I Did the Blogger Beta Switch
The feeling of impending doom was over-powering, but I simply could not help myself. I was extremely scared hesitant to do the switch, but after extensive research I felt reasonably safe in switching. Not many of you know this, but I have this...well, let's call it a condition. Dilbert has the same condition.
A few concerns I had:
- Will my template that I have tweaked and hacked survive the move?
- Will I be able to edit the template as before?
- Will my URL be changed?
The switch went smoothly, especially since I already had a Gmail account. I know there are some bloggers that have to wait. What made me so special, I have no clue. But, I'm feeling rather superior none-the-less. (They probably drew my name out of a hat.) Anyway, after I got over myself, I got down to business. I logged in and they sent me an email when the 'migration' was complete. Finally I was able to log in and see exactly what was left of my blog. Much to my suprise, it was intact. (Things like that never happen to me. Usually after some big upgrade, I end up having to reformat my computer.) I stuck with the 'edit html' option and shyed away from 'customize design', as tempting as it was. In doing so, I am unable at this time to do anything with many of their new features. But, I suspect it will be coming, as they said the new beta is not complete.
I did get a fancy new navbar that makes working on your blog a click away. And, publishing the blog is a breeze now...no more waiting...waiting...waiting. It is instant! Plus I noticed that on the 'edit posts' page, it shows how many comments you have for each post. Nice. Another new option is a private setting for those of you with deep dark secrets!
The catagory (aka Blogger labels) thing I'm not too sure about yet. I like using FreshTags and having all my catagories picked up by del.icio.us and Technorati. But, I think it will be fun playing with all the new features when they become available to those of us that are not planning to go with the cookie-cutter, plug & go customized templates. Not that it is bad, it just isn't my cup of tea.
All in all, a great upgrade. I'm happy to know they haven't forgotten us.
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Labels:
Blogger Beta,
General
18 Comments:
"I know there are some bloggers that have to wait. What made me so special, I have no clue."
annie, what means you were chosen for the beta? you got a link on your dashboard, right? did you log in as a google-user or with your blogger-id? and what was that link about? using my google-id i get the information "You are logged in with a Google Account.
Already a Blogger user? Switch now." is it this what you got or did you get a more special invitation?
i also want to get the new beta but in don't want to hang inbetween the two versions.
thank you
christian
christian, What I meant by 'chosen for the beta' is I have read on a couple of other blogs and forums that not all of us were given the option to do the switch just yet. I think the reason for this is Blogger simply cannot switch everyone at once. Kind of like boarding a plane...'everyone on rows 1-5 please board now'. Otherwise there would be a jam at the boarding counter. And I think there would be a jam in Blogger. Just my theory.
Anyway, I got the same message as you, so you were in one of the first groups to switch.
In your concern (ahhhh that word again) about hanging between two versions, that didn't happen in my instance. As a matter of fact, the email was waiting in my inbox almost instantly stating that the 'migration' from the old to the new is complete.
Plus, you get the choice after the switch is complete if you want to go with all the new features (customise design) or continue with the old way (edit html).
But, before doing anything, I would do a backup of your template.
Are you saying that there are people actually working at blogger? Amazing!
thank you. no i am more confident.
Well, I guess I did say that! I was overcome with excitement.
I got that message, too, but I'm not brave enough to make the switch yet!
@ray, it was a great effort for me to just go ahead and do it.
@hans, I'm glad your are getting something useful from my blog. That is why I do it! Don't you just LOVE FreshTags? Have you joined the blogroll? I know the guys over there would be glad to have you. Tell them I sent ya.
And, alas, no...I didn't know that my FreshTags were messed up. It was from the move, no doubt. I will have to contact the FreshTags guys and see if they have an answer. I looked it over and it is beyond my abilities.
We're on it!
There is no way I'm making the switch until beta is no longer beta
I had bookmarked a couple of your post prior to your conversion, they are dead now
@delite, sorry you got so upset. You win a few, you lose a few....
I got nervous about the switch too...but this may have calmed me...
Well, it wasn't so bad. The only casuality was my FreshTags. And I'm hoping that they will be up and running before much longer.
I'm a fairly new blogger (about eight weeks new). This has actually been an amazing discovery. I knew that blogs were these online journal things that were massively popular, but I didn't "get" it until I started blogging.
I switched to the beta just because there was that tempting beta info on my Blogger dashboard. I decided okay and, like you, I have a Gmail account. I knew there might be a risk, but I was new enough to the game to want to risk it. Initially, I thought I'd made a HUGE mistake.
The thing is I have two: one that's my primary email and the other I created for my blog. So after my blog migrated, all of those clicks I'd made two months ago were wiped out. My profile had my name, my blog had my primary email address (I used it because I didn't want to have to toggle back and forth logging in as one to edit and then logging back in with the other to check mail as the second one feeds to my primary email). My newbie blogger status caused me to freak out when I checked around and noticed this. I did figure it out within a few minutes, but switched my blog to private status in the meantime. During those few minutes I was fearful I'd have to wait for Blogger to fix it, but ended up remembering all the buttons I'd clicked the first time or just tripped over them again.
I do have trouble with making comments. I'd log in and get stuck in this loop that wouldn't allow me to post because the old system didn't recognize my new login but the old system also knew I'd switched to the beta so I was stuck without being able to comment. Now I get stuck in a loop even if it's a beta site but the old Blogger sites seem to be set with a forward to the Google log in but it still goes to a blank error page. That unfortunately means I posted the same comment twice on someone's blog. I hate that. It seems to work better when I comment from my Netscape browser while in Firefox mode. I have no clue why it makes a difference, but it does.
I also use Blogger for Word because cutting and pasting straight from MS Word would give me HTML codes that would mess up in Feedburner. When I went to use it with the beta I kept getting errors. I wrote Blogger about it and got an email saying that,"Websites and programs that integrate with Blogger will need to be updated before they can log you in with your new Google Account. Check with the particular service provider you're interested in to find out if they've made this change yet."
My thing is Blogger for Word is by Google, so I'd emailed the right folks as Blogger is a Google company. I don't know if it's resolved yet as I just decided to switch to WordPad and work strictly with .txt files. I cut and paste any links as I go and then just include them when I cut and paste my writing to Blogger. It's not as smooth but the HTML code preview for Blogger for Word took time to edit. For, now this is easiest.
I'm still trying to figure out how all of this works and integrates together. So finding your blog is a godsend. I look forward to clicking around and, hopefully, learning something.
expatjane, I also have the google account/email issues. I initially migrated over to the new beta with a different gmail account, not the one I normally have associated with BlogU. I emailed Google/Blogger but they said they couldn't switch email accounts. (I'm thinking yes, they could if they *really* wanted to.) So, I do some fancy logging in, logging out...but nothing I can't live with.
The other issue of signing in for comments is simply a pain in the patoot. Sometimes it seems to work, and sometimes not. Other times I think I log in with my old account info.
I have never used (nor heard of) Blogger for Word. Sounds interesting.
BTW, you officially get the award for the 'longest comment to BlogU'!!
Hi Annie (and others).
I did the beta-switch as well. After all they say: no guts no glory, and sooner or later we all have to switch anyway.
My experiences so far:
The switch goes quickly and smoothly. It's over in a few seconds. But then the fun starts.
I had my templates customized (as most bloggers, I guess), and dumped the Bloggerprofile-tag and made my own "Profile" using the <$BlogOwnerPhotoUrl$> tag. Well, that doesn't work anymore.
My Freshtags, just recently implemented with the help of BlogU, were out of order.
My Flickr Flash Badge is out of order (but a html-badge works fine).
Some of my posts have a linkfield to an external webpage, but clicking the post-title does not link to this external page but to the postitempage itself instead.
The switch to the layout is in some aspects a severe disappointment. There are no new, fancy layouts available, just a handfull of old, wornout layouts we already know from the templates.
However, for a html/css-layman it must be a great pleasure to customize this layout by adding page elements, changing colors, and so on. In a way, it is more userfriendly to add links to your sidebar with the new page-layout interface, than hacking it into the template.
The layout has limited flexibility. It has a sidebar to the right, that can't be moved to the left, but it is possible to customize the order of page elements in the sidebar.
Changing the language-settings has effect on the formatting of dates, and it is possible to change some English words in het post-footer to your own language if you want to (but not all of them).
Adding Javascript-code in page-elements is quite easy. Blogrolling and Librarything work like a charm, but you can't add functionality that needs Javascriptcode in the head-section.
The labeling functionality works fine, if you don't mind that it doesn't use Delicious or other tagging services.
So in general, I think Beta is a great improvement if yout want an quick up-and-running weblog, but for us hardcore bloggers we are in dire need of functionality to hack into our layouts - and design our own.
Hans, I agree with you about the hard-core bloggers needs. I want more than plug and play. But, it is great for those that want something up and running with not touching the 'icky HTML stuff'. From what I understand, we will get that option soon.
i did all the wrong things. Switched to beta blogger and let it "upgrade" my html code. Labels are good, but they come with a terrible cost. Salute del.icio.us.
@R-Cha-Na, I was upset at first also. But, with a very careful transfer (I started a new blog and took the old blog piece by piece to the new one, then when all transfered I copied it back to the old blog.) It took some patience and much trial and error, but almost all of my old template came through, with a tweak here and there!