1 EAGLETON NOTES: Blogger's At It Again

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Tuesday 29 May 2018

Blogger's At It Again

Unfortunately the latest Blogger update (they have, amongst other things, removed Open ID and third part app support)  has left many people, including me, with blogs that no longer provide notifications by email.  So without going to my blog and checking each post or the comments in the dashboard I have no idea who is commenting or when a comment has been made.

What is even worse is that I can't see comments on some of your posts without having to visit old posts all the time to find out what comments have been made. For some people that doesn't matter because they don't read other people's comments but for me that is an important part of the blogging experience. At the moment the only blogs I am sure that I am getting comments from are YP's, Cro's Monica's and Amy's.

There are lots of comments on the Blogger forum about the problem which seems unsolvable by users (or is the correct word insoluble?) and Blogger has so far made no comment.  Hopefully normal service will be resumed eventually but until then if I miss your comments please forgive me.

26 comments:

  1. Same hear Graham. No email notification. It must be soluble even Bisto is and that's been around for yonks. Blogger can be a right pain.

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    1. It's a right royal nuisance, Adrian, and I hope that they fix it soon. Looking at the forum we are nowhere near alone.

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  2. Why can't they just find a good plan and stick with it? Constant "upgrades" are the bane of my work life, and now my personal life too... I just found out that Blogger has trashed photos from all the old blog posts... I had gone back to an earlier part of my blog to see a photo I posted, and NONE of them were there! Just blank spaces! I was counting on my blog as a journal, so that I could look back and see what I'd written and posted photos of... well, guess what.

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    1. Mrs S. I gather that their principal alteration was to stop Open ID (whatever that is) but one can still set one's blog to receive comments from anyone and not just Google account holders. You scared the pants off me saying that old photos had gone. Fortunately (for me, though not for you) mine are still there. I've been gradually getting my New Zealand blog turned into books but it's a long (and costly) job and I've not started on Eagleton Notes yet.

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    2. Mrs Splapthing, I suspect you uploaded the snaps from a third party host like Flickr. If you exceed your free allowance then they will usually ask you to stump up a penny or two for a Pro account or they delete the early pictures to make room for the new ones. It's fair enough. Just pull them off your hard drive and go to the blog, click edit and reload them. Have fun and remember don't rely on free stuff: the internet is not Marxist.

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  3. I hadn't noticed a problem, but then I haven't been blogging much of late so that could be why! Perhaps it is all to do with this GDPR business. The emails you want you now wont get and those you don't want that truly are a nuisance of course will still keep coming through!

    Why they can't stick to the adage 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it' I'll never know. Perhaps it is because someone needs to justify their job?

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    1. Serenata I think it's to do with getting rid of Open ID (whatever that was) and third party apps so, perhaps, they could affect the GDPR situation for Google. It's certainly a pain though.

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  4. I hadn't noticed a problem but di notice that things wee changing. Now you've sent me off looking for a problem.

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  5. Oh dear, another Blogger bug. If it helps, I never got email notification, but do see the comments listed when I check my blog. There is a menu down the left hand side on the dashboard which has an Awaiting Moderation tab. (I am sure that I am teaching my grandmother how to suck eggs here by the way :)) I have just left a comment on your blog and was glad to receive yours on mine recently. It is my experience that Blogger messes up but sooner or later enough people moan about it in the forums and they sort it out.

    My difficulty in changing the hard to read colours on my blog did seem to disappear - at least, for long enough for me to be able to make the blog reasonably legible. (I dare not try to alter it again though just in case it has messed up again. )

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    1. Thanks, Jenny, and, yes, I am aware of the dashboard facility but it's a hassle and it doesn't help me read the comments on other people's blogs without actually re-visiting all the posts continually which is, of course, quite impracticable. Fortunately it seems that the problem is confined to a relatively small number of blogs that I follow.

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  6. Touch wood (which is making typing my response difficult to do...touching my head and trying to touch-typing at the same time...you see my problem)....I've not yet experienced any problems...other than the one described.

    I, too, never get email notifications...I never ticked that box. There are a lot of boxes I don't tick! :)

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    1. No, Lee, quite a few people don't tick the box. One person told me that they never read other people's comments but, to me, that defeats the overall blog experience.

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  7. Like Jenny and Lee, I do (or did) not use email notification about comments. To not miss out on new posts on the blogs I "follow", I have my dash board; same is true for comments on my blog, like Jenny describes.
    For checking whether my comments on other blogs have had a reply, I go back to the post where I left it after a day or two. And to be honest, I always find it a little disappointing when the blog author does not reply. It is like talking into thin air and I wonder whether I should bother leaving a comment next time.

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    1. Meike I agree that when there is no response it can be disappointing although some of the blogs I follow don't really call for comments or responses but I tend to comment anyway just so they know I've visited. However I do like with some blogs to see the whole picture and other people's comments contribute to that.

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  8. Testing, testing! I'm here and following you faithfully. Hope you get this response.

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    1. Thank you Jill. It's good to know that you are still there.

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  9. Sometimes I worry that Blogger will one day pull the plug on the whole blogging caboodle and suddenly all those memories, all that writing, all those interesting contacts with other people will evaporate into thin air. This is in fact what happened with the Google-hosted photo sharing website Panoramio. Another thing about Blogger is that we seem unable to communicate with the organisation. It operates in a secret bubble.

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    1. That worries me YP and I do back up my blog quite frequently but the photos would not necessarily be uploaded. I'm having my NZ blog turned into books but it's a long and rather costly process.

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    2. See my reply to Mrs Slapmything above, these folk are in business and entitled to do what they like. Back up anything you consider important and if you think DVDs will last think again. SSDs are the currant best but totally bomb proof is pen and paper and archive prints. The latter are best kept in the dark. There is no such thing as free or permanent.

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  10. and thanks for the warning - went to check my own blog and lovely to find a comment from you :)

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  11. I'm not getting any email notifications eiher and feel the same frustration. I also somehow missed this post unti now.

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  12. Just made a test on my own blog and before I replied to comments on my last post there, I clicked on the "notify me" for that post, and found that this made my own replies drop in as emails. Whether that will bring me other peoples' as well remains to be seen. I'll try to remember to do it on my next post as soon as I've published, and see if that brings the comments to my email inbox.

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Comment moderation is activated 14 days after the post to minimise unwanted comments and, hopefully, make sure that I see and reply to wanted comments.