Act Immediately, When Invited

Some moments come fleetingly, and never again.

One such moment may be, when you receive a blog membership invitation.

The purpose of this message is to inform you that xxxxxxx has invited you to join their private blog "xxxxx xxxxx". To accept this invitation, click on the button below.

or

The purpose of this message is to inform you that yyyyyyy has invited you to contribute to their blog "yyyyy yyyyy". To accept this invitation, click on the button below.

Unless you know the blog owner, this may be your one chance.

If you get an invitation to be a designated reader on a private blog - or an author on either a private or team blog - decide, and act as soon as possible.

Any invitation that you get will be temporary. Blog membership invitations expire, after a fixed amount of time.

Accept the invitation, to view and note the URL.

If the blog is private, and you accept the invitation as a reader, make a note of the URL too.

Long ago, you might get a "preview link" in the invitation - allowing you to view the blog, and bookmark / copy the URL for later. The "preview link" feature was abused by too many owners - and appears to be gone now.

No preview = no URL until after you accept the invitation.

Become an author, on a team blog!

Become a reader, on a private blog!



There's a limited amount of detail, in the invitation.

How useful is either invitation, if you don't accept, when viewed later? You can get the owner name (as provided by the owner), and the blog title - and that's it.

• Invitations contain only the author name, the blog title, and a membership token.
• A reader invitation, for a private blog, may not produce an entry in the dashboard "My blogs" list.
• Both author and reader invitations will expire.

Act promptly, for best result.

If you get an invitation, and you file it away so you can "think about it", don't think about it too long.

Once the token expires - and if you don't know the owner - you'll not be able to contact the owner. And until you accept the invitation - and actually view then bookmark the blog - you won't find out the URL.

Act quickly - or never.

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If you get an invitation to be an author on a private or team #Blogger blog, or a reader on a private blog, act promptly. Invitations expire too soon - they contain few details - and won't be very useful later.

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/blogger/z-lKeqO-ssA

Blogger Magic - Make A Private Or Team Blog

Some blog owners like to restrict access to their blog - and others want to have multiple people able to publish, or maybe to administer their blog.

A few even want multiple administrators, and restricted access. Both private and team blogs involve use of the Permissions wizard, and the membership invitation / acceptance process.

Making either a private or a team blog starts from the Permissions wizard. Just keep the multiple functions, and the different links, in mind.

The Permissions wizard, on the dashboard Settings - Basic page, is how we setup both private and team blogs.

You invite members - prospective authors and readers - using "Add authors" and "Add readers", respectively.

Start from the dashboard Settings - Basic page, in both cases.

Start from the Settings - Basic page.

Find the Permissions wizard.



The "Add authors" link is used for adding both administrators and authors.

Click on "Add authors", to add prospective administrators and authors.

Click on "Add authors", and add prospective blog authors.


Add a list of names / email addresses, with entries separated by commas.

Paste or type email addresses of prospective administrators and authors, into the "Add authors" window. Or use "Choose from Contacts".

The existing "Blog Authors" list is updated, and invitations are sent, when you hit "Save changes".

To make an administrator, wait until the invited author has accepted membership. Then, change "Author" to "Admin", in "Blog Authors". Don't change an author to administrator, unless you understand the risks!

The "Add readers" link is used for adding readers.

Click on "Add readers", to add prospective readers.

Click on "Add readers", and add prospective blog readers.


Add a list of names / email addresses, with entries separated by commas.

Paste or type email addresses of prospective readers, into the "Add readers" window. Or use "Choose from Contacts".

The existing "Blog Readers" list is updated, and invitations are sent, when you hit "Save changes".

Select either "Only blog authors" or "Only these readers", for private blogs.

You can make a blog private to Authors - or have both Authors and Readers. Select "Only blog authors" or "Only these readers", respectively.

Each prospective member must accept membership.

For an invited author or reader to become an active member, they must open the email and accept membership.

Prospective authors and readers are listed as "open invitations" - under either the "Blog Authors" or "Blog Readers" window - until they accept the membership invitation.



Accepting membership involves opening the emailed membership invitation, and clicking on the invitation link. The new member can use an existing Blogger account - or setup a new Blogger account, on the fly.

A GMail account is not required - just a Blogger / Google account - existing or new.

Remember membership limits.

Whether you are making a private or a team blog, remember that every blog is limited to an absolute total of 100 members.

• You.
• Any additional administrators.
• Authors.
• Designated Readers.

Designated readers (in a private blog) are part of the 100 member limit. Un designated readers (in a public blog) are not part of the limit. A public blog can have any number of readers.

Membership revocation may not be immediate.

You can revoke or update membership of an administrator, author, and / or reader - but membership changes don't always take effect, immediately.

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Making a #Blogger blog with administrators, authors, and / or readers starts with the Permissions wizard - and continues with each prospective member accepting membership, using email sent by the Permissions wizard.

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/blogger/Vd_L5xAtKFY

Use Google Drive For Team Document Development

Ever since AutoSave was developed, and added to posts being edited, people have been having problems when editing un published posts.

We see periodic cries of anguish, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue.

I had been working on this post, for weeks! Just as I selected a portion to delete, AutoSave kicked in, highlighted the whole post, and saved an empty post!!

and

I was working on this post, along with another member of the team. We keep making changes, and erasing each others changes!!!

Blogger allows long period editing of un published posts - and they provide team blog ownership - but you'll do better to not use either possibility, with any important projects.

I've been warning people, for a long time, that Blogger is not a Content Management System.

Blogger provides neither Draft mode edits, nor team membership, as compared to a CMS. Both Draft editing, and team blog membership, provides potential for loss of content, that only you (the original blog owner) will be able to recover.

AutoSave, And Editing A Draft Post
We've known about AutoSave, and it's ability to destroy carefully edited posts, for years. AutoSave is known for it's tendency to cause the entire post to be highlighted - and, after you just pressed delete, to save a newly deleted, empty post.

If you, as the author, have been working on a post for days - or weeks, and you save an empty post, your work is now gone. And Draft mode provides no consistent ability to recover previous versions of the post.

Team Membership
Team membership provides either authors (who can only edit their own posts), or administrators (who can edit, and destroy, everything). There is no middle ground.

If you want to have people able to collaboratively edit a post, you have to make them all administrators. When you do that, every team members absolutely must be someone whom you can trust.

If one team member takes it upon herself (himself) to take over the blog, and remove the other members (and you), this is a problem that you must handle - since you made the decision to give control of the blog, to that person. Blogger Support cannot get involved, legally, since it is (was) your blog.

And, even if team members play by the rules, two people, editing the same post, can easily interfere with each other. The Blogger post editor provides no ability for two team members to edit the same post, simultaneously.

Use Google Drive For Collaborative, Long Term Editing
Having noted the limitations, Google has provided a solution. Google Drive provides a real, Content Management System approach to long term, group development of documents, with version based recovery.

Just start a document, and invite people to help you edit the document. When the document is ready, embed it into your blog. You, and your team, can work on the document - and your only very trusted blog administrators can work on your blog.

If you don't like the embedding options, you can download the document as Rich Text or Plain Text, then copy the text into a new blog post and format the post as you like. If AutoSave misbehaves, you have the original Drive document, as a backup.

You can keep the blog, and the document, separate. When you embed the document, you can let some people continue to edit, while others can read the blog / document, as developed - and the general public can, as you like, be unable to view either one. And your trusted administrators / webmasters can develop the host blog.

Blogger and Google Drive, together, provide interesting possibilities. Imagine the possibilities. Use Google Drive, For Team Document Development Use Google Drive, To Develop Important And Group Documents Use Google Drive, To Develop Important And Group Documents

Private / Team Blog Owners, Using Non GMail EMail

For some time, we've known about a problem with non GMail based Blogger accounts, and comment moderation / notification email.

That problem, though mildly annoying to the blog owners affected, has an easy workaround - use a GMail based email address, for comment moderation / notification. That's a quick 15 minute fix.

1. Setup a GMail account, if necessary.
2. Change the comment moderation / notification email addresses, for the blog(s) affected, to use the GMail email account.

GMail email accounts are, after all, free.

Besides the ease of putting a workaround in place, that problem is not all that severe. The problem with comment moderation / notification email, being filtered, only affects blog owners who moderate before publishing. Owners who moderate after publishing can always use the Blogger dashboard Comments wizard, at their convenience, to moderate.

This week, we realised that the base problem - rejected email because of non GMail based Blogger accounts - may also affect owners of private / team blogs, who have prospective non GMail members. This specific problem probably affects less blogs - but it won't have as easy a workaround.

Owners of private / team blogs, who use non GMail based Blogger accounts, may not find an easy workaround for the problem of Blogger blog membership invitations being rejected by a non GMail email system.

The base problem, as it affects comment moderation / notification, is obvious. The owner of an affected blog will see all comment moderation / notification email, sent to him, rejected by his own non GMail email system. Anybody who owns a blog that's affected will be sending all comment moderation / notification email to the non GMail email system.

The base problem, as it affects private / team blog membership invitations, is more subtle. This problem will affect blogs owned under non GMail based Blogger accounts - and / or when sending invitations to prospective members who use non GMail email systems. Email within Google - Blogger to GMail - should not be subject to the same filtering, since the email will actually originate from a Google server.

With all that, this problem will be more annoying, in that it will involve email rejected by the prospective member email system - not by the blog owner email system. Prospective blog members won't likely be receptive to changing their email addresses, just to receive a membership invitation. Also, the blog owner may not always see the email rejection - and may not know that the invitations are being dropped - and may not be found in the "Bulk" / "Spam" folders.

To avoid this problem, membership invitations, from any affected blogs, will have to have be sent from a GMail based Blogger account. This will require a GMail based Blogger account, added as an additional administrator - and it will involve the known risks of having an extra administrator account. Only administrators can send membership invitations.

This problem will probably have less exposure than the one with comment moderation / notification email - but to the blog owners affected, it will seem more severe. It will actually prevent prospective members, using non GMail based email systems, from joining the blogs affected. And, it will require a blog owner to add a GMail based Blogger account, as a blog member.

Please, NEVER Share Your Blogger Account!

We see signs of naivete, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken. too often.

I gave my boyfriend (girlfriend, former spouse, Internet acquaintance, whatever) my account password - and now, I can't access my account.

This is a problem which Blogger cannot resolve, in any way.

Please, never ever share your Blogger account. Blogger accounts, like Blogger blogs, are free.

If someone who you know would like to read your private blog - or contribute to your team blog - add that person as a blog member, and let her / him use his / her own Blogger account (new, or existing).

There is absolutely no need for you to ever share your Blogger account.

Use private / team blog membership, when applicable.

Shared Blogger accounts carry all of the risks of team blog ownership - and more. Do not share your personal Blogger account to provide private blog membership, or team blog ownership.

Blogger does not provide an option to protect blog content, using a shared password. If you want to password protect blog content, make the blog private, and add readers. Let your readers use their own password (with their own Blogger account).

Split a blog into a security cluster, if necessary.

If you want to password protect a portion of a Blogger blog, break the blog into two portions - the public portion, and the private portion, and provide the private portion as a private blog.

Private blogs, with large reader communities, will require imaginative setup.

If you must have a private blog with more than 100 members, and you cannot use Google+ as an email based distribution medium, setup a read only account to access the blog - and let the members share that Blogger account.

If you setup a shared Blogger account as a blog member (read only), you'll need to maintain a separate mailing list of all shared members. Use BCC to email everybody (don't share everybody's email address with everybody else), giving them the shared account name and password. Save the mailing list, carefully.

With 100+ shared account members, chances are that one day, somebody will change the password on the account, and lock out everybody else. You'll have to then setup a new Blogger account, make that account a new read only blog member, cancel the old member, and email everybody with the new shared account name and password.

If you must have a community, of over 100 members, and let everybody share (not just read), use Google+ - or setup a wiki based website. Your needs are far beyond the ability of Blogger.

When another person works on the blog, they can use their own account.

If you need someone else to work on the blog, make them a blog member or administrator - with their own Blogger account. If their usefulness is temporary, when they are done, revoke their access to the blog - then verify that they did not leave any back door code behind.

Your account name and password is your personal identity.

In any case, keep your account and password (and the blog ownership) private, to you.

Use common sense. Do not share your Blogger account.

• Do not share your Blogger account with your boyfriend.
• Do not share your Blogger account with your girlfriend.
• Do not share your Blogger account with your husband.
• Do not share your Blogger account with your wife.
• Do not share your Blogger account with your boss.
• Do not share your Blogger account with your employee.
• Do not share your Blogger account with your collaborator.

I've warned everybody that team blogs are security risks - but they are way safer than team Blogger accounts.

• Do not wear other peoples underpants.
• Do not share your Blogger account.

Both are rules to live by.

How To Not Get Content For Your Blog

One of the oddest displays of naivete we see, from some blog owners, asking in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I?, would be

How do I let anybody post to my blog?

These owners have no idea how popular they would be, with spammers, were this to happen.

If you have a blog, and you want to let up to 99 of your closest friends publish their thoughts to your blog, you can setup a team blog, and have fun. Beyond that limit, you cannot - nor should you - go.

Occasionally, in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? we see the anguish

Where did the spam, on my blog, come from?

These queries come from people whose blogs have been successfully attacked, by hackers or spammers, and who now see content which they do not appreciate, being posted in their blog.

Leaving blog open to public authorship will make your blog spammer friendly.

If you were to voluntarily let anybody post in your blog, without requiring that anybody hack to gain control surreptitiously, your blog will become very popular with spammers.

After spammers saturate your blog content, your genuine friends will find elsewhere to post - and your remaining friends will be spammers. And your new friends (spammers) will tell their friends (more spammers), about a blog which accepts ads (posts) from everybody.

Your blog will be late classified as a spam host.

Shortly after this happens, your blog will be - righteously - classified as a spam host, and taken offline. And if you cannot show any non spam content, it will likely stay offline.

We're sorry, but your blog cannot be restored. It was recently confirmed as spam. Blogger suggests that you read the TOS.

You are responsible for content distributed by your "guest authors".

Another thing to consider, as the owner of a "host" blog, where "guests" post contributed material, is that you will be responsible for the content posted by your guests - whether you let the world post - or designated members.

• If you allow guest posts in your blog, you, as the blog owner, are responsible for the content of those posts.
• If your "guest" posts the same material elsewhere (as in his own blog, or a third person's blog), and search engines index both blogs, both blogs may receive "duplicated content" penalties.
• Nobody benefits, from duplicated content.

Unfortunately, you have to develop your blog content, yourself. Don't expect the public to provide your content for you - and plan to keep your blog online for long.

Blog Membership Is The Responsibility Of The Blog Administrators

We see occasional confusion in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? about gaining (or re gaining) access to a given blog.

I made my buddy an administrator - and now, I can't control the blog. Who do I contact to get this corrected?

and

I was reader of a blog which is now private. Can Blogger provide me contact to the blog owner?

Not everybody realises that Blogger does not provide blog access / membership control.

Though Blogger / Google is theoretically responsible (to a very limited degree) for content of the blogs which they host, access and membership control of any blog is the responsibility of the blog administrators / owners. And control is ownership.

If you provide your friend control of your blog, and your friend removes your control, the blog is now your (former) friend's responsibility. Blogger will not help you regain control, either.

If you want access to a private blog, Blogger won't help you there, either. Blogger supports our desire to publish a blog anonymously and in complete privacy - and if we (or anybody else) publishes a blog privately, they are responsible for proving contact information.

If you lose control of your blog, by forgetting the owning account name / password, and losing access to any backup tokens, you have lost control of your blog. Hoping that a responsible owner still exists, Blogger will retain the blog in question, until a responsible owner shows up. Threatening a lawsuit, because Blogger has stolen your blog, is frivolous misuse of court time.

In neither case, will you do anything but waste time, by posting in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? and demanding personal attention, from a real person in Google.

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Setup An Audit Trail For Your Team Blog

Ever since Blogger gave us the ability to have team blogs, blog owners have been asking

How do I track what my authors are posting?

as if Blogger blogs have an audit trail option. The unfortunate truth is that Blogger is a website publishing platform - it is (or was, at one time) called

Blogger One Button Publishing

Blogger, quite simply, is not a Content Management System.

However, even if Blogger does not provide a packaged audit trail, which would be a standard feature in any CMS, this does not mean that we cannot set one up, with very little work. If you publish a team blog (or a single owner blog), you already have this option.

The display medium, for a Blogger blog audit trail, is quite simple - your email Inbox. Both Comments and Posts, when published, can post to your Inbox. How to generate the audit trail depends upon whether the blog is public, or private.

Any blog, public or private, can provide an audit trail using email from comments (aka "Comment Notification"), and from posts (aka "BlogSend").

A public blog, which publishes a blog feed, can alternately provide an audit trail using FeedBurner email distribution. Formatting options for FeedBurner email distribution are much more flexible.

Whether your audit trail starts from BlogSend / Comment Notification, or FeedBurner email, just setup a few email filters, and store all Blogger audit trail email in a properly named folder. And there's your audit trail.

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Disabled Blogger / GMail / Google Accounts, When Reenabled, Leave Deleted Blogs

We've been advising people about the complications involved in recovering disabled GMail / Google accounts, for a few months. Recently, we've been seeing a new complication, in this scenario.

I tried logging in to GMail, and it says that my account has been disabled. So I tried verifying by sending codes to my mobile phone - I managed to log in, and it now redirects into my dashboard. Unfortunately, it now tells me

The blog has been removed.

So, I have my Blogger / GMail account back - but no blog!

Apparently, there is a delay, between reinstatement of the Blogger / GMail account, and recovery of any owned blog(s), deleted when the account is disabled.

Shortly after seeing one's disabled GMail / Google account re enabled, the blog owner will login to Blogger, and see the next disappointment - all owned blogs will probably show as removed (when they are listed, at all). Members of team blogs, even the people whose GMail / Google accounts are not disabled - may see the blog(s) in question disappear from their dashboards, also.

There is good news here. Blogger Support is now aware of this problem, and is hoping to resolve it shortly.

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A Blog Will Always Have At Least One Administrator

Almost daily, we see a confused query in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken

I 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.

1. Invite a new member (if necessary).
2. Wait while the new member accepts the invitation (again, if necessary).
3. Make the new member an administrator.
4. 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.

Private And Team Blog Membership Invitations Are Subject To Abuse

When you invite a designated reader to your private blog, or invite a member to your private or team blog, you use the Settings - Permissions wizard to send an email to the prospective member or reader. You select the email address to send the invitation to, based upon the known address of your prospective member or reader.

The prospective member / reader, upon receiving the email, is free to send it on, to any other email address that he or she uses, and to accept the membership by using any Blogger account - current, or setup at the time of accepting the invitation.

This allows anonymity in membership, by permitting somebody to accept membership, period. You have no way of knowing, nor should you know, what account or what email address your new member uses to accept membership. The only thing that you know is that a membership invitation was accepted, by a given prospective member.

Unfortunately, just as you don't know what account the membership was accepted under, you have no way of knowing how many people other than your targeted member were sent a copy of your invitation. That's a possible reason for some blogs mysteriously exceeding the 100 member limit.

The bottom line here is, just as you must choose your blog administrators wisely, so should you choose your members and readers. Don't just send an invitation to somebody, without considering the possibilities.

Identifying Yourself, As The Owner Of Your Blog

Occasionally, somebody in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? wonders

Why don't I have a Layouts (or Template) link in my dashboard?

or

How do I setup additional team members, without the right link in Permissions?

and the first question is

Are you logged in as the blog administrator / owner?

It's not difficult to verify the owner of your blog, if you have a public profile, and a standard template.

In your browser, select View, then "Page Source" or "Source". Or, use an HTTP text proxy. Look at the code for this blog, heavily trimmed and broken, for 'link rel="me"'.

<head>

...

<link rel="service.post" type="application/atom+xml"
title="The Real Blogger Status - Atom"
href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/24069595/posts/default" />
<link rel="EditURI" type="application/rsd+xml"
title="RSD" href="http://www.blogger.com/rsd.g?blogID=24069595" />
<link rel="me" href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/08069634565746003311" />

There it is!

https://www.blogger.com/profile/08069634565746003311

or maybe you'd see

https://plus.google.com/114025756997654559499

That's my profile. Click on either link.

Find the Profile URL, and follow the link - and look at the Profile.

So, look at the header code for your blog, locate the "me" link, extract the attached URL, and follow the link- either for a Blogger Profile, or for a Google+ Profile.

If there's no "me" link - which is normal, for blogs under team ownership - look carefully in the sidebar - if the blog has a Profile / "About Us" gadget, you may be able to find a "www.blogger.com/profile/ ..." or "plus.google.com/ ..." link there.

With some team blogs, you may find a list of each individual profile, for the whole team. Each individual profile should have a different Profile ID in the attached URL - again, "www.blogger.com/profile/ ..." or "plus.google.com/ ...".

Then, find the Profile URL from your dashboard - and compare the two.

Take each available "www.blogger.com/profile/ ..." or "plus.google.com/ ..." link, paste it into your browser, and take a look - or click on the link, if possible. Then, go to your dashboard, and find the Profile URL, from the dashboard. Compare the two profiles - are they the same?

If not, you probably inadvertently created a second (or third) Blogger account, possibly as you incorrectly transferred a blog from one Blogger account to another.

Learn to login to Blogger properly - and avoid multi account confusion.

When you login to Blogger, first clear cache, cookies, and active login sessions - then make sure that you login using the proper Blogger account. If necessary, recover the account information, and start over.

Remember that when you login, Blogger will not select the account for you. If you have FeedBurner, GMail, Picasa, or any of the other many Google services under another account, you'll need to use two different browsers - or a different computer.

Note the limitations of the procedure, when the owner wants privacy.

Note that this procedure works only for blogs and profiles that are properly made public. If a blogger has chosen to not make the profile public, or if the blog in question is published as private (with designated readers), you won't get the details needed here. And if the blog has multiple administrators, it probably won't have the "me" meta tag in the header.

In extreme cases, you'll need assistance from Blogger, using the Having trouble signing in? wizard. Now, you have to hope that your account isn't intentionally based on a bogus email address.

Transferring A Blog From One EMail Account To Another - An Alternate

I've written about the simple procedure of transferring a blog from one Blogger account to another, and how simple it should be.

Sometimes reality steps in - and the normal transfer procedure won't work.

• Maybe you don't want your EMail (GMail) address known by the current blog owner.
• Maybe the two EMail addresses are thoroughly tangled - you invite the second EMail address as a blog member but just don't get the email - even in "Bulk" or "Spam"! What to do?
• Maybe you opened the invitation email under one account, but were logged in to Blogger using the other account. This can happen if you execute the transfer, using just one browser.

Sometimes, having ignored one or two basic (to me) rules of Blogger account existence, you just can't send a membership invitation to a second Blogger account.

Here's where we think outside the box.

• Setup an extra email account, based upon any non GMail email address. I'll suggest Yahoo.com as an example here - but you can use whatever email service works for you.
• Go to Settings - Permissions, and add your new Yahoo email address as an invited member.
• For the Yahoo email part of the process, use a separate browser. If this browser has been used before, clear cache, cookies, and authenticated sessions, restart the browser, and login again to Yahoo. Start with a clean browser here.
• Go to your Yahoo email account, and open your email. Remember to look in your "Bulk" or "Spam" folder, if you don't see anything in "Inbox".
• Accept membership in the blog.
• When you're asked for an account / password, select "Use a different account"!
• Enter the second Blogger account name (address), and the correct password for that account.
• Go back to the Permissions display, and refresh.
• Verify that you have a new member in the Author list.
• Return to the normal procedure, and complete the transfer.

A little extra work, that. But if you need to transfer control of the blog, to make it possible to manage the blog from the other Blogger account, it's probably worth it.

And, next time you transfer blog ownership, you will (hopefully) use two browsers, in the transfer.

Make A Team Blog And Keep The Members Separate

Occasionally, we see a confused query

How do I allow access to my blog, and keep my GMail account private to me?

or

How do I have my friends using my blog, and each person use their own name in publishing posts?

These are people who do not understand the concept of team blogs.

Team blogs use a separate Blogger / Google account for each member, they do not require everybody to share one Blogger / Google account. You add each team member as an Author, in Settings - Permissions. When you do this, note two cogent details.

1. Each blog is limited to 100 Members (Authors + Administrators + Owners), in total.
2. You can invite members, using the email address that you know. People can accept membership using what email adddress (Google account) they wish. People may be able to accept multiple member entries, which may affect the 99 author limit.

If either of those two details are a problem to you, perhaps you should look at Content Management Systems. A CMS may give you more control over access to your blog.

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Accepting Membership In Another Blog May Change Post Editor Settings

Recently, we've seen an occasional question about mysteriously changed post editor selections.

Where did my options toolbar go?

or

Why do I now see the new post editor?

Right now, as part of the deployment of the new post editor, there are 3 selections, in Settings - Basic - Global Settings - Select post editor.

• Updated editor
• Old editor
• Hide compose mode

If you make this change under one blog, you'll find it true for all of your blogs. I've also noted, under some circumstances, that when you accept membership in someone else's blog, and the other person was using a different post editor selection, the other person's selection will now be yours, globally.

The next time that you accept membership in a blog, check your post editor setting. If the owner of the blog was using a different setting, your setting may have changed.

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Keep Malicious Content Out Of Your Blog

Every day or so, we see reported from concerned bloggers, about unknown content in their blogs.

Where did those ads come from? I didn't add them!

or

How do I keep this other blogger from posting porn links in my blog?

As we add content to our blogs, and make them fun, interesting, and shiny, to attract readers, we risk adding undesirable content. This is a constant problem.

The bad guys are out there - and the more fun, interesting, and shiny your blog is, the more it's likely to have readership, reputation, and value.

The more readership, reputation, and value that your blog has, the more attractive it is to the bad guys. And the bad guys have various ways to attack a given blog.

• Malicious Comments
• Malicious Posts
• Malicious Accessories
• Malicious Blog Members
• BlogList / Feed Gadgets

Malicious Comments

One of the easiest way to add third party content to your blog is from allowing comments.

Comments are contributed by people who, at best, you simply do not know. Any content from someone who you do not know can always be malicious, or obnoxious in some way.

Some blog owners will try to identify and block individual commentors. I will continue to insist that anybody who you should fear will not be bothered greatly by anything that you can do here.

You absolutely must moderate comments, or risk having a blog known for hosting malicious links - or worse.

Malicious Posts

Besides comments, posts are a constant concern. If you have a team blog, you have to be able to trust the other members in the blog.

Post moderation, using post editor to publish, isn't an option. Anybody who you make an author can publish what they feel like publishing. You can only moderate posts after they are published, when using post editor.

An alternative to using post editor to publish is Mail-to-Blogger, where contributions are emailed to the blog. If Mail-to-Blogger is setup to publish straight to the blog, and the bad guys figure out your MTB account and password, you'll have malicious content a plenty.

You can moderate before publishing, using Mail-to-Blogger.

Malicious Accessories

Any time that you install third party accessories of any type, you are placing your blog at risk.

Don't be overly paranoid - you have to make your blog interesting to your readers. But do keep the risks in mind.

This is similar to layered security for your computer, which is a related concern here.

Malicious Blog Members

Sometimes, possibly having unwisely installed a third party accessory, the install process may have enabled the addition of an unknown member to the blog. The unwanted content may be added by the attacker, using this unknown blog member.

If none of the above advice offers you an explanation for the existence of unwanted content, check your blog member list.

BlogList / Feed Gadgets

Occasionally, we may Follow a blog where the owner will later decide to try to get more traffic to the blog, and will redirect the blog feed to a cloud of random blogs. If you are Following such a blog, or have such a blog in your BlogList or Feed gadget, you'll see your BlogList or Feed gadget show odd content - and frequent spam.