Friday, May 27, 2011

Blogger Login/Commenting Problem Fixed (For Me, At Least)

If you're one of those poor souls suffering from the Blogger glitch mentioned a few days ago (and still not fixed, apparently), you might try the following.

First, save any work that you don't want to risk losing in any other tab or window, such as a blog post or email that you're composing. Then:

  1. Clear all cookies that contain the string blogger

  2. Clear your browser cache completely

  3. Close your browser, restart, and log back into Blogger

That's probably a little more blunt than it needs to be, but it worked for me, anyway. Please feel free to weigh in with refinements.

A bit more detail for Firefox 4 on Windows below the fold. More details on request -- post a comment, @ me on Twitter, send me an email, etc.

hth




To do the first two steps on Firefox 4 on Windows:

  1. Tools → Options. In pop-up window, click Privacy icon in toolbar. Click link labeled remove individual cookies.


    In the new pop-up window, type blogger in the Search box (without pressing Enter). You'll see a bunch of cookies listed, and odds are, not all of them will be labeled "blogger"-something.


    Delete all cookies that the search found anyway. Be brave! ;)

  2. Tools → Clear Recent History. Set the drop-down menu labeled Time range to clear to Everything. Don't be alarmed by that warning sign. Uncheck all boxes in the pane below except the one labeled Cache and click the Clear Now button.


    Clearing the cache may take a couple of minutes, particularly if you're old and slow. Like me. Your machine, I mean.

And then step 3, as above.

7 comments:

Bartender Cabbie said...

Thanks. will try this. Blogger commenting is only working "properly" sporadically for me at this time.

bjkeefe said...

That's interesting. Can you think what makes it sporadic? My first guess would be that you are sometimes logged into Blogger and other times not, and that's what the difference is.

Well, actually, I hope the cookie deleting and cache clearing fixes it once and for all, and that you won't have to try to troubleshoot any further. Please let me (us?) know your results when you've had a chance to try those things.

Jonathan said...

Yep, that works for me with Firefox. Not with IE though (which is my usual browser). I just hope they sort it out soon.

bjkeefe said...

Sorry to hear that, Jonathan, but I'm glad to hear that it worked for Firefox at least. Thanks for letting me know.

I tried to reproduce the same problem using IE (version 8) myself, but I could not make it happen. I only use IE to do a few highly Microsoft-specific things, like Windows Update, so I don't much know what to suggest.

I will say that the thing that set me on the path to figuring out the Firefox fix was visiting my blog in Private Browsing mode. Among other things, PB mode doesn't let sites see a lot of stuff related to your recent browsing (cookies, history, cache, possibly some other things), so you might try (1) logging into your blog (or your Google/Gmail account more generally) with IE in PB mode, and then (2) seeing if the problems you usually see, like being unable to comment, persist.

If they don't, then that's a good sign, I'd think. Two possibilities here. One option would be to delete all cookies (not just the ones containing the string blogger), under the assumption that there's something weird about how a cookie gets set in between IE and Google/Blogger.

A second option would be to use something like CCleaner or Glary Utilities, under the assumption it's possible to do a more thorough wiping of past browser use than whatever IE provides through its menus.

Good luck. Please let us know if you come up with a fix. Or, if you're up for it, let us know even if you try some things that turn out not to work. Maybe that'll give us or someone else who might happen along another idea.

BurtonReview said...

I can't believe this still is not fixed for IE users, like me. I have found that I can comment on the "pop-out" comment forms, but not those that are embedded within the original post.

bjkeefe said...

Sorry to hear that, Marie. Have you tried deleting all your cookies and clearing your cache?

As I said above, I'm not familiar with the inner workings of IE, but this Gmail help page looks like a good place place to start if you want some instructions.

BBM said...

I'm finding that the third time's the charm--If I write a comment and hit enter, I'm taken to the top of the blog post. Scroll down, hit enter, repeat again.

The third time, I will be taken to the sign in page for Google. If I don't unclick the remember-me button, I won't be allowed to post my comment.

I don't know why, but it is comforting that I'm not the only one.

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