Commenting Issues

Trying to comment here at From the Pew?  Several commenters (myself included while trying to comment on my own blog!) have had a difficult time commenting.  It seems that Blogger has made some people try to prove they aren't spambots before allowing a comment.  Wordpress is having issues, too, as they apparently require logging in with an already existing Gravatar account.  What is going on in the blogging world?

If any of my readers can try to comment on this post (or send me an email to fromthepew [at] yahoo [dot] com if you are unable to comment) I would appreciate it.  Thanks!

Blogger Is Back Up, I Guess

It looks like Blogger is back up.  I was able to re-post my Wednesday's post Re-Thinking The Sunday Church Service (Part 7) before Blogger re-posted all the removed posts.  I don't know what effect this will have on anything, but hopefully Blogger has the bugs worked out.

Blogger is Down

Apparently Blogger has been down for a few days now and in order to fix it, they had to remove all posts created since early Wednesday morning.  Hopefully all will be back to normal soon with new posts up.  Thanks for your patience.

Blog Construction Ahead

I may attempt to play with the template I have here on From the Pew.  This might be a construction zone for a little while.  Please be patient and stay tuned.  - Steve Scott

[Update:  The new layout, colors and all can be seen.  I'm still adding links and other things, so this is still a job in progress.  I will post when everything I want to do in this update actually occurs.]

Advice on Updating Blogger Template?

I have long desired to update my template on Blogger.  I have one of the ones that was available 5 1/2 years ago.  I have a newer blog (1974 Topps baseball cards) and like the format and ease of use.  But...

I've heard over the years from others that updating to a newer Blogger template can cause some big problems with layout and links and other things.  Does anybody know if this is still the case?  If anybody has experience with this and can offer advice, please let me know in the comments.

Thanks!

Mrs. Scott Solves Screen Resolution Issue

Mrs. Scott did some troubleshooting for me. The dropdown "view/text size" settings were somehow re-set to "largest" for many of the blogs I frequent. No wonder the text sizes were wacky. Thank you, Mrs. Scott!

What's Up With Blogger Screen Resolution?

[Update 02-25-09: problem solved, thanks to Mrs. Scott]

Last night, somtime in the middle of the night, all of my Blogger based sites on my blogroll had a screen resolution explosion (implosion?), so that now all non-toolbar space on the screen is hyper enlarged. One site, Gene's, is showing up with about 256 pt type. I can hardly read it, as even moderate length words in margins are displayed on several lines. Some sites have extreme text and photo overlap. Yahoo and Comcast home pages are also affected. Wordpress and several others don't seem to be affected.

One post title in Gene's right margin looks like this to me:

Dancing as
a Bride
with her
Bridegroo
m


I have a high resolution screen, the 1280 x 1024 max, but the non-toolbar spaces on these sites show up like some 800 x 640 kindergarten viewability. No, I'm not losing my eyesight.

My Blogger post editor has like 1/4" characters on my screen. All these things are screaming at my face. Any ideas out there?

Blogger Label and Series Problems

I'm running into some problems with Blogger's label feature. I've got a number of ongoing blog series in my margin where I want all posts on that topic available to readers (or myself) just by clicking. Before labels, I made one long post made up of cutting/pasting each post into one large one. The text editor's limited abilities made it difficult and time consuming to do. Once labels came into being, I used them. But now I've found that labels have a 20 post limit. For example, my "Re-Thinking Church Membership" series now stands at 21 posts, only 20 of which are visible, so I've taken to making "sub" labels, grouping parts 1-10 together for the reader to somehow access. And having accepted Bloggers new format, I don't have the "older posts/newer posts" feature available for my readers to delve back into my blog history through a label.

Some bloggers, like Ron McKenzie at Blessed Economist, have a separate website for completed works of writing, and link there. Ron's blog is his thinking-out-loud scratch pad where he formulates ideas. I use my blog to develop ideas, too, but don't yet want to use another source, so I'm stuck with its limitations. I don't want to get another blog host just yet. Any ideas on how to access all posts on a single topic? Thanks in advance.

Blogger Spell Checker Back On?

It seems my Blogger spell checker is back to working. I never found out why it wasn't, but I'll welcome it back.

Blogger Spell Checker Disabled?

Any others who use Blogger have their spellchecker stop working in the last few days? How about the ability to attach an image?

Slight Format Change

I have a list of ongoing blog series in the left margin. For some of the series I have taken each post and collected them into one post. I have found that this is difficult, time consuming and frustrating. Blogger's post editor isn't quite what I need for this task.

In light of this, I am now going to use labels exclusively for entire series. The existing collection posts will still be available in the margin, but at the end of each I will put a link to the series label for to access the continuation of the series. I know of at least one link to a series from another blogger, so I want to keep the collection post. I hope this doesn't cause problems for any readers who access them.

New Blogger Forced On Me

Okay, I held out as long as I could. I avoided the new Blogger which is specifically attached to a Google account. Prompts, choices and "aw, c'mon" have been ignored, bypassed and run around. Until tonight. It gave me no choice. I had to accept terms of agreement even to log on. I tried an old trick, in which I "logged on" in the comment section of another Blogger account so that when logging into Blogger from an additional internet window, I bypassed the login procedure to directly to my posting dashboard. Even this was not allowed. I was trapped.

So, now I'm on the new Blogger against my will. But I'm not complaining too loudly here. I just was too lazy to spend two seconds longer than usual to do the task. It screws up the works of some third party software I use through my site, but I know the remedy, and it'll probably take as long to fix that as it is in writing this post.

Now I can add labels to my posts. I wonder if that can be done retroactively, so I can catalogue all of my posts under labels to make it easier for my fans to love me and my similar posts. Let's just see how the new Blogger works. It might be easier, as they claim, but it always takes up-front labor on my part. Now to dive in...

Blogger's Funny SpellChecker

Blogger's spell checker is humorous. It doesn't even recognize "blog" as a word, suggesting "bloc" in its place. But when I use my blogpeer's handle "Vache Folle" I get the suggested replacement words, "vague folly." Blogger said it, not me.