Blogger Is Unfair - To Would Be Blog Thieves

Blog owners continue to forget the account name and / or password of their Blogger accounts, then demand alternate recovery options.

Every week, we see the reports in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue, claiming that changing their email - or getting a new phone - caused somebody to unfairly lose access to her / his blog. Too many blog owners refuse to understand that the email address and phone number are simply backdoor accesses to their Blogger accounts.

When given advice to use Blogger: Forgot your username or password?, or Blogger Help: Having trouble signing in or viewing your blog?, we frequently see demurrer.

Neither tool helps me. Can I please contact a real person?

The implication, when demanding human real time contact, is that the blog owner (or would be blog thief) can provide secret details - which when supplied, will convince a real Google security employee that the Blogger account / blog is the legal property of the complainant.

Secret details, which are jointly effective for Blogger / Google and the would be blog owner, are quite limited.

Account / blog recovery details have standards, to be useful.

Any account / blog recovery has to be based upon details which have three requirements.

1. The would be owner knows, and can use.
2. Blogger / Google can verify, within their own databases.
3. No third person can discover, using enough search time (Google or competitor) - or manufacture, using PhotoShop or a similar product.

Any details, which do not fulfill all 3 requirements, are either useless or unsafe. If unwisely accepted by Blogger / Google, they simply allow theft of someone else's properly secured Blogger account and blogs.

Verification can only use Blogger / Google maintained details.

Verification has to be based on Blogger / Google databases. Blogger cannot accept FaceBoook, Twitter, or WordPress personal pages or profiles, as proof of identity or ownership.

Blogger has a responsibility to active blog owners, to not permit theft.

Many complainants claim that Blogger is being unfair, in denying them access to their blogs. They overlook the fact that unwisely accepting publicly known or unverifiable details, as proof of blog ownership / identity, would be unfair to the millions of blog owners, who remember their login details - and are actively maintaining and publishing their blogs.

The purpose of account recovery is not to simply allow every blog owner access to their blogs, even if they casually neglected to remember required identification tokens (account name, email address, password, etc.). The purpose is to allow as many blog owners as possible access to their blogs - while preventing malicious blog theft by hackers able to misuse the provided recovery tools.

Active blog owners want their blogs to remain theirs.

People who carefully maintain access to their accounts and blogs do so, based on the presumption that Blogger / Google will not unwisely give someone else access. These people appreciate the Blogger promise that our blogs will remain ours, forever - as long as we exercise common sense and courtesy.

The many blog owners, who maintain both front door and back door access - and actively maintain and publish their blogs - do not really care about the few who need "their" long dormant blogs recovered - or who want to delete "their" blogs, so they can move their activity to FaceBook or WordPress. They appreciate that Blogger will not give up login details, without observing appropriate caution.

Help Me! I Can't Access My Blogger Account!

Every week, we see the anguished cry of blog owners, who don't have access to maintain, or publish to, their blogs.

Help me! My email address changed last month, I dropped my phone into the sink, and now I can't sign in to my blog!

If you look at the fine print, you see the full story.

Ask enough questions, and the details will come forth.

Help Me! I never bothered to remember my password - I used the Forgot Password wizard to reset my password every time I wanted to sign in to my Blogger account. My email address changed last month, my phone number changed last week, I can't get the email from the Forgot Password wizard, or the new Blogger Account / Blog Recovery wizard - and now I can't sign in to my blog!

As I have repeatedly advised folks, and previously pointed out in 2010, Blogger lets us maintain our blogs anonymously, and promises anonymous access and ownership for eternity. There is no magic token attached to our blogs, that let us conveniently email Blogger and ask for a second (or a third) back door access to our accounts.

If you can't access your Blogger account, you can't maintain your blog. Use the Forgot Password wizard, when you have access to the email account - or the new Blogger Account / Blog Recovery wizard.

And learn how to use the Google "One account" login wizard, properly.

Blogger wants to protect us, and our blogs, from attacks from people who claim to be us, but are not. Help them to protect our accounts, and our blogs - don't require that they gratuitously allow you access to your blog when you forget the password, and have no second - or third - back door access to reset the password.

Blog Membership Is The Responsibility Of The Blog Administrators

We see occasional confusion in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? about gaining (or re gaining) access to a given blog.

I made my buddy an administrator - and now, I can't control the blog. Who do I contact to get this corrected?

and

I was reader of a blog which is now private. Can Blogger provide me contact to the blog owner?

Not everybody realises that Blogger does not provide blog access / membership control.

Though Blogger / Google is theoretically responsible (to a very limited degree) for content of the blogs which they host, access and membership control of any blog is the responsibility of the blog administrators / owners. And control is ownership.

If you provide your friend control of your blog, and your friend removes your control, the blog is now your (former) friend's responsibility. Blogger will not help you regain control, either.

If you want access to a private blog, Blogger won't help you there, either. Blogger supports our desire to publish a blog anonymously and in complete privacy - and if we (or anybody else) publishes a blog privately, they are responsible for proving contact information.

If you lose control of your blog, by forgetting the owning account name / password, and losing access to any backup tokens, you have lost control of your blog. Hoping that a responsible owner still exists, Blogger will retain the blog in question, until a responsible owner shows up. Threatening a lawsuit, because Blogger has stolen your blog, is frivolous misuse of court time.

In neither case, will you do anything but waste time, by posting in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? and demanding personal attention, from a real person in Google.

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Account Recovery, Authentication, Contact, Privacy, And URL Availability Are All Related

Every day, we get various impassioned pleas from blog owners (active, former, and would be), in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I?, requesting assistance.

How do I get access to my blog, that I published 10 years ago?

and

How do I keep my blog from being visible in Google?

and

How do I contact the owner of a blog that was published 10 years ago (and never updated)?

All of these are valid concerns - and answering one question sometimes involves referring to various other concerns.

Blogger Support, some time ago, confirmed our right to privacy, as blog owners.

Our policies aren't pro-stalker, they are pro-respecting the privacy of user information. We simply can not release information without due process.

Effective use of the Internet requires some amount of ownership privacy.
The concept of Internet privacy in general, and blog owner privacy specifically, has legendarily been part of some major world political events. If we as blog owners are going to retain our rights to privacy as blog owners, we have to be aware of the limitations, and the results.

Not all blog owners are aware of the complex natures of Blogger authentication. We have two long used authentication options - account name / password (primary), and backup email access (secondary).

Some blog owners refuse to remember their account name and password, routinely.
Some owners routinely ignore the primary option, and use the secondary, regularly. When their email address changes because they change employer, graduate from college, or change ISP, we see the plaintive cry from former owners

I need Blogger to send the recovery email to my new address!

or

I can't use my previous email account!

To prevent the latter issue, Blogger / Google recently introduced a tertiary authentication option - SMS / Voice Recovery. This allows us to use a text message (SMS transmitted), or a voice message ("home" phone transmitted), to the "cell phone" or "home phone" of our choice. This approach, not universally popular, causes another privacy concern.

• It requires advance action. People currently unable to use the primary or secondary authentication options are not going to find a solution here.
• It requires the blog owner to register a "cell phone" or "home phone" number. People with privacy concerns don't appreciate this.

  I'm not giving Google my phone number!

  as if Google intends to add us to another phone spam database.

There is no Blogger required minimum publishing level.
Another privacy issue involves people who think that blog ownership involves some minimal publishing activity, and who require use of the Blog URL to match their blog subject and title.

I need contact to the owner of blog xxxxxxx!

Here, the would be blog owner ignores the owner's right to privacy, in requiring contact information.

Some people request that Blogger monitor posting level, and contact inactive blog owners.

Can Blogger just email owners of blogs with no posts for a year, and ask them to confirm their intention to continue? Those who don't respond can have their blogs taken away, so somebody else can make better use of the URL.

These would be owners seem to think that all Blogger accounts are based on active and valid email addresses, and that all URLs should be universally monitored.

Blogger can't satisfy everybody - you may have to pick an available URL!
The bottom line here is that there are several limitations, that we may have to learn to live with.

• Blogger won't disclose blog owner details, gratuitously.
• You, and you alone, are responsible for maintaining control of your blogs.
• If a given URL is not available, find one that is available now, and start your blog, today.

Compromise, and move forward. Remember, blog content is the value, in your Internet presence. Don't require that Blogger compromise security, to give you improper access to your blog.

June 2012 Graduates Should Start Planning Now

The discussion about Blogger account and blog access recovery, and authentication requirements, never ends.

Account / blog ownership recovery is not at all a simple issue. Occasionally, we see the extreme cases, and the frustration.

I made two blogs for school in im pretty sure 2009, so three years later I am no longer at that school, and it was registered with that school email, therefore I have no access to this email anymore, and the email account has most likely been deleted. I really need to delete these blogs because there are photos of people on there and they dont want them there.

My personal opinion is that the solution is obvious. If you cannot maintain either primary access (account name and password) or secondary access (access to a working email account) to your Blogger account, you should not publish a Blogger blog.

My opinion is not always well received, in Blogger Help forum. Some people have criticised me for my apparent lack of compassion, for the improvident blog owners. My sympathy is with blog owners, in general.

My most recent FAQ discussing this issue seems to have reduced - but not eliminated - the criticism.

One popular scenario seems to involve people who recently underwent an email address transition - for instance, recently graduating from college, and having to suddenly change email addresses.

In the past, one popular activity, involved in the frequently repeated scenario "I don't have access to my email account any more and, of course, never bothered to remember my password" would typically start with the plea

Please, can Blogger tell me my email address??!!

and Blogger Support would helpfully provide a hint

Your email address is r****or @ gmail . com

or possibly

Your email address is r****** @ ***e . edu

Many of those requests have come from people who, as college students, had created one or more blogs of frivolous or offensive content, that need to be deleted immediately (ignoring the blatant lack of ability to prove their ownership of the blog(s) in question).

This isn't an unusual scenario, among young people. We should note that most college grads can hopefully remember the name of the college attended, so the hint "***e . edu" should not be too obscure for the graduates themselves.

Recent developments in Blogger account recovery makes me hopeful that Blogger will soon eliminate the silly account name hints, and start relying entirely upon automated recovery processes. I do not think that it's unreasonable to expect that, by June 2012, those preparing to graduate from college should consider their post graduation activity checklist with some care.

• File forwarding address for all postal mail.
• Pack up and move all personal possessions in dormitory room.
• Return rented and borrowed books and similar materials to owners.

It's possible that they could add

• Setup a HotMail, GMail, or Yahoo email account.
• Transfer control of all personal Blogger blogs to a new Blogger account, based upon the new email account.

And possibly even

• Remember the new Blogger account name, and password.

Like Blogger blog ownership as a corporate resource, Blogger account management deserves some planning. If you are looking forward to graduating in June 2012, why not start preparing for graduation, now?

Will Legacy Accounts Deletion Automatically Make The URL Of Your Choice Available To You?

If you believe some of the discussions in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I?, a lot of Blogger blog owners are lining up at the gate - or will be doing that, starting 2011/12/05 23:59.

For a number of technical and operational reasons, we’ve decided to finally end our support for migrating legacy accounts and blogs after December 5, 2011.

Some discussions include speculation about deletion of blogs owned under legacy accounts, which will result in their personal dream URL being made available to them, finally.

How much chance is there that dozens of unhappy Blogger blog owners will finally get use of the URL to match their blog subject / title?

Does anybody here wish to guess the values for these numbers?

1. Total number of URLs that exist, in BlogSpot.
2. Number of URLs that interest you, in BlogSpot.
3. Total number of legacy accounts.
4. Number of blogs owned by legacy accounts.
5. Number of legacy accounts that will be deleted, immediately, on December 6.
6. Number of URLs that will become available on December 6.
7. Number of people like you, that desire the same URL that you desire.
8. Certainty that Blogger will clean up BlogSpot, and actually delete all blogs owned by legacy accounts.

If you are waiting for your dream URL to start your blog, how much chance is there that your new blog will be coming online December 7?

I'm thinking a working formula might be something like

( ( b / a ) * f ) / ( g + 1 ) * h

Comment lines are now open, and operators are waiting for your call.

If you have a blog in mind, get your blog online today, and make it valuable, using the content. Don't waste time, waiting for an event that may never happen. Especially given the fact that nothing stated by Blogger implies

h > 0.00

Read the note provided by Blogger, again.

we’ve decided to finally end our support for migrating legacy accounts and blogs

I have seen no mention of planned deletion of blogs, owned by the legacy accounts.

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Blogger Is Not Blocking Access To Your Blog

I've explained the issues about Blogger account maintenance, and blog access, so many times.

I've described it as possession being the law, or as reading between the lines, or even as responsible practice - and some people just don't understand these issues. Some people try to describe their problem, when they have a problem, as Blogger unlawfully stealing their possession.

Blogger won't give me access to my blog - do I need a court order to get access to my blog, and to my content?

At first glance, they have a point - Blogger has to give us access to our blogs, or they cease being our blogs. If you look closer though, there's a flaw in that reasoning.

Blogger lets you publish a blog, without identifying yourself legally to them, as long as you retain control of the blog.

To retain control, you have to access a Blogger account that owns the blog. You have two methods of access, to any Blogger account - a front door, and a back door.

1. The front door: The account name (email address when setup originally), and the current password.
2. The back door: The email address currently associated with the account, and access to that email address.

If you lose both the front door and the back door, you can't access the Blogger account, and you can't control the blog. If you lose access, don't blame Blogger for your loss of access.

Blogger is not preventing you from accessing your blog, and doing whatever you wish, with your blog - as long as you can prove that it's your blog. Blogger will assist you, when possible, to access your Blogger account, and your blog.

When you make it impossible, as when you lose both the front door and the back door, they can't assist you. If they can't assist you now, they will still hold the blog, patiently, until you are able to prove that it's your blog.

Your blog is still there, waiting for you to access it. It will remain there, waiting for you to access it. Blogger is not preventing you from accessing your blog.

A Blogger Account, For Virginia, USA

A few months ago, a few Blogger blog owners were given important news which may not have pleased them.

For a number of technical and operational reasons, we’ve decided to finally end our support for migrating legacy accounts and blogs after December 5, 2011.

If you are one of the blog owners who needs to read this, you will need to know the name and password for your (Legacy) Blogger account.

You will need to execute the Claim your blog wizard, before December 5. The normal Blogger account recovery wizard may work for you now - but after the end of next month, it will probably not.

If necessary, move ahead, this month. Next month will be too late.

A Blog Will Always Have At Least One Administrator

Almost daily, we see a confused query in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken

I lost ownership access to my blog. Can Blogger restore my access?

Not every blog owner realises that the Permissions wizard has a safeguard, ensuring that every blog will always have at least one administrator. Anybody who is the former owner is now a member of a team blog - and at least one other team member is an administrator.

The ownership transfer process involves 4 steps, out of necessity.

1. Invite a new member (if necessary).
2. Wait while the new member accepts the invitation (again, if necessary).
3. Make the new member an administrator.
4. Remove the old administrator (if necessary).

Each step can be executed immediately, or with any amount of elapsed time after the previous step, at your convenience.

Look at the Permissions wizard for your blog, some time. If you are the only administrator, you will see your name, with no ability to delete or demote yourself.

A team blog will have author status selectors.

If you own a team blog, you'll have a selector for each of the team members who are authors, allowing that member to be promoted to administrator status.

A team blog with multiple administrators will have administrator status selectors.

If the team blog has at least 2 administrators, each administrator will have a selector, allowing any administrator to delete or demote any administrator. As an administrator demotes any administrator to an author, the entry for that new author will have the ability for that author to be again promoted to administrator.

A blog with only one administrator will have no administrator status selector.

Whenever you are the only administrator, your member entry will have no ability to delete or demote. This prevents you from having a blog with no administrator.

Of course, as noted elsewhere, when the blog has at least 2 administrators, any administrator can be deleted or demoted at the decision of any other administrator. Also, team status is not checked when accounts are deleted.

If you are demoted, only an administrator can promote you.

The bottom line here is, if you suddenly find yourself without administrative access to your blog, the advice that you will get will be to

Ask one of the blog administrators to restore your status.

To prevent blog theft, only another administrator can restore your status.

Blogger Provides Blog Access Using Two Factor Authentication

Many bloggers are confused about how to protect their blogs, both from unauthorised administrative access, and unauthorised viewing. An example of the confusion is the occasional question

How do I set a password in my blog, to prevent unwanted viewers?

and the correct answer here is simple.

You can't set a password. Blogger uses two factor authentication, to protect your blog.

If you own a house or a car, you may occasionally wish to provide guest access to your house or car. Maybe you have an extra key, which you lend to your guests, so they may use your house or car at their convenience. If you've done this, you may observe inconveniences caused by availability of a shared key.

• A key may be lost, necessitating re keying of the locks, and distribution of a new key to all who have access.
• You may not wish for your guests to have access to the entire house or car, at all times.
• You may not wish for your guests to have access to the entire house or car, permanently.
• Your guests may decide that carrying another key, on a separate key ring, may be too much trouble. They may wish to put your key on their key ring. This can cause more complications.
• Distributing, and maintaining, a key library to everybody may simply be a lot of work.

In higher priced houses or cars, people have discovered the advantages of using electronic locks, which can provide more choices than simply providing a single key, available identically to everybody.

Blogger uses two factor authentication, which is equivalent in sophistication to the electronic lock which you use (or may wish to use) on your house or car. This allows you, and your guests, convenient and protected access to your blog. Two factor authentication provides more convenience, and protection, to both of you.

• You identify your guest by their public email address, and send them an invitation to your blog.
• Your guest accepts the invitation, using the Blogger account of their choice, and using their own personal password.
• You are safe from your guest, and your guest is safe from you, from either of you knowing too much about each other.

If you wish to provide additional access to your blog - either another administrator, another author, or a designated reader, use the Settings - Permissions wizard, and add a member of the appropriate type. That's how you manage blog access.

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Blog Membership Changes Won't Have Immediate Effect

We see these horror tales, occasionally.

I made my blog private, and only invited a few friends. The next day, I checked my visitor logs, and saw evidence of people that I did not invite, still viewing the blog.

or

My friend was a second administrator of my blog. I decided that I did not want him administering the blog, so I removed him from Permissions. To my dismay, the following day, he was still able to make changes.

With Blogger, membership / permission for any blog is checked only when someone initially accesses a blog. Ability to access a private blog, or to administer or post to any blog, is provided in a cookie based token. If someone does not clear cookies, or close the browser after clearing cache, access to the blog will continue, until the cookie expires. If someone tries to access the blog, and he has a cookie permitting him to do so, he will continue to get access - even if the access is revoked.

So once again, I urge you to grant access to your blog with care and discretion, and note that when you change your mind, your change may not be immediate.

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Recovering Your Account Information

Blogger promises us that our blogs will be ours, forever, and that we are free to publish our blogs in privacy, if we so desire.

They do this by protecting our Blogger accounts behind Two Factor Authentication. Both the name of our Blogger account, and the password used, are our secret to keep.

Since both the account name and the password are secrets, you can't just write to Blogger Support one day and say

I forgot my account name - can you tell me what it is?

When you setup a Blogger account, you provide an email address, which will be used for recovering forgotten account names and passwords.

If you forget the account name, or need to reset the password, you can use the Forgot your username or password? wizard.

"Forgot?" has two options, which you use depending upon what you know.

The "Forgot?" wizard gives you two options, and sends a recovery email message accordingly.

• Recover access to an account. Provide the account name (the email address that you provided when opening the Blogger account), and the email goes to to the primary email address for that account.
• Recover access to the blog. Provide the URL of the blog in question, and the email goes to the owning account(s) for that blog.

There are several interesting details, with the "Forgot?" wizard.

• The wizard works only for BlogSpot URLs. If the blog is published to a non BlogSpot URL (as a custom domain), you will need to provide the original BlogSpot URL.
• The wizard works for all BlogSpot URLs - regardless of the Country Code alias which affects the blog owner. Whether the owner is in Canada (and seeing "xxxxxxx.blogspot.ca"), in Mexico (and seeing "xxxxxxx.blogspot.mx"), or in the USA (and seeing either "xxxxxxx.blogspot.com" or "xxxxxxx.blogspot.us"), you use only the "xxxxxxx" BlogSpot name, in this wizard.
• The wizard works only for active URLs. If the blog is deleted, either by you or by Blogger, you won't be able to recover access.
• You will only get the recovery email, when you login to the recovery email account. You have to use an active email account, for recovering your login information.
• Blogger will not tell you the email address, since the account name / email address is kept a secret.
• Blogger cannot tell you anything, if you have intentionally obscured your identity.

In cases where the account was last used under Old (Pre 2006) Blogger, the Claim your blog wizard may be used - but note that Legacy accounts are no longer supported, in general.

"Having trouble?" complements "Forgot?".

A third possibility would be the Google Having trouble signing in? wizard. You may also find Google Accounts: Secondary Email Address to provide relevant - if not welcome - advice.

In any case, your personal identity is kept a secret from others - as other folks identities are kept a secret from you. If you don't have access to the email account that's associated with the Blogger account, you don't get the email. That restriction leads to interesting scenarios - such as mysterious email received from the Forgot Password wizard, caused by desperation.

Whether you use either "Forgot?" wizard, when you open the email and login to Blogger as part of the authentication process, be sure that you provide / use the right Blogger / Google account. Alternately, clear cache, cookies, and sessions - then restart the browser - before executing either wizard. Do not claim or recover the blog, to an unknown or unexpected account.

Recovery is easiest done, using two browsers.

Account recovery will involve accessing two accounts, simultaneously - and is best done using two browsers.

It's possible that understanding the relationships between Blogger accounts, email addresses, and Google accounts may reduce your need to continue. If your account is based on a non GMail email address, you may wish to consider the special relationships.

Your next possible solution is to try using the Blogger "Forgot your password?" wizard. If "Forgot?" does not provide you enough clues, you're entitled to ask Blogger Support for help - but you need to understand the limitations of their ability to help.

If you choose to ask for help, consider making an effort to recover access to your GMail account, or to your non GMail account, as necessary. And when you check your email accounts, GMail or non GMail, check carefully.

Having recovered the account, you should be able to find the blogs previously owned - and possibly un delete them - starting from the "Deleted blogs" dashboard list.


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Some blog owners lose access to their #Blogger accounts - either forgetting the account name / password, or letting the blog go dormant and requiring demographic authentication when trying to access later. They expect that Blogger will just send them an access token, without verifying that they are the rightful owner.

They fail to observe that Blogger wants them to continue publishing their blog - and does not intend to let unknown parties have control of it, through failure to require verification of identity.

Help Me! I Can't Access My Blogger Account To Publish My Blog!

Every week, we see the anguished cry of blog owners, who don't have access to maintain, or publish to, their blogs.

Help me! My email address changed last month, and now I can't sign in to my blog!

But, if you look at the fine print, you see the full story

Help Me! I never bothered to remember my password - I used the Forgot Password wizard to reset my password every time I wanted to sign in to my Blogger account. My email address changed last month, I can't get the email from the Forgot Password wizard, and now I can't sign in to my blog!

As I have repeatedly advised folks, Blogger lets us maintain our blogs anonymously, and promises anonymous access and ownership for eternity. There is no magic token attached to our blogs, that let us conveniently email Blogger and ask for a second back door access to our accounts.

If you can't access your Blogger account, you can't maintain your blog. Use the Forgot Password wizard, when you have access to the email account.

Blogger wants to protect us, and our blogs, from devious attacks from people who claim to be us - but are not. Help Blogger Security to protect our accounts, and our blogs - don't require that they gratuitously allow you access to your blog when you forget the password, and have no back door access (or even second back door access) to reset the password.

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Blog Access Blocking, By Denying Individual Permission, Won't Work

In a corporate network, you have one or more teams of employees, whose duty is to assign and maintain authentication and authorisation information. Authentication validates who someone is, and authorisation validates what ability that person should be granted, when accessing corporate resources on the network. Each employee gets one and only one identity, and has one specific list of access rules (authentication / authorisation). This restriction can (must) enforced, because each employee provides proof of identity, when registering as an employee.

With Blogger (Google), as with most Internet services, there is no real proof of identity required. In the online world, many people maintain multiple identities. That is one of the features of online life, called "freedom". Freedom to be who you want to be, or at least to seem to be.

So you, and I, can have as many Google accounts as we wish. Google accounts are free, and if you have multiple lives, or interests, you can have a different Google account for each, and more. And therein lies a problem.

Occasionally, someone asks about having a publicly accessible blog, but blocking specific individuals from accessing or commenting upon the blog.

How do I block one person from accessing my blog? I want it to be otherwise publicly accessible.

but that's an impossibility. Since nobody is restricted to having one identity, if you block one identity from access, it's no great effort for someone to use another. Any determined attacker won't be put off by one identity being blocked, though he may be slightly angered, and his next series of attacks may be nastier than before.

If you're going to restrict access to your blog, you have to start with a private blog. That's the only real solution for restricting access.

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More Granular Security For Your Blog

I've been writing about Private blogs, and the ability to limit even the readership of the blog, for some time.

What if you want to have some posts accessible by a few people, and others by everybody? Or maybe you would like some of your administrators to have the ability to edit only a portion of your blog.

A content management system might provide security settings on a post by post basis, but Blogger is a blogging platform.

With Blogger blogs, you can set security only on a blog by blog basis.

The ability to set security on a post by post basis was one of the many issues discussed in the Appspot forum, in early 2009. It did not receive a large amount of votes.

But nobody said that you have to have everything in one blog. Having different security levels for different blog sections is similar to having different template objects for different blog posts.

Setup a second blog, as like the current one as you wish - but with different security settings, or maybe as a private blog. Then combine the two blogs for your readers.

To your readers, you'll have 1 blog. To you, you can have many blogs. And your blog members will have only the access that you want each one to have.

What Access Do You Have To Your Blog?

Occasionally, you see bloggers becoming confused about what access they have to their blog.

I can look at the Edit Posts menu, but there are no posts listed.

or

I can't access the Template Designer (edit the template, add users to the blog, ...).

These are bloggers who are confused over a blog where they are an Administrator, vs a blog where they are an Author.

Let's look at my dashboard, and at a pair of blogs which we see there.


Here's my dashboard. Among the many entries, you'll see one blog listed where I am an Author, and a second where I am an Administrator. Let's first look at a blog where I am an Author.


Let's look at "Edit Posts".

I'm an Author in this blog, and I haven't created any posts. There are plenty of posts in the blog, just none that I've created. I have no access to any posts that I haven't created.


Let's look at "Settings".

I'm an Author in this blog, so all of the Settings that I have are Email and Permissions.

The Email access gives you the ability to setup your own Mail-to-Blogger entry. The Permissions access lets people who have previously accepted Guest ("Author") membership in a blog to remove themselves, without having to contact the blog administrator.

Let's next look at a second blog, where I am an Administrator.


Let's look at "Edit Posts".

I'm an Administrator in this blog. Look at my Edit Posts menu.


Let's look at "Settings".

I'm an Administrator in this blog. Look at my Settings menu.


Let's look at "Design".

I'm an Administrator in this blog. I have a Design section (For a Classical blog, this would be "Template", but there would be lots less tabs under "Template".).



If you're not seeing either of the above, or you're seeing access as an Author, where you should be seeing Administrator, you lost access to your account or your blog.

• First, verify that you are the primary administrator / owner of the blog.
• You may have inadvertently created a second Blogger account.
• You may have tried to transfer control of the blog from one account to another, and made a mistake.
• You successfully transferred control to an administrator who should not have been trusted.
• You may have any of several different connectivity or security issues on your computer or network, which prevents you from accessing your account or your blog.

Unfortunately, these problems may be your responsibility to resolve, as you alone have the responsibility for retaining access to your blog, and for your own connectivity to the Internet.

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