Today I was stuck at home without a car, so I decided to tackle some long-overdue blog maintenance. The first task was updating the sidebar blog list. Every couple of months I take a look at the list, add my new favorite blogs, and delete those who've stopped publishing on a regular basis.
This is the way it works. On the design screen you click the
Edit button, which brings up a popup called
Configure Blog List. Close to the bottom of this popup is an
Add to List link. That shows a box to put the URL in. You save it, then voila!, the changes show up on the blog.
However, today when I clicked on the
Add button nothing happened. I tried several times, and got the same result. When I searched the Blogger Help forum I found out I wasn't the only one having the problem. I added my comments to a discussion, and over the course of the day several more people chimed in complaining about the same issue. Finally, late in the day I heard that the Blogger team was working on the issue, but it might not be fixed until next week.
I guess I have no choice but to wait.
Five years ago today:
Glassy
Yesterday my computer guru helped me transfer my blog from the email address that was hacked to a new one at google. It meant I gave up my blog list. Horror. But, I opened the old blog in another browser, and one by one opened the blog, copied the URL, went to the new blog and put you all back in, one at a time. If my Add button had let me down, too, I may have melted down.
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear it worked for you.
DeleteThe thing that concerns me about this is, Google have been known to just kill off projects as a sudden surprise to people, or let them die off without any support.
ReplyDeleteOne of the reasons I moved to Wordpress was the lack of assistance and support from Google/Blogspot.
In this instance maybe the best thing to do is to cut Google out of the equation, and set yourself up with an Inoreader account - put all the blogs you read in there, then create a bundle. You can then link to the bundle and everyone can see the blog posts from the blogs you are reading.
I should probably make a tutorial on how to do this, actually. I've been looking for how to guide topics and I might add this one to it, plus, I might see if there is an easy way to make Inoreader bundles do that thing in your sidebar. :)
Well, I was bored - nothing on the teevee, just finished reading all my blogs, was wondering what to do next, this could be it. :)
Good ideas. Maybe one of these days I'll pull the trigger on some of them :-)
DeleteLooking forward to reading your tutorial. I read A LOT of blogs, and list only a portion of those on my sidebar.
Good to know it is not working, I would just keep trying as I do use that from time to time.
ReplyDeleteI usually do too, but it's nice to try different tactics every once in awhile
DeleteTruth be told... I expect it to NOT be working and am delighted what time it does. Sad, eh?
ReplyDeleteYes, truly sad.
DeleteBefore this I hadn't had many issues with Blogger. Hope this isn't the beginning of the end.
I really need to update my blog list too. There's a couple of blogs that don't post anymore, but I keep them on the blog roll on purpose. The others though, I should probably remove if they aren't posting regularly.
ReplyDeleteDepending on how long they take to fix the issue we might be updating at the same time.
DeleteWell I did some looking into whether or not you could use Inoreader to do the same thing as the blog list thingy blogger allows, and there is one massive issue on the Blogger end.
ReplyDeleteInoreader allows you to "export" folders and bundles as an RSS feed. So you can essentially group together any blogs you enjoy reading into a folder and then just export that folder - and you can of course have other folders in there which you read and do not export. That part of things is fairly simple.
On Bloggers end, you can have an RSS feed gadget in your sidebar. It only allows you to show 5 items, though. That is where the massive issue is. :(
There are some third party options but none of them seem especially reliable.
What you could do, is do one RSS feed gadget for each separate blog that you follow, and allow just one item for each blog. It would not look quite as pretty as the present list, but it would at least allow those new blogs you want to add a space until the add button is fixed.
If it is fixed, that is. I do have a sick-ish feeling that Blogger is not a huge priority for Google anymore. So I do think looking at other options - and at a minimum creating yourself a wordpress account and making sure you get the blog name over there that you would want to use, if and when you should ever need to move over there, might be worth doing. And that is something I will write a how to guide on in coming weeks, seeing as my other how to guide won't be happening, at least not for blogger. ;) I may do one for Wordpress. :)
I would also take a moment to back up and export your blog here, in case anything goes awry. Blogger has a habit of losing peoples photos as a surprise to them, as well as deleting blogs for no particular reason. :(
Blog all backed up. Thanks for the reminder!
DeleteI do the same thing with my sidebar blog list. I guess I'll wait awhile before doing anything. I've been rather disorganized lately though and having a hard time getting my blogging consistent.
ReplyDeleteKay, the issue seems to be resolved. Update to your heart's content.
Delete