FTP Publishing - August 2008

So once again this week, we have various bloggers, publishing (wanting to do so, any way) to remote servers using FTP, and complaining of the well known error

Your publish is taking longer than expected.

Sometimes, having reported this to Blogger, a Blogger employee will come back almost immediately with

We reset the server, and you should be good to go.

Other times, this symptom will drag on for days, and weeks. Occasionally - and keep an open mind here - problems with the host server can contribute to this error.

While awaiting action by Blogger, you might do yourself and others a favour, and provide details of your problem (as best you are able).

1. Name of host server and connection type (FTP / SFTP).
2. Geographical location of host server.
3. Path, within the FTP server, of the blog.
4. URL of blog.
5. Name of template.
6. How many posts in the blog?
7. How many posts / days of posts in the main page?
8. How many photos (average / best guess) in a typical post?
9. How many photos (best guess) in the blog, but not in posts?
10. How old is the blog?
11. How is the blog archived (weekly, monthly, yearly)?
12. How many posts (average / best guess) / archive period?
13. What size (average / best guess) are your photos (160, 320, 480, 1600)?
14. How many labels defined in the blog?
15. How many posts / label, and labels / post (average / best guess)?

Note that

• Blogs published by FTP use HTML and static publishing.
• The number and average size of statically published pages will affect the amount of time required to publish your blog.
• Each archive link, and each different label link, will be one more statically published page. The more posts in an archive, or the more posts with a given label, will make that static archive or label page larger.
• The amount of time required to publish the blog will, in turn, affect how likely you are to see the mentioned error

  Your publish is taking longer than expected.

Considering all of the details, is it any wonder that you don't see that message more often? These are some reasons why I suspect that moving to custom domain publishing makes more sense, as your blog gets larger.

>> (Update 8/25 05:00): We see one example of where the host server was involved in the problem, and in finding a solution for the problem.

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FTP Publishing - If You're Having Problems, Check Your Settings While You Wait For Support

Many different reports are seen in the forums, this month, about problems with FTP publishing. The old "Your publish is taking longer than expected ..." error is reported a lot. Alternatively, some folks report seeing no error, yet their posts simply don't end up on the blog.

Blogger Support will try to help you - really. As long as you report the problem objectively, and wait patiently. And they can help you best, when it's a problem that they can solve.

Some problems they can't help you solve, or at least can't help you as easily as you can help yourself. Problems with FTP Settings are problems that you can solve, on your own, a lot quicker than Blogger can solve for you.

If you have a problem with FTP Publishing, report the problem. And while you're waiting for their attention, spend some time diagnosing the problem on your own.

I fished around and discovered that my host, pair.com, using the special additional login username and password that I added for Blogger, was automatically routing posts to my blog directory. So what happened is that instead of files being uploaded to

pair.com/users/me/public_html/blog/

they went to

pair.com/users/me/public_html/blog/users/me/public_html/blog/

This is an example of good diagnostic work. Maybe Blogger would have eventually figured out the problem, by looking at the settings for the blog. Maybe not. Maybe Blogger changed the way they process the settings. If so, this report will hopefully help them identify their problem. It certainly won't hurt.

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