Identifying An Available URL - #2

The issue of URL availability has been a subject of intense debate, in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I?, for several years.

Many would be blog owners URLs learn that neither "dormant" blogs, nor deleted blogs, nor spam locked blogs, are automatically available for the curious nor desperate.

Those denied the URL of their choice ask

How do I find an available URL? All of the good ones are taken - and picking one that's available is way too much work! I'm moving my blog to WordPress!

And that complaint is somewhat valid.

Under the Classic GUI, picking an available URL was a pretty painful process.

Here is the first really helpful and innovative improvement, in the New Blogger GUI.

When you use the "Create a new blog" wizard under the New Blogger GUI (2011), you paste or type the blog name or URL into the "Address" window, as usual. What's different about this wizard is that the "Address" is verified, for URL availability and validity, in real time.

Check it out! Enter a Title, and select a Template, first. Then, get started.

Paste (or type) the name which you have chosen (only the "xxxxxxx" portion of "xxxxxxx.blogspot.com") into the window, and see what it displays. If you see a yellow exclamation mark, and

Sorry, this blog address is not available.

Try a variation on the URL - add a letter or number - or some very specific characters. See what happens, as you type.

• "a" - "z" (lowercase alphabetic characters).
• "0" - "9" (numeric characters).
• "-" (dash character, which may not be the first or last character in the name!)).

This is a limited character set - but you want a reliable name, not a showy one. Your Blogger blog has to depend upon directory services from thousands of DNS servers, all over the Internet - so try and pick a name that will work everywhere. See Blogger Help: About URLs for additional advice.

As soon as you see a blue check mark, and

This blog address is available.

Hit the "Create blog!" button, now - and create your new blog.

Note that with the "Create a blog" sequence made simpler, you'll take less time choosing an address. Unfortunately, as long as you take longer than 0.00 seconds choosing a given address, there's always some slight chance that another person can choose the same address, simultaneously.

If you hit the "Create blog!" button after somebody else, and both of you have entered the same blog name - even with "This blog address is available." visible - one of you will still get an error message, with the bad news.

Sorry, this blog address is not available.

or

The subdomain name is not available.

The chance that someone else could "steal" your chosen address, while you are choosing it, will never be zero. It will simply be lower with the New GUI, then with the Classic GUI.

Only one person - the person who hits the "Create blog!" button first - gets the URL. If you're creating a blog based on some recent new trend or news story, there will probably be other people doing the same. You'll have to move quickly - grab an available URL immediately, when you see one. Wait .050 seconds, instead of .025 seconds, and you may miss your chance.

As with renaming your blog, please note that addresses previously taken will not be reissued to you by Blogger - a 10 year old blog remains valid, whether published once daily for 10 years, or once 10 years ago and never again.

If you're setting up a new blog, and you pick a popular subject for your new blog, you're still going to have to do some experimentation, to find an available URL. With the New Blogger GUI, you'll simply have a slightly easier time finding one.

Diagnostic Improvements With Photos And Picasa

For some time, blog owners would note mysterious problems with photos on their blogs, in various ways - depending upon the browser in use.

Some blog owners and readers would report a mysterious red "X", others a big, blank space - and still others would see nothing at all, not even a space. The only common symptom would be

My pictures have vanished!

Recently, photos hosted under Picasa changed that vague symptom, by displaying two "place holder" icons, depending upon either of two commonly diagnosed problems which had caused the missing photos.

Photos hosted under Picasa, and subsequently being either deleted or made private, are now being replaced by either of two diagnostic icons when referenced.

This improvement will go a long way to resolving much confusion about missing photos (including photos uploaded to the blog using the "Insert image" wizard in post editor), which has long been a source of despair in the Blogger community.

If your photo has been deleted, you will see this icon - an exclamation point inside a triangle.



If your photo is now private, you will see this icon - a dash inside a circle.



These icons are simply the new symptoms of a problem - they are not the problem itself.

• If you just made your Picasa photo album private, maybe when setting up your Google+ account, you can correct the problem easily enough. Just login to Google, use Picasa, and make the photos public, again.
• If you just deleted the photo album, when setting up your Google+ account - or maybe trying to save storage space on your camera / phone, you may be able to recover the deleted photos.
• If you just deleted the Picasa photo album, by having deleted the Google account, however, you are out of luck. Picasa does not provide any un deletion options.
• If these are not your photos, and you are linking them from somebody else's Picasa album, you are likewise out of luck.

However, at least you can now detect - and diagnose - the problem, when your photos are hosted by Picasa.