February 1, 2007

I hate Blogger.

I am now bursting with hate for Blogger. I hate hate hate New Blogger. After that last post, I tried to open the comments page and got an error message. I tried to open the blog in a different broswer and got a "Server Error." Trying to open a "Create Post" window went nowhere for the longest time. Getting to the blog has been taking way too long ever since the switch. Perhaps you've noticed.

You know, for months, I wasn't able to respond to the invitation to switch to New Blogger because it was not ready to deal with very large blogs like mine. (I have over 7,000 posts.) Well, I tend to think they still weren't ready. But now I've switched, and I'm in this Blogger hell. And I have no way to contact anyone at Blogger support. They've scrubbed the site of any reference to an email address where you might reach an actual person. And it was never -- as far as I know -- possible to contact [ADDED: I mean telephone] anyone at Blogger, AKA Google.

ADDED: Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking. And in case that gets any Blogger attention to this post, let me say that my main problem is that my feed stopped working, as complained about in the previous post, "New Blogger is driving me crazy!" And Glenn puts it well: "Google's success depends on things working right, because if they don't, there's nobody to call, and they quickly transform from cute-but-big company to hated uncaring corporate monolith."

MORE: A blogger representative did notice my problems and email me at 1:40 this afternoon. About my feed's dysfunction, he said "we're looking into why and should have it fixed asap." It's 7 hours later, and it's still not working. And though the big errors that everyone was getting this morning are done with, Blogger is still opening pages terribly sluggishly.

UPDATE: The feed was restored at around 3 pm on Friday.

17 comments:

Jazz Bass said...

Yesterday afternoon I was presented with NO option to continue to opt out of New Blogger if I wanted to log in. After getting in the front door, it was their way or the highway. So I was forced to "sign ze papers" if my dance with the "don't be evil" devil is to continue.

Bah, period.

Jim O'Sullivan said...

Good. I thought it was just me. I can no longer post to my blog. I'm just another visitor. I started that one because I could not post to my original blog; I was just another vistor as soon as I switched. I'm stating a 3rd one now, which I will use until, as seems inevitable, I can no longer post to that one.
I didn't take Google long to go from nimble, new-economy darling to arrogant corporate behemoth, did it?

Duke of DeLand said...

While I am certainly sorry you have entered "blogger hell" with the new version of "Blogspot", I am certainly going to take advantage of your experience.

I've been considering revamp of my 4 active blogs to the newer product... but had followed, so far , my usual hesitation to try any newer version of anything related to computers... until the product has been demonstrated, refined, etc.

Apparently this was the right decision.

One of our other Tampa-area bloggers also had a miserable time with the product about two months ago. Hers is a quite small blog, and still she had problems.

Best wishes to you, and I hope the folks in charge get the message and FIX the damn thing!

Duke DeLand

José M. Guardia said...

support@blogger.com has usually worked for me in the past. It took a couple of days, but they replied in person eventually.

A Jacksonian said...

Ann - I do feel your pain! Tried to switch over last month and... well... two out of three made it. More or less.

My main site went into limbo for awhile, until they brought it back under old blogger. And I would get the opportunity RSN to switch over for that, too. A month later, nada. Plus comments got dead-ended on the main site...

So contacted them a couple of days ago and they will 'get right on it' which means errors pulling up things on one of the sites that did make it through. The other is still in old blogger land.

The new template system is a CF, to say the least. Have to revise tons of hand done HTML and then *still* not get the functionality I got from hand crafting. So I use the old template set-up for one and have a small blog to try things out on....

*bleah*

I will soon be looking for a new hosting home... the stylistic limitations on systems are something I have come to know and dislike. I am willing to actually *pay* for a good hosting situation that I can trust, and my ISP will be my first venue as I like them immensely... but they are more static site or 'you do it all yourself' hosts. Nothing really in-between.

So now waiting to see what will happen to my main site and the few hundred posts there.

Google should be much, much better... I was hoping for an easy integration of Google Earth...

I hope you do better!

Marc said...

I also switched yesterday to New Blogger. The only problem I noticed straight away, was that my main site feed was not working. Submitted a bug report with this link, and it was working this morning.

Hope you get things sorted out!

Andy's Ego said...

Hmm, I left Blogger about two years ago for WordPress. The old importer doesn't work anymore though. It's time to write a new importer to make this possible again. Hi ho, hi ho...

Mercurior said...

this is why i just run blogger for the posts and haloscan for the comments.. must easier ;-) i have a lot of posts too, but i regularly clean my cache and i dont have much trouble.

i am staying on the old blogger format, its easier for me.

but i have started to create a back up on livejournal, plus i save all my old posts and i get them emailed to me when i have done them.

Pete Fanning said...

I offer no comfort, Ann...I, however have had NUMERIOUS problems accessing blogger and blogspot blogs recently and have posted about this subject. This is why I maintain my own software (MovableType) on my own ISP. I realize that's not for the everyday blogger, but if you can do it and can afford it I HIGHLY recommend it for everyone.

Or, grab your friendly neighborhood computer geek and ask him to set it up for you....and no, I'm not available :) (at least not now anyway :))

edX said...

I sympathise with you. Bugger, i mean, blogger, is not entertaining any comments on my site ever they released the final version. Looks like the comments only work if i was to replace my existing (k1) template with one of their rubbish ones. I think this is just one way of ensuring that the masses make the right choice by presenting them with a 'do-or-die' choice.

edX said...

"ididn't take Google long to go from nimble, new-economy darling to arrogant corporate behemoth, did it?"

That is the logic of capitalism my friend. It is based on the insignificance of the masses and the significance of those who control and profit from them. Any new 'darling' is usually motivated by such a perspective, which is why they generally tend to turn into utter bastards once they become 'behemoths'. It's just the next logical stage in their development considering the perspectival point of their trajectory.

Locomonk said...

yes! me too! I created a new account and a blog two months ago, and now I can't log in at all, and the blog is still up. And this old account I'm using now has two different profiles depending on which link I click to "view my profile"... it's too damn messy. And I hate that I have to create a google account to use blogger... that's so 'yahoo'
can't they leave a name/site alone for once? too many changes!
Love your article BTW, glad I found it. I'll be reading ;-)

David said...

I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one who hates the new blogger. For me, the deal-breaker was the Picassa integration that used to be accomplished with 3rd party apps like Hello. It may have been clunky, but it worked pretty well for me. The new interface just doesn't work for me .... I have to login EVERY single time (despite clicking the remember me button), posts get labeled as drafts, photos get lost ... you get the picture. And the capper is the whole "never admit fault" attitude that seems to permeate the Blogger/Google organization.

Thanks for expressing your indignation and allowing me the opportunity to vent as well.

John said...

if anyone out there knows how to get on to !@#$%^&*() blogspot to either add a new post or see my blogs, please let me know. I just created a blog, and the email they sent say's I'm a member of ....., but when I go to login it tells me "we're sorry, you're not a member." And the help page has no way of actually emailing google or blogspot. Can somebody tell me what the !@#$%^&*() is going on.

!@#$%^&*&(*)

John said...

oh.......and did I mention that it seems impossible to actually find an email to a !@#$%^&*() human at either google or blogspot. Extremely frustrating.

Ann Althouse said...

John: Try the Blogger help group, here:

http://groups.google.com/group/blogger-help

They figure things out quickly there.

Luke said...

i someone got the new formatting on my blog, and i can't even figure out how to delete the blog if i wanted to, so i had to delete a lot of posts, but you can't figure out anything on it, and if you go to edit you unreadable stuff, so you can't edit. is there another free blog out there?