Preventing FeedBurner Email Distribution Delay

One very useful FeedBurner service is the Email Distribution feature.

Email Distribution is virtually a turnkey subscription management. Email Distribution has one limitation, which not everybody understands, however.

FeedBurner sends out any new posts daily, based on a chosen distribution time. Depending upon what distribution time you choose, for any FeedBurner Feed, you can have anywhere from (up to) 2 hours, to 26 hours - of delay, between publishing a post, and having that post distributed by email.

To minimise email distribution delay, you choose the daily distribution time carefully - then publish immediately before the daily scheduled distribution.

1. Choose a convenient distribution time window.
2. Using the FeedBurner menu, Publicize - Email Distribution - Delivery Time, choose the corresponding daily 2 hour window, for email distribution.
3. Publish posts immediately before the start of the chosen time window.

You will still have a single daily distribution time - but you can choose an appropriate distribution window. And, you can publish just before the chosen distribution window.

>> Top

Google+ Circles Is Replacing Following / Google Friend Connect

Those of you who have been Following this blog, in the past, may have recently noted a new gadget in the sidebar.

Just below the "Follow Me" gadget, you'll see "+Follow Me". The latter gadget looks the same as the former, but has some subtle differences. Some differences are visible, others not so visible. And some differences are not visible to the eye - but will still affect your access to this blog.

The Google+ Circles gadget, which on this blog is labeled "+Follow Me", appears similar to the Following / Google Friend Connect "Follow Me" gadget - but appearances can be very misleading.

The larger pictures are one obvious difference - but that's not the most significant difference. Some difference need to be discussed now, rather than later, for maximum benefit.

Following / Google Friend Connect lets your acquaintances Follow a single blog. I have several blogs, and a different group of Followers for each blog. The Google+ Circles gadget shows everybody in all of your publicly visible circles, merged together. The merged concept may, or may not, be to your liking.

With Following / Google Friend Connect, your Followers can use email, or any number of newsfeed clients, to read the complete content of your blog - including each complete post, if you setup the blog feed that way. Google+ Circle members can read a snippet of any blog post intentionally Shared, in their stream - but will have to click on the link to the blog, in the snippet, to read the entire blog post. If you have read this far, that's what you have already done.

Following / Google Friend Connect works best for public blogs - and supports a reader audience of unlimited size. A Google+ Circle, likewise, supports a reader audience of unlimited size.

With a properly setup Google+ Circle, and a Blogger blog with a list of designated readers - and your readers properly accepting the emailed membership invitation, up to 99 of your designated readers can Follow your blog. As before, the limit for private blog distribution, as for any team blog, is still 99 members.

Anybody Following a blog, using the stream of any author of the blog, will see a snippet of each post Shared in their stream. To read the complete post, they will have to click on the link in the snippet. With a private blog, the reader will have to be a blog member, to read the complete post.

Many publicly visible Blogger blogs have Following communities which vastly exceed my 4700 member population (my "Follow Me" gadget, as of April 2013) - and the possibility of losing those communities will not be willingly accepted by everybody. The integration of Following with the newsfeed subscription - and with the dashboard Reading List - is not automatic with Google+ Circles.

A blog with multiple authors (aka "team blog") will have either a Google+ Circles gadget for only one author - or multiple Circles gadgets, to fairly let people subscribe to the various authors Google+ streams. Neither solution will be exactly equal to the Following / GFC blog feed subscription - especially if the various team members are similar to me, and my range of interests.

Right now, it appears that a blog can have just one Circles gadget. How team membership blogs will use Google+ is another question to ask.

Similar to the team blog, we may wish to consider the multiple interests of each blog owner. I am one person, with a number of interests. People who have intentionally subscribed to the newsfeed from this blog, and are specifically interested in my blog about Blogger blogs, may not be extremely interested in my blog about cooking - nor in my blog about jokes, pranks, and miscellaneous ramblings. Unfortunately, if you Follow my Google+ stream, you'll get a bit of each subject.

Again, the Google+ Circles gadget appears to contain the total Followers for one person, for all interests of that one person. I have not yet found a tool that will allow me to analyse the interests of each of my Followers, and to accurately determine the specific areas of overlapping, between my own personal interests and theirs. It will be impossible for many blog owners to keep an accurate Circle complement, and segregate each circle according to interest, so they may Share only relevant material with the specific members of each different Circle.

As the Google+ Circles gadget evolves, some significant improvements - and some compromises - will be required. Like the Internet, Blogger, and Google, are constantly evolving. This may require compromises by many Blogger blog owners.

We now have a rollup discussion, where each blog owner is asked to provide their thoughts about the above described issues - and possibly, others that concern you. Anybody who experienced the Blogger GUI upgrade of several years ago may, from experience, realise how much better off we may all be, with these issues discussed now - rather than later.

>> Top

Control The Email Settings, Relevant To Your Blog, Wisely

Some blog owners don't always think about the various email settings, which are part of their Blogger blogs, and the possible effects to their email - or somebody else's email.

There are several settings, where a blog owner may enter an email address.

• Email posts to
• Comment Moderation.
• Comment Notification Email.

These settings don't require acceptance by the recipient, making for some interesting possibilities for causing problems in other people's email, as well as one's own email.

There are several Blogger dashboard settings - related to post publication and to various commenting activities - with differing effect to one's own, or somebody else's, email.

• Settings - "Mobile and email" - "Email posts to" generates a minimally formatted text copy of each post, when published, to up to 10 email addresses.
• Settings - "Posts and comments" - "Comment Moderation" generates a minimally formatted copy of each incoming comment, before the comment is published - and allows moderation of the comment, while reading the email message - when the recipient has the proper authority.
• Settings - "Mobile and email" - "Comment Notification Email" generates a minimally formatted copy of each incoming comment, before the comment is published or rejected.

Since none of these settings require acceptance by the recipient, there are various possibilities for causing interesting email delivery.

Unlike various subscription services which use email, such as a FeedBurner Email Subscription service, an email address added to any of these three settings requires no formal acceptance. If a blog administrator should add an email address, whether their own (primary or additional personal email address), a willing friend or relative, or an unknown victim's address, there is no initial email sent to the recipient

You (or somebody else) has added this email address as a recipient of "Email posts to" / "Comment Moderation" / "Comment Notification Email". Do you approve of this additional traffic source to your email service?

or a similarly worded notification / approval. Given a clueless or malicious blog owner, it's possible that one (or all) of these settings could be used to harass an unwitting third party.

The "Email posts to" feature, also known as "BlogSend", generates a minimally formatted text copy of each post, when published, to up to 10 email addresses. This setting has been used, in the past, to provide distribution of newly published posts for private blogs, as well as a simple distribution for posts from public blogs.

Since it's limited to 10 entries, BlogSend does not provide a suitable service for any blog with a reader population of any appreciable size. For a blog owner with any technical experience, FeedBurner Email Distribution is a much better solution for post distribution - when the blog in question is publicly accessible.

For distribution of a private blog to more than 10 readers, one may use Google+.

The "Comment Moderation" and "Comment Notification Email" settings, used together, can generate interesting duplication of email to one's own (or somebody else's) email service. If these settings are made without thinking, some interesting confusion can result. Email addresses can be added to each of these settings without consideration of the relationship or level of authority enjoyed by the owner of the email address, relative to the blog in question.

Comment Moderation Email is presumed to generally be a function performed by blog administrators - but email resulting from this setting will be sent to anybody addressed. A blog administrator / member - or other non administrator of the blog or an unwitting stranger - will receive email suggesting several options,

Publish
Delete
Mark as spam

Moderate comments for this blog.

If the recipient is not an actual blog administrator, the links in the email provide confusion, and no result.

Comment Notification Email might be generally addressed to blog members - but is not necessarily limited. Since notification of comments is sent separately from moderation, recipients of a notification can become confused when they fail to find the comment, mentioned in the notification, present on the blog. A blog administrator, using either an email moderation message - or using the blog Comments wizard, may or may not decide to Publish - or to designate a comment as Spam - regardless of a notification message having been delivered to each designated recipient.

Comment notification email may look similar to comment moderation email, less the comment processing options - possibly causing more confusion. A blog owner, adding his own email address to both comment moderation and comment notification, may see the combination as unknown duplication. And blog owners may confuse the proper use of comment moderation and comment notification email.

A blog owner, transferring ownership of a given blog, may overlook updating of the email settings. A new blog owner, receiving a blog being transferred, may likewise overlook these settings, and may lack the associated email, until the omission is corrected.

Either the previous owner, or the new owner, may be confused temporarily - and may wonder why they are still getting email / not getting email, until they examine and correct the setting in question. Alternately, if someone's email address was added maliciously, by a blog owner intending to harass somebody, one can see interesting possibility for conflict.

>> Top

Use Of Google+ For Networking, And Keeping Your Blogger Account And Blogs Safe

One constant activity in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken involves blog owners whose blogs were deleted - either righteously or spuriously - as part of the ongoing battle against spam, in Blogger blogs. Generally, the problem comes directly from the blog content.

Sometimes, the problem is more subtle.

When I tried to login to Blogger, I got a screen that said my account needed to be verified, due to "unusual activity on my account". Having verified my account, I see that my blogs have been deleted.

This is part of one of the more intriguing episodes, in the never ending fight against hacking and spam, in Blogger.

Some Blogger blog owners participate in comment based discussions, and provide their email addresses there. Some state their email addresses openly, in the body of the comments, for the world to see when viewing the comments. Others post comments using their Blogger accounts, knowing that the blog owners can see their email address in the comment moderation / notification email messages - and can contact them using email.

Spammers use comment based networking, to their advantage. They subscribe to any comment thread, using the "Notify me" option - then wait while blog readers comment using their Blogger accounts. As the email comes in, from blog readers commenting, they scrape the email addresses from the email content. Since most people commenting either openly state their blog URLs in the comment bodies - or link to a list of their blogs - the spammer now has two essential ingredients, to be used for hacking someone's Blogger account, and gaining control of the blogs owned by the account.

Google now provides Google+, where we can network with a designated audience, and avoid spam in our email. Using Google+, our email addresses are not revealed, and spammers have less incentive to use Google+ for email address harvesting. This protects our Blogger accounts and blogs against hacking, and relieves us from email based spam.

For people who update their Blogger accounts to use Google+ based profiles, but continue to network using Blogger comments, Blogger now protects us by using anonymous email addresses in all comment generated email. This leaves people who continue to comment, using Blogger accounts with native Blogger profiles, vulnerable to ongoing email address harvesting, and account hacking.

Blogger account hacking, using email addresses harvested from Blogger blog comments, will typically involve brute force password guessing. Blogger, detecting brute force attempts against a vulnerable Blogger account, will lock the account and the blogs. Once we verify ownership of our Blogger account - and hopefully change the Blogger account password to something less vulnerable to guessing - the blogs owned by a possibly compromised account remain locked, until they can be examined for signs of tampering, by Google security / spam analysts.

We also must consider the possibility that not all brute force password guessing attacks are being detected by Google - and some Blogger accounts are being deviously, and temporarily, hijacked.

People who setup Blogger accounts based on bogus email addresses - or who have accounts based on old email addresses which they can't use - continue to present a challenge here. These people will never receive essential email advising them of a problem in either verifying their Blogger account - or their blogs. This will continue to make our initial spam lock advice relevant.

Can you login to Blogger? Do you have a dashboard link "Deleted blogs"? That's where you start.

You wait 24 to 48 hours after submitting a Restore request - then you post back here, and we take the next step.

>> Top