Your Custom Domain Blog, And AdSense

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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How Long Should Migrating A Blog Take?

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!

Spacing Changes In Blogger Beta - 3

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.

Beta WishList

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.

1. 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.



2. 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.



3. 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.


4. 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.



5. 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.


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

Authentication - And Changing The Account On Your Blog

(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.

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Beta Enhancements

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?