Blogger Magic - Enabling Scripts, In Your Browser

Similar to the need to properly filter cookies in the browser, we have the need to properly filter scripts.

Cookies and scripts are completely different elements - but proper filtering of each is essential, to making many Blogger features operate properly.

If you have a problem with Blogger - either accessing / using the dashboard, or using / viewing a blog - one of the simplest things to check, complementing cookie filter settings, is the browser script filter settings.

The browser is the most important component, when setting up security - and scripts, like cookies, are a common challenge.

Script filters are adjusted differently, for each browser. Consider the multiple domains used by Blogger / Google - and layered security, on any computer, used by the owner and readers of any blog.

• Chrome.
• Firefox.
• Edge / Internet Explorer.
• Opera.
• Safari.

Setting the script filters in Chrome.

With Chrome, you enable scripts, using Settings ("Customize and control Google Chrome") - aka the 3 bar toolbar icon.

In Settings, if necessary, click on "Show advanced settings" at the very bottom of the page.

Under Privacy, click on "Content settings", which gives you the "Content Settings" wizard. Here, you have selections for Cookies and Javascript - including "Manage exceptions" for each section. Select the recommendation.

• JavaScript: Allow all sites to run JavaScript

Hit "Done" - and close the Settings tab.

From "Privacy", hit "Content settings".

Under "JavaScript", select "Allow all sites to run JavaScript (recommended)".



Alternately, you may select "Do not allow any site to run JavaScript" - then use "Manage exceptions", and allow all blog(s) that you publish, and the many Blogger and Google domains, to run JavaScript. Make your exceptions complete, for best results.

Setting the script filters in Firefox.

Firefox does not contain any native script filters. The most popular add-on for Firefox is NoScript - and this is how most Firefox users filter scripts.

You'll need to designate "blogger.com", "google.com", and any Google domain excepting "blogspot.com", as trusted - when you load any display for the domain in question. An untrusted domain will show a "NoScript Untrusted" icon in the status area at the bottom of the window. To enable each domain, you position the cursor over the NoScript icon and select "Allow (domain URL)" in the popup menu.

Setting the script filters in Edge / Internet Explorer.

With Internet Explorer, you enable security settings - both cookies and scripts - from the browser menu, using Tools - Internet Options. Optionally, you may access the "Internet Options" applet directly from the Windows Control Panel.

• IE uses a zone defense setting, where you designate "blogger.com" and "google.com", in Security, as being in the Trusted zone. Please note that "blogspot.com", in general should not be in the Trusted zone - .
• You will want the published URL of your blog(s) - including any country local domain URLs, in the Trusted zone.
• Default settings for the Trusted zone will allow proper filtering of scripts.
• Verify proper settings, with "Trusted sites" selected, and the Security level slider control set to "Medium". Hit "Custom level", and examine the Settings list.
• Look for the "Scripting" section, 3/4 of the way to the bottom of the list.
• You will observe 6 options under "Scripting". Default settings will have all options Enabled, except "Allow Programmatic clipboard access"; you may wish to Enable this to allow easy use of Post Editor.
• Hit "OK", and "Yes" if necessary, then "OK" again.

Setting the script filters in Opera.

With Opera, you enable cookies and scripts from the Advanced tab, in the Preferences wizard. The Content menu contains selections for scripting.

Setting the script filters in Safari.

With Safari, you enable scripts, using the Preferences wizard. The Privacy wizard, in Preferences, contains selections for scripts ("Cookies and website data”).

Script filters cause problems with Stats "Don't track ..." and other Blogger features.

Many problems, reported in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue, with various Blogger features - and the Blogger dashboard - involve script filters.

Stats and the "Don't track ..." option used to involve third party cookies, for many years. In March 2016, the "Don't track" wizard was rewritten to run under the URL of the blog, when being set - and now requires enabling scripts from the blog URL.

Consider how your blog is published.

If your blog is published to "blogspot.com", consider the non "blogspot.com" alias that may be relevant to your country. If your blog is published to a custom domain, consider the custom domain URL.

Many computers have other relevant settings, which block scripts.

Many blog owners and readers will have computers, and networks, with additional protection. Scripts, in the browser, may not be the only filter that needs to be checked - but this is a start, to learning how to control the script filters.

Having checked and corrected your script filters, continue by checking browser cookie filters - then check cookie and script filters, outside the browser. Also check settings on any ad blocker add-on - which may be an app, or a browser extension.

Be aware that many settings may not be obvious - and that both obvious and obscure settings may be updated, without your intention or knowledge.

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Many #Blogger problems are cause by overly restrictive script filters. If you, a blog owner or reader, are going to use Blogger successfully, you need to configure your browser properly - for both cookies and scripts.

The New Stats "Don't track" Option, And Script Filters

The new Stats "Don't track" option is an improvement, to many blog owners.

"Manage tracking your own pageviews", as before, starts from the Stats dashboard page. The wizard now runs from a sub directory of the blog managed by the dashboard - and uses a normal (first party) cookie.

Now, blog owners no longer must enable third party cookies, to make Stats ignore their page views. This is an improvement - but it can still present a challenge, for some blog owners.

Besides filtering "third party" cookies, not all blog owners and readers will permit complete control by content under the individual blogs.

If you want "Don't track" to work reliably, enable scripts for the blog URL.

If you want the "Don't track" option to work reliably for your blog, you now must enable scripts to run under the published URL.

We have to trust scripts run from "blogger.com" - that is the Blogger dashboard. The Blogger dashboard is produced by Blogger Engineers - and if we trust Blogger to host our blogs, we have to trust their code.

Scripts which run under the individual blogs - "blogspot.com", local country domains, and custom domains - can be added by the owner of each individual blog. Not all blog owners should be trusted.

People who mistrust third party cookies may also mistrust scripts which run under "blogspot" etc. Unfortunately, to make "Manage tracking your own pageviews" work, you (the blog owner) now have to open up any script filters, which block content run as part of your blog.

Start from the Stats dashboard page.

Click on "Manage tracking your own pageviews".



"Manage tracking your own pageviews" now runs under the blog published URL. This removes "third party" cookies from the problem.

With a custom domain published blog, you must use the wizard in "HTTP:" mode.

By default, the new wizard runs in SSL mode. This will be a problem, with blogs published to custom domains.

If the blog is published to a custom domain, you will need to change "https" to "http".

Check "Don't track my views for this blog." - then close the tab / window.



The new wizard, "Would you like to have your pageviews counted when you visit this blog?", now runs as "blogging.nitecruzr.net", for this blog.

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/b/statsCookieManage

If you publish to a custom domain, and you can correct the URL, you will see the same, for your blog. If you publish to "blogspot", you can see the same also. This is a script - and the script is subject to security filters.

And yes, there is no "Save" button, or link. Just the box.

Don't track my views for this blog.

Click the box or don't. As soon as you click, it's set. If you change your mind - now or later - click the box, again, and clear the option.

You should trust your blog - even though you do not trust other blogs, in general.

Generally, as the blog owner, you can safely trust content run under your blog. You probably should not trust "blogspot.com", and all blog publishers, however. This means that you will require multiple filter rules - for every browser and security add-on, that contains a script filter.

• Block all "blogspot.*". (Please!).
• Permit "yourblog.blogspot.com".

If you publish to "blogspot.com", and live in a country which has a local domain, such as the UK, you need a rule to permit the local domain alias.

• Permit "yourblog.blogspot.co.uk".

If you have multiple blogs - and want to block pageviews from being counted, for each blog, you need permissive filter rules for each blog.

• Permit "yourblog1.blogspot.*".
• Permit "yourblog2.blogspot.*".
• etc.

If you publish your blog to a custom domain, you need a rule to permit the domain URL. For this blog, I need

• Permit "blogging.nitecruzr.net".

If you do not permit the proper URL(s) for your blog, you will find Stats counting your own pageviews. Possibly, this will happen even with "Don't track my views for this blog." checked. In some cases, the check mark will be cleared, when you close the window.

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Owners of #Blogger blogs who don't want their activity tracked by Stats now see a new "Don't track" wizard. Using the "Don't track" option no longer requires enabling third party cookies - and worrying about the security issues.

Unfortunately, this now means that the "Don't track" wizard may now be vulnerable to filters which restrict scripts that run under blogspot, and any custom domains.

Stats And "Don't track", And Custom Domains

Blog owners have been trying to block tracking their own Stats pageviews, for a few years.

This option has long been unusable, for blogs published to custom domains. Recently, Blogger Engineering updated the option - and the dashboard page with the link.

The new Stats option to "Manage tracking your own pageviews" is an improvement, over the old dashboard page.

The new Stats option page is run as part of the blog - not the Blogger dashboard - so it does not require third party cookie access. Unfortunately, this provides no obvious help, to people who publish their blogs to custom domains.

To see the problem, start from the Stats dashboard page.

Click on "Manage tracking your own pageviews".

And, you get "This site can’t be reached" or a similar error.



Custom domain published blogs do not support HTTPS access - even from the Blogger dashboard.

So, change "https:" to "http:", in the address window.



If you manually remove the "s", you can access the "Would you like to have your pageviews counted when you visit this blog?" wizard.

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/b/statsCookieManage

You can't access the "Manage tracking your own pageviews" for a custom domain published blog, by simply clicking on the dashboard link.

This suggests an interesting detail. Now that "Manage tracking your own pageviews" runs under the blog URL, it will be subject to script filtering - for "blogspot.com", any applicable country local domains, and / or a custom domain URL.

You may need to correct your browser script filter, to make "Don't track" work, now.

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Owners of custom domain published #Blogger blogs have been wanting to block Stats from counting their own pageviews, for a few years. This option is now available - but not in an obvious way.

Reading Posts In Main Page View Affects Stats

Some blog owners don't understand why Stats displays show that no one is reading their latest post.

I know that my most recent post is being read - but Stats shows pageviews, for that post, as 0!

This owner does not understand the difference between main page, and post page, access.

If you read this blog, without being interested in any particular post, you can access the main page. On the main page, and other index pages, you'll see anywhere from 10 to 15 carefully summarised, recently published, individual posts.

Clicking on "Read more »", at the end of any of the summaries, you can read any complete article. This complete article, and others in this blog, is published as an individual post page - and summarised on index pages, using Jump Break.

Not every blog owner uses Jump Break, to display the posts. Some blog owners publish complete blog articles, in each index page post. Depending upon how any blog is designed, some readers may click on a link, to read any individual post - and others may read some posts from the main page.

Stats enumerates pageviews for individual post pages, in the "Pages" / "Posts" displays. Since the main page is an "index" page, main page activity is not tracked, in the "Pages" / "Posts" displays - and that causes some confusion.

For any given blog not using Jump Break in the posts, the unconscious decision to read a post from the main page, as opposed to a post page, is affected by various blog design details.

• Physical size of main page.
• Number of posts published on main page.
• How frequently new posts are published.
• Whether the blog is publicised, using main page links - or individual post page links.
• Presence - and position - of the Archive index accessory, on the blog face.
• Presence - and position - of any search accessories, on the blog face.
• Use of label indexes - at the end of the posts, and / or a Label index on the blog face.
• Use of links in post content.
• Choice of comment display style - combined with the blog content which may or may not encourage comments.

All of these details, and more, may cause a reader to read a given blog article on the main page, or on an individual post page.

Physical main page size. Larger main pages require more scrolling. The more scrolling is involved, the greater the chance that the reader may find a link to an individual post page, click on the link, and read the article from the post page.

Number of posts published on the main page. Number of posts affects physical main page size. Thanks to auto pagination, some blogs may be displayed with a few posts on the main page, and other blogs with many posts on the main page. Blogs published with less posts on the main page will have more readers clicking on links to the individual post pages, for older posts that won't appear on the main page.

The most recent post published will appear at the top of the main page, in its entirety. Readers accessing the blog, using the Home (main page) address, are almost certain to read the most recent post as part of the main page. Other posts, further down the page, may or may not be read in the main page, or in individual post pages.

Frequency of publishing. Blogs with posts more frequently published will see older posts pushed from main page view sooner, increasing the chance that older articles will be read from the posts pages.

How the blog is publicised. Blogs that are publicised using the main page URL will see more traffic to the main page, while blogs that are publicised using the individual post page URLs will see more activity to the post pages.

Presence and position of the Archive index. If an archive index is present, and visible at the top of the page, a reader may click on an archive index entry, and read an article from an individual post page.

Presence and position of a search accessory. If a search accessory is present, and visible at the top of the page, a reader is more likely to use the search, and to read an article from an individual post page.

Use of a label index may lead to reading the blog using a label index page. Similar to main page, a label index page is a page which groups posts under the label in question. A label index page may be reached from an end of post label list entry, or from a Labels index accessory.

Pageview counts for label index pages, like main page, are not counted under "Pages" / "Posts", in Stats. Here, too, you can have articles read without clicking to the individual post pages.

Use of links in post content. Posts which contain direct links to other posts - as opposed to use of the end of post label index - lead directly to other individual post pages.

Comment display style, and use of comments in the blog. Blogs which use embedded comments will have activity on the individual post pages, when the reader feels the need to examine previously published comments, and / or publish a new comment. The embedded comment display, and entry form, are at the bottom of the individual post pages. The Comment Count Link - "nn Comments" - goes to the bottom of the individual post page, and will generate activity, as counted by Stats.

Blogs with full page or popup comments - and blogs which don't encourage comments - will have less activity on the individual post pages. The post pages are not loaded, with full page or popup comment forms. The full page and popup forms are published under "blogger.com", not under the blog's URL.

All of these seemingly insignificant details, which are present in every blog, in different combinations, will affect access to individual post pages, as opposed to various index pages (archives, labels, and main page).

This will determine whether access to a given article in the blog is counted (as a page or post) or ignored (as an archive, label, and / or main page). The infinitely variable combinations of these details will determine the relative "accuracy" of the Stats "Pages" / "Posts" display, for different blogs. You'll see similarly variable search engine indexing of the blog, with these combinations of details.

And remember also that in the "Page" / "Post" Stats lists, only the top 10 most active Pages and Posts are displayed, at any time. This will also affect "accuracy".

The Stats "All Time" Display, And The 2010 Numbers

Occasionally in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, we see a curious question.

My blog Stats display is missing a complete year.

The problem is actually right there, in front of all of us - if we look.

Look at the Stats Overview tab, and the graph at the top of the display.

What happened to "2010"?


My suspicion is that it's a deliberate omission, to get the graph to fit in the limited horizontal space. How will they get "All Time" to fit in that space, as the Stats display gets older, and "All Time" covers more years?

That being the case, it should not be that much work to add a little "broken line" symbol in the border, between "2009 October" and "2011 March". Look how smoothly the line flows, in my graph, right through 2010. What does your blog show?

Fast forward to 2015, and we'll know the answer.

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And in 2012, we now see the same display oddity with the numbers from 2011.

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Stats Not Displaying Newer Posts, In "Posts" Lists

The problem of last week, with Stats, was fixed late yesterday, and our Stats displays once again are showing Posts pageview counts and enumerating individual Posts. Now, we have a perceived problem, being reported by newer blog owners.

My Stats display does not show my newer posts!

This concern is visually valid - but it's not real. It's most common with blogs that have just over 10 posts, which are owned by people who are not aware of the Stats display limitations, as we have explored.

The Stats Posts displays enumerate the 10 most popular posts, for any given time period. Newer posts will seldom appear in the Posts lists, for many blogs.

• The "Posts" lists enumerate individual posts, and shows pageview counts for posts viewed in single post view. Newer posts will be displayed in their entirety on the main page, and read as main page views.
• The lists show only the 10 most popular posts. Newer posts, not yet indexed by the search engines, or linked by your readers, won't have as many inlinks - and the post page URLs won't get as much traffic from other blogs and websites.

Owners of newer blogs will not be aware of these details - and with just over 10 posts, may not see the significance, in their Stats displays. These owners will simply see, from time to time, posts that don't appear in the lists.

If you look at the main page, for this blog, you'll see use of "Jump Break" in my newer posts. Each of these posts, to be read in their entirety, can only be read using the "Read more" link - and from the individual post page. Look at the address window above.

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2011/10/stats-not-displaying-newer-posts-in.html

Since you're viewing these words, this post is being counted in Posts, as a pageview. Thus the Posts lists, for this blog, will enumerate this post, sooner.

Here, we see another benefit of using "Jump Break" over other auto summarisation techniques. The "Jump Break" links directly to the single post view of each post - and it uses HTML, which makes it search engine friendly. Some previous auto summarisation techniques used JavaScript to hide the full post content, preventing search engines from indexing the full post text.

Besides encouraging the post content to be read as a post page, the search engines will index post content in the post pages. The archive retrievals, and main page, will only list the partial content of each post - and search engine hit lists will contain more relevant content.

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Stats Not Displaying Individual Posts, In Detail Lists

For several days now, we've seen various reports from anxious Blogger blog owners, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, lamenting the lack of detail information in their Stats logs.

My Stats logs does not show the page views for particular posts.

This is just one example, of the many ways that blog owners perceive, and report, the ongoing problem.

If you look at the Stats Overview or Posts display, for any blog with any popularity, in the "Now" or "Day" time range, you'll likely see the well known advice

No stats yet, check back later.

When initially reported, this was only visible in the "Now" time range. Now, the effect is seen in "Day", and for some, less consistently trafficked blogs, in "Week" also. The effect is visible, consistently, in both the Classic GUI (brown / dark blue display), and the New GUI (2011) (brown / orange on white display).

This problem is apparent, for most blogs, in the "Posts" tab.
Most blogs with consistent traffic will show this affecting only the detail Posts lists. The "Now" and "Day" Posts lists, as noted, show "No stats yet, check back later.". The "Week", Month", and "All time" Posts displays show the Posts lists from before the problem first occurred. Both the Posts names in the lists, and the pageview counts for each post listed, are frozen.

This blog shows no effect in pageview counts, outside the Posts detail lists. I've carefully examined the graphs for "Now", "Day", "Week", "Month", and "All time", in both the Classic and New GUI, for this blog - and I don't see any count discrepancies. Your observations may agree or disagree - and I await your comments.

We have a Rollup discussion, in Blogger Help Forum.
We have an ongoing rollup discussion, in Blogger Help, where the scope of the problem is being discussed. My original perception of the problem began as we explored the latest wave of referer spam; I am today trying to determine if the two events are related.

An earlier outage may be related to this problem.
We also had an interesting 2 hour outage, a week ago, where no Stats data (counts, or details) was available for the previous week - and some blog owners are wondering if that issue is related. We have no references for the latter episode, as we escalated that problem in real time, and Blogger Support was able to fix it, immediately.

That problem was complete (as noted, both counts and details were available), it was immediate (it showed on all Stats displays for the previous week, retroactively), and it was total (the immediate nature and effect on the forums made it an obvious BloggerFire). This problem, according to my observations, is neither.

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(Update 18:00): Blogger Support has fixed this problem.

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Nitecruzr.Net Hits The Big Time

This morning, we're seeing a number of questions in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken.

Why are my Stats displays showing

No stats yet, check back later.

yet again?

and more interestingly

"blogging.nitecruzr.net" is showing multiple hits in my Stats log!

And none of this is really surprising, personally.

The bad guys, who have been serving various waves of referer spam against the many Blogger blogs, have recently included "nitecruzr.net" in their lists of websites, falsely advertised by their attacks.

I've been using this blog to talk about spam, in general - and about referer spam, in particular - for years. This week, the people who operate the referer spam networks are targeting me, in a Joe Job attack, using Stats logs to confuse Blogger blog owners.

In crime novels, it's called a "frame up". In networking, what they are doing is vaguely similar to a "smurf attack", using the various Blogger blog owners, in an attempt to overwhelm the forums.

I guess I should be flattered. Let's try to keep it in perspective, though - and keep working on your blog.