A huge, "Thankyou" goes to the Support Team at Blogger!
I had to take my blog private for a few days to figure out a problem with another online entity. There is a service called Blog 2 Print that will make a book of your blog for you. Fantastic, and wonderful, right? They do work with Blogger, Wordpress and Typepad. Both Wordpress and Typepad require that the person ordering the book enter their password, (hopefully) showing that they are indeed the owner of that blog. The interface with Blogger only requires the url, which meant anyone could have ordered a book of my entire blog, and I would have recieved no compensation, but Blog 2 Print would have been paid for it.
I searched "How to block" Blog 2 Print, "How to disable," I even went backwards searching "Troubleshooting" the same service to find a problem so I could try to create it. I was exasperated.
I made my blog private to block their access to my work, posted the problem in Blogger's amazing Help Forum (I love these people!), and I got immeadiate feedback. Most people asking about Blog 2 Print wanted to print books, but my question was how do I block anyone from using it on my blog? Two helpers and one newer blogger like me jumped in with ideas, links and brainstorms until an answer was found! One Helper suggested I change my Feed settings and try to use the service. I tried a few settings and here's what I found to stop this.
Click your Blogger "Settings" tab
Next, Click "Site Feed."
Under Allow Blog Feeds, Click "Short" (if you want to continue to have short feeds put out to link back to your blog) or "None," if you don't wish to have any feeds.
I retried printing at Blog 2 Print and got an error message as they were unable to get to my blogs.
Whew! What a journey.
Again, Thankyou to the Helpers at Blogger.com! I am so proud of these people!
Here is a link to the discussion that helped me so much:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/blogger/thread?fid=0175ec71ed22c4910004a80fe94ee435&hl=en
tina jones
tinajonesart blog. Here, you'll find the thoughts of an artist, possibly some artwork, and most definately me.
Tina...thanks for that information. I did not know that they could do that. I don't research that sort of thing enough. I just blog, but now you've made me realize what's happening out there. Again, thanks.
ReplyDeleteLokelani,
ReplyDeleteI didn't realize until a few days ago, when the offer popped up on my screen showing the interface. It looked odd, so I signed out of my account and attempted to order my own url anonymously. It was going to let me do it. I put in a random url, again it was going to let me. It scared me, not just for myself, but for the many authors and artist/photographers I know on Blogger. Some make their sole living from their words and images. I was sickened that they might get taken and sold fy a third party. I'm hoping saying something about the problem will alert Blogger to change the interface. A simple requiring of a password could make all of the difference. Until then, we can reset our feed, but if people don't know the work can easily be printed and sold. Thanks so much for reading and commenting.