Managing separate Google and Blogger accounts?

January 7, 2007 7:43 AM

Managing separate Google and Blogger accounts?

I have a Gmail account and a blogger account. As I want my blogging to remain pseudononymous, I want to keep my accounts unrelated. However, every time I post a comment on one of the new Google/Blogger blogs, I have to re-log in with my Blogger account and am automatically logged out of Gmail. I'm perfectly happy to get a second Gmail account, but this logging in and out is annoying. Solutions?

posted by callmejay to Technology (7 answers total)

If you use two different browsers, I think they maintain two separate cookies... use Firefox for whichever you use the most (email, probably) and IE for blogging?
posted by olinerd at 7:54 AM on January 7, 2007

I've been having the same problem. I think you can set things such that your blogger identity is linked to your gmail account but people can't see your gmail address/account name at all from looking at your blog/profile, though that's not quite anonymous enough for me.
posted by needs more cowbell at 8:59 AM on January 7, 2007

Best answer: I had exactly the same problem, so I set up two Firefox profiles, using the following steps:

With Firefox closed, go to its start menu entry and choose "Profile Manager."
Create a new one (we'll call it "blog").
Assuming you still want the new profile to have all of your extensions, etc. that you use, use something like MozBackup to save everything from default and reimport them into the new profile. This step is, of course, optional.
When you're done, run Firefox again, choose the default profile as before, then check "Don't ask at startup." Now whenever you run Firefox, you'll go straight to your normal profile as before.
For when you want to blog, create a new shortcut (or just use the Run command) to launch the string "firefox -P blog -no-remote" and you'll get a new window running under the other profile. (This assumes you use Firefox 2, if you don't you'll need to follow these steps to allow simultaneous use of two different profiles).

Then you have two windows open simultaneously, each logged into a separate Google account. Personally I recommend changing the home page or bookmarks in one of them, so you can more easily keep track of which one you're using at any given moment.
posted by Partial Law at 9:18 AM on January 7, 2007 [2 favorites]

If you can get your hands on an original Blogger account (prior to the time when they started getting linked to your Google account), this would not be a problem. If you find someone with an unused blog, you could take over their username, if they gave you their password.

I have an old Blogger account myself, but I need it. The new ones have some issues with old templates.
posted by sindark at 12:17 PM on January 7, 2007

I was thinking of pointing out Greasemonkey - as it can manage a number of google accounts via a javascript. But you'd still have to login/out.

I'd download portable firefox. Your main copy would have nothing to do with your anonymous one this way.
posted by filmgeek at 12:17 PM on January 7, 2007

Best answer: I have two Gmail accounts that I want to stay logged-in to simultaneously, so I assume that the problem is the same as having Gmail and Blogger logged-in simultaneously with different usernames. The solution I use is to have the IE Tab extension installed in Firefox, with one Gmail account open in one tab and the other open in an IE Tab (which uses the Internet Explorer engine embedded into Firefox, and therefore a different cookie destination). I think this could work for you more easily than the other suggestions.
posted by Tawita at 1:22 PM on January 7, 2007 [2 favorites]

If you can get your hands on an original Blogger account (prior to the time when they started getting linked to your Google account), this would not be a problem.

I contest that. I have one of those, but once I log (back) into my Gmail account it defaults back to that (there may be a timeout involved somewhere, I don't know).
posted by ClarissaWAM at 5:27 PM on January 7, 2007 [1 favorite]