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

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?

or

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!

or

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.

1. Setup a new Google email account for migration.
   
2. From the original Blogger account, send an invitation to the new Google email account, offering blog(s) membership.
   
3. From the new Google email account, accept the Blogger invitation, and create a new Blogger account, for blog(s) membership.
   
4. 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).
   
5. 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).
   
6. 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.
   
7. 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!

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.

1. Conduct a careful audit of each blog, and document all team relationships. Identify all team members, by name and current email address.
   
2. Designate the master computer, from which to conduct the migration.
   
3. Designate one source (Blogger) account, to start the migration. Make sure that account has administrative authority over the blog(s) being migrated.
   
4. 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.
   
5. 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.
   
6. Log off all Old Template 2006 (Blogger) accounts that have administrative access to the blog(s) being migrated, excepting the master computer.
   
7. Close the browsers on all computers which host administrative activity for the blog(s) being migrated, excepting one browser, on the master computer.
   
8. Remove administrative relationships, for all Old Template 2006 (Blogger) accounts, for the blog(s) being migrated, using that one browser on the master computer.
   
9. 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.
   
10. From the designated source account on the master computer, start the migration.
    
11. 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.

Another Complication In Migration - Team Blogs #3

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

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

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.

I'm Nervous About Migration

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.

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.

Another Complication In Migration - Team Blogs

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.
  

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