This week, we're seeing a few reports from anguished blog owners, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue. My blog was deleted for spam, and I can't request review because the dashboard button doesn't work!
This blog owner is being hit by a double whammy - first, a spurious spam classification; and second, inability to request review of the blog, falsely accused, using the dashboard.
It's possible that this problem is just the latest symptom of intrusive security on the personal computers, used by the owners of blogs falsely accused of hosting spam content.
Like every other feature in Blogger, that requires authentication of owner status, the dashboard "Restore" / "Review" button can only be used by the owner of a given blog.
Knowing that almost every computer on the Internet is subject to unnotified security updates, it's not un imaginable to see a recent security update having caused this problem.
This problem has been forwarded to Blogger Support, for their consideration. While we wait for a response from Blogger, it's up for the owners of the blogs falsely accused, to provide some details about their computers.
We noe have a rollup discussion, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue. If you are affected by this problem, please provide details there.
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During the past weekend, we started seeing a number of reports in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, from blog owners who participate in FaceBook, and who can't publish their blog posts to their FaceBook Wall. The problem appears to be common to both publishing using the "Share to FaceBook" button in the blog post (within Blogger), as well as the Wall posting wizard (within FaceBook).
We have a problem rollup in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, where we are collecting details from the blog owners reporting.
- What's the URL of your Blogger blog?
- What's the URL of your FaceBook Wall?
- Were you posting from your blog post (using the "Share to Facebook" button), or directly to your Wall (within FaceBook)?
- Is the email address associated with your Blogger account GMail, or non GMail?
- Is the email address associated with your FaceBook account GMail, or non GMail?
- Is the email address associated with your Blogger account the same as the email address associated with your FaceBook account?
- Were you logged in, as the blog owner, to Blogger?
- Were you logged in, as the Wall owner, to FaceBook?
- What post did you try posting, to FaceBook?
- How recently were you able to, successfully, post to FaceBook?
- Does your Blogger account use a Blogger profile, a Google profile, or a Google+ profile?
- If you were posting to your Wall, did you solve the CAPTCHA successfully?
- What browser (name, and version) are you using?
If you are observing this problem, with your Blogger / FaceBook accounts, providing as many details as possible may help Blogger / FaceBook Support staff to focus on your problem, by identifying a pattern.
(Update 2012/01/94): It appears that most people are now able to post to FaceBook. Some people are now reporting a new annoyanceYou are attempting to post a link that has been marked as abusive and/or spammy.
(Update 2012/01/01): After having examined the many diagnostic reports provided in the rollup discussion, and having done some testing, I am suspecting that the problem does not have a simple cause, that's solely the responsibility of Blogger. Blogger Support appears to support this conclusion.
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We're getting a few reports today, in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I?, from blog owners who publish blogs with static pages, that use the new dynamic templates, and that now have no ability to index the pages in the dynamic views. We're also seeing reports mentioning some blogs which have no menu bar visible, in dynamic views. Both problems were, reportedly, first observed mid morning today, Pacific time.
Earlier this week, if you looked at this blog in dynamic view, you could see two static pages, from this blog, indexed in the menu bar. Both Commenting Policy and Leave Comments Here were, at one time, indexed. Today, they are not.
Interestingly enough, neither page is indexed in the static template menu bar, which you can see just above. Other static pages, which were indexed in the static template menu bar, were not observed in the dynamic template menu bar.
We have a rollup discussion, where we are collecting details about your observations of these problems. If your blog is affected, please provide details in the discussion, as best as you are able.- What is the published URL of the blog?
- Is the blog explicitly setup to use the dynamic templates?
- If the blog is setup to use the dynamic templates, which view is the default?
- Does the blog, in the non dynamic view, display the navbar?
- Does the blog, in the non dynamic view, display a Pages gadget / menu bar? If no, where are the pages indexed?
- Did you setup the Pages gadget using the Classic Blogger GUI, or the New Blogger GUI?
- Have you enabled the Mobile Template, for this blog?
(Update 2011/11/14): It appears that this problem originates with blogs using a custom Pages gadget. Blogs that use a standard Pages gadget, created in the New Blogger GUI Pages editor, seem to be OK. Here, you may view my test blog - both using a dynamic view, and similarly using a non dynamic view - which has a standard Pages index, positioned in the sidebar.
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