Custom Domains And URL Forwarding - A Bad Idea

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

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.

1. http://martinezumc.blogspot.com/
2. http://www.martinezumc.blogspot.com/
3. http://martinezumc.org/
4. http://www.martinezumc.org/

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

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

1. You setup DNS pointing to the Custom Domain server "ghs.google.com".
2. 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.

>> Top

New Blogger - And The Confusion

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

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.

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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.

Another Blog Hijack?

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
  

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.

Spacing Changes In Blogger Beta - 2

(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.

Error 405

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

(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?

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

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!

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.

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Beta Evaluation

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

Leaving Comments On Other Peoples Blogs

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

1. The two authentication processes aren't compatible.
2. 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

Photo Uploading Problems In Beta Blogs

I recently upgraded the appearance of this blog - just slightly - by cleaning up the header. What you see above is a graphic. I did this a couple days ago, with no problems.

The following day, I decided to write about my work. So I wrote text, and composed it, and made Customising The Header #2. Then I added some pictures, showing the blog header appearance, as I progressed with the project. Or I should say tried to add pictures.

I could select a picture, and hit the Upload button. And the spinner would run for a few seconds, but nothing would upload. Even clearing cookies, which I tried twice, and verified that I was using a different Blogger server, brought no relief. Nor did uploading to a blank post, tried in both "Edit HTML" and "Compose" modes. Nor using Firefox or Internet Explorer.

Meanwhile, simultaneous improvements to PChuck's Network, which is a Classic blog, proceeded nicely. Pictures were a useful addition to my Network Connections wizards instructions.

So, I guess Beta blog picture uploading is broken. I'm not alone anyway.

• posting pics OPEN 9/7
• Why can't I upload a pix? OPEN 9/7
• Images - Blogger Team's Not Looking So Good OPEN 9/7.
• Pictures not Posting OPEN 9/6
  

(Edit 9/7 17:40): A very interesting forum thread involving Blogger Employee AND Jehovah himself, Pete Hopkins, Google Blogger Help - Publishing Trouble: Why can't I upload a pix? is a start. Watch this post (or the thread).

(Edit 9/8 17:00): A post in Blogger Beta Known Issues: Some users are unable to upload images suggests clearing cache. This seems to work, though not always on the first try.

(Edit 9/13): The procedure of clearing cache appears to be effective against cases where the upload appears to be successful, yet clicking on Done takes you back to a post editor where no code is inserted. Now we seem to have a new symptom - no Done button appears. Clearing cache appears to have a mixed effect here. This problem is still open in Blogger Beta Known Issues: Some users are unable to upload images, though some links there may be misleading.

Known Beta Issues - Being Acknowleged

So this morning, I see a comment in my RBS Classic The Problem Here Is Not The Problems, It's The Silence.

...just the day after I read this very post about their silence, I found this - http://knownissues.blogspot.com/ ...A known issues page, made up by the staff. Available through the beta logon/dashboard page.

This is an improvement. It shows some effort, anyway. Let's see if it's maintained properly.

(Edit 9/13): The BKI blog, upon examination, appears to be robust both in depth (number of issues being tracked), and in breadth (blog layout). The blog has, in its sidebar, direct links to 3 key problem resolution resources.

• The Blogger Help Form.
• The Blogger Status blog.
• The Google Groups: Blogger Help forums.

All in all, a significant improvement, and complementary to the improvements in Blogger Beta itself.

Login Problems

Possibly the biggest problem with Blogger Beta, right now, is the confusion over authentication. Under classic Blogger, you could have a Blogger account, with an account name. That account could be tied to any email account, with any email service. By default, Blogger Beta ties your Blogger access to a Google email address.

• Blogger Beta
• Google Adsense
• Google Groups
• Google Mail
• Google Talk
• Google Sitemaps

What happens if you want to switch accounts for various reasons?

One of the desired features in Blogger blogs was the ability to restrict access, ie allow only authenticated users to view a blog. Google decided to include this feature in its Beta Blog release, and decided to use Google accounts for the authentication. Unfortunately, this creates a problem with people who are currently authenticated using Blogger accounts. And Classic blogs likewise have trouble with people who are authenticating only with Google accounts.

Remember, you can have any Google account managing your blogs, within limits.

I suspect that there is some possibility for account confusion, among the Google services. Blogger Employee seems to consider this possibility. And Blogger Buzz: Beta Update! (look for "Login trouble" - they don't use anchor tags) describes issues that are relevant here too.

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Guess What?

The Real Blogger Status Beta joined the ranks of the unhappy Bloggers, but just temporarily.

In my case, it was a feed problem. I removed 2 feeds, saved settings, and it's back online.

And I reported the problem to Blogger Support. Just got a reply, which looks to be from a person:

Thanks for letting us know about this bug with Blogger in beta. You were receiving this error due to Blogger not recognizing the URL you you entered into the Feed page element as a valid feed URL. We're looking into it and hope to have it fixed as soon as possible. In the meantime, to avoid this problem simply remove this page element from your blog and it should appear correctly. We appreciate your patience and apologize for any inconvenience.

Sincerely,
Danish
The Blogger Team