Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with blog and blogspot

Blogspot blogs won't display on one computer only

nanojath — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 13:50:27 -0800

Weird glitch in Internet Explorer: certain blogspot blogs won't display on one computer only (post wifi browsing session?) Asking for someone I know. They were on free wireless at a (supposedly secure, free corporate type) wifi hotspot and browsed their own blogs and several others they regularly visit. Later they discovered that they cannot view these blogs on their laptop any more: Internet Explorer appears to open the pages, but they are totally blank. Here's the extra weirdness:

1. There is NOTHING to view on the pages as they come up. You can't highlight anything, there are not objects. BUT if you look at the source it just looks like a normal blogspot blog page setup. Again, view source brings up just what you'd expect (well, I haven't gone over it line for line but it certainly looks right, having looked at more than a couple of blogspot pages in source) - yet what you see in the browser window is nada, just a blank black page!
2. On other computers these blogs come up fine so it is the computer, not the blogs themselves.
3. One of their own blogs is affected - but they can still log in to their account, make posts etc. The posts show up fine.

Complications:

1. This showed up after they did the wireless browsing and they are convinced the free wifi "did this" to their computer but I just don't get how that would be. They think only the blogs they browsed there were affected but under questioning couldn't be totally sure about that.
2. An alternate browser is not an option, they cannot install outside software on their computer.
3. Did the standard clearing of cache, cookies, history, offline web content, restart. No change. I haven't personally used IE for a long long time but I can't think of anything else basic to do about it.

Any bright ideas? I'm completely flummoxed.

Please Help me with my Blogger Blog and Custom Domain

andoatnp — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 13:26:09 -0800

Why might my Blogger blog not be working with my custom domain and how do I fix it? Four days ago, I set up a blog at CUSTOMDOMAIN.blogspot.com and I own the url CUSTOMDOMAIN.com from GoDaddy. I followed the instructions here from Blogger so that people who visit the Custom Domain would see me Blogger blog. When I visit CUSTOMDOMAIN.com it just shows the godaddy.com parking page without the content from my blogspot blog.

In order to set up the domain I own with the blog I created a CNAME record for the domain (screenshot here, does this look right?) and changed the setting in my blogger setting panel to indicate that it is a custom url that I am using. I'm reasonably certain that I did everything in the blogger side ok, because when I visit CUSTOMDOMAIN.blogspot.com it redirects to CUSTOMDOMAIN.com, but with just the empty godaddy parking page.

Is there something I did wrong or something that I can fix so that my godaddy.com domain works with my blog?

Also, is it possible to set up a Google Apps account and then transfer this domain that I have purchased to that account so that blogger is handling both the domain and the blog? I see where I can purchase a new domain with Google Apps, but can I transfer one that I already own?

Also, I emailed godaddy tech support, and they sent a reply saying that it didn't look like a problem on there end.

Is there a way to show all my blog posts?

jejune — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 07:46:42 -0800

Is there a script that will show summaries of every post from my blog, using a feed from a Blogger blog? I use this widget to display the first 100 or so characters from each post from a feed of my blog. When you copy & paste the code from that webpage into a Blogger blog post, it displays headings from your blog posts along with a summary for each one.

But the problem is that there's a limit: it only displays your 25 most recent posts. Is there any kind of widget that will show all the posts, with no limit?

It would be sufficient if there were a script that would let me specify: "Display posts #1-25," then separately, "Display #26-50," etc. That way, I could just combine them.

Time to Pimp My Blog

davidstandaford — Thu, 22 May 2008 19:23:33 -0800

Suggestions for what additions, widgets, extensions, interactive doodads to include on a blogger/blogspot blog. Looking for input from both blog writers and readers. As a side project, I've been keeping a blog where I post one YouTube video per day on a narrow theme. I was wondering if there is anything I should add to the blog (hosted on blogger) that will either be a help to me or that my readers would appreciate.

Currently I have: Contact information, a blogroll, categories for the posts, the blog archive, adsense, and subscription/RSS information.

Things I'm considering: "claiming" the blog on technorati and integrating with that service, setting up a mybloglog account to track my visitors, and a shoutbox that people could leave sitewide comments on.

Is there anything else I'm forgetting/missing? Should I try to find a way to make it easy for people to delicious/digg/reddit my posts or the blog?

What are the little extra features on a blog that you really like to see included?

Daily Blogger Post of All my Twitters

davidstandaford — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:36:33 -0800

Is there a way to automate a daily post to a blogger blog with all my twitter posts of the last 24 hours? I have searched and found a bunch of ways to install a widget/badge to my blogspot blog that will be constantly updated with all of my daily twitters, but that is not what I am looking for.

I would also like there to be an automatic post to the blog itself each day that includes all of the twitters. Can blogger do this in any sort of automated fashion?

It seems there are plenty of solutions on wordpress, but none for blogger. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Can't modify - or even find - my Blogger blog.

gottabefunky — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:32:36 -0800

I have a Blogger blog that I set up a while ago but never put anything on. Now I can't modify it at all, even though the URL is "taken" - by me. I set up a blog (juliansmith.blogspot.com) a while ago but never
posted anything to it.

Now I can't do anything to it. I type in that URL and just get the
blogspot top bar ("next blog," "dashboard," etc.) above a blank white screen.

The blog doesn't show up on my dashboard, but when I try to create it, it says "that name is taken." Of course it is - by me! But how do I get to it to modify it?

Can a blogger ID specific readers by IP address?

Locative — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 22:50:32 -0800

Can a blogger tell that I am reading their blog by my IP address? I read a Blogger/Blogspot blog in my Google Reader feed. Can the owner of the blog tell that I am reading it by my IP address?

A while ago, I subscribed to the blog of an eccentric friend of a friend for the lulz. This blogger just fired off a post saying that she knows who is reading it because of the IP addresses, and called out all unauthorized readers as "stalkers." I'm a little creeped out, since I didn't really want this blogger to know I was reading her posts and want to avoid any drama. Is it actually possible for a blogger to ID specific readers by IP address?

Apologies for my ignorance, but my understanding of how IP addresses work is that (unless you are mathowie caliber) a person can only find out a region and city from an IP address, but not a specific name. Wouldn't someone have to petition a ISP to find out a person's name?

Thanks in advance, and further apologies for a question that I'm sure is quite basic.

Posting One Thing to Many Blogs?

davidstandaford — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 23:56:19 -0800

What is the best way to share my blogging when I have different friends on myspace, livejournal, blogspot, facebook. etc. I currently have a myspace blog, a livejournal, and a blogspot blog where I triple post my content. I also sometimes will write facebook notes with the same post.

I'm wondering if people have advice about how to streamline this process and have one application do this for me. Either XP or OS X is a possibility. Is there an easy (free?) way to write something once and have it show up everywhere?

Secondly, does anyone have any experience with trying to integrate multiple blog services into one location. Ideally, the people who like to read me on facebook or myspace or livejournal would all just visit a single blogspot blog and make things easy for me, but I'm not sure they actually will (and these are people who don't know what RSS readers are). Checking their livejournal friends page is probably easier than clicking over to my own separate blogspot blog once a week (if they remember), so I want to keep all the readers, I just don't like having to triple post what I write in all those places.

How can I get rid of a Blogspot spam blog?

Locative — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 03:05:15 -0800

How can I get rid of a Blogspot spam blog? A year ago, I had a blog related to my professional interests set up on on Blogger. I posted a while, but eventually deleted it. It was not at all popular and used a very obscure address (i.e. obscureblogname.blogspot.com). A few months ago, I Googled myself and in the results found an old link to my blog from a prominent blogger in my field (from when the blog was still active). Since the link was dead, I didn't care -- until I realized that the same URL is now being used for one of Blogger's many spam blogs.

Essentially, I don't want people (especially prospective employers) Googling me and finding a link to a blog full of debt consolidation crap. I tried asking the prominent blogger to take down the link, but he never replied. I have flagged the blog, but it remains up months later. Is there anything I can do to expedite the removal of this blog from the site? Thank you!

Blogger New Post E-mail Notification?

Roach — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 17:53:17 -0800

Automatic E-mail notification of new post in Blogger? It's tough to search for answers when one of the key terms is "Blogger".

I loosely administer a group (family) blog with roughly 50 members on Blogger. Sometimes we get 3 or 4 posts a day, and participation skyrockets. If 5 or 6 days go by without a post, the NEXT post receives very little interest.

Everyone has been encouraged to make visiting the blog a part or their daily Internet routine, but many of the (family)members are over 50.

I can't find any way to activiate email notification for each member when a new article is posted. There seems to be nothing in the limited Bloger FAQ either.

Does anyone know of a simple way to implment this? I mean, new members are ADDED based on their email address!

Blogspot, BlogTHIS!

jak68 — Tue, 23 May 2006 07:05:22 -0800

Why does Blogspot's "Blogthis" work fine when I click on the example link at blogspot.com 's help section, but not when placed as a link in my favorites folder? My pop up blocker is off. my IE Security is at Medium. I am logged into my blogspot blog. I also downloaded and tried a right-dick script for it- no luck. I don't even get the Pop up Javascript window for it. Absolutely nothing happens. Yet, when I click the link ("drag this to your links bar") at the site, it pops up immediately. Why, oh why!

Boot a Blogger Blogspot Blog

chase — Sun, 08 Jan 2006 09:25:59 -0800

How do I achieve shutting down a Blogger Blogspot blog? I have been a Blogger user since July 2001. My Blogger username is ontask. I have my own domain name of ontask.net, so I post directly to my own website. I have just discovered, that back in September of 2004, a Blogspot blog was created with the blog name and URL of ontask. Apparently, there are no restrictions to setting up a Blogspot blog using a Blogger username that is not your own.

This is causing brand confussion and difficulty in syndicating my Blogger account content to other locations.

In particular, on SuprGlu when asked for my Blogger username, instead of being able to import my Blogger content, I am getting the Blogspot blog of ontask content [2]. (SuprGlu is another one of those new Web 2.0 sites that has popped up. I created a Suprglu account in order to evaluate and review the service.)

I've written an email to Google and to Blogger explaining the situation. I guess I'm feeling unhopeful and just need to rant.

I realize that my blog content is not currently really exciting... but I hope to improve the quality such that I can build traffic. I suppose my main problem is that I am passionate about the discussion of how to improve consistant Internet identity. This recent discovery certainly makes the issue of Internet identity personal.

Any advice or comments on how to cope with this situation? Would I have any legal rights to the use of my Blogger username in other areas in the Blogger system? Should I just shrug and say, "C'est La Vie?"