Shut Down Of Ftp Support On Blogger

[Mrs. Muddled]

I just received this email. I am one of these people who publish my blog via FTP. It's been a long time since (with Gail's kind assistance) I set this system up. I'm reading this announcement and I haven't got a clue what I should/shouldn't do.

 

I'd appreciate some of your sage advice ... and remember ... you are talking to your Mother!

___________________________________________________

 

Dear FTP user:

You are receiving this e-mail because one or more of your blogs at Blogger.com are set up to publish via FTP. We recently announced a planned shut-down of FTP support on Blogger Buzz (the official Blogger blog), and wanted to make sure you saw the announcement. We will be following up with more information via e-mail in the weeks ahead, and regularly updating a blog dedicated to this service shut-down here: http://blogger-ftp.blogspot.com/.

The full text of the announcement at Blogger Buzz follows. Last May, we discussed a number of challenges facing[1] Blogger users who relied on FTP to publish their blogs. FTP remains a significant drain on our ability to improve Blogger: only .5% of active blogs are published via FTP — yet the percentage of our engineering resources devoted to supporting FTP vastly exceeds that. On top of this, critical infrastructure that our FTP support relies on at Google will soon become unavailable, which would require that we completely rewrite the code that handles our FTP processing.

Three years ago we launched Custom Domains[2] to give users the simplicity of Blogger, the scalability of Google hosting, and the flexibility of hosting your blog at your own URL. Last year's post discussed the advantages of custom domains over FTP[3] and addressed a number of reasons users have continued to use FTP publishing. (If you're interested in reading more about Custom Domains, our Help Center has a good overview[4] of how to use them on your blog.) In evaluating the investment needed to continue supporting FTP, we have decided that we could not justify diverting further engineering resources away from building new features for all users.

For that reason, we are announcing today that we will no longer support FTP publishing in Blogger after March 26, 2010. We realize that this will not necessarily be welcome news for some users, and we are committed to making the transition as seamless as possible. To that end:

• • We are building a migration tool that will walk users through a migration from their current URL to a Blogger-managed URL (either a Custom Domain or a Blogspot URL) that will be available to all users the week of February 22. This tool will handle redirecting traffic from the old URL to the new URL, and will handle the vast majority of situations.
  • We will be providing a dedicated blog[5] and help documentation
  • Blogger team members will also be available to answer questions on the forum, comments on the blog, and in a few scheduled conference calls once the tool is released.

We have a number of big releases planned in 2010. While we recognize that this decision will frustrate some users, we look forward to showing you the many great things on the way. Thanks for using Blogger.

Regards,

Rick Klau Blogger Product Manager Google 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043

 

---- This e-mail is being sent to notify you of important changes to your Blogger account

[TCH-Bruce]

Let me ask a question. Are you using Blogger and having it publish via FTP to your TCH domain?

 

I used to do that eons ago. You can install WordPress and migrate your posts to it. There are literally thousands of themes for WordPress that you can apply to get the look you want. Then you would do all your blogging from the administrator panel of your WordPress blog right here at TotalChoice.

[Mrs. Muddled]

Yes Bruce, that is what I am doing - having my blog published through TCH. I did it this way because I wanted to own my website name.

 

WordPress: Oh dear. Your memory must be as bad as mine. There are a plethora of TCH posts associated to my WordPress experience. That was back when I still had this vision of beautiful web pages. It was such a convoluted process trying to figure out how to work everything I eventually gave up and just reverted to Blogger. Blogger has just been such a delight for me to use. It is almost idiot proof.

 

I will dig up my old WordPress posts and see if I can figure out how it works. Already I can feel my blood pressure rising!

[TCH-Bruce]

Yes, I remember but if Blogger is shutting down their FTP publishing you have two choices. Host with them or use a different blog software on your own hosting account.

 

The importing might be better now.

[Gail]

Hi MM,

 

I was just reading your Email again and then came here to see if you had started a post re this subject. I was reading a little about the Custom Domains - I gather you can still use Blogger but use your own URL. I must admit I don't have a clear understanding of how this works but I guess that is one possibility. They are supposed to have a migration tool ready for the week of Feb. 22.

 

Like Bruce, I like WordPress. I believe there are several TCH customers that use WordPress so there is good support available at this forum. Of course there is all kinds of documentation and support available at the WordPress web site.

 

Gail

[Mrs. Muddled]

I have decided to transfer my Google blog to Wordpress.com. I need to get some specific guidance before I venture further and actually open a new account with them. I am being re-directed back to TCH for the assistance I require.

 

Accessing WP help forum can only be done if I have downloaded their program. I have a few questions before I take that step.

 

Can I open this new WP account before I sort out how to hang on to my domain name? Can I just open a WP.com account under a temporary name and then transfer my domain name into that account?

 

I've read some of the TCH directions in cpanel about this subject, and frankly don't understand what they are talking about.

 

After reading some of the notes on WP it would appear they host my blog, thus I would no longer require TCH.

 

I've been trying to figure this out for over a week now and I'd REALLY appreciate some clear directions.

[TCH-Bruce]

You can have a free blog with them if you don't want to use your own domain name. Or you can pay them to use your own domain name and get a blog that allows you to host 3gb of content. I don't know what they charge and wouldn't post it here if I did since it would be a violation of the forum. That said, there is no reason you need to go there to host your blog when you can simply install WordPress here and keep your domain name where it is. Although the decision is yours to do as you wish I don't understand why you would want to host there versus here.

 

WordPress is probably one of the simplest blogging packages to install and modify on your own.

[Mrs. Muddled]

I'd be quite happy to stay here. I've been here for a long time. So if you can help me with answers to my questions so that I can get started on WP ... that's great.

[stevesh]

If I understand, you already have your domain hosted here at TCH. Installing your own copy of Wordpress doesn't involve a WP 'accout'. Wordpress is really just open source software, like Joomla or Zencart.

 

As Bruce mentioned, WP is easy to install. It mainly involves uploading the folders and files to your hosting account using FTP, and making a few changes in a configuration file. I've done it in 5 minutes.

 

I've never used Blogger, so I don't know how (or if) you can merge your existing blog entries with the new software, but I'd be surprised if there isn't a way to do it.

[Gail]

Hi MM,

 

WordPress installation is available in Fantastico Deluxe in your cPanel - I know you have never used an FTP program and the thought of this is upsetting to you. Use the Fantastico to install and I believe you can also do WordPress upgrades via Fantastico. The upgrades are not always timely I don't think but they are eventually available.

 

Once you have WordPress installed - then you can import your blogger posts via WordPress tools found in WordPress administration. I hope I am reading the import guidelines correctly. It would be worth a try. If you can't use the Import tool - there has to be a way to get your posts from blogger to WordPress - I did it a few years ago as you know. The first step is to get WordPress installed and then worry about the second step - importing posts and you will find lots of help here.

 

Gail

Edited March 21, 2010 by Gail

[Mrs. Muddled]

Don't know what I would have done without the TCH Help Desk. They are great. I've got a headache that I don't think will EVER go away! I'm so tired of reading endless help files that are totally over my head. I might as well be reading Greek. I'm still messing with WP and trying to set it up the way I want it.

[Mrs. Muddled]

Just to let you know: The Help Desk (God bless 'em!) figured out why I couldn't login to upload a new template and IT WORKED! I'm so happy! I now have three different sets of logins to function in WordPress. I've got one for admin, one for support and one to upload templates. Hey, they all work so I'll leave well enough alone!

 

I'm going to play with my new blog now.