Author Archive

Over the weekend there were some errors with our help request form that caused some people to be unable to submit their questions and problems to Blogger Support. This is now fixed.

Over the weekend, some users were seeing generic "unexpected error" messages when attempting to log in to their accounts. That problem has been patched as of about 10 AM this morning (PST), so if you were affected by it your account should be working normally again now. If you still see the error, just clear your browser's cookies, then log in again.

Some users are currently getting "403 Forbidden" errors when viewing their blogs, and "Permission Denied" errors (or variations thereof) when publishing. We're restarting some machines right now and things should be working again very soon.



Update: This has now been fixed. If you still encounter problems, please clear your browser's cache and cookies, then give it another shot.

A clarification about the filer we restored yesterday: This machine is indeed up and functioning again, so the affected blogs are no longer entirely inaccessible. However, it is still not in great shape and we are in the process of moving all the data off of it and on to better machines. So over the next few days there may still be lingering and intermittent problems for some blogs. This includes the "forbidden" errors we're all getting tired of, as well as occasional publishing errors, or incompletely published pages. If you get an error viewing a blog, refreshing the page once or twice should clear it. For publishing problems, simply wait a few minutes and republish, and that should take care of it. Thanks for your patience while we work on clearing all this up.

We've finally finished moving all the affected blogs off of the bad machine that has been causing us so much trouble recently. You may see some lingering problems with a few blogs that were incorrectly or incompletely published on their last update, but republishing any such blogs should fix them. If you continue to receive errors viewing any blogs, try clearing your browser's cache and then refreshing the page. Going forward, though, things should be back to working normally. Thanks for sticking with us through this.

We've been having some database issues this morning, causing Blogger.com to be inaccessible for some users. We're investigating the cause of the trouble, so thanks for bearing with us as we work on getting everything running normally again.



Update: For the majority of users things should be working properly again now, though there may still be a few smaller, lingering issues. We plan on having these resolved by the end of the day.

Some users are noticing problems with photo uploading timing out or taking a very long time to respond. We're looking into this and will post an update when there is more information.

Some folks are finding that some of their emailed posts get dropped and don't reach their blogs. We're looking into this.



Update, 8/1: We found the problem in one of our mail servers, so new emailed posts should go through normally now. You might also start seeing old messages show up that previously hadn't gone through.

Some password recovery emails are being sent out with incorrect links, which will cause an error when you try to click on them. We're working on getting this fixed soon, but in the meantime if this affects you, you may be able to work around it yourself. Check your link to make sure there is a "/" after the "blogger.com" part, and if it's missing, add it in. E.g.: http://www.blogger.comlotsofcrazytexthere would become http://www.blogger.com/lotsofcrazytexthere.



If that doesn't help, please be patient, and check back on this page for updates. Once we've fixed the problem, you can request a new password recovery email which will work.



Update (2pm PDT): This should now be fixed. If you are still having trouble getting your login information, please request a new password recovery email here.

Blogger in beta initially launched without a few features -- it's still a beta version after all -- and it turned out that one of the ones folks missed the most was having an Edit HTML view for their templates in the new Layouts system. I can sympathize with that myself. Complete template control was one of the things that originally made me choose Blogger over the other available options almost four years ago (and yes, that was before I worked here). That kind of personalization and customization is important to us here at Blogger, so I hope no one thought this feature was gone for good.



I love the fact that we've got such cool new ways to just drag 'n' drop parts of your template around, and change fonts and colors with the click of a mouse. And that "shuffle blog colors" option can keep me entertained for hours. But still, there are times when you really just want to muck around in the code and nothing else will do. So for those of you who feel that way, have at it! Edit HTML is now available for Layouts.



One quick warning before you all dive in, though: The new template language is completely different from the old one. So even if you're used to working with classic templates, you'll need to learn some new tricks to directly edit the new templates for Layouts-enabled blogs. We've got some starter documentation on it, with more to come later. Personally, I recommend making a test blog to experiment on while you learn how it all works.



Have fun!