Blog Rat: Blogger

Showing posts with label Blogger. Show all posts

Monday, March 27, 2023

Forcing Blogger to Display Your Favorite Language

Blogger was acquired by Google in February 2003. Like Google, it always uses IP address to identify viewers' geographical locations for language display. It doesn't offer language selection for viewers. If you own a blog under blogger and have already logged in, you will be able to control the language display via the blogger settings. For others, they could see foreign language as per their IP locations. In order to force blogger to display your favorite language, you can simply append a query string (a key-value pair) to the end of URL along with a question mark (?) prefix . This method applies to Blogger URL without parameters. Otherwise, replace the question mark (?) prefix with an ampersand (&).

This technique also applies to Google Search and most Google related products.

No URL Parameter
(Blogger URL usally doesn't have query string)
Sample Languages	Add Query String Portion including question mark (?)
English (United States)	?hl=en
French (France) - ‪français (France)	?hl=fr
German - ‪Deutsch	?hl=de
Chinese (Hong Kong) - ‪中文（香港)	?hl=zh-HK
Japanese - ‪日本語	?hl=ja
e.g., https://www.blogger.com/profile/08199735935642753756?hl=en

When URL Parameter Exists,
use ampersand (&) instead of question mark (?)
Sample Languages	Append Additional URL Parameter
English (United States)	&hl=en
French (France) - ‪français (France)	&hl=fr
German - ‪Deutsch	&hl=de
Chinese (Hong Kong) - ‪中文（香港)	&hl=zh-HK
Japanese - ‪日本語	&hl=ja

Monday, July 6, 2020

You have not been authorized to use this domain

All of a sudden, about two (2) weeks ago, my blog resulted in error due to too many redirection. Thus I went to Blogger and played around its settings. Then the following domain unauthorized error kept popping up, which prevented me from taking away the Redirect domain setting.

"You have not been authorized to use this domain."

I finally managed to disable Redirect domain by turning off HTTPS availability first. Unfortunately, the domain unauthorized error was back and would not go away. After that, I was unable to alter any settings including HTTPS availability.

Today, I simply deleted the original domain associated with Blogger and then rebound it back. The domain unauthorized error disappears and I can feel free to do any settings change like before. Hope that such an annoying error won't be back again. I still don't understand how this error occurred and what triggered it. It appears to me that it is the issue in Blogger or Google.

In sum, for my case, to fix this domain unauthorized error, I did nothing on DNS but only playing with Blogger settings. Deleting the already bound domain first and then associating it back fix the issue.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Blogger fails to identify users

Some people are unable to provide comments with their own identities using their Google accounts, because blogger always mistakenly tags them with someone else. Clearing cookies and cache for the browser won't make a difference. I am one of them. Thus, I won't comment friends' blogs with my Google Account identity because it will never be me. Luckily most of them allow visitors to sign with Name/URL.

I just did a little bit experience using a public computer where I have never been before by posting a comment back to my own blog. When I posted a comment, I logged in with my Google account, hoping my name will show up correctly. No, never! Instead, I became someone else. The worst is that I don't even know who that person is. Obviously, it is not the issue of you possessing many Google accounts as blogger claims. Unfortunately, blogger has never admitted the fault and has no plan to fix it. In looking back the complaints posted to the blogger user communities/forums, this problem has existed for a few years already. To be safe, if you have already experienced this problem, it would better not use Google account when you post a comment to blogger, use OpenID if you have another identity with some other sites, or use Name/URL if the blog allows anonymous posting.

Blogger cannot correctly handle their own Google account for comment posting. Why not put Google account under OpenID category and handle it the same way as other OpenIDs? This problem discourages people using (or signing up) Google accounts and also degrades user experience.

Friday, May 15, 2009

Blogger cannot display the image

Using the images stored with blogger could be tricky. There is no doubt that the image can be displayed correctly if you use exactly the code provided by blogger.

As you may notice in the above code, the references specified in href and src are no much difference except for one directory hierarchy:

href uses the image in s1600-h: the image looks original or bigger.
src uses the image in s320: the image is shrunk or smaller.

With the image specified in s320 directory, the image is displayed without a problem:

With the image specified in s1600-h directory, the image cannot be displayed:

In order to reference the bigger image, you have to use the undocumented directory s1600 for image reference, not s1600-h: