FTP Publishing - Moving Ahead

Some time ago, in my comprehensive comparison of Custom Domain vs FTP Publishing, I suggested that

FTP publishing has a limited life span. From an economic and support viewpoint, it makes more sense for Blogger to concentrate its attention on Custom Domain publishing.

This week, we have a new, annoying problem with FTP publishing, which, regardless of what may or may not be stated by Blogger, does not seem to be solved. And we have a possible reliability improvement in custom domain publishing, with the dreaded "404 Not Found" problem, recently, becoming less frequently reported.

It's possible that my prior suspicion may become reality sometime in the near future. Some of you, currently publishing your blogs using FTP Publishing, may do well to consider changing to Custom Domain Publishing. And in doing so, you should consider several key issues.

• If you initially published your blog to the FTP server prior to November 2007, it's possible that the original BlogSpot URL isn't associated with the external URL. If the BlogSpot URL is associated with the blog, it's probably through some workarounds that you may have put into place, on your own. With Custom Domain publishing, the BlogSpot URL used to setup the blog is automatically redirected to the Custom Domain URL. You'll need to publish the blog to BlogSpot, to ensure a BlogSpot URL is in place first.
• If you're hosting a domain on an external server, you're probably hosting photos there too. You may want to plan to migrate the photos, and host them on Google servers, unless you want to keep maintaining the FTP server with the existing photos. Unfortunately, migrating the photos will involve manual effort.
• If you're hosting a domain on an external server, you will need to ensure that the registrar for the domain provides DNS servers that support CNAME referral. If not, you'll want to find another registrar, or buy another domain.
• If you're hosting a web site on an external server, when you move to hosting the web site (blog) on a custom domain, the structure of the blog, and some URLs, may change. If the blog is part of a web site, you'll want to update the web site, to reflect the change.
• With an FTP published blog, you have folder and file control. You may have files, installed in the root of the blog, that enable automated processes, such as search engine spiders, to index the blog. You'll have to use meta tag records for similar functions, when your blog is published back to Blogger.
• When the blog is published back to Blogger, the URLs of some files will likely change, to include publishing month, and title hash, uniformly. If you have any external or internal references to individual posts (and most blogs do), be aware of this change. Plan to use a missing files host, to reduce the impact of this issue.

With all of that said, let's plan the actual move.

1. Carefully consider the relative advantages and disadvantages of FTP and Custom Domain publishing.
2. Go through the issues list above, and consider each as it applies to your blog.
3. If the move from FTP to custom domain involves a change in URL, let your readers know in advance.
4. Publish the blog back to a BlogSpot URL.
5. Update the DNS records to reflect the custom domain setup.
6. Publish the blog to the custom domain.

We can actually describe steps 5 and 6 in combination, as setup a custom domain. You'll have 2 alternatives, here.

• If you can use the existing domain, just update or add a "CNAME" referral for the blog, redirecting it to "ghs.google.com". Here, you'll use the "Advanced Settings" wizard.
• If you need a new domain for the blog, use "Buy A Domain", and you're done.

Either way, this task has been tried and tested by hundreds of bloggers before you, if you start from a BlogSpot published blog.

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Always Test Your Changes

Periodically, we see an anxious query

I just got an email from a friend

Your blog looks like crap.

What do I do now? Help! Oh yes, I think I tweaked the template a couple weeks ago.

So if you made the change to the template "a couple weeks ago", why did you wait until today, to find out from your friend that you have a problem?

Blogger Blogs are easy to work on. As easy as they are to work on, though, they still demand respect, and responsible practices are still relevant.

If you make changes, test your changes using different browsers.

Any time that you make a change to the blog, or even when you post a new article, check out the change, preferably using multiple browsers. When you test, you need to see the blog as your readers may see it - so prepare to logout and login a few times, to view changes then make adjustments.

If you have a second browser or computer, this would be an excellent way to use one - to stay logged in on one browser, and make changes much easier. Or, using a sandboxed browser is an alternate way to check what your readers see - you won't be logged in, from there.

Alternately, an online website display service may be useful.

When making template changes, setup a test blog and change there first.

If you're making changes to the template, consider setting up a blog for testing, and make your template changes there first. Blogs are free - Xanax isn't.

1. Setup a test blog.
2. Save the template from your production blog, to your computer.
3. Load the template, saved in Step 2, to your test blog.
4. Export posts from your production blog, then import them to your test blog. This gives you a real test bed.
5. Make changes, and test them, without worrying about what your readers see. They only see the production blog. If you mess up badly, go back to Step 3.
6. When you're happy with the test blog, save the template to your computer.
7. Load the template from Step 6 to your production blog.
8. Save the template copy from Step 2, as a fall back.
9. Wasn't that easier on the nerves?

Just copying the template won't give you a cloned blog.

Nowadays, and if you develop a template and decorate it using a lot of custom gadgets, merely copying the template from one blog to another may not leave you with an elegantly developed blog.

Right now, there is no procedure for backing up or restoring gadgets. If that's a problem, you develop the template, then transfer the comments, posts, and URL to the newly developed blog.

This is a bit more work, but it will preserve your gadgets.

1. Setup a test blog.
2. Save the template from your production blog, to your computer.
3. Load the template, saved in Step 2, to your test blog.
4. Export posts from your production blog, then import them to your test blog. This gives you a real test bed.
5. Make changes, and test them, without worrying about what your readers see. They only see the production blog. If you mess up badly, go back to Step 3.
6. When you're happy with the test blog, transfer the existing comments, posts, and the URL to the new blog.
   • Extract the comments and posts from the existing blog, to an XML file.
   • Import the XML file to the new blog, and publish all posts not already handled in Step 4.
   • Re publish the existing blog to a new URL.
   • Publish the new blog to the publicly known URL.
   • If you have administrators / members / readers, you'll have to add them to the new blog.
7. Save the old blog, published to the new URL, as a fall back.
8. Wasn't that slightly easier on the nerves?

And of course, in both cases, backup the blog and the template, before and after making any major changes.

Don't wait for your friends to complain.