Verify BlogSpot And Domain URLs

Whenever dealing with any problem with a blog, you should verify the URLs involved.

Some of the most baffling problems, with blog connectivity, identity, or ownership, can start from simple typographical errors. This possibility will involve both native "blogspot.com" and custom domain URLs.

The Publishing wizard window, in the Blogger dashboard Settings - Basic page, is essential for identifying errors. Whether you paste or type a URL into the registrar's zone editor, the Publishing wizard, or the browser address window, you can make a mistake. Checking the Publishing wizard is as important as examining a Dig log extract - or as viewing an HTTP trace.

Verifying the URLs involved, in the dashboard Publishing wizard, is as important as examining a Dig log extract, or an HTTP trace.

This will be the case, when dealing with various "blogspot.com" connectivity problems, researching a custom domain problem, or a dashboard or ownership problem.

Both screen prints, and text copies, are very useful - and not redundant.

Both a screen print, and a text copy, of the Publishing window (and / or the browser address window) is very useful, when diagnosing connectivity problems - or possibly, researching ownership issues, or similarly vanished blogs. And with a custom domain, similar detail from the registrar zone editor is useful.

A text copy of the contents is needed, to avoid having to re type the URL - and maybe cause a different problem when comparing the URL. And a visual copy of the Publishing wizard is good, to identify the context of any problem.

Let's look at two blogs - and what we need to examine / verify.

My test blog, published as "nitecruzr-test-ssl.blogspot.com".

Here, we see a "blogspot.com" URL, in the browser address window.

http://nitecruzr-test-ssl.blogspot.com

Here, we see the Blogger dashboard Settings - Basic page, for a "blogspot.com" published blog.

The Publishing display, for a "blogspot.com" published blog.



Useful text details, from Publishing, for a "blogspot.com" published blog:

nitecruzr-test-ssl.blogspot.com                                  Edit

If you are requesting assistance with your native Blogger blog, the latter details, in both a screen print and text copy, will be useful.

My blog, published as "blogging.nitecruzr.net".

Here, we see a custom domain URL, in the browser address window.

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net

Here, we see the Blogger dashboard Settings - Basic page. for a custom domain published blog.

The Publishing display, for a custom domain published blog.



Useful text details, for a custom domain published blog:

blogging.nitecruzr.net                                                  Edit
bloggerstatusforreal.blogspot.com                               redirects

With a custom domain published blog, next click on "Edit", and make a second screen print.

The second page of the Publishing display - which only applies to a custom domain published blog.


You maybe have seen this display, similarly formatted, in an infamous "Error 12" or similar display.

The domain root redirection, properly selected.



More essential details, for a custom domain published blog:

Third party domain settings
http://  blogging.nitecruzr.net
  X   Redirect nitecruzr.net to blogging.nitecruzr.net.

If you are requesting assistance with your custom domain published Blogger blog, the latter details, in both a screen print and text copy, will be useful.

A zone editor display, for my domain "nitecruzr.co.uk".


A zone editor display, from GoDaddy. Every registrar will have a different display.


If you purchased the domain using a credit or debit account, the bank statement and / or charge advice will frequently have a description which details the purchase. In some cases, this will include the domain name.

Comparing the URLs in the browser window, and in the Publishing window - and in Dig logs and zone editor displays (for custom domains) - we can identify typographical errors, and other mistakes. Typographical errors can be a cause of various problems, when publishing blogs to custom domains - and to "blogspot.com".

Some problems result from failure to copy and paste, properly. They can be as challenging to diagnose, as failure to observe registrar name server syntax.

Having verified the URLs, in some cases, you will continue with an affinity diagnosis, and with a differential diagnosis. This is all part of my simple 12 link test set.

You, the blog owner, may consider "duplicate" and "redundant" to be synonyms. When we research a blog problem, "duplicate" != "redundant". Many confusing problems have been solved, by comparing combinations of various above details - and by finding inequality, in one or more displays.

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Diagnosing problems with #Blogger blogs can require careful diagnostics, using details found in dashboard screen prints and detail text copies, in Dig logs, and in HTTP traces. All details must be carefully compared, both visually and using text extracts, to diagnose some problems.

Much of this may seem superficial, to experienced support analysts - yet be obscure to some blog owners.

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.

Blog Ownership - Possession Is The Law

Long ago, Blogger blogs had a very simple membership permissions policy.

Each blog had an owner, and members. The owner was the administrator of the blog, and ownership could not be transferred.

This simple policy was a problem, because some blog owners would eventually lose interest in a blog, and want to cede ownership to someone else. In other cases, people were known to die suddenly, leaving blogs with no live owners. In both cases, Blogger Support would become involved, and would manually transfer ownership.

Later, Blogger developed the Permissions wizard, and added a class of member called "Administrator". The original publisher of a blog becomes the first administrator, who may, at his / her discretion, designate additional administrators.

The ability to designate an "Administrator" solved the problem of nontransferable ownership, but introduced a second problem.

Any administrator could, at her / his discretion again, remove him / herself (or any other administrator) from the administrators list.

Initially, this improvement created two problems.

1. Some bloggers managed to remove all administrators from the list, creating blogs with no administrators.
2. Some bloggers, newly made administrator, would inappropriately remove other bloggers (including the original administrator aka "owner") from administrative status.

Blogger fixed the first problem, by adding a safeguard - making the Permissions wizard check for the presence of other administrators in the membership list, before removing administrator permission from any one member. However, there remain two problems, now.

1. The safeguard works only if you can guarantee that all administrators can perform as administrators.
2. This policy works only if you can guarantee that all administrators will perform honourably.

If blog membership is to be fully transferrable, all administrators to a blog have to have equal status. If you have an "owner" class of administrator, and a suddenly dead owner, you have a blog with no active owner. Or, you have blogs with non transferrable ownership status.

Right now, anybody who is a blog administrator is a blog owner. If you make someone an administrator, and that person removes you (and any other administrators) from administrator status, that person becomes the blog owner.

If you have an administrator who dies, you do not prune the administrator list, and you are able to remove yourself from administrator status, you may end up with a blog with no live owner.

The administrator(s) / owner - whoever she / he may be - has the right to decide over disposition of comments and posts - and of who to make a member, and to make an administrator. Blogger cannot, legally, "restore" anybody's previous rights.

If the "owner" deleted the blog, it's going to remain deleted. Contributors, and former "owners", have no say in the matter. If deleted content must be recovered, it may be possible to do this on a page by page (post by post) basis - possibly from blog cache or a blog posts newsfeed.

Possession is the law, for Blogger blogs. If you gave up control (voluntarily or even involuntarily), it's not your blog.

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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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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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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More Granular Security For Your Blog

We see the occasional query

How do I have a single post, and only let my closest friends view it?

or

How do I keep people from commenting on some posts?

or even

How do I make a linklist / poll / whatever visible to a select few?

and the answer is - you can't.

If your blog is open to everybody, all portions of that blog are open to everybody. Unlike WordPress (which has a few limitations too, just not this one), you can't set permissions in just a portion of that blog.

But, you can make portions of another blog visible to a selected audience.

• Make a separate blog, with permissions that suit your need.
• Put the restricted content into the second blog.
• Include or link the second blog to your current blog.

Blogs are free. Setup another, with the restrictions that you need. And another, and another.

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