How You Should Backup Your Blog Will Depend Upon How You Plan To Restore It

We see signs of naivete, in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I?, from blog owners concerned with malware / spam deletions, and with other unexplained disasters in Blogger.

How do I backup my blog, to protect the contents against unfair spam deletions?

Not many concerned blog owners realise the first principle of backups, known by any experienced network administrator.

• Never plan a backup, without first planning the restore.

How you backup your blog depends upon several details.

• What problem do you expect, to require a backup?
• How do you plan to recover, from a problem?

One of the simplest solutions for a backup, which some Blogger experts will suggest, is to use the Export / Import wizard, in Settings - Other.

• Before disaster strikes, Export your posts and comments.
• After disaster strikes, simply Import your posts and comments, from a convenient backup.

Similarly, some experts may suggest backing up the template.

• Before disaster strikes, use the dashboard Template "Backup / Restore" wizard, to backup the template.
• After disaster strikes, use the wizard to restore the template.

There are many components of a Blogger blog - not just the comments, posts, and template.

• Accessories.
• Comments.
• Decorations.
• Gadgets.
• Posts.
• Layout.
• URL.

Before you plan how to backup your blog, you need to decide which of these features is most important to you, and what problem from which you wish to recover.

The accessories (decorations, gadgets) is one component of the blog which is most frequently missed, after a deleted blog is recreated / restored using a "comments / posts / template backup" restore strategy. Both graphic decorations, and XML based gadgets, may not be easily backed up, and may present a challenge when the blog is restored, or recreated.

XML gadgets, such as bloglists and linklists, may contain a lot of detail, which is installed into the blog one entry at a time - and there is no known way to automate a backup or restore of these gadgets.

Recovering the URL is one of the most subtle details, that may not always be considered by many blog owners. The URL is relevant in two ways. Most blogs which are important enough, for the owner to want to backup, have acquired reputation - both with people (readers, subscribers, and viewers), and with search engines.

Some blogs will link the various posts to each other - as I do with this blog. In either case, the recovered blog is not as useful, unless the URL is also recovered.

If the blog is deleted by Blogger - or by the owner - the URL may not be available, for blog recovery. When Blogger deletes a blog as a suspected abusive content host, the URL is locked to the blog. The only way to recover the URL is to have the blog reviewed, and restored to availability.

When a blog is deleted by the owner, the blog must be restored by the owner - within 90 days after deletion. In either case, a backup is useless.

If you have a personal blog, containing just posts (and maybe comments from known family or friends), backing up the comments and posts makes sense. For a publicly known blog, containing various accessories, and having a known URL, you'll want to plan your backup / restore strategy using a bit more effort.

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Enabling Blogger, If You Now Have An ISP Provided Email Account, That Uses Google Apps Based GMail

We're seeing problem reports from some confused blog owners, who are apparently customers of ISPs who have made the switch, from using a private email infrastructure, to using GMail based email (administered using Google Apps).

When I try to sign in I get this message.

Blogger has not been enabled by the administrator of the domain

How do I administer my blog?

We've known, for a while, that having a Blogger account based on a Google Apps provided GMail account may not be a good long term strategy - particularly if the Apps account is based on a domain which you own, and the domain was purchased to host one of your blogs.

Possibly considering the latter scenario, Blogger / Google now requires that you enable the Blogger service, for any new Google Apps controlled domain - if you wish to use email addresses in that domain to host Blogger accounts. This is a safety measure, helping to prevent you from having a Blogger account that you can't control - or can't recover access when you forget the password.

All of that is fine - when you control the domain that you wish to use to host your Blogger account. But what if you don't control the domain? What if you previously setup a Blogger account based on your ISP's email domain - then later the domain administrator decides to upgrade the domain, to use GMail based email? What happens to your Blogger account?

Short of convincing the domain administrators for your ISP that you have a genuine and urgent need to have a Blogger account, based on an email address that they provide, you're going to need a new email address - provided by someone other than Google, or your ISP (school, employer, what have you).

Start by setting up an email account in some third party web service - maybe "Yahoo.com". Then, you have two possibilities. If you're reading this article just before your ISP makes the switch, and you can still use your Blogger account, transfer control of your blog(s) to a new Blogger account that's based on your new email address.

If you just discovered the change by your ISP - maybe because you now see the bad news

Blogger has not been enabled by the administrator of the domain

you are going to have to recover control of your blog, based upon access to your ISP's email account - and setup a new Blogger account based on your new non ISP based email account.

1. Generate a new account recovery email message.
2. Setup a new email account, outside your current email service.
3. Clear cache, cookies, and sessions.
4. Restart the browser.
5. Login to your current email service, find, and open the email message.
6. Click on the link in the email message.
7. Setup a new Blogger account, based on the new email address.

Whatever you do when setting up your new Blogger account, please make sure to verify the email address - and setup recovery options, carefully.

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Blogger Supports Their Customers - But They Support Their Active Customers More

Every week, in Blogger Help, we see the cries of frustration.

Many years ago I had a Google account with a "gmail.com" e-mail address. But I deleted this account, because I didn't need it anymore. Later, I wasn't able to login to Blogger, to delete my blog. And I also wasn't able to remove it by contacting Blogger. Why doesn't Blogger support their customers?

The point being overlooked here is that both Blogger and Google do support their customers.

Blogger / Google, like every commercial enterprise worldwide, simply supports their active customers more than their not-so-active customers.

1. They have millions of customers, who spend much time maintaining and publishing their blogs.
2. They also have some customers, who start blogs, and leave them dormant for many years - then require assistance recovering access to their Blogger accounts, because they have forgotten the account name or password, and the backup email address can't be used.

Considering that Blogger / Google is not a non profit organisation, and needs to support customer activity, which group of customers should they support most readily?

Blogger / Google wants to encourage us to maintain and to publish our blogs regularly. People who don't use their services regularly, then demand special assistance when needing to use their services, are not going to receive the same level of support.

1. People who use Blogger regularly will develop a level of proficiency - and won't require special assistance as much as those who don't use Blogger regularly.
2. People who use Blogger regularly simply require a working Blogger interface, and a level of security that keeps their blogs under their control. People who don't use Blogger regularly need a different and more complicated Blogger interface - and a lower level of security, so they can continue to access their Blogger accounts.

The needs of the few (who don't use Blogger regularly) have to be considered against the needs of the many (who do use Blogger regularly).

Recently, we had a series of well organised hijackings of actively published Blogger blogs. After Blogger / Google recognised this ongoing threat - which endangers all Blogger blog owners - they tightened down their security, and restricted assistance to those needing help recovering access to their Blogger accounts. People who don't use Blogger regularly don't understand the reasoning behind this reduced level of assistance, and increased level of security.

Unfortunately, understand it or not, we all have to learn to live with it - if we wish to continue publishing Blogger blogs.

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A Team Blog With No Administrators Is Given To The Authors, For Their Control

We have known, for a while, that every Blogger blog has to have at least one administrator.

That rule is enforced by the Permissions wizard, which gives any administrator the choice to demote or remove any administrator, from the Permissions list - but only when there is at least one other administrator in the list.

When the Permissions list is displayed, if there are at least two members with administrative authority, each administrator entry, in the list, has a link to demote or remove that member. If there is only one member with administrative authority, there is no such link - and that member can be neither demoted or removed from the list.

As long as only the Permissions wizard is used, to demote or remove administrators, this article would be meaningless (see the above link). But, there is another way for administrators to be removed - and this occasionally leaves blogs with no administrator.

If the only way to lose an administrator (or member) from a blog was by using the Permissions list to demote or remove, then the Permissions list setup, as described above, would be sufficient.

Unfortunately, the Blogger - and Google - account deletion processes don't consider the member lists for the blogs owned by the account. When a Blogger account is deleted, the fate of the blogs owned, by that account, has to be decided later.

Any blogs which have only one member (the owner) are either frozen or deleted - as with only one owner, there is no need to keep those blogs. Any blogs with more than one member simply lose that one member. But what if a blog has more than one member, but only one administrator - and that one administrator takes a hike?

With a team blog with one administrator, and one or more authors, losing the one administrator would leave a blog that was being published (by the authors), but could not be managed (because there was no administrator). This would, in the past, lead to panic in the forum.

The administrator for my blog deleted his Blogger account - and now my blog has no administrator! What do we do now?

With no administrator existing, Blogger Support would be summoned, and would have to determine whether a blog:

• Had no administrators.
• Had at least one author.
• Was being requested by a person who had a legitimate need to request control (a former administrator, or a current author).

Failure to ensure that each condition was being properly met could, with the right problem report, allow a hijacker to improperly assume control of someone's blog - with only Blogger Support to blame for enabling the hijacking.

To allow control recovery without needless delay, and avoid the need for endless detail in verifying any such panicky report, Blogger Engineering made a simple procedural change. The "Forgot your username or password?" wizard, when control recovery is requested for a blog with no administrator, simply sends the appropriate access tokens (aka "login instructions") to all blog authors - as long as the membership list is well maintained.

Any blog authors, able to receive the login instructions, then become de facto administrators - and can jointly determine the fate of the blog. The control recovery process can be automated, and the risk of possible hijacking of actively owned (administered) blogs is reduced. This simply requires that at least one blog author uses a Blogger account based on an active and genuine email address - and if necessary, can search persistently for the email sent.

When this reset process is done, each author of the blog initially has the same power as each of the other authors. Blogger leaves it to all authors to act honourably - and to politely choose one or more authors to be administrators. As long as the author submitting the reset process is able to locate the email message in his Inbox immediately, he can make himself the sole administrator - if he decides.

If one of the authors has problem locating the email, it's possible that the other newly appointed administrators could unwisely hijack control of the blog. If this happens, it will be up to the authors to jointly establish order. Blogger Support will not be involved in any conflict.

The more authors a given blog may have, the greater the chance that one author, receiving the email message, may act dishonourably, and hijack the blog. In cases where there are a large number of authors (precise number not known, right now), Blogger will defer to the author requesting the reset.

In this case, the author requesting the account reset can enter his email address, that is used by his Blogger account, to have the password reset email sent directly to him.

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Claiming A Brand Name Based BlogSpot URL

Periodically, in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I?, we see a hopeful query.

How do I claim the brand name URL for my clients blog?

Many merchandisers are unaware of the simple Blogger / Google policy

Blogger accounts and Blog*Spot addresses do not expire.

Another way of saying that would possibly be first come, first served.

If the clients brand name is a registered trademark, you may be able to report a DMCA Violation. This action will likely get you two things.

• The offending blog may be deleted - with the URL locked to the current owner, for eternity.
• You (your clients company) may get some bad PR.

You probably won't get a third thing.

• The immediate use of the trademark URL.

To avoid bad PR, you might make up for the inconvenience, and compensate the current owner to have the URL transferred to you - but you may have to provide compensation, imaginatively. Traditionally, Google forbids us from selling Blogger / Google resources - including URLs.

Blogger supports our right to publish our blogs, anonymously. If the current owner, of the blog in question, can't be contacted directly, you may have to do some research to find the owner, or - again - get a court order.

If you do manage to contact the owner, and arrive at an understanding where you are offered control of the blog, have the URL transferred to you, properly.

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