Switch Between Your Blogger And Google+ Profiles

Long ago, when Blogger blog owners were given the option to associate their Blogger account with Google+, some would try out their new identities - then change their minds.

Some blog owners would upgrade to a dynamic, exciting Google+ profile - then regret their decision. Not everybody appreciated the features offered by Google+, as applied to a Blogger blog.

Blogger gave us the ability to revert to a Blogger profile - within 30 days. This did not help people who took over 30 days to observe problems.

Recently, Blogger Engineering improved our ability to choose a Blogger or Google+ profile, for our Blogger accounts.

You can choose either your Blogger or Google+ profile, as desired.

You can select either a Blogger or Google+ profile, when it's convenient.



You use the "User settings" dashboard page, to select your Blogger or Google+ profile - when you have both profiles associated with your Blogger account.

Use the dashboard menu - or bookmark a shortcut.

Just use "User settings", from the dashboard Settings page.

Start from the dashboard menu, and select Settings - "User settings".

Now, you can select either a Blogger or Google+ profile, as convenient.



If your Blogger account has both a Blogger and Google+ profile, you can simply select one or the other, as convenient. Some Blogger features are based on the profile used by the blog owner, so consider the selection carefully - but the selection is at least available.

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#Blogger blog owners, who have Blogger accounts associated with both Blogger and Google+ profiles, can now switch between one and the other, as convenient. Consider the change, carefully - but make the change, when necessary.

Blogger Magic - Followers / Reading List Visibility

When we use Blogger Following, we create a link to our profile, from each blog that we Follow.

That's the primary purpose of Following - to see, and to be seen. We also create links from our Followers profile, to each Followed blog. That's the purpose of having a profile - to describe ourselves, by the blogs that interest us.

Everybody does not want other people knowing about every blog that we Follow, though. To let us Follow blogs without being seen, we can Follow anonymously - or hide a blog, from our profile on other blogs.

When we Follow a blog, we can choose to Follow anonymously, or publicly.

We can change the option, to Follow anonymously or publicly, when needed. If we Follow publicly, we can hide this blog, in our profile, on other blogs.

We can also hide blogs in Reading List, to keep the list manageable.

Change between Anonymous and Public Following.

There are two ways of changing between anonymous and public Following.

1. Use the Followers gadget.
2. Use the Reading List wizard.

Use the Followers gadget.

If you are Following a blog publicly, you'll have your icon in the Followers facepile (the icon cloud in the gadget). You can edit your profile, and Follow anonymously - or continue to Follow publicly, but with this blog hidden from other blogs.

Click on "Options", when you are logged in to Following, as yourself.

Then, click on "Site settings".

Or, if you are Following publicly, you can click on your icon, then "Settings".

Now, you have the Settings wizard, for this site.

Click on "publicly" - since you can see this, when Following publicly.

If you're Following publicly, you can choose to Follow anonymously - or continue to Follow publicly, but not include this blog on your profile.



If you are Following a blog anonymously, you won't have your icon in the facepile. If you want to now Follow publicly, and you are properly logged in, you'll still have "Options" - then "Site settings".

Use the Reading List wizard.

There are two Reading List management wizards - one for Blogger profiles, the other for Google+ profiles.

Changing Reading List, with a Blogger profile.

If you have a Blogger profile, you use the Blogger "Manage Blogs I'm Following" wizard - that you access from the Blogger dashboard.

If you have a Google+ profile, you'll use Google friend connect "Sites I've joined".

Start from the Blogger dashboard home page.

Click on the "gear" icon, to the right of "Reading List".

Some blogs are Followed publicly.

You can make any publicly Followed blog, Followed anonymously.

Just click on "Change to anonymous".

Some blogs are Followed anonymously.

You can make any anonymously Followed blog, Followed publicly.

Just click on "Change to public".



Changing Reading List, with a Google+ profile.

If you have a Google+ profile, you use Google Friend Connect: Sites I've joined. You can't click to this wizard, from the dashboard.

If you have a Blogger profile, you'll use Blogger "Manage Blogs I'm Following".

Start from "Sites I've joined".

Find the blog that's relevant - and click on "Settings".

Some blogs are Followed publicly.

This blog is being Followed publicly.



If you choose to Follow publicly, using a Google+ profile, you can choose to display this blog, as part of your profile - when your icon is displayed on other blogs. Alternately, you can Follow this blog publicly - but make it non visible, from other blogs.

To Follow anonymously, click on "Follow anonymously", and "Save".

Some blogs are Followed anonymously.

This blog is being Followed anonymously.

To Follow publicly, click on "Follow publicly", and "Save".

If you Follow publicly, you can choose to hide the blog from your profile. You'll be visible, on this blog - but your profile, on other blogs, won't point to this blog.



Hide and un hide a blog, in Reading List.

Besides anonymity in Following, we can hide a blog, to make Reading List manageable.

So, be aware of the options for choosing private ("anonymous") vs public Following.

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When we Follow a blog, using #Blogger Followers, we have several options to control our visibility on different blogs. We can make ourselves fully or partially visible - or non visible.

The "About Me" Gadget, And Google+

Some blog owners are accustomed to editing their Blogger profiles, from time to time.

Publishing a blog that presents oneself to ones readers, openly, is important to some blog owners. The Blogger profile becomes a blog component that is edited, periodically, to keep the blog reader friendly.

The Blogger profile editor produces content which is displayed in the "About Me" gadget, for single owner blogs. Multiple owner blogs, complementarily, display "About Us" - which provides a different display.

Google+ profiles are edited using the Google+ desktop - and Google+ desktop content does not display in "About Me", in Blogger.

"About Me" displays Blogger Profile content. Once you upgrade to a Google+ profile, you won't have access to the Blogger Profile Editor - and you'll have no way to edit Blogger Profile content.

If the blog has been upgraded, you won't be able to edit your Blogger profile.



If you can edit your Google+ profile, sufficiently, you'll be good. If not, you can work around the problem.

Just create your own custom "About Me" gadget, using a Blogger HTML or Text gadget. You can do this in under an hour.



Add an "HTML / JavaScript" gadget. That's how you start.



Use the Layout "Add a Gadget" page, add an "HTML" or "Text" gadget, and fill the gadget content with your profile. With a little work, you can make a gadget with as much detail as any Google+ page or profile.

• Desktop banner background / icon.
• Photos.
• Text.
• Video.
• Whatever interests you - and your readers.

With a little work and imagination, you can have a blog that looks like part of your Google+ desktop.

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Owners of #Blogger blogs that use Google+ profiles want to edit their "About Me" gadgets - but find no way to do that. With a Google+ profile edited using the Google+ desktop, no "About Me" displayed content is produced.

Fortunately, it's not difficult to produce a custom "About Me" gadget.

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/blogger/Ifg3aW2yMrg

Comments Posted Use "noreply" Email Addresses

Recently, we've noted a number of complaints about Blogger commenting, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken

.My comments all use a "noreply" email address, instead of my actual email address. How do I have people email their replies to my comments?

This appears to be one more way which Blogger is trying to safeguard our Blogger accounts and blogs, from malicious, technically astute blog thieves.

Some time ago, we observed that this precaution appeared to be unique to Blogger accounts which used Google and Google+ profiles - and did not involve Blogger profiles.

It appears that this is now universal, and includes Blogger profiles, as well as Google / Google+ profiles. It's likely that the noreply email addresses are being offered to keep more blog readers from, inadvertently, exposing their email addresses to email mining techniques.

In remembering the long ago discovered "nice blog" spam, it's possible that "nice blog" spam was originally developed to help the spammers gather email addresses, using very innovative technique.

All that a spammer has to do is to post a "nice blog" comment, select "Email follow-up comments to me" - then watch as the Inbox fills up with follow up comments from bloggers, willingly giving up their email addresses to every stranger also selecting "Email follow-up comments to me", in that comment thread.

The people willingly providing their email addresses, to the world in general, are perfect targets for hackers later trying to brute force access to the Blogger accounts, starting from the provided email addresses. Use of the "no-reply" email address prevents this type of mischief - and reduces the workload of Google Security, as they would otherwise have to verify account / blog integrity, for hacked accounts and blogs.

For even more protection (which is not a bad idea, in any case), consider using Google 2-Step Verification, to protect your Blogger / Google account from hacking.

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Blog Owners Report Their Reading Lists Contain Just One Entry

This week, we're seeing a few reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, mentioning a badly shortened dashboard Reading List.

When I want to read the list of the blogs I follow, I can only see 1 blog, instead of the usual 30. When I click on "Show more", nothing happens.

A brief affinity analysis, of current forum reports, suggests that the affected blog owners are using Draft Blogger.

One of the little realised issues with the Reading List is that access to your Reading List requires that you be identified, to Blogger, as you.

If the "One Entry" in your Reading List display is the Blogger Buzz blog, that would suggest that you are not being properly identified. Blogger Buzz is a part of every Reading List, automatically, and can't be removed. If you are only seeing Blogger Buzz, then you, the specific owner of your Reading List, are not being identified.

Reading List content is complex - and subject to various local computer and network problems. Many problems can't be resolved, by Blogger Engineering, alone.

Given the normal instructions to revert to use of Production Blogger, several blog owners have reported success.

I just switched to Production Blogger - and there's no problem now!

This blog owner has just found himself experiencing the latest Draft resident bug.

To determine whether you are in Draft or Production Blogger, when you have this problem, examine your Profile URL, after you login to Blogger. An example (with a hypothetical URL):

Draft:

https://draft.blogger.com/profile/04234326634594848875

Production:

https://www.blogger.com/profile/04234326634594848875

See the difference?

Once again, I'll suggest that you use Draft Blogger to work around specific problems - and when the specific problem, affecting you, is resolved, switch back to Production Blogger. The sanity, that you save, may be your own.

Blogs LIsted Twice, In The Blogger Profile Or Dashboard

Occasionally, an oddity in our Blogger profiles will cause confusion - and offer some blog owners a opportunity to make a bad mistake. For some unknown reason, some Blogger blogs may be listed twice, in the dashboard or profile Blog List.

If you are one of these blog owners, seeing the same blog listed twice in your dashboard or profile, think before you act! Check the URL behind the blog title, for each entry - you'll see an identical URL behind both.

Seeing the duplication and only wanting a clean list, some blog owners will innocently delete one of the duplicates.

I don't need two of the same!

Since the two entries reflect the same blog, the owner will see the list go from two of the same, to zero of the same.

Now where is my blog?

Hopefully, the mysterious blog will now be present in the deleted blogs list, and can be un deleted.

1. Possibly, the blog can be un deleted - and will produce one entry in the blog list. This is the best result.
2. Less desirably, the blog can be undeleted, and will simply restore both duplicate entries to the list. This is the realistic result.
3. Undesirably, the blog won't appear in the deleted list - or can't be un deleted, even if in the list. This is the undesired (but still possible) result.

Do you feel lucky, punk?

Recalling a few previous reports of this oddity, I've observed that the problem spans GUIs - both the Classic GUI, and now the New (2011) GUI. I'm pretty sure that the problem involves the Blogger profile - the Classic dashboard (dark blue / orange) is where I first observed this, though I won't say that the problem is not also present for blog owners using the new Google profile (orange / white).

It's your blog, and your profile - so you are entitled to see what happens. I recommend just accepting the uncertainty - you won't be charged any more for having two blogs, than for having one.

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Google Friend Connect Accessory To Be Provided By Blogger

This week, Google announced the end to its website based community building accessory, Google Friend Connect, for non Blogger based websites.

We're retiring the service for all non-Blogger sites on March 1, 2012.

The announcement notes its replacement with Google+.

We encourage affected sites to create a Google+ page and place a Google+ badge on their site so they can bring their community of followers to Google+ and use new features like Circles and Hangouts to keep in touch.

Blogger blog owners can continue to use the Followers gadget, can use Google+, or can build their communities using both features.

Blogger blog owners were recently offered several suggestions, to integrate Google+ into their blogs.

• The Google+ badge, placed on the blog, directs your readers to your Google+ profile.
• You can replace your Blogger profile with your Google+ profile.
• Replacement of your Blogger profile with your Google+ profile enables you to publish your blog updates to your Google+ followers.

With Google retiring Friend Connect, this allows Blogger to take over its functionality. Blogger blog owners, who like the idea of letting their Followers display their icons on the faces of our blogs, and view our blog updates in the Blogger Reading List / Google Reader displays, can continue to use the Followers accessory.

By removing Google Friend Connect from the Followers accessory, Blogger is hoping that the code supporting the Followers gadget can be simplified, and will become more stable. This will hopefully resolve many of the recently reported outages, both in the blog face display, and in our dashboard and Reading Lists.

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Security Change To BlogSend Leaves BlogSend Email Distribution Broken #2

A year ago, we noted a security change to BlogSend, which left many blog owners with severely deprecated ability to publicise blog updates, when using a private Google Group. At that time, the recommended workaround was to add "no-reply@blogger.com" as a Google Group member.

Today, we see that the ability to add Google Group members directly is no longer offered. It appears now that the use of private Google Groups, for distribution of Blogger blog updates, is not an option.

Last week, Blogger announced the option to publicise blog updates using Google+.

It would appear that use of Google+ may be the future, for Blogger blog publicity. Some time ago, we were advised that private Blogger profiles were being replaced by Google+. It's possible that private blog updates may have the same future.

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Publicising Updates To Your Blog, Using Google+

Ever since Google+ was released, blog owners have been asking how to post blog updates to Google+. Previously, there was only the possibility of publishing from Google+ to our blogs - and that option was not well designed. Last week, Blogger released this option, in Draft Blogger.

Today we’re excited to announce the first way you will be able to leverage Google+ -- by making it possible to replace your Blogger profile with your Google+ profile.

In addition to giving your readers a more robust and familiar sense of who you are, your social connections will see your posts in their Google search results with an annotation that you've shared the post.

As long as you are prepared to use a Google+ profile with your Blogger account, you can send blog updates to your followers.

After you login to Blogger, simply edit your profile. There, you'll see the advice

Connect Blogger to Google+ : Use your Google profile and get access to upcoming Google+ features on Blogger. Learn more Get Started

After you upgrade Blogger to use your Google+ profile, go to the dashboard Settings - Google+, and select "Prompt to share after posting", for automatic sharing. Or, you can use the Posts link "Share" for any post, when convenient.

I suspect there will be several possibilities with this new feature, so watch this space for updates.

Identifying Yourself, As The Owner Of Your Blog

Occasionally, somebody in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? wonders

Why don't I have a Layouts (or Template) link in my dashboard?

or

How do I setup additional team members, without the right link in Permissions?

and the first question is

Are you logged in as the blog administrator / owner?

It's not difficult to verify the owner of your blog, if you have a public profile, and a standard template.

In your browser, select View, then "Page Source" or "Source". Or, use an HTTP text proxy. Look at the code for this blog, heavily trimmed and broken, for 'link rel="me"'.

<head>

...

<link rel="service.post" type="application/atom+xml"
title="The Real Blogger Status - Atom"
href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/24069595/posts/default" />
<link rel="EditURI" type="application/rsd+xml"
title="RSD" href="http://www.blogger.com/rsd.g?blogID=24069595" />
<link rel="me" href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/08069634565746003311" />

There it is!

https://www.blogger.com/profile/08069634565746003311

or maybe you'd see

https://plus.google.com/114025756997654559499

That's my profile. Click on either link.

Find the Profile URL, and follow the link - and look at the Profile.

So, look at the header code for your blog, locate the "me" link, extract the attached URL, and follow the link- either for a Blogger Profile, or for a Google+ Profile.

If there's no "me" link - which is normal, for blogs under team ownership - look carefully in the sidebar - if the blog has a Profile / "About Us" gadget, you may be able to find a "www.blogger.com/profile/ ..." or "plus.google.com/ ..." link there.

With some team blogs, you may find a list of each individual profile, for the whole team. Each individual profile should have a different Profile ID in the attached URL - again, "www.blogger.com/profile/ ..." or "plus.google.com/ ...".

Then, find the Profile URL from your dashboard - and compare the two.

Take each available "www.blogger.com/profile/ ..." or "plus.google.com/ ..." link, paste it into your browser, and take a look - or click on the link, if possible. Then, go to your dashboard, and find the Profile URL, from the dashboard. Compare the two profiles - are they the same?

If not, you probably inadvertently created a second (or third) Blogger account, possibly as you incorrectly transferred a blog from one Blogger account to another.

Learn to login to Blogger properly - and avoid multi account confusion.

When you login to Blogger, first clear cache, cookies, and active login sessions - then make sure that you login using the proper Blogger account. If necessary, recover the account information, and start over.

Remember that when you login, Blogger will not select the account for you. If you have FeedBurner, GMail, Picasa, or any of the other many Google services under another account, you'll need to use two different browsers - or a different computer.

Note the limitations of the procedure, when the owner wants privacy.

Note that this procedure works only for blogs and profiles that are properly made public. If a blogger has chosen to not make the profile public, or if the blog in question is published as private (with designated readers), you won't get the details needed here. And if the blog has multiple administrators, it probably won't have the "me" meta tag in the header.

In extreme cases, you'll need assistance from Blogger, using the Having trouble signing in? wizard. Now, you have to hope that your account isn't intentionally based on a bogus email address.

Surfing The Blogosphere

For a long time, the natural way for finding multiple, random blogs was "Next Blog" surfing.

After a while, spammers found out about this, and "Next\\\\Porn Blog" surfing became the norm. A couple months ago, Blogger developed a new "Next Blog" link which has turned out to be safer - and boring.

Fortunately, "Next Blog" surfing isn't the only way to see what's out there in the Blogosphere.

We have a number of alternative strategies, which give you various choices to focus or randomise your surfing.

• Blogger Profile Surfing
• Following Surfing
• Google Blog Search
• Google+
• Next Blog Surfing

Blogger Profile Surfing

This is easy to focus, and it's symmetrical. While you are finding out about other folks, they are also finding out about you.

You fill out your Blogger profile with key words describing your interests. Your key words, separated by commas, become links to search for other profiles with identical key words.

You link from your profile, to SERP lists of other profiles, and to other blogs. The options, which focus your surfing here, are based on the keywords which you add to your profile, then which profile you examine from the SERP list, and finally which blog you select from a given profile.


Following Surfing

Following Surfing, like Blogger Profile Surfing, involves your profile. The Following profile, though, links blogs and profiles asymmetrically, and provides focused and random surfing alike.

You link from anyone's blog, to random and miscellaneous personal icons of the Followers, to profiles of the Followers, and to other blogs. The options, which focus your surfing here, start with which Follower icon to select, then what blog linked to the profile of the Follower selected.


Google Blog Search

Like Blogger Profile Surfing, this is easy to focus. While the latter is symmetrical (as you are able to surf other profiles, others are able to surf yours), this option allows you some anonymity.

This gives you the ability to specify a number of interesting criteria to narrow down your interests, then randomly accesses multiple blogs in a search based upon your criteria. One frequently requested "Next Blog" feature has long been language selection, and that is one key selection for Google Blog Search.

You link from the blog search options "command line" interface, to a Google SERP list - and to the blogs of interest.


Google+

Google+ is an interactive search process, where you contribute as you benefit. With Google+, you get recommendations of blogs and web sites, based upon what you recommend to other people.

When you share what interests you - and as your universe of friends expands - your friends will share, with you, what interests them. If your friends are interested by what you share, then some of what they share will interest you.

As your universe of friends expands, you'll have more friends who are interested in what interests you. As your friends are interested in what you share, they will share what you share, with their friends - and their friends will become your friends.

As your universe of friends expands further, you'll have more friends with other interests. As you explore your friends interests, some of what interests them (now) may interest you (later).

Google+ is much more dynamic than any literal "search engine", because it is constantly expanding. Google+ lets you surf, based on your friends recommendations - and as your universe of friends expands, so will your universe of interests.


Next Blog Surfing

No longer accessing blogs that are recently published, and supposedly engineered now to access only other blogs of similar subject to the current blog displayed, the "Next Blog" link will still access random blogs. It just uses additional filters, with language and subject identified so far.

You link from any blog, to other blogs, one at a time. There are no options here - you take what you are offered, or continue surfing.

Each strategy has its advantages, so try them all and decide for yourself which one suits your needs.

A Private Blog May Not Be Completely Private

We've known for a while that private blogs have limitations, such as latency.

If you originally publish your blog as public, and later make it private, cached copies of the blog will be all over the Internet, for anybody to read, after it's supposedly private. This week, we see another, possibly more serious limitation.

Why was my coworker able to read my very private, personal, password protected blog yesterday? I had it set to "Blog Author Only" and yet she found it and was able to read the whole thing.

It has never, ever been public. I started it last September and set the permissions to "blog author only" at the start for all posts. I have never invited anyone else to read it...and have never, ever logged into it at work.

The private blog interstitial may not be loaded, for any would be reader, for several reasons.

The private blog interstitial won't be loaded, before every access to the blog.

People with blog content cached locally - either on their computer, or their network - won't always requires Blogger server access, when a blog page is displayed. Some visitor logs will detect blog access, even when cached content is retrieved - and even when the private blog interstitial is not involved.

Some readers may inadvertently provide access to other network users.

Occasionally, while using slow Internet access, I might load a private blog.

As the blog loads, the browser identifies the various components of the blog, such as various pictures loading, in the browser status area. An odd interstitial notice might be seen.

This blog is open to invited readers only

It doesn't look like you have been invited to read this blog. If you think this is a mistake, you might want to contact the blog author and request an invitation.

This might come up well after the blog main page contents have loaded.

If you are surfing from a network which uses a caching proxy server, it's possible that one person who has permission could properly load the blog in their browser. With the blog having been loaded once, the proxy server may not load the interstitial page again. Anyone else on the network could later view the blog without the interstitial page - even if they do not, supposedly, have permission to do so.

If your Blogger profile is part of your public blogs, or people link to your profile while surfing profiles, and your private blog is listed as one of your blogs, someone may click on the link, and may get a view of the blog.

Invited readers may intentionally share their recently received invitations.

A second problem comes when you invite people as members of your blog. The invitation goes to specific people, who are free to forward the invitation to their other email accounts, and even to the email addresses of their friends. You may invite one person, and you may see a dozen persons later reading the blog. This may even account for a known discrepancy with the 100 member limit.

These security deficiencies are not ones that you can control. You have no way of denying anybody access to your profile, if it's published publicly. Nor can you stop people who you invite to your blog, from forwarding the invitation to their friends.

If you want to keep your blog private, it would be a good idea to at least remove it from the list of your blogs, in your profile.

Private blogs are not immune to referer spam.

Some entries in some visitor logs might make us think that unauthorised people are reading a private blog. Referer spam is not blocked by the private blog interstitial - since referer spam does not involve actual blog access.

As previously stated, visitor logs are not 100% accurate.

These various issues contribute more reasons why no visitor meter will ever be 100% accurate.