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Blogger Help!

Shortfatdyke

08:46 / 02.08.02

please, i'm desperate here - i've just spent the last hour trying to set up a weblog via blogger. i'm not computer genius, but it seems to me that blogger is just crap - when i finally managed to set up an account - after about 10 minutes of just sitting around waiting for the damn thing to be generated, i posted. nothing happened - another 10 minutes of watching the page apparently being generated. so i tried again and again and now i find i have posted three times. i've tried editing and deleting the extra posts, but again, it just endlessly pretends to be doing something. i'm getting really pissed off with it. is blogger just too overused to be worth bothering with? or am i even more stupid at this techno stuff than i thought?

that

08:48 / 02.08.02

You? A blog? Me, gobsmacked.

Ellis says:

08:58 / 02.08.02

I had this problem about three weeks ago when I tried to redo my blog, I know what the site address is, and it says I have posted, but when i go to view the page it says "page not found". In the end I just gave up.

Maybe the site is just really busy at this time..?

Shortfatdyke

09:06 / 02.08.02

i think the problem is that blogger is just too popular - i'm now getting messages up saying i can't post anything because publishing has to be 'shared out'. i've finally managed to delete the extra posts, but even now i'm getting to my home page and all there is on it is my name - no one can read my stuff! i'm really disappointed - i keep being told how great blogging is - and i do want a place i can vent and put essays and the like - and i think i'm just wasting my time. back to pen and paper, perhaps.

Ellis says:

09:10 / 02.08.02

There are other alternatives- diaryland, livejournal etc which you could try.

I just found blogger useless; and blogging isn't all it's cracked up to be. Especially when your boss reads it...

Ariadne

09:10 / 02.08.02

Can't you just set up a Web page? A lot of ISPs seem to give a small amount of Web publishing space free with each email account - it might be more bother to start with but easier in the longer term? I'm not sure, having tried neither.

The Return Of Rothkoid

09:16 / 02.08.02

Ellis: you don't know the half of it.

SFD: add me to your team as an admin and I'll have a poke around if you like...

Less searchable M0rd4nt

09:27 / 02.08.02

Blogger is glitchy at the mo', sfd; the bloke that runs it (and yes, that's bloke, singular, for the most part) has just re-jigged everything. Quick fixes that might work:

First, log out, then log back in. This works a lot of the time. If not, try again later.

Was there any HTML in your post, such as a link? Blogger tends to choke on bad HTML. Try editing the offending post; if it won't let you, go into safe mode.

If that doesn't work, try resetting your template (save the HTML first if you've made any changes to the template.)

If not, check the "Help" and "Discuss" pages. See if other people are having the same problem.

Blogger's not a bad old service. I find that simply leaving it alone for a couple of hours to get over whatever tantrum it's throwing generally sorts out most problems.

Shortfatdyke

09:42 / 02.08.02

thanks for the advice and help - i've decided not to bother and have created a diaryland account. it looks alright - i've got rid of the godawful pastel colours! and if one bloke is dealing with blogger, no wonder there are problems. in contrast, diaryland was quick and easy to sort out. i know way too little to do a webpage, i just want a place to vent/write essay and stuff.

Saveloy

15:03 / 28.11.02

Bugger, wish I'd seen this thread before I started Bollop. Is anyone at all familiar with Blog*Spot? There doesn't seem to be any way to list or even search for blogs, you just get the 'Ten most recent' and 'Notable Blogs'. Am I missing something? I ask cos I fancy having a stroll around blog land with a view to nicking a nice set of HTML.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

16:26 / 28.11.02

Blogger has a directory of weblogs, which doesn't work. There's a search function, which also doesn't work. They haven't worked for as long as I have been blogging (about a year), possibly longer.

The thing is due for a new look soon, so maybe a few things'll get fixed. Somehow I doubt it.

Hieronymus

20:11 / 10.07.03

Does anyone know when Blogger will shake the bugs out of their new and improved setup? I'm encountering pure hell with it lately; posts from the past that mysteriously disappear, errors messages and devoured new posts.

Tryphena Absent

22:09 / 10.07.03

Really? It's mostly working as usual for me... the occasional posting error but that seems up to standard. The new setup's been working in tandem with the old for a month or so and actually it's been just as efficient as the old ignoring the first couple of days. I think it's more a case of it's your turn for the horrors to happen. I've had posts eaten, error messages, bananas appear on my background (normally pale blue I might add) and my archives used to disappear every so often. Mordant's advice above seems rather accurate.

Oh god, I bet I've jinxed myself now.

w1rebaby

23:10 / 10.07.03

sounds like Blogger's getting as reliable as Livejournal... at least with Blogger, if it's down your entire fucking blog doesn't disappear

*whispers... movable type... movable type...*

I swear, I'd move my whole blog happily over to MT if it weren't for all the LJ people who read it.

w1rebaby

23:12 / 10.07.03

and the fact that I've bought a permanent membership

The Return Of Rothkoid

00:05 / 11.07.03

I think their new backend is fuckwitted, to be perfectly honest. It devours posts (something I discovered after about 25k (no, it's not that - the post limit is about 100k) post went out the spout - also discovered that w.bloggar erases your savefile once a "successful" result from Blogger is sent back) and seems to have been uniformly arse-paining. Their "support system" (if you get a "BIG POST ERROR - REPORT IT!" link on your page, you report it and they don't bother to answer) is nonexistent - something I can understand with a small team operation - and to keep denying the big holes in the service is pretty shortsighted. It's alienating a fuck of a lot of people.

As soon as I can be arsed, MT for me. Fridge: why should people merely reading it stop you moving?

w1rebaby

00:14 / 11.07.03

I dunno, I like to be read. I know my readership would drop off if I went pure MT - though it might go up again, because Google is much better at indexing static pages than dynamic ones, so I'd get people finding me that way.

Also, the LJ comment system kicks arse, though not many people outside of LJ leave comments. And I'd have to restructure my whole blog since I use MT for content management at the moment.

I wrote an article about the matter, but I'm rethinking some of it since my posting style has moved away from the usual LJ "dozen short posts a day about random shite" thing to longer pieces.

The Return Of Rothkoid

00:35 / 11.07.03

So you're ON LJ? Or what? I can't tell from your posts.

There's a perfectly adequate comment system on MT, I thought - and I've never seen any problems with search engines with MT blogs. If positioning worries you that much, get DumpTruck and submit yourself to the top 15 engines - they'll actively spider you then. I know people who have changed to MT and their readership's altered not one whit. Fuck, I don't update at all through the week, occasionally, and my readership doesn't change - I really don't think it's as big a deal as you think.

w1rebaby

11:04 / 11.07.03

I have a site that runs MT, which I use to manage things like photo albums, references to old pages that I did, things I want to keep. I also use LJ, embedded into the front page. It looks like a normal blog but all of the LJ entries are stored on LJ and served back to my page when requested, which saves me a lot of space. It just means I have to rely on LJ's reliability every time anyone wants to read it, that's all. It's also not (easily) searchable, and a bit slower.

MT has a decent comments system, true, but I've been spoilt by LJ's, which really is good. It's threaded, you can screen and edit comments or block certain groups, people get mailed when someone replies to them... it's more like a slashdot thing. Which is one of the reason LJ's grown so many communities. Mostly discussing absolute shite of course....

Ech, swings and roundabouts innit.

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