Recently my Blogger dashboard switched from the old interface to the new one, which I've been struggling with for the last few weeks.
Now someone has explained to me how you can get the old one back.
If you have had the new and degraded Blogger dashboard foisted on you, you can (at least for the time being) get the old one back.
There's a little cogwheel thingy up in the top righthand corner of the new and degraded Blogger dashboard.
Click on it and among the options that are revealed is the option to revert to the old and improved Blogger interface.
Hat-tip to a commenter on nourishing obscurity | Google/Blogger/WordPress’s kindergarten coders
Ah, bliss!
If the new interface is foisted on us, I predict another huge move to WordPress.
Showing posts with label blog software. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blog software. Show all posts
20 May 2012
11 June 2009
Firefox crashing on clicking Image Uploader in WordPress
Firefox crashing on clicking Image Uploader: WordPress.com Forums:
I've been having that problem too, so I thought I would try it in Blogger.
The last couple of days I've been at the Amahoro Conference, and wanted to blog about it on my Khanya blog, and every time I tried to upload a picture, Firefox crashed. But it seemed to work OK in Internet Exsplorer.
But it seems to work OK here, so it must be a Wordpress problem rather than a Firefox one, though the latest information is that Google Gears is the culprit, so it looks like it's time to uninstal that.
Oh yes, the Amahoro conference has been pretty good, and I've blogged about it here and here, among other places.
Is anyone reporting problems with Firefox crashing when trying to upload images? I have not installed anything new on my desktop, just clicking on the square box to upload images would crash Firefox.
I've been having that problem too, so I thought I would try it in Blogger.
The last couple of days I've been at the Amahoro Conference, and wanted to blog about it on my Khanya blog, and every time I tried to upload a picture, Firefox crashed. But it seemed to work OK in Internet Exsplorer.
But it seems to work OK here, so it must be a Wordpress problem rather than a Firefox one, though the latest information is that Google Gears is the culprit, so it looks like it's time to uninstal that.
Oh yes, the Amahoro conference has been pretty good, and I've blogged about it here and here, among other places.
23 December 2008
How lekker is local?
There's been some discussion in the South African blogosphere about the merits of local versus overseas hosting.
For example this blog is hosted at the blogspot server, which I believe is in the USA, and so the argument goes that South African readers have to get it from overseas, and ultimately we have to pay for international bandwidth in foreign currency. So the argument runs that local is lekker, and one should use local hosts for blogs.
But for the last couple of days Amatomu, the best-known South African blog aggregator, which I assume is locally hosted, has epitomised the World Wide Wait, and waiting for pages to appear is more boring than watching the proverbial drying paint.
Another disadvantage with local hosting, for blogs, at any rate, is that individual blogs are swallowed up by the host. If you check Amatomu, blogs hosted by overseas servers are listed individually, and not as coming from Blogspot, or Wordpress or whatever. But the local ones are not listed individually; all posts are shown as coming from "Blat - to utter without thinking" or "Thought leader" or whatever the host is. So local isn't really so lekker.
For example this blog is hosted at the blogspot server, which I believe is in the USA, and so the argument goes that South African readers have to get it from overseas, and ultimately we have to pay for international bandwidth in foreign currency. So the argument runs that local is lekker, and one should use local hosts for blogs.
But for the last couple of days Amatomu, the best-known South African blog aggregator, which I assume is locally hosted, has epitomised the World Wide Wait, and waiting for pages to appear is more boring than watching the proverbial drying paint.
Another disadvantage with local hosting, for blogs, at any rate, is that individual blogs are swallowed up by the host. If you check Amatomu, blogs hosted by overseas servers are listed individually, and not as coming from Blogspot, or Wordpress or whatever. But the local ones are not listed individually; all posts are shown as coming from "Blat - to utter without thinking" or "Thought leader" or whatever the host is. So local isn't really so lekker.
23 November 2008
Moving back to Blogger?
A couple of years ago half the Blogger blogs I knew were announcing that they were moving to WordPress. Here's one going the other way.
On blogger now � Rock_Angel_Grass:
Now the Blogger software has stabilised, and some people, it seems, are beginning to move the other way.
For myself, I continue to keep a foot in both camps. One platform is good for some things, and the other for others.
On blogger now � Rock_Angel_Grass:
To all readers who want to read more of my blogs, please visit me at http://blogophobicgracia.blogspot.com for more updated posts.. Thank you.. :-)Back then, of course, Blogger was being "upgraded", and many features stopped working and the "full-featured" Beta version was missing many of the features that had made people like Blogger in the first place.
Now the Blogger software has stabilised, and some people, it seems, are beginning to move the other way.
For myself, I continue to keep a foot in both camps. One platform is good for some things, and the other for others.
06 July 2008
WordPress versus Blogger
I have three general blogs on three different blogging platforms, and occasionally I compare them to see which is most popular.
The blogs are Notes from Underground on Blogger (this one), Khanya on WordPress, and my LiveJournal. The graph from Amatomu below shows that the oldest, the LiveJournal one, has the fewest readers, while the newest one, the WordPress one, seems to have the most readers. Is this because readers prefer WordPress to blogger?
Actually the comparison is not quite fair to LiveJournal. Most liveJournal posts are read by friends on feeds, and very few people read the actual blogs themselves. Nevertheless, it does seem to indicate a preference for WordPress on the part of blog readers, though as a blog writer I find it has several limitations, notably that it does not support Javascript, so all sorts of widgets and things just don't work.
But knowing which one readers prefer also affects the way I write. I now tend to be more careful about what I wrote on the Khanya blog, knowing that more people will probably read it. Notes from underground tends to get used for quick 'n dirty posts, and the LiveJournal even more so, or even just for pointers to posts on one of the others, if I think some of my LiveJournal friends might be interested, and I hope that some of them may comment.
The blogs are Notes from Underground on Blogger (this one), Khanya on WordPress, and my LiveJournal. The graph from Amatomu below shows that the oldest, the LiveJournal one, has the fewest readers, while the newest one, the WordPress one, seems to have the most readers. Is this because readers prefer WordPress to blogger?
Actually the comparison is not quite fair to LiveJournal. Most liveJournal posts are read by friends on feeds, and very few people read the actual blogs themselves. Nevertheless, it does seem to indicate a preference for WordPress on the part of blog readers, though as a blog writer I find it has several limitations, notably that it does not support Javascript, so all sorts of widgets and things just don't work.
But knowing which one readers prefer also affects the way I write. I now tend to be more careful about what I wrote on the Khanya blog, knowing that more people will probably read it. Notes from underground tends to get used for quick 'n dirty posts, and the LiveJournal even more so, or even just for pointers to posts on one of the others, if I think some of my LiveJournal friends might be interested, and I hope that some of them may comment.
10 May 2008
End of the road for Blogger?
For more than a year now I’ve had a blog on Blogger and one on WordPress, and have posted about equally on both. I found it hard to decide which platform I preferred, but this just about clinches it.
Tried to log in to my Blogger blog a few minutes ago, and got this charming message:
We’re sorry…
… but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can’t process your request right now.
We’ll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon. In the meantime, if you suspect that your computer or network has been infected, you might want to run a virus checker or spyware remover to make sure that your systems are free of viruses and other spurious software.
If you’re continually receiving this error, you may be able to resolve the problem by deleting your Google cookie and revisiting Google. For browser-specific instructions, please consult your browser’s online support center.
If your entire network is affected, more information is available in the Google Web Search Help Center.
We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope we’ll see you again on Google.
It seems that I can post, but the moment I try to read my posts, I get that message.
If that’s lasts any longer, you certainly won’t be seeing me much longer on Blogger.
And obviously, if I can't read my blog, I can't read or respond to comments, so if you would like to comment on this, please do so on my WordPress blog.
14 February 2008
Blogger is broken -- again!
Just when I thought it was safe to use Blogger again (at least in the mornings -- it won't let you post in the afternoons and evenings), it breaks.
The "Blog this" and "Link to this post" no longer work. Oh yes, you can mark the text all right, but the "Publish" and "Save" buttons are hidden, and if you enlarge the box to reveal them they disappear before you have time to click them.
The "Blog this" and "Link to this post" no longer work. Oh yes, you can mark the text all right, but the "Publish" and "Save" buttons are hidden, and if you enlarge the box to reveal them they disappear before you have time to click them.
09 February 2008
Backtracking on secularisation? Archbishop of Canterbury and Sharia law
Father David MacGregor has linked together a number of reports in his Contact Online blog about the Archbishop of Canterbury's views on introducing Sharia law into Britain, which has set a herd of cats among the pigeons.
Post truncated ... read the rest here.
Maybe they will fix this bug next year, or the year after, but until they do, read the rest of this post here.
Post truncated ... read the rest here.
Moved to Wordpress blog because of Blogger bugs
This post was actually posted at 6:00 pm, and should have appeared above the post above this, instead of below it. But Blogger has a bug that only allows it to post in the mornibng, and an ything posted after noon is moved 12 hours back.Maybe they will fix this bug next year, or the year after, but until they do, read the rest of this post here.
31 December 2007
End of the year
It's four minutes to noon and the end of the year for Blogger, because at noon Blogger turns into a pumpkin, so there isn't time to write a retrospect on the past year.
See you next year.
See you next year.
05 December 2007
Blogger: now mornings only
It seems that Blogger is now "mornings only".
If one posts after noon, the time of the post reverts to 12 hours earlier. If you have already posted a blog entry in the morning, the afternoon post appears after it, out of order.
For a while it was possible to correct this manually, for example by clicking on "Post Options" and entering the time as, say 18:15 instead of 06:15, but now if one does that it says one must enter the time as hh:mm. Never mind that 18:15 IS hh:mm -- one simply cannot get the correct time stamp on a blog posting, so afternoon posts appear out of order in the blog, and also don't show up on blog aggregators.
Yet another reason to switch to WordPress, I suppose.
If one posts after noon, the time of the post reverts to 12 hours earlier. If you have already posted a blog entry in the morning, the afternoon post appears after it, out of order.
For a while it was possible to correct this manually, for example by clicking on "Post Options" and entering the time as, say 18:15 instead of 06:15, but now if one does that it says one must enter the time as hh:mm. Never mind that 18:15 IS hh:mm -- one simply cannot get the correct time stamp on a blog posting, so afternoon posts appear out of order in the blog, and also don't show up on blog aggregators.
Yet another reason to switch to WordPress, I suppose.
20 November 2007
Blogger, WordPress and LiveJournal
Today my Khanya blog on WordPress caught up with my Blogger one (this one) on Technorati. They are now running neck and neck with "authority" of 100, and a "rank" of 66360.
It's nearly five years since I started blogging on LiveJournal, with a post on Arthur Shearly Cripps and St Herman of Alaska.
I found LiveJournal interesting, with its "friends" system making it possible to share blogs with people of overlapping fields of interest. Actually it was more a journal than a blog, so the name LiveJournal was accurate.
Two years ago I discovered Blogger, almost by accident. It seemed more like a true blog, a web log, and what persuaded me to start using it was the "Blog this" feature, which made it easy to record and comment on memorable blog posts.
But quite soon after I started using it, a new and "improved" version of Blogger was introduced, in which most of the features that attracted me to Blogger in the first place no longer worked, including the "Blog this". And as functionality was reduced, more and more Blogger users migrated to WordPress.
Eventually in February this year I started a WordPress blog, called Khanya, as an experiment. It didn't seem to have many of the features I missed in the "new" Blogger, but it did have a "trackback" system for linking to other blogs, which worked (sometimes).
I found that if I wanted to blog on something in WordPress blogs, I used the WordPress one, and when I wanted to comment on Blogger blogs, I used the Blogger one, at least for the ones where the "Link to this post" feature was enabled. That was for more than straightforward comments, but rather a spin-off post inspired by an idea in another blog.
Now Blogger has improved, and most of the missing functionality is back. The "Blog this" feature has been improved, and now works with any web page, and not just Blogger blogs. The only thing missing, at least that I notice, is the "Search all blogs" link at the top of the Blogger page. But there is a workaround if one goes to Technorati.
But just at the point where Blogger has regained most of its missing features, my WordPress blog has overtaken my Blogger one, not only in Technorati links, but in page reads as well. The WordPress blog, Khanya, has caught up to this one in just eight months, in terms of "authority", and surpassed it in number of visitors. Has Google left it too late?
Those are visitor figures for today (so far), yesterday, and for the month so far.
It's also interesting to see where visitors come from:
Khanya
Notes from underground:
Notes from underground (this blog) gets twice as many South African visitors than Khanya.
As for LiveJournal, responses in the form of comments have dwindled to almost nothing. I now use it mainly for personal stuff and family news and pictures.
It's nearly five years since I started blogging on LiveJournal, with a post on Arthur Shearly Cripps and St Herman of Alaska.
I found LiveJournal interesting, with its "friends" system making it possible to share blogs with people of overlapping fields of interest. Actually it was more a journal than a blog, so the name LiveJournal was accurate.
Two years ago I discovered Blogger, almost by accident. It seemed more like a true blog, a web log, and what persuaded me to start using it was the "Blog this" feature, which made it easy to record and comment on memorable blog posts.
But quite soon after I started using it, a new and "improved" version of Blogger was introduced, in which most of the features that attracted me to Blogger in the first place no longer worked, including the "Blog this". And as functionality was reduced, more and more Blogger users migrated to WordPress.
Eventually in February this year I started a WordPress blog, called Khanya, as an experiment. It didn't seem to have many of the features I missed in the "new" Blogger, but it did have a "trackback" system for linking to other blogs, which worked (sometimes).
I found that if I wanted to blog on something in WordPress blogs, I used the WordPress one, and when I wanted to comment on Blogger blogs, I used the Blogger one, at least for the ones where the "Link to this post" feature was enabled. That was for more than straightforward comments, but rather a spin-off post inspired by an idea in another blog.
Now Blogger has improved, and most of the missing functionality is back. The "Blog this" feature has been improved, and now works with any web page, and not just Blogger blogs. The only thing missing, at least that I notice, is the "Search all blogs" link at the top of the Blogger page. But there is a workaround if one goes to Technorati.
But just at the point where Blogger has regained most of its missing features, my WordPress blog has overtaken my Blogger one, not only in Technorati links, but in page reads as well. The WordPress blog, Khanya, has caught up to this one in just eight months, in terms of "authority", and surpassed it in number of visitors. Has Google left it too late?
| Khanya | 33 | 113 | 1,879 | |||||||
| Notes from underground | 26 | 91 | 1,425 |
It's also interesting to see where visitors come from:
Khanya
| Num | Perc. | Country Name | ||
 | 216 | 53.07% | United States |  |
| 47 | 11.55% | United Kingdom |  |
| 41 | 10.07% | South Africa |  |
| 19 | 4.67% | Canada |  |
|
Notes from underground:
| Num | Perc. | Country Name | ||
 | 200 | 45.15% | United States | |
| 90 | 20.32% | South Africa | |
| 38 | 8.58% | United Kingdom | |
| 23 | 5.19% | Canada | |
| 9 | 2.03% | Korea, Republic Of |  |
|
Notes from underground (this blog) gets twice as many South African visitors than Khanya.
As for LiveJournal, responses in the form of comments have dwindled to almost nothing. I now use it mainly for personal stuff and family news and pictures.
19 July 2007
What kind of liberal am I? Blogger pulls ahead
My Liberal Identity:
You are a Peace Patroller, also known as an anti-war liberal or neo-hippie. You believe in putting an end to American imperial conquest, stopping wars that have already been lost, and supporting our troops by bringing them home.
Take the quiz at www.FightConservatives.com
I posted this on my WordPress blog, and somehow it just didn't work out. It seems that there are some things that Blogger still does better than WordPress, and graphics is one of them.
The MyBlogLog widget, which used to work OK in WordPress no longer does so, and there's a stats counter that seems to display a whole lot of code. So I'm not going to move this blog to WordPress yet, though I'll continue to play with the WordPress one.
Concerning the test itself, I noted over on the WordPress blog that it was very much American centred.
Consider, for example, the last question:
If you could pile any three people into a naked pyramid, who would you choose?
- George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld
- The CEOs of Exxon, Chevron, and Shell
- Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito
- Enron’s Jeffrey Skilling, Andrew Fastow,and the ghost of Ken Lay
- Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, and Rush Limbaugh
- Revs. Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and Ted Haggard
So faced with those questions, I chose question 1, because those are the peo[ple I've heard of.
That's how the test is skewed by its ethnocentrism and chauvinism.
10 July 2007
WordPress versus Blogger
A few months ago it seemed that half the blogs in my blogroll were switching from Blogger to WordPress.
I could understand why, because when I switched to the much-hyped Blogger Beta, lots of features no longer worked. Nine months after it was announced that the "new" Blogger was introduced, and that it was now "fully-featured", most of the features that didn't work in the Beta version still don't work, and a few more have got broken along the way.
As a result of that, I started an experimental WordPress blog, called Khanya, back in February, and now for the first time, it has passed this blog in the number of people reading it in a day.
Yesterday Khanya had 64 readers, and Notes from Underground had 47. Khanya was ranked 145 on Amatomu, while Notes from Underground was 167. That may just be a temporary thing, of course -- Notes from Underground still has far more links to it from other blogs (according to Technorati), and so perhaps it wouldn't be a good idea to move this blog to WordPress because it would break those links.
They also seem to have different sets of readers, according to StatCounter:
So perhaps the time has come to move this blog to WordPress, as so many others have done.
I'm still not sure though. Most of the features of Blogger that no longer work were never part of WordPress anyway. And the Blogger template is still easier to edit than WordPress.
Blogger features I miss most:
1. Blog this!
2. Search all blogs
3. Click on interests, books, movies in user profile to find those with similar interests
Annoyances:
When you're at the Dashboard, you can click "Dashboard" to get there when you're already there, but when yuou're at the blog, you have to click "Customise" to get a place where you can click to get to the Dashboard. This not only wastes time, it wastes bandwidth, having to load another page unnecessarily.
When you click "Link to this post", the "Edit HTML" no longer works -- you have to save the page and then edit it, loading two more pages in the process -- wasing more time and bandwidth.
So I'm still in two minds about whether to switch. Perhaps when the next thing breaks in Blogger.
I could understand why, because when I switched to the much-hyped Blogger Beta, lots of features no longer worked. Nine months after it was announced that the "new" Blogger was introduced, and that it was now "fully-featured", most of the features that didn't work in the Beta version still don't work, and a few more have got broken along the way.
As a result of that, I started an experimental WordPress blog, called Khanya, back in February, and now for the first time, it has passed this blog in the number of people reading it in a day.
Yesterday Khanya had 64 readers, and Notes from Underground had 47. Khanya was ranked 145 on Amatomu, while Notes from Underground was 167. That may just be a temporary thing, of course -- Notes from Underground still has far more links to it from other blogs (according to Technorati), and so perhaps it wouldn't be a good idea to move this blog to WordPress because it would break those links.
They also seem to have different sets of readers, according to StatCounter:
Khanya readers:
| Num | Perc. | Country Name | ||
 | 197 | 43.20% | United States | |
| 144 | 31.58% | South Africa | |
| 33 | 7.24% | United Kingdom | |
| 18 | 3.95% | Australia |  |
| 14 | 3.07% | Netherlands |  |
| 12 | 2.63% | Canada | |
| 7 | 1.54% | Philippines |  |
| 6 | 1.32% | New Zealand |  |
| 5 | 1.10% | Mauritius |  |
| 3 | 0.66% | Greece |  |
| 2 | 0.44% | Cyprus |  |
| 2 | 0.44% | Unknown | - |
| 2 | 0.44% | Malaysia |  |
| 2 | 0.44% | France |  |
| 1 | 0.22% | Finland |  |
| 1 | 0.22% | Iceland |  |
| 1 | 0.22% | Namibia |  |
| 1 | 0.22% | Spain |  |
| 1 | 0.22% | Albania |  |
| 1 | 0.22% | Romania |  |
| 1 | 0.22% | Suriname |  |
| 1 | 0.22% | Chile |  |
| 1 | 0.22% | Turkey |  |
Notes from Underground readers:
| Num | Perc. | Country Name | ||
| 157 | 33.76% | South Africa | |
| 150 | 32.26% | United States | |
| 39 | 8.39% | Canada | |
| 26 | 5.59% | United Kingdom | |
| 12 | 2.58% | Thailand |  |
| 11 | 2.37% | Germany |  |
| 9 | 1.94% | Australia | |
| 7 | 1.51% | France | |
| 7 | 1.51% | India |  |
| 5 | 1.08% | Netherlands | |
| 4 | 0.86% | Philippines | |
| 4 | 0.86% | Mauritius | |
| 3 | 0.65% | Barbados |  |
| 3 | 0.65% | Malaysia | |
| 3 | 0.65% | Unknown | - |
| 3 | 0.65% | Greece | |
| 2 | 0.43% | Switzerland |  |
| 2 | 0.43% | Austria |  |
| 2 | 0.43% | Russian Federation |  |
| 1 | 0.22% | Suriname | |
| 1 | 0.22% | Puerto Rico |  |
| 1 | 0.22% | Togo |  |
| 1 | 0.22% | Poland |  |
| 1 | 0.22% | Slovenia |  |
| 1 | 0.22% | Lebanon |  |
| 1 | 0.22% | Algeria |  |
| 1 | 0.22% | Hungary |  |
| 1 | 0.22% | Mexico |  |
| 1 | 0.22% | Chile | |
| 1 | 0.22% | United Arab Emirates |  |
| 1 | 0.22% | Argentina |  |
| 1 | 0.22% | Malta |  |
| 1 | 0.22% | New Zealand | |
| 1 | 0.22% | Nigeria |  |
| 1 | 0.22% | Ireland |  |
So perhaps the time has come to move this blog to WordPress, as so many others have done.
I'm still not sure though. Most of the features of Blogger that no longer work were never part of WordPress anyway. And the Blogger template is still easier to edit than WordPress.
Blogger features I miss most:
1. Blog this!
2. Search all blogs
3. Click on interests, books, movies in user profile to find those with similar interests
Annoyances:
When you're at the Dashboard, you can click "Dashboard" to get there when you're already there, but when yuou're at the blog, you have to click "Customise" to get a place where you can click to get to the Dashboard. This not only wastes time, it wastes bandwidth, having to load another page unnecessarily.
When you click "Link to this post", the "Edit HTML" no longer works -- you have to save the page and then edit it, loading two more pages in the process -- wasing more time and bandwidth.
So I'm still in two minds about whether to switch. Perhaps when the next thing breaks in Blogger.
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