Only the irascible Victor Meldrew’s catchphrase, as uttered by the inimitable Richard Wilson, can sum up my incredulous frustration at Blogger’s latest spanner in the works. Or rather lack of spanner, as I’ve just noticed that the invaluable little wrench symbol, which allows me to edit all the gadgets in my sidebar from my front page, has disappeared without trace, as has the Quick Edit pencil icon below each post and the Delete button next to comments.
This is the unintended and profoundly annoying side-effect of yet another change to Blogger, or rather to the blogspot URL where our blogs are hosted. Google is gradually changing the suffix of our blog addresses from the ubiquitous .com to co.uk for us Britons, .ca for all Canadian blogs, .au for Australia
I read some of the howls of anguish in the Blogger Help forum from the countries where the change has already happened, as they saw all their quick editing tools disappear at a stroke, and I pitied them. Now it’s Britain
Sadly I have no advice to give, no quick fix or workround to share. All I can do is to reassure my affected blogfriends that it’s not their fault and share their frustration at now having to go behind the scenes every time they want to tweak anything, however small. When Google will eventually sort out this new bug is anyone's guess, but given the number of recent problems, I'm not hopeful that it will be soon.
I need a drink – a large one……
Perpetua - think we'll all join you.
ReplyDeleteRed, white or something stronger,Molly>
DeleteGet me a glass!
ReplyDeleteComing up - and I only do big ones. :-)
Deleteexactly the right size :-)
DeleteBTW I just noticed that you have .fr suffix on your blog ....
ReplyDeleteAnd you have ,uk on yours, Niall and Antoinette. As far as I can gather, it's some system of redirection from the main site and it obviously means that we read each others blogs as though they were published in our country. Weird or what?
DeleteVery! We have .fr suffix 'at base' as it were and when I visited ABroad she had .com [is based in UK] so all a real mess methinks
DeleteI've just checked The Broad's site and she is unaffected because her blog is hosted on her own domain, not on blogspot. That's one of the few bits of information I was able to glean in the help forums.
DeleteThanks for that info ... I though it was probably going to be the case. Whew.
DeleteStill -- can I have a glass, too -- in sympathy, of course!
DeleteHere's one of celebration instead, Broad, both of your immunity and of the fix I managed to find on the Blogger Help forums. :-)
DeleteNever mind a glass....where's the bottle!
ReplyDeleteI've just had the frustration of not being able to comment on Wordpress blogs without logging in to WP and now Blogger is going to start messing about again....
The pastis is half empty or I have a nice red open, Fly.
DeleteYou're not the only one as far as WP is concerned. I discovered that yesterday as did others, but found that I could put my blogspot blog address in the URL box. I'm now permanently logged in to WP and yet anyone who clicks on my name in a WP comment gets sent here.
Thank you...I'll try that...after the pastis....
DeleteIs there any point...or even just an end point to this madness?
ReplyDeleteYour guess is as good as mine, EF. It's just one thing after another. My DH reckons this latest development is all to do with targeted advertising and he could be right....
DeleteFacebook users are all dreading the moment when they too will be "timelined" a new wall/page design which has two wide columns and virtually no rhyme nor reason to it as far as I can see. It's being rolled out bit by bit, some have it, some don't. Many much prefer the older format yet one day they log on, and there it is. They've been "timelined."
ReplyDeleteIt hasn't hit my page yet. I will need a darkened room to lie down in when it does.
FB has had targeted advertising for yonks. Apparently I am supposed to be in the correct demographic to be obsessed with wrinkles, belly fat and seaside holiday cottages. It's like they can read my diary!
I'm a complete FB numptie as you know, Baby Sis, but I feel your pain nonetheless. The cumulative effect of all the Blogger problems and changes of the past few months has me poised to migrate to WordPress. I really don't mind change when it's for the better, but most of the Blogger ones have resulted in reduced functionality which is crazy!
DeleteAs for the targeted ads, I see exactly the same ones on a couple of forums I'm on and I instinctively look down or stroke my face. :-) And ClustrMaps reads my blogposts....
Thank you for the warning.
ReplyDeleteI've been less often in blogland this week and haven't noticed the gremlins.
You're welcome, Friko. It only happened lateish yesterday and as I've been out all day today, I didn't notice until this evening.
DeleteGrrr...I haven't the stamina to be angry just yet, Perpetua, as I'm still drowning in a sea of unintelligible gobbledygook...but thanks for the heads-up!
ReplyDeleteSorry to add to the load, CB, but it's such a hugely inconvenient change I felt I should warn people. Grrr indeed....
DeleteI've got a long straw...where's the bottle? Smiles Astrid.
ReplyDeleteHere you are, Astrid. I don't know whether the change applies to the US yet, but if it doesn't I'm guessing it soon will do. :-(
DeleteOh No!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteOh yes, Rosaria!!! Does this mean that it's happened to you too now? It's like being permanently loggd out of one's own front page. Sigh...
DeleteWell apart from this new annoyance I'm now having problems commenting on Wordpress blogs. When you set up the WP help blog and I joined I couldn't use the name Ayak for some silly reason, so I had to use ayak48. Now when I try to comment on a WP blog it won't let me use Ayak, even though I'm receiving email notifications. The problem would appear to be that I now have two usernames associated with one email address, and there is no way that I can get rid of one of them. I have written to support@wordpress.com and asked them to sort it out...ie I only want one username and I don't want to have to create another email address to be able to use it.
ReplyDeleteI'd join you in a large drink too but now all this has caused a splitting headache. I do so wish these things didn't happen.
Ayak, as I said to Fly above, I've been having a similar problem with WP over the last couple of days as have others. They've obviously changed something too. I've solved it by staying logged in to WP and putting in my blogspot address, but your problem is a bit different. At least a real live person from WP support WILL get back to you eventually, unlike Blogger which never gives individual help.
DeleteHope the headache disappears soon. If it's any consolation a very large number of people are wishing the same as you....
I was so relieved to come across your blog and to know that I wasn't alone. I have lost my little spanners, delete button and pencil icon too, and thought it must be me. Why do they not leave us alone? Thanks for the information - I raise my glass to you - cheers and thank you.
ReplyDeleteHi Rosemary, glad to be of assistance. I've sometimes wondered whether I'm making my blog very boring by posting about these technical problems, but they are becomeing so numerous and so annoying I think it's worth getting the word out when I can. This latest one is almost the last straw for me - absolutely infuriating and so very inconvenient.
DeleteI Like Rosemary, assumed it was me again.... I'm really cross as I'd only just mastered the spanner and little pencil. Aggghhhh. Thanks again though for letting me know its not me. J.
ReplyDeletePoor Janice. I do feel for newer bloggers like you and Croixblanches, having to cope with so many negative changes while still coming to terms with the basic software. I don't think there is a single change that has been made to Blogger recently that hasn't removed functionality rather than enhancing it.
DeleteI am now following you and Janice - so, as I mentioned to Janice, good things can come from adversity - this is all down to Blogger and his (I think Blogger is male) problems!!
ReplyDeleteWelcome aboard, Rosemary - I nearly said welcome to the madhouse in the present Blogger climate. :-) Oh, I think Blogger is definitely male, a geeky adolescent who doesn't really live in the same world as the rest of us....
DeleteGlad you've found Janice too. Even the foggiest clouds have silver linings.
Hello Perpetua:
ReplyDeleteOh dear, oh dear, we are always so grateful to you, dear Perpetua, for flagging up the latest Blogger Blip but we always leave feeling rather sad and wondering which bit of our blog, or those that we follow, will collapse, seize up, disintegrate or disappear altogether.
it is our belief that if only Blogger Headquarters would employ steady, middle aged, female technicians, then everything would run like clockwork.......still, even that would need winding from time to time!!!!
Hello Jane and Lance. I'm sorry so often to be the bearer of bad tidings, though I do try to provide a solution whenever I can, as I've just done in my very latest post. As for Blogger and its employees, well they do say that many supermarkets prefer to employ women of a certain age for their reliability. :-)
DeleteIf your a retired priest do you remember the episode of Father Ted where Richard Wilson is driven crazy by his own catch phrase?
ReplyDeleteWhat Google is doing is getting Blogspot ready for censorship. China doesn't want any blogs from Taiwan, etc, and now the rest of the world is paying for it. Already code has come out to switch it back to .com. I've begun experimenting with it and it works. I just don't want to try it out on my big blog yet.
Hi David. I'm afraid I wasn't a great Father Ted fan, but know just what you mean about catchphrases. :-)
DeleteThe link I posted to Google's explanation for the change hinted at the whole censorship question, but you make that clearer. As you say on your own blog, a sad day for Google. If you look at my later post, you'll see I found reference to a very simple fix that doesn't involve interfering with template code and it works perfectly.
It is a good fix to get your widgets back but people seeing your blog will still see the other address. My URL for your blog is perpetually-------blogspot.ca. Anyway, I'll link to it from my blog so that people can find a short term solution.
ReplyDeleteDavid, I'm in the UK and I see your blog as -----blogspot.co.uk. as I do every single blog I follow, wherever it may be. I don't think there's anything we can do about that, since we access each other's blogs through Blogger's system and they can set that to whatever they choose. All I can do is to make blogging easier for people by helping them to get missing functions back.
DeleteFound this solution in the one of the Blogger forums. It's only a temporary fix and not permanent. "Open your blog and edit its address in your browser address bar. Delete the suffix after the word blogspot and in its place add .com/ncr and hit your return key. This takes your blog address back to blogspot.com and all the Quick Edit tools will come back."
ReplyDeleteThanks for coming across to let me know this, Andy. very kind of you. As it happens I found the fix in the same place soon after I posted this and did my next post on it. You're quite right. It is only temporary and I've had to redo it a couple of times, but that's no problem as long as I get the Quick Edit tools back every time.
Delete