Blogger Errors

January 11, 2004 5:01 PM

blogger woes: I've been trying publish (for the very first time) via Blogger, but every single time I press 'publish' I get the same error - "There Were Errors in Publishing. dk.eos.net.FtpError: Login incorrect." I know for a fact that the ftp username and password Im using are correct, so what the heck am I doing wrong?? I've been fidding with this for over an hour and I'm losing my mind!! I thought Blogger was supposed to be easy!
posted by anastasiav to computers & internet (9 comments total)

log into your site and publish a file with an FTP program, then if successful, go back to blogger and redo every single setting to match. If the problem still persists, send an email to blogger's help system.
posted by mathowie at 5:05 PM on January 11, 2004

It's possible that there is a problem on their end right now, but you can troubleshoot your own setup by attempting to connect via your own FTP app. Download WSFTP or something like it, and make sure you're able to connect to the same server name, with the same login name and password. My web host has pulled a switcheroo on me once or twice whereupon I have to suddenly connect to my own domain name as the host, when once I simply used their host name. If you can set up an FTP app identically, and make it work, hit the blogger support pages. They will likely detect the issue soon.
posted by scarabic at 5:07 PM on January 11, 2004

Also you may want to make sure you're not trying to publish to a directory on that server that you don't have write permission for, i.e., make sure your directory prefix is correct.
posted by Space Coyote at 5:17 PM on January 11, 2004

It's possible that you cannot use blogger to publish directly to that server.

The error message that you are receiving is very similar to the one I continued to get when Blogger went through the Dano upgrade last summer.

Here's the known issue that I believe you are facing:

publishing your Blog via FTP will not work if your webhost only supports active FTP (those users needing active FTP access had been relying on the pro1.blogger.com publisher). Dano now supports both passive FTP and sFTP.

I reported this to Blogger at the time, and never got a response. I also reported the problem to the blogger supportgroup at Yahoo, along with a lot of other people.

I don't understand why this made this change, but it left a lot of people unable to use the software. The lack of any response or any notice was annoying, too. The folks at the Yahoo group tried to help, but they aren't part of blogger, and are just volunteers trying to help people.

Matt has the right idea, but I'd say to contact your host and ask if your server only uses active ftp. If it doesn't support passive ftp or sftp, then that is likely your problem.

You can try contacting Blogger's help. Maybe they've hired more support personnel since the summer.
posted by bragadocchio at 5:28 PM on January 11, 2004

Also check out the archives of blogger_user_support because this issue has come up dozens of times before in various permutations and been answered there.
posted by billsaysthis at 5:29 PM on January 11, 2004

Thanks to everyone for their assistance. I had, in fact, been in touch with Blogger support prior to posting my answer here, but I got a sort of 'shrug, not our problem' answer. The FAQ for my IP does say explicitly that they support both active and passive FTP so I don't think that's the issue.

I think I'm going to just give up on Blogger for now and continue the path I've been on -- hand coding my page in notepad when I can find the time to sit down and do it. It may be primitive and less than 'real time' but at least doing it that way doesn't cause my head to explode with tech frustration. Thanks for your answers, though.
posted by anastasiav at 5:39 PM on January 11, 2004

anastasiav - as a longtime Blogger user, I can promise you that configuration woes are common, but the ease of use once you get past them does, in fact, live up to its reputation. Take a break and look at it with a fresh pair of eyes in a couple days. I think the issue is bound to be linked to one of the things raised here. I've helped a few folks through setups and it's usually ftp hostname or default path issues. I'd be glad to help you if you like. Just email my MeFi username at hotmail.
posted by scarabic at 5:45 PM on January 11, 2004

Er, I have to disagree. As a longtime Blogger user, one of the happiest days of my online life was when I escaped from their clutches and moved to MT. Blogger kept going haywire, not letting me in, screwing up my archives, &c &c, until I finally couldn't take it anymore. (And I'm far from the only one; every time I mentioned one of these problems I had people telling me similar stories.) And for a final present, when I moved I discovered it had eaten many of the comments from old posts. It's a great service if you're just getting started (if you're lucky and it happens to let you publish!), but if you're serious about your blog you'll want something better.
posted by languagehat at 1:25 PM on January 12, 2004

I can echo languagehat's comments - I started off with Blogger and continually had problems ranging from niggling publishing errors that I managed to find work-arounds for to inexplicable major problems that never got resolved. Movable Type rules.
posted by dg at 1:47 PM on January 12, 2004