Welcome back, Spammer
Right, so, back in Dalian, but this is not exactly the post I meant to write today, and not exactly the welcome I wanted. Here’s what I found when I tried to post the latest trip entry. If you’re reading this, I’ve been let back into the good graces of Blogger, hooray:
Your blog is locked
Blogger’s spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. (What’s a spam blog?) Since you’re an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not a spam blog. Automated spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and we sincerely apologize for this false positive.
You won’t be able to publish posts to your blog until one of our humans reviews it and verifies that it is not a spam blog. Please fill out the form below to get a review. We’ll take a look at your blog and unlock it in less than two business days.
If we don’t hear from you, though, we will remove your blog from Blog*Spot within a few weeks.
Find out more about how Blogger is fighting spam blogs.
…
And today, I got the email saying everything’s OK
Hello,
Your blog has been reviewed, verified, and cleared for regular use so that
it will no longer appear as potential spam. If you sign out of Blogger and
sign back in again, you should be able to post as normal. Thanks for your
patience, and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.Sincerely,
The Blogger Team
Maybe it really is time to switch to Wordpress.
March 3rd, 2007 at 2:45 pm
it’s sad that this has pushed you to make the move, but it is good news yo uare seriously considering the move, since wordpress is nowhere near being the evil, corporate entity blogger/google has become.
I’d recommend simply cutting and pasting the first month’s wordpress entries over here, on bloggger, then for one addtional month simply post an entry’s headline and a link to the wordpress blog, then finally leave a permanent post of “all future entries are happening here, at: http://www.whateverwordpressaddyyouhave.com. Please update your links, thanks!”
Whoever returns to this blogger version will have a chance to adjust their bookmarks, see the old lay out, and then get on the bandwagon and see your new home. After a while, they’ll simply see you moved on and that’s that.
Blogger sucks. They protect the bad guys (liableous assholes, CCP censors) claiming they do not censor blogs, then do shit like make it difficult to post, or, as you found out: the bullshit “spam blog” crap - and punish the responsible guys.
Blogger is bad news. So is Type Pad (SSDS). Of the good blog providers (that are free) only wordpress is comparable. The other services (xanga, for example) are fine, but really for the computer illiterate into slap-dash.
Even with their free service, you can see how many visitors you have daily, who’s linked to you, etc. Stuff blogger used to (and may still) expect you to pay for.
Give it a shot. Regular readers will follow you. Those who don’t - fuck ‘em. They aren’t worth worrying about.
You’ll probably have more wordpress brethren discovering and sending traffic to your site, too.
March 3rd, 2007 at 5:34 pm
Typed may cost, but it is SOO easy.
March 4th, 2007 at 1:00 am
@Anon:
Thanks for the input. Yeah, a lot of things have been pushing me toward wordpress lately, and toward buying my own server space. Google slipping from its “Don’t be evil” mantra is just the latest. It’s not going to happen right away, but the change is definitely coming. Stay tuned.
@CLB:
Thanks for the tip. Easy isn’t necessarily what I’m going for, though. This blog is partly a learning tool for me, so I’m kinda looking for a more do-it-yourself platform. Basically, I treat this blog like my father treats the house I grew up in: something to be constantly upgraded and meddled with, but never really perfected.
March 5th, 2007 at 5:10 am
Hey Chris,
Get your own domain name. Doing that will allow much greater flexibility in what you implement (wordpress, drupal, whatever), and also give a permanent email address and redundant storage area for important files that may get destroyed if you slip over on the laptop.
It costs little for a shared hosting plan - less than $10 a month for sure.