The Return of the "Blogger Followers" App to the Tavern

For those that are long term readers of this blog, you'll remember The Tavern suffered a hijack last fall, which led to the tear down and rebuilding of the blog. In the process, the Blogger Follower app was not reinstalled. It was nuked down to "zero followers" and was not a priority when reinstalling the posts and other blog features took precedence

Amazingly enough, 57 fine and loyal readers of this blog found a way to add themselves to an app that wan't actually on the blog - pretty damn cool if you ask me. In any case, the Loyal Followers app is back. Feel free to add yourself back ;)

I've also added a translate feature, so if you want to read The Tavern in poorly translated Tamil, have at it. ;)

Of Blogger and G+ and the Piss Poor Mish-Mash of the Two

I'm an active blog poster. I probably post on average three to four times a day over here at The Tavern. Each of these posts also get shared on G+, and I guess I'm fairly active over there too. Heck, as of today over 4,000 fine folks have included me in their circles. I'm flattered.

My experiment of trying out the use of G+ for comments in Blogger lasted a few hours. It prevented those without G+ accounts from commenting, which I thought was pretty damn limiting as many of my blog readers and commenters aren't active on G+.

So, the communities overlap to a large extent, but the blog and G+ are also a bit separate.

Now, I posted a comment on a Blogger blog yesterday that had G+ integrated into the comments section, and it turned my comment into a publicly shared post by me on G+, which lost much of the context of the comment as the blog was linked to, but not quoted from by G+. I wasn't looking to fan any flames, but to get the original poster's thoughts on a specific question.

My comment basically started it's own thread, which was not my intention.

Looks like I'll be avoiding commenting on blogs that have G+ integrated in their comments section until Google figures this shit out.

Will the Real "Tenkar's Tavern" Please Stand Up?

Last fall this blog got hit by a stealth attack. A third party app was embedded in the site by me (dumb, I know) but it worked fine over over a year, before the app's owner let the domain expire. Someone grabbed the domain, redirected the app and turned the blog into an adware home for a few hours.

As I had purchased the domain tenkarstavern.com from google, google's buggy interface didn't allow me to edit the original tenkarstavern.blogspot.com. So, my work around was to create a new blog at tenkarstavern2.blogspot.com and allow tenkarstavern.com to redirect to the new blog.

All was well - until today.

It appears a "blog resurrectionist" has grabbed about a dozen abandoned blogs today, and tenkarstavern.blogspot.com is on that list. There can be only one reason for the blog land grab - adware or worse.

So, if a "Welcome" message popped up in your blogroll today from a blog claiming to be Tenkar's Tavern, it's not me.

It probably only effects those that have been following this blog for 3 years or so or longer, but I figured I'd throw it out there.

Big thanks to +Tim Shorts for the exceptional looking out ;)

What Google Giveth, Common Sense Taketh Away

This afternoon I jumped on the opportunity to integrate G+ comments with my blog's comments. It was like peanut butter and chocolate, or so I thought.

My impression was that it allowed comments to the blog and to G+ to be mutually accessible. What I didn't realize it really made both sides G+ commenting only - no G+ profile, no comments can be left.

The idea was good in theory, but the implementation is horrid. I have a blog so that people can share their thoughts about my thoughts. I allow comments from everyone but "anonymous posters", because those fuckers are either spammers or worse, and I have no desire to be constantly weeding my blog garden of such.

G+ integration of comments has been turned off.

I need to thank +Dyson Logos for bringing this to my attention. Maybe later on down the line, Google will get it right and we'll try this all over again.

In the meantime, feel free to comment to your heart's content ;)

Comparing Google+ to Blogger For Posting Purposes

I've been cross posting my Blogger posts to Google+ for the past few weeks and I've noticed some differences in the comments between the two.  Blogger tends to get fewer (often much fewer) comments,  but the comments themselves are frequently longer.

Google+ tends toward more but shorter comments.  It's more immediate and less polished in general, but definitely more lively.

This post: What Are Your 5E Deal Makers / Breakers? had 9 comments on Blogger, 266 on G+.  Admittedly, the G+ thread had some cross talk going on, but that's still a factor of 1 to 26 in terms of comments.

I'm interested in the next integration step between G+ and Blogger, as I suspect it will blur the lines between the two.

Blogger's New Interface Blows

Anyone else having issues with Blogger's new interface?  When I mentioned earlier this week I planned on trying out some new blogging software, I had no idea Blogger was going to be playing around with it's software.

This shit sucks.  My previous attempt to post had no less then 2 dozen error messages pop up, then it refused to post.

I really will need to step on to some real blogging software.  It was the plan anyway.

Sigh...

Blogger Has Become a Serious PITA These Days

I like Blogger, really I do. It's much easier for the novice to use then Wordpress IMHO, but that strength is also its weakness these days.

Last weekend I had to use my google-fu to find HTML code that Blogger had apparently dropped willie-nillie from my blog, thereby preventing me from commenting on my own blog posts.

Last nite I was informed by Greg (he of the Errant RPG, Synapse and many others) that no one was able to comment on my latest posts. Blogger was at it again. Now I have my comments set to pop out, which seems to be working for now, but it is far from my ideal solution.

Maybe Google should get their shit together before rolling out updates to Blogger that are all buggered up, or is that just too much to ask?

Update... Re-date... New Date? What Is Up With Blogger?

I updated a post (caught a typo) from last thursday and blogger has re-dated it with today's date. Apparently Blogger is still having issues. Joy of joys.

I guess it's an easy way to keep the appearance of fresh posts, but it can screw things up if there is a necessary progression one must follow while reading the posts (which wasn't really the situation in this case). Still, it's annoying.

K, done venting.

And Then There Were...

Well, I'm really hesitant to post the next part of my Building a Better Bard, as it is written down in random notes that I collect, prune and purge as I post them to the blog.  With Blogger having some "issues" recently, I'd hate to post something and then have it disappear (like yesterday's post did for a bit ... but now, its back).

So I'm gonna round out the Bard in Pages, then copy it over to Blogger.  Crap, I  really should use that nice Print to PDF Button on these posts to save everything.  That would make way too much sense ;)

I'm kinda happy I was too busy to post much the last few days... I think some of my fellow bloggers can relate to this man:

I feel his pain.  Its been that kind of a week...

Damn You Blogger!

EDIT - Blogger is obviously up!

Blogging my Blog via Blogger
Seemed wise at the time.
Now it's down and
All I can do is whine ;)