Diagnosing Problems With Your Blog

In Information Technology ("computer" / "Internet") organisations with any size or complexity, one of the fastest growing groups in the organisation will be Change Management. The job of Change Management is to coordinate all changes in the product that involve more than one component of the product. This is because any change that involves multiple components generally involves changes made by more than one person or group in the organisation.

Your blog is a complex structure, and frequently can be as complex as any moderate sized IT product (yes, really). You have an edge over many IT organisations, though - you own and control your blog (though you don't control the changes made by Blogger, which can contribute to your observed problems). You, personally, don't (probably don't) need a Change Management staff, but you could do well to use Change Management principles, when making changes to your blog. Having well documented changes can help you triage problems, and reliably state which problems are caused by you, or by Blogger.

Besides using change management before making changes, you can do structured analysis, when problems are detected. Many different Blogger problems can be solved with this approach.

• The "dropped sidebar" problem.
• The "Operation Aborted" error.
• Many other problems involved in the generic "My blog is gone" scenario.

It's not a complicated approach, and can help you to avoid a lot of frustration.

1. Does the blog have a third party accessory, or a tweaked Blogger template? If so, roll back to a standard Blogger template, before continuing.
2. What change did I just make? Maybe just publish a post?
3. Remove that change. If a post was just published, edit that post and save it as a draft.
4. Did the problem go away? If so, figure out where you went wrong with that change.
5. If the problem did not just go away, look at the previous change, then go back to Step 3.
6. And so on.

That's a simple technique. With blogs, it can be approached based upon blog structure. Since blogs contain two separate but equally important sections of code - the blog template and the post template, you can frequently isolate a problem by separating the two in your diagnosis. Compare a view of the main page, with views of the individual posts.

• If you see the problem in all views, the problem is likely in the sidebar, or the blog template.
  
• If the problem is NOT visible in even one individual post view, the problem is, most likely, in the multiple individual posts where the problem is seen.


• Note: In one extremely odd situation, the problem was in a post title, and became active when the post title appeared in the sidebar, in the Previous Posts list.

In a third alternative, you could setup a new blog (blogs are free), with a clean copy of the same template.

• Export / import comments and posts from this blog.
• If the problem does not transfer, then copy the template from this blog to the new blog.
• Finally, add the various gadgets, one at a time.

There are other, equally as obvious, and as useful, approaches too. Understanding blog structure is important. Here's one place where having the sidebar at the left, or at the right, side of the blog will make a difference. With the sidebar at the left of the blog, a problem in a single post will generally not affect sidebar display. Conversely, a problem in a single post can affect sidebar display, with the sidebar to the right side. There are also general principles that should be noted. When you ask for advice, and are given some basic settings which you can start from, try those settings with an open mind. And unless otherwise instructed, leave those settings in place until you're told to change them again. Don't make the changes, see that they don't work, immediately change them on to something else, then post back in the forum

That didn't work. Does anybody else have any suggestions?

Some problems require multiple diagnostic steps, including more testing with the first set of changes in place. You don't have to have a degree in Information Technology, or be a senior manager in a major software company, to produce a blog. Most blogs are produced by people of neither persuasion. But you can use principles and techniques known and respected by both, and be free to customise, and to write more content, because you spend less time in Blogger Help Forum Something Is Broken, yelling

Help me!

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