Fnurban #43 Blogger issues: Jon F's work-around

You are all probably aware of the issue with Blogger in the past week or so - Blogger is not updating people's Blog Lists -  and the  resulting difficulties  seeing  recent posts by other bloggers.  Jon Freitag of Palouse Wargaming Journal  has come up with a work-around which seems to get people's posts 'out there' and allow followers to see them.  I thought I'd summarise what Jon has suggested as a work-around: 

(1) Getting blogger to publish your new post to others:   part of the issue seems to be that Blogger is not always  pushing out your recent post to the rest of the world. Jon thinks this is because it is using  a 'cached' version (stored in  memory somewhere, for speed of access) of your blog,  and the cache is not getting updated with your new post.  His suggestion to solve the issue is to refresh the cached data, so that blogger will see the new post  and publish it.  To do that, he has used Feedburner to refresh the cache.  

I admit I had never heard of Feedburner, so all credit goes to Jon for this one! Anyway it seems to be an app, which is part of the google environment ('universe'? 🙂 ) . You can find it here:

https://feedburner.google.com/      or if you google search for 'Feedburner'   you should find it easily.

IF you are already logged in to your Google account (e.g. because you are signed into Blogger)  the Feedburner page should immediately give you a list of your blogs.  There's a 'configure proxy' button and a 'three dots' menu for each one.  If you click on the 'three dots'  it gives a bunch of options, and you want 'refresh feed'  - here's what mine looked like     

 

When I clicked 'refresh feed'   I just got a 'feed will be refreshed in background' message, and that was that.   Hopefully that refreshes the cache, so if you do that after you publish your latest post, it should have done the trick. It may take a few minutes to refresh - due to that 'background' process.   

(2)  Reading other people's posts :  once you have published your post, other bloggers need to be able to read them.  Most of us use the 'Blog List' gadget to get updates of other people's blog posts. Jon noticed that there was an issue with some blogs on there too, in that the addresses of the blogs in the list are sometimes  prefixed 'http'  and sometimes 'https' .   You can see that on the 'Layout' page,  look for the Blog List gadget and 'edit' it . Again, I'll show you mine'  🙂

 

As you can see, some addresses start http and some https.  (I'm not sure why this happens - it may depend on the age of the blog, perhaps those more recently created have the 'secure' https prefix? ) 

It seems that if your Blog List gadget has a given blog listed as prefixed 'http', but the actual address being published is prefixed 'https' (or vice-versa), your Blog List won't pick it up.  

Basically you need to make sure the address on your Blog List for another person's blog  matches the address in their Feedburner settings.  Of course you can't see other folks' Feedburner, but basically it will be prefixed http or https, so if another blogger's posts seem to be updating on other people's  Blog List (so they're publishing OK)  and not on yours, then try editing their entry on your Blog List to change the prefix from http to https, or vice-versa.  

To edit, you use the 'pen' symbol next to the address in the list (see above)  - sorry if this is assuming you are a complete IT beginner!. Notice there are about 3 levels of  'continue' or  'save' to go through after you make the change; to the address itself, to the Blog List Gadget AND to the Layout page - if in doubt,  hit 'save' !

If this works, when you go back to your blog page ( and reload it, for good measure), you should see latest  posts - at least from people who have heeded Jon's 'Feedburner' advice, and where you have the correct address in your Blog List gadget.  There might be a few minutes delay, so if it doesn't work straight away, wait a bit and reload again..

 

For those of you following my blog,  I should point out the address that Feedburner is using to publish my posts, which is as follows: 

         https://russetcoatcpt.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default 

So hopefully there's no excuse for you to miss my sparkling wit and repartee in future... (!)

Finally,  a good tip is to include your own blog in your Blog List gadget - that way,  when you publish a new post ( and refresh with Feedburner if necessary) you can see when Blogger publishes your post to the outside world without having to go and look on other people's blog lists. 

I hope this is useful - assuming you actually get to read this post! I'll also email all the bloggers I have in my address book to alert them to this.  

Credit for all the above goes to Jon Freitag - he's done the legwork,  I've just tried to summarise it fairly simply and clearly in a form I hope everyone can follow (fair takes me back to my IT Support days - I'll admit I wasn't the techie expert, but I could follow simple instructions and recognise patterns and typo errors. Which puts me roughly on a par with 'AI' models nowadays..).  Many thanks, Jon, let's hope this sorts things out until Google can fix things properly! 

Back to proper hobby stuff next time; until then, keep well (and keep blogging)  everyone.