When I heard Blogger was down, my reaction was relief. If people couldn't blog, then I wouldn't be so far behind on my genealogy blog reading. Then when I woke up the next morning, Blogger still wasn't working. Even better!
During the down time, I started a citation project in my RootsMagic database. Basically, I've never liked the way my citations for US census entries looked. Thanks to the tips I learned in the RootsMagic webinars, I came up with a census source template that I met my needs.
So this weekend I started changing over the old citations to my new census source template. This project will take some time, but it is a very good thing in the long run.
So while the blogging world was thrown into a tizzy, I was actually quite happy with the Great Blogger Fail of 2011.
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Yup, I could not update my blog. By the way, I am her son.
ReplyDeleteAmy, interesting about the reactions bloggers had about Blogger being down. I was in Canada, and not totally aware, but like you, I would have welcomed the relief. I wonder why they just didn't prepare blogs in Word, and then when Blogger was up, transfer their post to it. Are these people not adaptable? Pretty silly and pretty sad. I would expect a little more from genealogists, or was it just they felt they had to write about it. Hey, this is a free service too. I could go on, but this is it.
ReplyDeleteBarbara, I think there was some time when posts, drafts and comments were temporarily lost and some folks found that scary and frustrating. It looks like all my stuff has been restored.
ReplyDeleteAlso, people who went to NGS wanted to get their blog posts published in a timely manner, so there was frustration there as well.
I just thought it was funny that my initial reaction was, "oh thank goodness." I'm a little over-subscribed in the blog department. :)
Yes, I can confirm that "M" is my son. Glad to have him as a commenter and reader. He's ok as a kid, too. :)
ReplyDeleteAmy, I love your positive outlook! It's a lovely way to live life!
ReplyDeleteThat was my same reaction too. I have been crushingly busy, and I was so far behind in my Google Reader that I was thrilled to hear nobody could add anything for a while.
ReplyDeleteDoes Blogger not have plugins like WordPress where you can have backups emailed to yourself? I'm reading all of this hand-wringing about how things were (or could have been) lost. My blog has a plugin that automatically backs up daily (and then emails the backup to me so that it's separate from the blog itself).
The Blogger Black Hole didn't bother me, either. Gave me a chance to clean my house a bit before anyone called the health department on me.
ReplyDelete@Kerry, yes, Blogger offers an option to have your posts and comments emailed to you. I've had it turned on for both of my blogs for years.
You guys put me to shame. All I did was hang out and be lazy.
ReplyDeleteKerry, if you need to restore just a few posts from your Blogger blog, you could do each one manually from the copy that you've had emailed to yourself... but you could not restore other people's comments that way. To restore the template and all blog posts and comments, you will need to use the two backups that you make via:
ReplyDelete1. Settings - Basic - Export blog.
2. Design - Edit HTML - Download full template.
I hope that helps. It certainly got me out of trouble once!
Judy
I'd love to see what sort of template you put together for the census citation! Always interested in making it better!
ReplyDeleteJudy--I have a self-hosted WordPress blog, so I wasn't affected by the outage.
ReplyDeleteI too would love the RootsMagic Census template. I made a HUGE mistake and downloaded Ancestry.com family tree and imported that into my RootsMagic file without checking the file over first. UGH! Now I have two versions of the Census notes that won't merge. And the US Census template that I used did not convert nicely to be used on Ancestry.com. So now I have a third ugly entry to deal with. With 1500 names to examine for multiple Census entries, UGH! Before I go down the US Census citation clean-up, I'd love to see a template.
ReplyDelete