Almost daily, we see a confused query in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is BrokenI lost ownership access to my blog. Can Blogger restore my access?
Not every blog owner realises that the Permissions wizard has a safeguard, ensuring that every blog will always have at least one administrator. Anybody who is the former owner is now a member of a team blog - and at least one other team member is an administrator.
The ownership transfer process involves 4 steps, out of necessity.
- Invite a new member (if necessary).
- Wait while the new member accepts the invitation (again, if necessary).
- Make the new member an administrator.
- Remove the old administrator (if necessary).
Each step can be executed immediately, or with any amount of elapsed time after the previous step, at your convenience.
Look at the Permissions wizard for your blog, some time. If you are the only administrator, you will see your name, with no ability to delete or demote yourself.
A team blog will have author status selectors.
If you own a team blog, you'll have a selector for each of the team members who are authors, allowing that member to be promoted to administrator status.
A team blog with multiple administrators will have administrator status selectors.
If the team blog has at least 2 administrators, each administrator will have a selector, allowing any administrator to delete or demote any administrator. As an administrator demotes any administrator to an author, the entry for that new author will have the ability for that author to be again promoted to administrator.
A blog with only one administrator will have no administrator status selector.
Whenever you are the only administrator, your member entry will have no ability to delete or demote. This prevents you from having a blog with no administrator.
Of course, as noted elsewhere, when the blog has at least 2 administrators, any administrator can be deleted or demoted at the decision of any other administrator. Also, team status is not checked when accounts are deleted.
If you are demoted, only an administrator can promote you.
The bottom line here is, if you suddenly find yourself without administrative access to your blog, the advice that you will get will be to
Ask one of the blog administrators to restore your status.
To prevent blog theft, only another administrator can restore your status.
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.
Occasionally, you see bloggers becoming confused about what access they have to their blog.I can look at the Edit Posts menu, but there are no posts listed.
orI can't access the Template Designer (edit the template, add users to the blog, ...).
These are bloggers who are confused over a blog where they are an Administrator, vs a blog where they are an Author.
Let's look at my dashboard, and at a pair of blogs which we see there.
Here's my dashboard. Among the many entries, you'll see one blog listed where I am an Author, and a second where I am an Administrator. Let's first look at a blog where I am an Author.
Let's look at "Edit Posts".
I'm an Author in this blog, and I haven't created any posts. There are plenty of posts in the blog, just none that I've created. I have no access to any posts that I haven't created.
Let's look at "Settings".
I'm an Author in this blog, so all of the Settings that I have are Email and Permissions.
The Email access gives you the ability to setup your own Mail-to-Blogger entry. The Permissions access lets people who have previously accepted Guest ("Author") membership in a blog to remove themselves, without having to contact the blog administrator.
Let's next look at a second blog, where I am an Administrator.
Let's look at "Edit Posts".
I'm an Administrator in this blog. Look at my Edit Posts menu.
Let's look at "Settings".
I'm an Administrator in this blog. Look at my Settings menu.
Let's look at "Design".
I'm an Administrator in this blog. I have a Design section (For a Classical blog, this would be "Template", but there would be lots less tabs under "Template".).
If you're not seeing either of the above, or you're seeing access as an Author, where you should be seeing Administrator, you lost access to your account or your blog.Unfortunately, these problems may be your responsibility to resolve, as you alone have the responsibility for retaining access to your blog, and for your own connectivity to the Internet.
>> Top
We see the occasional queryHow do I have a single post, and only let my closest friends view it?
orHow do I keep people from commenting on some posts?
or evenHow do I make a linklist / poll / whatever visible to a select few?
and the answer is - you can't.
If your blog is open to everybody, all portions of that blog are open to everybody. Unlike WordPress (which has a few limitations too, just not this one), you can't set permissions in just a portion of that blog.
But, you can make portions of another blog visible to a selected audience.
Blogs are free. Setup another, with the restrictions that you need. And another, and another.
>> Top
