The problem with Blogger's overzealous software-policeman seems to be almost over - at least for now. In an attempt to kill off spam blogs, Blogger unleashed a program that supposedly was capable of identifying the blogs and automatically locking them down. Unfortunately, there were hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of innocent blogs swept up into that net at the same time.To Blogger's credit, the problem was resolved pretty quickly and I was pleasantly surprised to find that Book Chase is back under my control as of sometime this morning.
There does seem to be another issue out there, however, that is still affecting Blogger users, a conflict between Sitemeter, Internet Explorer 7 and Blogger that makes it impossible to open up the blogs via IE7. Sitemeter is the meter of choice for many bloggers, including me, so I'm hoping that someone is actively working on this problem. This one could actually turn out to be the bigger problem because there are three separate companies and pieces of software involved but I'm hoping that one of them takes the initiative to get this figured out soon.
It's a tough decision for Blogger users: delete Sitemeter and lose all the valuable feedback that comes from the service or limit the number of readers having access to their blog by keeping IE7 users shut out. It's kind of a no-brainer because readers are the most important thing to bloggers, but it is painful to lose Sitemeter even for a little while.
What a mess...
EDIT- As of ten p.m., Houston-time:
Although the Sitemeter site crashed a couple of hours ago, it does appear that they have now resolved the coding conflict they caused with IE7 sometime yesterday evening when they were doing some code revisions in their software. I think they took a pretty tough hit, both in reputation and number of users, because a whole bunch of Sitemeter users appear to have yanked their meter from their blogsites. It's a tricky business.
I'm back in, too. Just over checking to see if you had "been resolved."
ReplyDeleteGlad to know it's been fixed! Hopefully the other problem will soon be resolved too.
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear about this. I'm all for getting rid of spammers, but not at the expense of honest bloggers. I see now why I was having problems myself this morning. When I tried to load my own page to read comments I couldn't do it. IE kept shutting me down. I finally figured the page would load until it got to the Sitemeter widget. When I took it off the page (hopefully can put it back on later), the page was fine. How bizarre. I don't like IE7 and wish I could go back to IE6. I'm contemplating just switching to Firefox.
ReplyDeleteGood to see you're back Sam. I didn't know that about Sitemeter. I have one. Maybe I should get rid of it :(
ReplyDeleteGlad to see you back. No idea what you're talking about...a little too technical for me.
ReplyDeleteDarn. I was hoping you'd have to move to Wordpress so we wouldn't have to jump through so many hoops to leave a comment! ;)
ReplyDeleteActually, I just had the first bit of spam posted to my blog yesterday. I'm still trying to get rid of it without deleting the post.
ReplyDeleteGlad to see you're back and I'm adding you to my blogroll.
Great reviews here.
Phew, glad to see you're back! How annoying, but it seems like they got on the problem fairly quickly. Hope it's smooth sailing from here on out :)
ReplyDeleteGlad to see that you're back in business, Jenclair...what a waste of a bunch of hours for a lot of people, the kind of thing that gives IT departments a bad name. I hope someone at Blogger pays the price for this mess.
ReplyDeleteJeane, looks like Sitemeter has fixed its problem now and that things are settling down again.
ReplyDeleteDanielle, I swear by Firefox and have used it pretty much since it was first available. It's way better than Explorer in ease of use and security issues. The conversion is easy...all your shortcuts in Explorer can be imported directly to Firefox, for instance.
ReplyDeleteChris, the Sitemeter problem is fixed now, so hang on to the meter. I think it offers the best feedback data in the business and really didn't want to delete it, so I'm relieved about their fix.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Mary. It was a frustrating and stressful two days for lots of us, but it seems to be done...I hope.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, I've started working up the blog over at WordPress but that service is a bit limiting in that it doesn't accept java script and some of my sidebar widgets won't work over there. Also, all of my YouTube embeddings and links would have to be relinked one-at-a-time. I spent about three hours on the thing and have only scratched the surface on the amount of work that needs to be done.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure, honestly, where I'm heading with this thing, but for the immediate future, Blogger is the best option.
Good luck getting rid of the spam, C.B. That can be a real pain.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link. I'll stop by your blog soon and will link back to you.
Thanks, Gentle Reader, things do seem to be running smoothly now that both Blogger and Sitemeter finally got their respective acts together.
ReplyDeleteSam, I'm glad you're back. I was worried.
ReplyDeleteGlad you're back on the air, Sam!
ReplyDeleteYou said you weren't sure where you were headed with this blog... I think it should be come a message board for books and book reviews. :)
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad things are back to normal, Sam! I've been out of town, and not blogging for a few days, so I missed this whole fiasco. But I would have been very distressed to not have access to your blog! It's an important part of my day!
ReplyDeleteGlad you're back up!
ReplyDeleteThanks, y'all...it's great to be back to normal. Now if the darn storm doesn't shut me down again, I might catch up.
ReplyDeleteOh, now Blogger is refusing to let us upload pictures to our posts...just another day trying to work with Blogger software.