Recently, we've been seeing a number of reports in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, from people suddenly unable to login to Blogger and maintain or publish their blogs.
It appears that more and more private network owners are converting their email and office applications suites, to use Google Apps / Docs. This gives the various employers and schools the ability to block people, using their email, from also using extraneous / unnecessary services like Blogger and YouTube - and encourages the employees and students to spend their time more productively.
People with Blogger accounts, that are based on the converted email domains, are seeing problems accessing their blogs.
Part of the Google Apps / Docs package includes the ability to disable the use of various Google products and services, to people using accounts in the domains.
Blog owners are locked out of Blogger, with new managed domains.
People with Blogger accounts that are based on the newly converted domains are finding themselves locked out of Blogger.When I login, I get the message.Blogger has not been enabled by the administrator of the domain employerdomain.com.
What do I do, now?
Not all domain administrators, even for those domains which use GMail / Google services for non "gmail.com" email addresses, believe Blogger blogs to be an essential service. Some domain administrators will forbid you to access non domain email services, from their domains.
Not all domain administrators know how to manage the domains properly.
Administrators of small domains, having just converted to Google Apps, may not be aware of the Services settings in their domains, and may need coaching - even if sympathetic to your needs. Any willing domain administrator can refer to Google Apps Help: Add Google Apps services to your account, for instructions on adding the Blogger service to the domain, that you need to use.
The bottom line is that, if your Blogger account is based on an email domain that has been recently converted to Google Apps, you may have some work ahead of you - if you want to use your Blogger account.
Recently, we've been seeing a number of reports in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, from people suddenly unable to login to Blogger and maintain or publish their blogs.
It appears that more and more private network owners are converting their email and office applications suites, to use Google Apps / Docs. This gives the various employers and schools the ability to block people, using their email, from also using extraneous / unnecessary services like Blogger and YouTube - and encourages the employees and students to spend their time more productively.
People with Blogger accounts, that are based on the converted email domains, are seeing problems accessing their blogs.
Part of the Google Apps / Docs package includes the ability to disable the use of various Google products and services, to people using accounts in the domains.
People with Blogger accounts that are based on the newly converted domains are finding themselves locked out of Blogger.When I login, I get the message.Blogger has not been enabled by the administrator of the domain employerdomain.com.
What do I do, now?
Not all domain administrators, even for those domains which use GMail / Google services for non "gmail.com" email addresses, believe Blogger blogs to be an essential service. Some domain administrators will forbid you to access non domain email services, from their domains.
Administrators of small domains, having just converted to Google Apps, may not be aware of the Services settings in their domains, and may need coaching - even if sympathetic to your needs.
The bottom line is that, if your Blogger account is based on an email domain that has been recently converted to Google Apps, you may have some work ahead of you - if you want to use your Blogger account.
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 pleaPlease, can Blogger tell me my email address??!!
and Blogger Support would helpfully provide a hintYour email address is r****or @ gmail . com
or possiblyYour 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?
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.
- Some bloggers managed to remove all administrators from the list, creating blogs with no administrators.
- 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.
- The safeguard works only if you can guarantee that all administrators can perform as administrators.
- 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.
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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