Deleting Your Blog? Do It Right!

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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Another Cache Refresh Needed?

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.

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Blogger Maintenance January 9 Morning

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.

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Another Cookie Issue

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?.

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

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.

Blogger Alert 12/14: Blog In Limbo

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:

1. Beta blogs can be accessed only from Beta accounts. Beta blogs will acknowledge only members with Beta accounts (migrated, or native).
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. If you delete or remove the original owner account of a blog, the blog will be owned equally by all remaining administrators.
5. All owners will have to migrate their accounts, before the blog can be migrated.
6. 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:

1. Migrate all member accounts to Beta before migrating any team blogs.
2. 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.
3. Before migrating your Blogger account to Blogger Beta, make sure that your account is eligible to migrate any key blogs.
4. 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.

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

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

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

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

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

Blogger Alert 12/2: Missing Toolbar Buttons

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?