Friday, March 19, 2010

Blogger: Auto Pagination

Hi all. As I was going through my archives to try to find a couple of things to help me write my con reports, I noticed that a WHOLE BUNCH of my posts were no longer showing up, and nothing I did would make them show. I eventually hunted down the information in the edit window, but it appears that those posts are no longer available to readers unless they know the exact URL of the post page.

Why?

Because Google has introduced a bug (which they call a feature) to Blogspot blogs. This bug, called "Auto Pagination", limits the amount of data that will display on a page. The data is limited at the source and cannot be worked around. For all Blogspot users that have a "layout" version, this isn't a real problem. Those blogs have an "older posts" link at the bottom of the page which leads to the posts that don't show. But for those of us on classic templates, like this blog, it's a real problem. Because Google never bothered to figure out how to give us an "older posts" link, those posts are simply no longer available!

In short, Google is being evil to all Blogspot users who are still using Classic Templates. The workaround is to downgrade our templates to the sucky "layout" version. This wouldn't be a problem if I hadn't heavily customized my template, but because I did, I will lose ALL formatting if I make the change and have to start over from scratch. There is no conversion tool, and Google has not offered any help. I will have to learn a completely different tagging system, and will probably not be able to get my blog back to this format (which I'm very happy with) even if I do manage to learn their layout garbage.

So I have this choice: either downgrade my blog from classic template to "layout" format, or have a large number of my posts become lost.

Gee, thanks Google.

There really isn't a choice. I don't have the energy for it, but I'm going to start working on the problem as soon as I can muster any strength. The "layout" format is supposedly easier to edit once you've got your blog in it, but I dread converting six blogs (including Elayne's) into it from their heavily customized state. I don't want to learn another tagging system. I just want my freaking blog to WORK. Times like this I really consider just converting over to a Wordpress blog hosted on my own domain. I don't like that solution, either, but at least I'd be in control.

So if you notice any strange format errors on this blog over the next month or so, you know why. Or if this blog suddenly moves to a Wordpress blog hosted over on gjovaag.com, you'll also know why...

4 comments:

Jay said...

When I went from classic to layout, I had to manually save my links in my sidebar and manually re-enter them. Yeah, it is a bit of work, there...

Tegan said...

It's a lot more work than that. I just spent an hour trying to duplicate my header in "layout" format, and haven't had any luck. No javascript allowed, apparently, and it always changes back to the default header no matter what changes you make to it. In other words, it just won't stay changed!

I'm looking at WordPress now.

Elayne said...

Oh crap. Sorry for the work ahead for you, Laura. Please don't feel you have to make it any sort of priority.

Tegan said...

Ah Elayne, you know that once I get started on a new project, I work until I finish it or burn out. I've spent the afternoon cursing Google, but I'm making some progress on converting Bloggity. Still can't get it to render correctly on Internet Explorer, because Internet Explorer is a non-compliant browser, but otherwise making progress.

I'll work on yours next.

I set up a "sandbox" blog to do the work in, so I can make all the changes, then just pop it in once I think it's ready and only have to do a few final tweaks to make it work.

I'm very peeved at Google for not providing a tool or clear instructions for downgrading to layouts.