I’m thrilled that Google is finally releasing an update to Blogger that adds serious new features, not that infrastructure improvements are nice but, face it, Blogger is so far behind other platforms it stopped being funny a year ago. I was even happy to see I was invited to beta test the new version.
But… the beta currently doesn’t work for users who have Pro accounts and publish via FTP to their own server (i.e., not a BlogSpot blog). Raise your hand if you have a Pro account. Raise your hand if you publish to your own server.
(Both my hands are up and nose-typing is really slow!)
One of the skills Google has certainly mastered is databases, in pretty much all the different forms they can be made these days. My meaning? Shouldn’t the G Men and Women be holding off the invites for folks like me until they resolve the problems blocking these uses? The information is readily available in the blog settings.
While I could create a new blog just to test with, frankly I’m not that interested in using my time that way. This wouldn’t be a big deal or worth it to me to write about except that I just wasted 10 minutes trying to log in after clicking the invitation page link to NOT skip for now.
One of the changes in the new system is that everyone will need to use a Google account, and the old Blogger ones will go away. (Didn’t Yahoo just have this headache over Flickr?) Again, no big deal except that I use the personalization features of Google News and so am signed in for that as well. I use the browser Google recommends so I can have multiple tabs open all the time. UH OH, cookie conflict.
In fact, I’m kind of nervous that since I just logged in to News in another tab this post won’t get published when I hit the orange button. Better take a copy, just in case.
After Publish: Glad to report no issues with the push. Still, one would really hope the folks at the ‘Plex could have done a tad more testing before pushing this beta out.
BillSaysThis 