We are still around

Someone recently posted a comment asking if we are still around. We are, just not everyday or every month. We are busy with hundreds of blogs and dozens of websites, and we do get in here when we can.

We just approved and answered a bunch of questions on another post here.

While I still like blogger to a degree, I spend most of my time working within Wordpress blogs, which are being installed on their own domains. I find them much more friendly and reliable - although it does require some investment for domain registration and hosting.

Feel free to ask questions here to your hearts content. I will be around as often as I can manage to answer those questions for you.

In the meantime, if you need help with blogger, some of the best places to find that help are listed here:

Blogger Problem Reporting: https://www.blogger.com/problem.g
Blogger Contact page: http://help.blogger.com/?page=contact

You must be logged in, to access the two above.

Blogger support on Google Groups: http://groups.google.com/group/blogger-help

Blogger Support Forum (operated by a third-party): http://getsatisfaction.com/blogger

I hope this helps during my long absences.


Bill Platt
http://blogger-support-issues.blogspot.com

Is Blogger Getting Better?

I have not noticed any major issues I would like to see the Blogger team fix in quite a while. So that has got me wondering. Are they doing better?

Please feel free to add your comments to this post, and I will try to answer your technical support questions with Blogger / Blogspot blog software. If I cannot help, we will petition to the Wizards behind the machine at Oz.


Bill Platt
http://blogger-support-issues.blogspot.com

Blogger Features I Would Like To See

Yes, I still use the Blogger.com platform, but I also use the WordPress platform too. To build a new blog in very short order, Blogger.com still ranks the best, although WordPress offers a few features that I wish Blogger had.

For example, I would like Blogger to offer:

• Mass Post Deletes - Allow us to check off the posts we want to be rid of, and give us an option to delete all checked items. We know they have the technology, because I manage Google Groups that have this feature.
• Readable Captchas - I hate to admit it, but I am getting older and my eyes aren't what they once were. I find the audio for the handicapped to be an absolute pain in the ass to use, so I don't use it. But Google has been so clever to create Captchas that spammers cannot get passed, and unfortunately, their loyal users can't get passed it either. I would like Google to track which Captchas are typed correctly or missed and to develop a rating on each Captcha so that they can see how often I simply cannot read their darn Captcha. Please... Sometimes, I have to type Captchas five, six or seven times just to get a post approved.
  
• Blogger's Next Blog Link - Let us rank our content's audience and then make sure that the Next Blog link is friendly to our audience. The fact that you can click from my family-friendly blog and find yourself on a spam blog or a p-0-r-n blog is a real problem for the future of my blog's audience. Hey, Blogger is owned by Google. Isn't it possible for you to run some kind of contextual content check on new blogs to find offensive content and remove it, before my user's find it and get pissed off at me for linking to non-family friendly content?
  

I am impressed with Blogger's new template management system. It is actually pretty sweet, and it is a definite improvement over the previous plain test template system. Making changes to a template is so super easy now, and the fact that I can configure it to my heart's content makes it an absolute joy to work with.

Until next time, we can applaud what makes Blogger great, and more importantly keep the focus on making it even better.


Bill Platt
http://blogger-support-issues.blogspot.com

"001 java.net.ConnectException: Connection timed out..." Error on Blogger/Blogspot Hosted Sites

The problem has returned, except for now the problem resides on Blogger/Blogspot hosted blogs on the Blogspot servers.

Previously, this problem only occured on blogs that we hosted on our own servers.

I know it is driving us all nuts, and it has been an ongoing issue for about ten days. But experience has shown that the only steps we can take towards the resolution of this matter is to exercise patience.

This issue has not come up on account of anything that you have done... It is a problem within the Blogger software.

My guess would be that it is not occuring across the board on all blogger accounts, but it is occuring on several servers. We just have to wait patiently for the Blogger folks to get it together. They always have got these problems repaired in the past, so we know they will get to it eventually.


Bill Platt
http://blogger-support-issues.blogspot.com

Did You Notice The Google Footprint?

Did you notice that we now have the option of logging into Blogger.com with either a Blogger or Google username and password?

Google has owned this company for a long time, and we are just now seeing the two start to integrate in a public way.

Of course, with a system integration, there are always hiccups, burps and slobbers. The first day I had noticed this, the Iframe with the login window would not load correctly. I had to wait a day to login to my blogs on account of this hiccup. Since the integration has begun, the login systems have been a bit hit-and-miss.

Patience is the best strategy for the login problems, since this is a grand transition for the Blogger systems.


Bill Platt
http://blogger-support-issues.blogspot.com

I finally solved my 001 java.net.ConnectException: Problem, BUT NOT THE WAY YOU THINK

I was torn for a solution forever. I finally came up with one.

Now, the decision was made difficult by the fact that nearly every page of my blog had good PageRank value attributed to it. So, I wanted a solution that did cause me to lose my PageRank...

Here is the solution I finally made:

1. I moved my blog to the Blogspot servers.
2. I updated the blog and Republished the entire blog.
3. I went through every page of my blog on the Blogspot servers, and copied the source code. I pasted all of the new code on my old pages on my server's copy of the blog.
4. I tweaked the links presentation within the blog on my server, putting in a new field called "Current Posts" and then placed a link back to the blog on the blogspot server.
5. Then I created a Redirect URL for the main page of my blog and redirected that traffic to the blog within the blogspot sphere.

The advantages I gained were these:

1. Any search engine traffic currently landing on my blog on my own server is still captured. The people can view the original page in its original context, but when they click a link to go to other area's of my blog, they will be whooshed off to the blogspot copy of my blog.
2. I don't have to start off anew in the search engine rankings for those pages that I can no longer maintain on my own server.
3. I can now regularly update my blog and make any tweaks that I might wish to do, and I can do that without fear of whether the blogger software will work.

It was a pain in the you-know-what, but I was able to make the transformation in only one hour for a blog that has 12 posts over the course of 1-1/2 years... Of course, that time frame is misleading, because I was unable to post to the blog for more than half of that time frame.

If you want to see a comparison between the Old and the New, you can view these two links:

Old: http://thephantomwriters.com/blog/2005/12/o-sabine-ehrenfeld-how-i-long-for-you.html

New: http://bill-platt-speaks-up.blogspot.com/2005/12/o-sabine-ehrenfeld-how-i-long-for-you.html


Bill Platt
http://blogger-support-issues.blogspot.com