Showing posts with label google. Show all posts
Showing posts with label google. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 22, 2020

Oh, Good ~ Blogger Has Changed




I last created a post yesterday and ta-da! I find today that the Blogger interface has changed. I'm not saying everything should remain static forever, but I've been blogging since 2007 and I knew my way around.

I'm sure the tech guys worked hard on these changes, so kudos, I guess. And I'll get used to them. The reason I use Blogger and not WordPress is ease of use. WordPress is a quagmire...and ugly. I have a blog there that I created after Google ate my blog and sent me on a dizzying tangle of links that never once solved my issue. I created one post on WordPress and then bit the bullet; created a completely new Blogger account and lost all my previous followers, alas. On the plus side, I'm now followed by approximately 73 bots. (Bots don't leave comments, by the way.)

From what I've ascertained so far, the updates are largely cosmetic; simply more confusing to find. And the addition of emojis is rather superfluous. What am I, five? 🙄(had to do it once)

I browsed Blogger's delineation of the changes and found statements like this:

A fresh Comments page helps you connect with readers more easily by surfacing areas that need your attention, like comment moderation. 

I was an educator in my previous life ~ don't talk like this! I'm guessing the writer consulted a thesaurus. I do it, too; but make sure the synonym makes sense in context.

The new change that rankles me is the inability to embed a video the old-fashioned way. Now I have to rely on a search within Blogger and hope that the video I want is listed as an option. Bad, Google! Major faux pas.**

**UPDATE: I found by opening the video search box and pasting in the address of the video, voila! (duh; sorry, Google.)

An enhancement I've longed for but still doesn't seem to exist, is a means to find other blogs in my areas of interest. If no one can find a blog, what is the reason for its existence? (I actually know someone who printed up business cards with his blog address ~ c'mon!) I obviously don't blog for followers, since I have no "real" ones, so I've given up on anyone finding me; but I would still like to read other music (or other) blogs. This is one area in which WordPress excels.

What's missing from Blogger is the human connection. Maybe the developers know this. Maybe they intuit that most of us are composing with the quixotic notion that somebody, somewhere will read it. Maybe blogging is dumb and antiquated. If it is, so be it. Rich Farmers has turned into my personal diary anyway; a means of preserving memories and milestones and musings.

To be fair to Google, the changes aren't really confusing. They're actually straightforward; just different.

But since this is a music blog, after all, I must go with a "confusing" song:


















Saturday, April 27, 2019

Blogging Platforms and Discovery





I love Google as much as...well, everybody. I use Google practically every day for something. And I'm quite sure that Google knows me very well, but it's a trade-off...information at my fingertips or protect my privacy? Frankly, I need Google. After all, Ask Jeeves has retired.




Everyone swears by WordPress for blogging, but I've used Blogger since 2007 and I like it ~ it's made to order for a writer; no confusing elements to configure; no resultant hissy fits. I actually have a blog on WordPress, but I'd never be able to find it...now.

The one advantage to WordPress, though, is that it's easy as pie to find blogs to browse. You just click "next blog" and voilà. Finding blogs on Blogger, however...good luck! The Google people are so smart, I just don't get it. Maybe blogs aren't actually a "thing" anymore, so Google figures, why bother?

I used to follow certain blogs, but then Google locked me out of my account and hard as I tried, I could never recover my settings. The email threads were (almost) funny...nobody at headquarters could grasp what I was asking, and each "representative" sent me to links that redirected me to other links that redirected me back to the original links. After months of frustration, I simply gave up and created a new blog. But I, of course, lost my favorite blogs and lost all my followers. I'm (kind of) over it now.

But now I can't find blogs to follow. I tried...well, Googling..."Blogger blogs" in my preferred category, but that was essentially useless. I feel adrift. I would love to find like-minded writers, to feel like I'm part of a community. I also would love to get my followers back ~ they at least left comments ~ but they lost me and won't ever find me again.

So, if anyone is actually reading this and either has a blog or knows how to search for them, please let me know. 

Meanwhile, I'll keep on keeping on. I'll keep writing. That's what I do, after all.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
UPDATE:  

I did find a Blogger search engine, Bloggernity, in which one can search by category. Sadly, most of the blogs I found have not been updated in ages. Maybe Google is right and blogging isn't a "thing".





Saturday, February 27, 2016

Comments

If you've tried to comment, or have commented, on any of my posts, I apologize for not responding, but I can't see them! I like Google, generally, but apparently one of their recent "fixes" has resulted in blog comments being shrouded in mystery. I know I have comments; I just can't see them. Or I can see parts of them, but they make no sense without the entire context.

Once again, I have searched for a resolution and hopefully, maybe, I've found one. Time will tell.

Anyway, if you've left me a comment, thanks! I just don't know that you have.