Now, It's Gone For Good

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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Still Waiting?

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.

• How to remove Google account from Blogger account?
  
• Switching from old blogger to new
  
• Stuck between the New and Old Blogger
  
• Getting multiple blogs under one Google account
  

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

Migration Log

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.

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!

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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Now You See It - Now You Don't

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.

1. 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?".
2. 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).
3. 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?
4. 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

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.

Which Migration Experience Would You Prefer?

Here are two migration scenarios, brutally simplified.

Unplanned Migration.

1. Accept the migration invitation, and let your account, and blogs, be migrated.
2. After migration, select your blog, select and accept a Beta template, and convert the blog to Beta status.
3. Get email or read blog comment

   Dude, your blog looks like crap.

4. Look at blog.
5. Go into forum, and write

   I just migrated my blog, and now it's broken. What do I do now? HELP.

6. Repeat as necessary.
   • Field complaints from readers.
   • Accept advice from other victims.
   • Patch blog, and test, repeatedly.
7. Vow to never do this again.

Planned Migration.

1. Plan the migration, as outlined in my article Don't Stress Yourself - Convert The Template By Hand Before Converting The Blog.
2. Accept the migration invitation, and let your account, and blogs, be migrated.
3. Select your test blog, select and accept a Beta template, and convert a test blog to Beta status.
4. Carefully test the test blog in multiple browsers, and note that it looks like crap.
5. Go into forum, and write

   I just migrated my test blog, and now it's broken. What do I do now? Please help.

6. Repeat as necessary.
   • Be thankful that your readers aren't affected by the test.
   • Accept advice from other victims.
   • Patch blog, and test, repeatedly.
7. When testing is successful, migrate production blog.
8. 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

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?