog which is loaded with stuff. It was a good workout getting used to changing it into the new Beta toys. After I felt better about my ability, I started with another one - the easiest one. And so it went. And here are the steps as best I remember.

I made copies of all the templates into NotePad and dated them in the titles, which gave me copies of all the latest Classic templates in my own familiar old NotePad territory. I had recently, in anticipation of the move, copied all the posts in their Edit HTML form. I know, probably didn't need to do all this, but I was headed for the unknown and wanted to be prepared. Later there is opportunity to download copies to your computer. I did that too - ha! added a belt to go along with my suspenders - you never know when something might break! Screen shots of the first page of each blog turned out to be helpful later.

Once your account is switched -
Go to your dashboard. Find the blog you want to start with. Click on 'Template'. Once there look in the row of tabs. There is one labeled 'Customize Design'. If I remember correctly, clicking on that is The Point of No Return that takes that blog into the New World.

Read the paragraph 'Give Your blog a whole new look!'. Click on 'Blogger Layouts Customization' - a page of instructions comes up. Read that then minimize it so if you need to look back at the instructions during the process, they will still be there.

Then click: UPGRADE YOUR TEMPLATE . There is a small window within the large one. Slide the small one up and down to see all 16 templates available. (It's much like looking through a keyhole.) The one like you have will already be selected, but you can change to another one, if you'd like, by clicking in the tiny circle that looks like a hole punched. Then Click: 'Save Template'.

You will then be on the screen where you can add to and arrange the layout of your blog. If you want to go back/revert to your old template look near top of screen and click 'Edit HTML'. In that screen look at bottom left-hand side for options. As you know by now, as everyone is preaching, if you revert you will not have the benefit of the new features.

So, here's the bottom line.

You migrate all blogs, at once, from Blogger to Google accounts. That's the simple part, where you surrender control to the Blogger migration process.
Once the account migration is done, you can migrate each blog, separately, from a Classic to a Beta template.

With the template migration isolated from the account migration, you can let the account migration proceed at will. Account migration will be a homogenous process - all Blogger blogs currently use Blogger authentication, and all Blogger blogs will use Google authentication.

Onve the account migration is out of the way, proceed to the template migration. This is a heterogenous process. Each blog has a different template, with some templates containing custom code that won't be retained by the migration process. If you have any concerns about migration of the template, proceed with my two stage template migration process.

There's good news, and bad news, here. The good news? Almost all custom Classic code is plain old HTML / Javascript, and can be migrated by copying the code straight from the Classic template, into another HTML / JavaScript page element. The bad news? Some Classic code involves HTML in two places in the template - you may have to search for variable definitions at the top of the template, to support JavaScript at the bottom. This is where you will definitely benefit from a testing period!

If you consider this to be excessive thinking, consider my hypothetical experiences in Which Migration Experience Would You Prefer?

Don't Stress Yourself - Convert The Template By Hand Before Converting The Blog

2006-11-22T16:07:00.000-08:00

I just did a dry run on a Beta migration, and not my blog. This was good.

It gave me a chance to sit back and say to myself

Now, how would I convert this feature?

a few times.

And what I decided made me think.

The Blogger migration process will migrate the blog account - from a Blogger to a Google account. And that will happen for all blogs owned by a given Blogger account, simultaneously.

After the account migration, for all blogs, comes the template migration, each blog, one by one. With any blog of any size and complexity, I will have to have the Classic to Beta migration migrate the posts and comments. No question there.

Anybody who has been posting, or helping, in any of the Blogger Help Group forums has seen this query.

I just finished entering a post into my blog. I previewed it - and it looked fine. Then I published it. And now, my blog looks like crap. What happened to my blog?

Well, what happened is that you didn't test your post enough. The Post Preview wizard simply doesn't provide a valid test, for every blog.

And my guess is that the Beta template migration process won't provide a valid test, for every template, either. There will be template features, on any blog with any complexity, that will have to be tested in a live browser. Preferably, two, or more, live browsers.

Expecting that, after migration, there will likely be template features, in any Classic blog of any complexity or size, that won't be migrated automatically, I'll ask a rhetorical question.

When would you prefer to be testing your new Beta template?

Now, while your blog is online and operating (as a Classic)?
Or later, after migration, while your blog is down (with missing features to be patched in) (And with complaints from your readers)?

I'll bet you'll answer

#1

in a heartbeat.

Why stress yourself? Having added various features to both Classic and Beta blogs, I'd bet that any Classic template, that originally took more than an hour or two to setup, probably won't migrate as is, with all features intact. I'll waste an evening, to reduce stress and make a more successful migration happen. Start this process before you accept the migration invitation.

Before you accept the migration invitation.
1. Be aware of current migration issues. Learn from other folks mistakes.
2. Be aware of New Blogger 2006 design deficiencies and limitations. Learn from others disappointments.
3. Setup a test blog.
4. Copy the current template, and half a dozen posts with comments, from your current Classic blog.
Accept the migration invitation. Let all of your blogs, production and test, be migrated to use your Google account.
After you accept the migration invitation.
1. Migrate the test blog, to a Beta template.
2. Customise the test blog, adding template features, as necessary.
3. Test the test blog, with the Beta template, in multiple browsers.
4. When you have the test blog all working, so it looks like you want your blog to look, then migrate the production Classic blog to a Beta template.
5. Finally, copy the fully tested Beta template, from the test blog, to your newly migrated production Beta blog.

The bottom line? Some planning, and extra (and redundant) effort, will make for a less stressful migration. Less stress will make for less mistakes. Less mistakes will make for a better experience by your readers. And your readers are The Bottom Line, aren't they?

If you consider this to be excessive thinking, consider my hypothetical experiences in Which Migration Experience Would You Prefer?

No More Previous Posts

2006-11-22T13:51:00.000-08:00

The old 10 Previous Posts list is no more. Knowing that a blog was originally designed as a journal, it made sense that any post would link to previous posts only. You can't predict the future. But the limitation of 10 posts always bothered me, as it did many Bloggers. And every month, somebody would ask

How do I get a list of more than 10 posts?
How do I get a list of previous posts, in reverse order?
How do I get a list of the 10 earliest posts?

So now, previous posts is combined with the archives. And you can see a list of all posts, in any one of three styles.

A collapsible hierarchy.
A flat list.
A dropdown menu.

Each of the styles can list the selections in reverse order (oldest first). Each can display by month, by week, or by day. And the first, hierarchy, even has an option to display post titles, ie table of contents, with chapters by date. No more muttering to yourself

Now, I know I wrote that post sometime last month - but what did I call it?

So, as I described it elsewhere, it's not

New Blogger doesn't have a previous posts list.

It's

New Blogger doesn't need a previous posts list.

So How Do I Use This New Feature?
Adding the Previous Posts, in a Classic blog, required you to edit the template. With a New Blogger blog, properly migrated, you simply go to Page Elements, under Template. Then add another page element, a Blog Archive, and configure it as you like.

My Blog Archive is called "Other Articles", and is selected as

Hierarchy.
Show Post Titles.
Archive Frequency: Monthly
Date: 2006 and Month: January (this is key in the collapse mechanism).

Configure yours as you prefer. Experiment with different possibilities, and find which suits your needs.

Beta WishList

2006-11-22T10:37:00.000-08:00

Some items are actual bugs in Beta, others are design deficiencies. They all need to be communicated to Blogger, by the Blogger WishList.

(Note): This article is where I list my personal wishlist items. If this list encourages you to complain to Blogger, about these or other issues, I'm encouraged when you comment here, but you have to use the Blogger WishList, for any real chance of seeing positive results.

The purpose of this post is merely to identify the technical issues, so you can objectively state the facts to Blogger when you recommend changes to them. It's not a substitute for the Blogger Contact or the Blogger WishList forms.

With blogs published on Blog*Spot, "www.myblog.blogspot.com" appears to be equivalent to "myblog.blogspot.com". This is nice, but not so essential. But with blogs published to custom domains, "www.mydomain.com" does not appear to be equivalent to "mydomain.com", even with carefully setup DNS references. And AdSense does not work, in this situation.
Custom Domains: Make "www.customdomain.com" reliably equal to "customdomain.com", in all cases. And end the monolithic error - provide diagnostics.

Provide a tool to use before, and during, blog migration.
Migration Support Tool: Provide an estimate of time required for any blog to be migrated, AND / OR a migration progess indicator.

Give us the ability to transfer Beta blogs from one administrator account to another. Don't give the creator of the blog permanent, unrevokable administrative status.
Blog Ownership: Give us the ability to transfer blog ownership, from one account to another.
(Edit 6/13): This ability has now been provided.

Fix the spacing problems caused by including an indented post component, like <blockquote>, <ol>, <ul>. The workaround required, to make our posts look clean and consistent, is either painfully tedious, or causes reduced readability.
Text Formatting: Fix the spacing problem caused by inserting an indented text element, like <blockquote> ... </blockquote>, into our post.

If we create or edit a post, we get the Post Published screen, which has links to View Blog. How about the ability to view the post just updated? If it's not the most current post, it won't be at the top of the blog. It would be so cool to be able to view the post itself, without having to search thru the blog again.

The New Blogger NavBar lacks components found in the Classic NavBar. Are these omissions intentional? If not, how were they overlooked?

Migration Testing

2006-11-15T18:56:00.000-08:00

Created 2 new gmail accounts, nitecruzr68 and nitecruzr67.
Created 2 classic blogs, Migration Test 1 and Migration Test 2.
From Nitecruzr, made nitecruzr68 a member of Migration Test 1, and nitecruzr67 a member of Migration Test 2.
Created new Beta account Nitecruzr68.
Setup new Beta blog, Nitecruzr68, owned by Nitecruzr68.
Accepted Migration Test 1 with nitecruzr68@gmail.com, creating new Blogger account Nitecruzr68.
Accepted Migration Test 2 with nitecruzr67@gmail.com, creating new Blogger account Nitecruzr67.
Setup new classic blog, Nitecruzr67, owned by Nitecruzr67.
From Nitecruzr, made Nitecruzr68 admin on Migration Test 1.
From Nitecruzr, made Nitecruzr67 admin on Migration Test 2.
From Nitecruzr68, removed Nitecruzr from membership of Migration Test 1.
From Nitecruzr67, removed Nitecruzr from membership of Migration Test 2.
Setup blogrolls linking test set blogs.

>>Current test set.

Putting A Post At The Top (A "Welcome" Post) - Beta

2006-11-13T07:45:00.000-08:00

Layouts template Blogger blog posts are sequenced as Classic Blogger blog posts - by date, in reversed sequence. This means, again, that the newest post will fall at the top, and every time that you make a new post, it will be visible above any previous posts.

Just like a Classic blog, you can make the posts display in any order that you like - just change the date of each post. This is called a work around. With a blog of any size, and activity, you'll note that it is a very painful one.

In a Layouts blog, though, we have one improvement. You can create a special post, and have it "pinned" to the top of the blog. I created a brief Welcome message, which is at the top of this blog, just below the header, but centered like a post.

When you're in the Layout Editor, select "Add a Page Element". Select an HTML / JavaScript, or a Text, element. You can create content using either Rich Text, or HTML, at your convenience. After you create your new element, you can drag and drop it anywhere in the layout - at the top of the post column, or the sidebar, or even at the bottom of the post column.

Positioning a new page element, using the layout editor, can require some experimentation. When you move the new element over the area where you would like it to be, it may drop centered on, another area of the blog. When it does this, move it ever so gently in the right direction, a couple pixels or so, until it positions properly. When it is positioned where you want it, release it, and it will fall into place, properly positioned and sized.

>> Top

Migration To Blogger Beta - The Final Chapter?

2006-10-19T14:05:00.000-07:00

In my previous series Migration To Blogger Beta - Evaluation, and previously, I've discussed the practical issues surrounding the migration.

Today, in Blogger Help Group: Publishing Trouble When will all Blogger accounts be switched to Blogger beta?, we see the third statement by Jordan, aka Blogger Employee

Yes, a few months, max.

One week ago, in Google Blogger Help: An Open Question to "Blogger Employee"

We're looking forward to migrating all users to beta in the next few months, so, as there's limited time left with regular Blogger,

I just hope that there's some window of opportunity provided to all blog owners, so nobody goes from

Sorry, we can't allow you to migrate.

You have to migrate this week.

in the same week.

Common courtesy would require that those with larger, and maybe more complex, blogs, be given an appropriate amount of time to decide when to migrate. I would hate to interfere with some blogger employees coffee break time, but maybe it would be right to think of the unpaid employees slightly, and cut the breaks just a bit shorter.

Please.

Authentication - And Changing The Account On Your Blog

2006-10-18T09:40:00.000-07:00

(Edit 6/13): Changing the owner account is still not a casual process. But it can now be done.

Neither Classic or New Blogger have a simple setting to change the administrator account on your blog. There's nothing in Settings that says

Manage this blog from this account.

As I note in The Real Blogger Status (Classic): Changing The Account Name On Your Blog, though, this is not a great problem. Simply add a new administrator, then delete the old one.

Under Classic Blogger, this could be done in one step, and this was a problem. It was possible to make a new member an administrator, and end up with no administrator. This would require another ticket to Blogger Support. DOHH.

Please restore my administrator status. My blog has no administrator.

In New Blogger, this is a problem, possibly intentionally so because of the latter scenario.

Add a new blog member.
The new blog member accepts the addition.
Make the new member an administrator.
The new blog administrator cannot, unfortunately, remove the old administrator.

And there's the problem. You have one account that can't be deleted from administrator status. And, in Blogger Help Group: How Do I? Switching Blog to anothe rgmail account?, we see this problem. And note the warning: do not delete the owner account, in an attempt to force ownership upon a second account. You'll end up with no blog.

This is just one of the many details that needs to be fixed, in New Blogger. Let's tell Blogger that this is a major concern.

>> Top

Spacing Changes In Blogger Beta - 2

2006-10-17T08:48:00.000-07:00

(Note 11/25): The below content is informational only. The problem in question is not demonstrated, because of the workaround currently in place.

A new post starts out with wide vertical spacing. Look at what we have here, from line to line. Nice and wide vertical spacing. Clean and easy to read. The perfect look for a blog, right?

But don't get used to it - what does this look like in Internet Explorer? In my previous post, Spacing Changes In Blogger Beta, I showed the problem. Maybe the advice given by Paul R will help here.

Now, let's throw in a quote.

And now, look at the vertical spacing. It's fine now, until after the unsorted list below. Nice one, Paul.

So, how did this work? Well, in the above example in my previous post, I have

<blockquote>Now, let's throw in a quote.</blockquote>

and in this post I have

<span style="line-height: 1.2;"><blockquote>Now, let's throw in a quote.</blockquote></span>

Look at my other posts, for instance. Enough! I Want To Go Back! and Beta Blogs: My 3 Week Evaluation both exhibit this behaviour.

Other folks who have observed this.

Problem with the line space of the posts. Observed 10/17.
problem with block quotes Observed 9/22.
Line spacing is not the same... Observed 9/16.

(Edit 11/18): And today, we see the new comment (#2, below)

The fix worked for me on Firefox, but not in Internet Explorer.

DOHH! Why should this not surprise me?

(Edit 11/24):See Spacing Changes In Blogger Beta - 3 for an update, making this workaround unnecessary.

(Edit 10/17): From Problem with the line space of the posts., we find possible hope:

As a temporary fix for current posts, I (accidentally) found that if
you add <span style="line-height: 1.4;"> before each blockquote, and </span> after the blockquote, then the line spacing goes back to normal after the quote, as it is supposed to.

Migration To Blogger Beta - Evaluation - 3

2006-10-15T17:59:00.000-07:00

In this series about the migration to the Blogger Beta product, I've described (briefly) the technique of a migration project, the overall status of the migration, and where (I suspect) that Blogger thinks this project is right now.

As the Google Blogger Help community reacts to last weeks announcement (carefully hidden in the forums)

We're looking forward to migrating all users to beta in the next few months, so, as there's limited time left with regular Blogger

I see an interesting mixture of reactions.

I just migrated my blog, and I'm having no problems. You should migrate now, and enjoy yourself.

and

Don't migrate now, wait until all of the bugs are worked out.

My own personal opinion varies from day to day, according to what problems we are seeing (Classic or Beta), and / or what responses we are getting (or not getting) from Blogger Support. Several times in the past week, I have experienced moments of euphoria (from various causes), where I have contemplated pulling the pin, and migrating PChuck's Kitchen.

Being able to use MultiStyle Topics, to cross reference my recipes, would rock. PChuck's Kitchen is not large, and could be rebuilt if necessary, so it's a perfect candidate (to me) for migration.

Unfortunately, none of this matters, as Blogger says to me, and many other folks

We're not ready to allow you to migrate just yet. But setup a new Beta blog - and try out the neat features!

So, of the folks using Beta blogs right now, how many are using new blogs vs how many have actually been migrated? My guess - and I am being liberal - is maybe 1 Beta blog out of 3 was migrated - 2 out of 3 are new Beta blogs.

There are a lot of Classic blogs waiting to be migrated. Almost certainly, the blogs that haven't been migrated are the ones with interesting features. And that means that those features, and other features used by more complex blogs that can't be migrated, haven't been tested under Beta just yet.

Features that haven't been (won't be) tested under Beta are problems waiting to happen. Blogger is simply saying

Migrate anyway, and we'll deal with the problems after you migrate.

And after they migrate, they'll be saying

We can't respond to your problem personally - we're too busy dealing with all of the problems. Please describe your problem in Google Blogger Help - Troubleshooting, and wait for answers from your peers.

If there are features in Beta that you can't, or don't want to, wait for, then it's in your own best interest to migrate. Those of us who don't want to migrate our blogs immediately will benefit from waiting, and watching the problems that occur without us, occur without us. If you migrate, and you experience problems, then I can learn from your experience, as I watch you struggle.

Those of us that do eventually migrate will benefit from many having migrated before us, and already dealt with the problems. But the choice to migrate is not given freely to everybody. You can only migrate when you're allowed.

We're not ready to allow you to migrate just yet.

So here, again, is the suspicion that Blogger is ignoring the idea that many blogs are owned and cared for by real people.

People who have hopes and dreams.
People that won't enjoy migrating with the fear of having problems, and knowing that once you go forward, there's no coming back.
People who know that possibly they will wait, but one day, possibly in the process of making an urgent post (new or updated), they will get the notice
You must migrate now.

Where now might be any future time convenient to Blogger Support, though not to the blog owner.
People who know that one day, possibly in the process of making an urgent post (new or updated), they will get the notice
You must migrate now.
even though now, they see
We're not ready to allow you to migrate just yet.

And that's the real downside of not migrating immediately. You have no idea when that shoe will drop. And there is another problem with The Silence.

(Edit 10/19): One week later, we see the third statement by Blogger Employee, and this story continues.

Authentication - And Confusion

2006-10-14T13:35:00.000-07:00

One of the long awaited features in Blogger Beta was the ability to restrict access to your blog. Designating your blog as private, to be read by authorised parties only, was a much requested feature.

Blogger Beta uses your Google account to identify you, and verify that you are authorised to view any blog (including yours). And that causes occasional concern, fortunately unnecessary in this case. Seeing your Google account, which coincidentally may be the same as your email address, as you peruse your blog, is a bit scary.

Rest assured, though, as you see your email address in your Navbar, every visitor to your blog is seeing their own email address in their Navbar. Nobody else sees your email address.

And if you're seeing an increase in spam recently, rest assured that it's not related to your Blogger Beta account, or your Google account, being visible to spammers.

Improved spam filtering requires increased spam volume, in order to allow the spammers to maintain a constant income level.
Increased availability of bots makes the increased spam volume possible.

None of this, unless your computer has become part of a botnet, is related to anything that you have or haven't done.

Relax just a bit. Concentrate on other, more urgent, issues - like the coming Beta migration. But accept the inevitable - you will need a Google account to use Blogger.

Your (Blogger) Google account, and your (GMail) Google account don't have to be the same, though. Google accounts are free, and you can set up another, if you like.

(Note 2/13): As noted by Pete in his separate comment, your email address is kept private, by carefully designed code:

The iframe separation keeps arbitrary Blog*Spot blogs from reading (for example) your Google Account e-mail address when you're logged in.

>> Top

Migration To Blogger Beta - Evaluation - 2

2006-10-14T13:05:00.000-07:00

So where are we in the rollout of Blogger Beta? The rollout, for me, began on August 16. Let's be casual, and call it 2 months.

And Blogger Employee, in Google Blogger Help: An Open Question to "Blogger Employee". says

We're looking forward to migrating all users to beta in the next few months.

Although my personal preference would be a year, I'll suspect we'll be lucky to see that stretch into 4 - 6 months. Let's equate "a few" to 4, which makes the total migration project 6 months. I'm using my Migration To Blogger Beta series and the (straw man, and yes, I realise the limitations here) 10% - 80% - 10% triage, as a reference.

When Blogger makes a reference like "a few months", it looks like they think that the pilot is over, and they're going to migrate everybody homogenously. Given a 6 months (24 weeks) overall project, and we are 8 weeks (1/3) into the project, with a 10% - 80% - 10% weighting, that puts us well into the main part of the project. Even at a 20% - 60% - 20% weighting, we are well into the main part.

Unfortunately, they're still telling a lot of folks

We're not ready to allow you to migrate just yet. Just setup a new Beta blog, and test Beta out.

Now, my suspicion is that they have no idea what problems might arise as the Classic blogs are migrated. They can't really. They have no ideas what features are used on any blogs, because they don't support the blogs. They only support the blogging infrastructure. All user support is provided by the users, in the forums.

The unfortunate thing (for us) is that many blogs haven't been migrated, because Blogger says

We're not ready to allow you to migrate just yet.

Now the reason why they aren't allowed certain blogs to be migrated is that they are still trying to work out the issues. Some issues they know about, and have delayed migration for those blogs. But without those blogs being migrated, they don't have any idea what other issues may be awaiting us.

And the reactions in the forums is interesting. I see a few Bloggers saying

I just migrated my blog, and I'm having no problems. You should migrate now, and enjoy yourself.

Other Bloggers advise

Don't migrate now, wait until all of the bugs are worked out.

I suspect that the answer lies in the middle. So, next I will discuss the variety of Bloggers and their opinions about the migration.

Migration To Blogger Beta - Evaluation

2006-10-13T14:55:00.000-07:00

In my Classic blog series Migration To Blogger Beta, I wrote 4 posts to give an overview of the principles of project management, as it applies to migration projects. In those posts, I talked about principals (computers, software, users). What I was really talking about, once you get the principles down, is blogs.

You migrate blogs, just as you migrate computers. Even though you can't see blogs, as you can computers or users, they are still very real. And they are are owned, and cared for, by very real people.

I mention that fact first, in the hope that Blogger may realise this eventually. Because I don't think that they realise this, right now. At least, after reading that specific post in Google Blogger Help.

So next I will evaluate the progress in the Blogger Beta Rollout. I'll start by describing where (I suspect) Blogger Support thinks that we are. Then I'll continue with where other Bloggers like Roberto thinks that we are, other Bloggers in the Blogger community think that we are, and where I think that we are.

Error 405

2006-09-24T18:15:00.000-07:00

The complete error message, from reading a number of threads in Google Blogger Help, appears to be

HTTP method POST is not supported by this URL Error 405

What is the meaning of this message? Is this a peer error to the old friend (not)

We're sorry, but we were unable to complete your request.

Here's a sampling of reports. Some threads suffer from subject drift, some involve Blogger Employee, some may have just died. Who knows? I don't see it listed in Beta Known Issues, but it seems to come and go.

Convert to Layout Started 9/24
Can not access Blog Beta from cousin Started 9/18
"We're sorry, but we were unable..."... Started 8/27 Massive thread drift, AND a celebrity appearance by Blogger Employee.
BLOGGER BETA Started 8/16
Blogger Beta Invite-Only Redirection Failed Started 8/15

If I omitted to list your favourite thread, please accept my apologies, and please let me know.

Spacing Changes In Blogger Beta

2006-09-22T18:11:00.000-07:00

Now, let's throw in a quote.

And now, look at the vertical spacing. With enough lines in here, you can see a change in post layout. The vertical spacing becomes much tighter. This looks sloppy. I've also seen this happen when you include <ol> and <ul> post elements. It appears to happen with any indentation element.

But let's try a test, per advice outlined below.

Testing.

Look at my other posts, for instance. Enough! I Want To Go Back! and Beta Blogs: My 3 Week Evaluation both exhibit this behaviour.

Other folks who have observed this.

Problem with the line space of the posts. Observed 10/17.
problem with block quotes Observed 9/22.
Line spacing is not the same... Observed 9/16.

(Edit 11/24):See Spacing Changes In Blogger Beta - 3 for an update, and now you cannot (hopefully) even see the problem.

(Edit 10/17): From Problem with the line space of the posts., we find possible hope:

As a temporary fix for current posts, I (accidentally) found that if
you add <span style="line-height: 1.4;"> before each blockquote, and </span> after the blockquote, then the line spacing goes back to normal after the quote, as it is supposed to.

So I will test this in Spacing Changes In Blogger Beta - 2, and we will see how it works out.

ReferenceError: log is not defined

2006-09-18T13:22:00.000-07:00

This is a Firefox error. In Internet Explorer, you'll get the equivalent

[object Error] undefined.

You see this when you're in main page view, looking at Older Posts (or maybe Newer Posts).

The improved main page view, in Blogger Beta, rocks. Being able to page forward and backwards, and view all posts in the blog from main page view, is great. But here is a problem - you can see maybe 2 pages of main page view, before this pops up.

And it only applies to main page view. From article view, I used the Older Posts link, repeatedly, and viewed all the way back to the first post.

Are you here because you have this problem yourself? Have you reported it to Blogger Help? If you just answered "Yes" and "No", then you are part of the problem.

Here are other folks who have reported the problem, and who probably need to report it now to Blogger Help.

Changing Number of Posts Breaks Additional Pages OPEN 9/23
"Reference Error: Log is not defined" when trying to access archived posts OPEN 9/18
Next Page Bug OPEN 9/16
Older posts not show OPEN 9/16

And Ramani, of HackOSphere, mentions a friend who reported this, incidentally.

The error window, in Firefox

The error window, in Internet Explorer

Note that neither error window offers any interaction. Copy and Paste is not offered. I have to close this window to get my browser back. When I do, the main page view is blank. Only by reloading main page view, starting with the latest post, can I continue.

And yes, I did report this, and I replied to the botmail.

(Edit 9/27): This appears to be fixed, though again in silence.

Enough! I Want To Go Back!

2006-09-15T12:28:00.000-07:00

New Blogger, while a great improvement over Classic Blogger, is a little rough around the edges. We've all learned that over the past few months.

Some folks have had enough.

Maybe they can't take the problems or suspense.
Maybe the promised features just aren't there.
Maybe there are incompatibilities with some essential tweaks.
Maybe the selections of third party templates, for New (Layouts) Blogger, aren't inspiring enough.

Whatever.

Well, if you can't work with the New Blogger template, you can use a Classic template.

Select Template.
Select Edit HTML.
Select Revert to Classic Template.

This will give you an old template, with the unfortunate limitations.

You'll lose any tweaks that you made to the New template.
You won't have new features like GUI template editing, or page elements.
You'll still use your Google account for authentication, so you'll have a Classic blog (template) that only New Blogger (Google) accounts can leave comments on. This may confuse the viewers.

Having reverted successfully, try moving forward again by starting over with a Layouts template, but setup a test blog, and test your custom settings there. Just as Old Blogger didn't remain very long, I'll bet Classic templates won't be supported forever.

If you decide to do this, will you please let us know at Google Blogger Help what your experiences are with this? Maybe there are other issues that I'm not thinking of right now. Your experiences, if documented, might save somebody else some grief, and that's what the forums, and this blog, were created for.

>> Top

Beta Evaluation

2006-09-14T17:47:00.000-07:00

Today is September 16. I made my first post in this blog on August 16, so this is my one month evaluation.

The Good

Labels.
Archives, to replace Previous Posts.
The Page Layout editor / GUI Template.
The improvedTemplate editor.
Private blogs, requiring authentication.
The improved Main Page view.
The improved Edit Posts screen.
Various minor tweaks.
- The Edit Posts screen lets you page forward and backwards, when there are more posts then will fit on the maximum requested posts screen.
- The post editor actually highlighted an error, in addition to saying that I had made one.
- Instant publishing - no spinner of death.

The Bad

Feeds don't work with Google SiteMaps.
Authentication / commenting between beta and classic users.
External publication not working.
Post Summaries (aka ">>>More") not working.

The Ugly

Once you go forward, you can't go back!
Not all features are provided, to those blogs that publish externally.

The Good

Labels
If I was to pick one feature which would keep me in a Beta Blog, it would be Labels. The ability to associate posts by keyword, dynamically, is useful. Just that. But take that ability, and generate a custom main page view, of all posts with that keyword. Way more than useful. Very user friendly.

Archives
The old 10 Previous Posts list is no more, it's been integrated with the archives.

The Page Layout (aka Page Elements) Editor
The ability to customise 75% (my guess) of all blog features, using a GUI process, is a big relief. The template editor is not very user friendly. But defining commonly used features in a GUI process, and letting us change their characteristics, goes a long way towards making the template editor unnecessary.

Just moving elements within the page is a major improvement. Want a link list at the top of the sidebar? Grab it, drag it, and drop it. Want to change colours and / or fonts? We now have a standardised setting process for that. No more "Why did that change size?").

The slightly improved Template editor.
The template editing process, while substantially like the old, helps you to save and restore your current template, using a GUI process. This will encourage each of us to save our templates more readily, which will reduce stress level when editing templates, which may reduce mistakes. I know that it will for me. Plus we can make smaller changes, leading to more understanding of what we are doing, and possibly less mistakes.

And a possibility for endless activity - template HTML now supports Javascript. I am just getting in to this - but there is real potential for pushing into new territory.

Authentication
Using a Google account / password to authenticate ourselves allows blogs to be made private for viewing, as well as for adminstration. And it integrates well with the menu of blogs (ie "dashboard") under our control.

The Improved Main Page View
Under Classic Blogs, you could have 2 views - main page, and article. You could have an article view of any specific post, but you could have a sequential ("main page") view of only the latest 10 (or whatever number the blog owner determined) posts. If the articles of interest weren't in that latest x number, it was time to look by post name. Oh yes, there was no post name list (excepting of course the 10 previous posts). Good luck finding a post by title!

Now, your main page view is unlimited. The limitation simply affects how many in a single view - when you get to the end of the page, just hit "Newer" or "Older". And integrating Label search results into main page view makes it great.

The Vastly Improved Edit Posts Screen
Start with the first improvement that I saw weeks ago. When you peruse the Edit Posts list, if you decide upon a limit of 50 posts, that's now just 50 posts on the first screen. More than 50 posts? Hit "Older" ("Newer").

And it gets better. All posts are listed, with their Labels. Want a comprehensive list, by post, of all labels used? Here it is.

And in another column is a master list of all labels. If you click on one, the list of posts shows all posts for that label. And each post listing all labels for that post. Want a labels cross-reference? Here it is.

And we have ability to select listed posts, and then to add or remove a selected label. Need to change one label for another? Here's a list to do this from, quite painlessly.

And a minor (but not very much so) item. For each post with Comments, you get a link to view the comments for that post.

Various Minor Tweaks
A nice experience here. I actually went to Publish a post, and was told that I was missing an opening "<a>" (unbalanced "</a>"). The difference here was that it highlighted the offending "</a>"!

The spinner of death is no more. When you Publish a post, or edit the template, your changes save instantly. No more waiting. YAY!

The Bad

Feeds

Authentication

Publishing To External Servers

Post Summaries

There's No Going Back, Folks!

Not all features are available to blogs that are published externally (aka FTP blogs).

>> Top

Please Help Translate This

2006-09-14T08:54:00.000-07:00

The latest post in Beta Known Issues:

Today we pushed a new version of Blogger beta that contains a significant number of bug fixes, most of them concerning issues that users reported to us. It would be too much detail to list all the specifics here but we hope they will improve your beta experience. We're continuing to work on the other issues that are listed on this blog, and if you find new ones please let us know.

I'm taking a stab here. Comments are invited.

We made a bunch of changes - we aren't sure what, nor are we sure if they will fix anything. If you see any problems, let us know, and we will continue to ignore you. We'll make more changes later, and won't tell you about them either.

Well, the BKI blog mentions the Page Element adding problem as fixed. Earlier, the “We’re sorry but we’re unable to complete your request” errors were fixed on Labor Day (but possibly not completely). Anything else anybody can see as fixed?

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

This looks like more of the silence. We are now seeing Beta Known Issues getting the same treatment as Blogger Status.

Welcome to K-Mart. How may I ignore you today?

Leaving Comments On Other Peoples Blogs

2006-09-14T08:01:00.000-07:00

There are several issues about Commenting on blogs. In general, they involve authentication.

If your blog allows open commenting, ie with no authentication (Who Can Comment? set to Anyone), there will be no problem with comments. Unfortunately, this is spam friendly.

To restrict spam postings, you set authentication to Blog Members or at least Registered Users. Both of those settings require authentication, using the standard Blogger account name / password (for Classic blogs), or Google account name / password (for Beta blogs).

It appears that

The two authentication processes aren't compatible.
Google gave no thought to the two being used together.

So now, they're trying to repair their mistakes.

Blogger has identified two issues - Classic users attempting to comment on Beta blogs, and Beta users attempting to comment on Classic blogs. Both issues are supposedly resolved.

Discussions:

I CAN'T LEAVE COMMENTS Open 12/12
Can't leave comments Open 10/23
friend´s blog invitation problem Open 10/20
Comments and Non-Beta Blogs. WHEN? Open 9/13

>> Top

MultiStyle Label Lists

2006-09-13T12:14:00.001-07:00

This lets you decide how you want to list the Topics (aka Labels). You select the Style that pleases you, not the blog owner. So, how does it work?

Hide
Select Hide Style to hide everything except the MultiStyle Labels Menu Bar. Hide Style is the default in this blog; other blogs may vary.

List
Select List Style for the familiar long list, alphabetised, with post counts.

Menu
Select Menu Style for a pop up list, alphabetised, with post counts.

Zoom
Select Zoom Style for a long list, alphabetised, using larger fonts to identify topics with higher post counts.

(Question): This rocks! So, Chuck, how do I get this into my blog? For the answer, see Cumulus Blogs: Adding CumulusTopics Code Into Your Blog

Template Editing

2006-09-13T11:03:00.000-07:00

Along with Labels, the Beta template editing ability is probably the neatest feature in Blogger Beta. The GUI Page Layout editor is totally kewl.

Not too many folks realise though that you can edit page elements from other than Page Layout editor mode. When we're logged in as an administrator, we can make changes to the individual page elements, just as we can edit posts. Similar to the "Edit Posts" pencil at the bottom of each post, you'll find the "Edit" widget at the bottom right of every page element.

And here's some confusion.

How in the world do I get rid of the cute little dragonflies that seem to be a part of the template that I have?? I do not know enough about the HTML to find them or what they might be called.

Well, I've been studying the HTML / XML, but I don't know the name myself. It does sort of look like a dragonfly, though. It's just another thing that got put, into Blogger Beta, without a name. Another violation of one of my principles

Everything gets a name.

Fortunately, named or not named, it's only visible to you, in a specific situation. And, once you explain that to folks, the general philosophy is

I can live with that, as long as the readers aren't seeing it.

And they're not seeing them. Only you can see them, in a specific situation.

When you are logged in to the blog as an administrator.
When the blog has Quick Editing enabled.

There are 3 ways to prevent the dragonflies from displaying.

Log out from your account.
Disable Quick Editing.
Edit your template.
1. Backup your template.
2. Select "Expand Widget Templates".
3. Find, and replace, all instances of
  <b:include name='quickedit'/>
  changing each to
  
4. Save Template changes.

(Note): You may find it necessary to clear browser cache, after doing the above, to make sure the dragonflies will be gone.

Beta Enhancements

2006-09-13T10:01:00.000-07:00

No product will ever be released with all of the possible features immediately included. Any product ever treated that way will never be released, becuase the vendor will keep adding and deleting features.

So we shouldn't be surprised that Blogger Beta has problems. And it has design limitations, and other issues. And there are other features which, in our own personal opinion, should have been included.

The Post Published Screen
When you edit a post, and you hit Publish, you are taken, immediately, to the Post Published screen. Yes! No more spinner of death (among other terms used). But having done that, you click on "View Blog", and go back to main page view. How about a link to "View Post"? That would make it so much easier to test what we just wrote.

Or have you never finished a (you thought) bang up job, published, and waited for the raves to pour in? And looked at the first rave, which said

Dude, that sucks. Why did you do that?

So you look at what you had done, maybe from another browser, and find that you had made a mistake.

Always test after making changes. Check each link, for instance. Preferably in each browser. And testing, in general, would be more instinctively done, if we had a link on the Post Published screen, that went straight to the post just finished. At least, for me.

Making Comments On My Own Blog
Sometimes, I moderate and publish a comment that warrants a response. Since most comments are made anonymously, it's easiest to post another comment.

But getting thru the comment entry form (and the obnoxiously small comment form is another subject), having done that, I am left with a Captcha. Why do I have to fill out a Captcha, if I am logged in to my own blog?

Labels

2006-09-13T09:43:00.000-07:00

To put it simply, this feature rocks.

Here's a dynamic search for all posts about Beta Problems (label "beta problems"), in this blog. Why dynamic? Because it's evaluated each time that you click on the link (possibly within limits of your cache).

And instead of an ugly search hit list, where you get snippets of useful information, that you have to hunt for (ever try finding an article title, or the URL, in a typical search hit entry?), you get a customised main page view of your blog, with all of your customised amenities and layout, showing only the posts relevant to the label selected. Very user friendly.

And look at the end of this post. See the labels listed? Click on any one. Yep - another dynamic search - on that label. Keyword cross referencing.

To add them, just type any keywords, as desired, into the box at the bottom of the post edit window. They aren't case sensitive, so just lower case, comma delimited, as many as relevant for any post. And as you type, you'll get a popup menu of already entered labels, so you can pick ones already in use when possible. No misspelled labels. When you feel the need to change any, just add, change, or delete words, in the list, in each relevant post.

There's even a selection to the right of the Labels box, called "Show all". That opens a cloud display, showing all labels defined, for all of the posts in that blog. Just click on each relevant label, and it gets added to the list for that post. What could be easier?

Start using labels early, while your blog is young. It's easy to type in 2 or 3 keywords, into the labels field, whenever you add or update a post. When you have a couple dozen posts, and have to add the labels then, it won't be quite so much fun. I speak from experience here.

When you have labels defined for your posts, you have numerous options for referencing them.

Already there for you - the labels menu at the end of each post.
In the sidebar, or at the bottom, you can add a Page Element, listing the labels in your blog. You can, of course, rename the list - mine are called "Topics aka MultiStyle Labels". Or you can forget about the plain one style label list, and go straight to MultiStyle Labels.
You can have a feed for each label.
You can even have a link, in the post. Look here for other posts about How Do I Use Various Beta Features, as an example.

Now, for the next step in the evolution of The Real Blogger Status - Beta, check out MultiStyle Label Lists, courtesy of HackOSphere and CumulusBlogs.

A Limit In Blogger Beta?

2006-09-09T10:06:00.000-07:00

How many HTML / Javascript page elements can you have? My bud Roberto asked me about this last night.

I keep getting "unable to complete your request" when trying to add another widget.

And I tried myself, and I saw the same error. I used the Add widget, selected "HTML / Javascript", and there it was - our old friend (not)

We're sorry, but we were unable to complete your request.

Well, nobody can say that Roberto's Retreat 2 - Beta isn't pushing the limit. I advised him to think of his viewers, and limit the complexity.

But as we explore the amenities of Beta Blogs, I'll be surprised if we don't run into limits like this occasionally.

(Edit 9/9 21:00): I see that there is actually a Known Issues entry for this problem, from 9/8. Maybe the BKI blog will actually be useful.

(Edit 9/11): In Google Blogger Help - Customising Templates: Is the number of HTML/JavaScript widgets limited?, we see a suggestion for a workaround.

Cool, the Text elements accept HTML and JavaScript so I can still carry on adding stuff with codes

So, forget about HTML / Javascript, and let's see how well you can customise a Text element.

(Edit 9/13): In Known Beta Issues, this problem is reported as fixed.

Beta Blogs: My 3 Week Evaluation

2006-09-09T07:34:00.000-07:00

So today in Google Blogger Help - Customizing Templates: Will we all have to switch to Beta Layout?, we see the question on the mind of many:

...do you think Blogger will forse us all to switch to layouts?

I personally think we will all eventually want to switch. Blogger Beta is so much better than Blogger Classic, for those who publish to Blog*Spot anyway. Whenever I edit The Real Blogger Status, or PChuck's Network, I feel like I'm working in a 2 dimensional world, where editing The Real Blogger Status - Beta is 3 dimensional.

If you don't though, you will have the ability to edit the HTML directly ("raw HTML edit"). Maybe it would be good to see if that will work, though.

So it's time to evaluate what we have, and to decide where to go from here. My gut feel is

Eventually, everybody will want to switch, or
Nobody will care, or
We will all be better off switching.

Having said that, I intend to keep The Real Blogger Status - Classic as a Classic blog, until it's the last known Classic blog. So we will see.

And I think that a more robust evaluation is certainly in order.