How to Contact Blogger

For those of you who would rather talk to Blogger directly to report a bug or Terms of Service violation, unofficially there's still a way to do this, nicely hidden if you try to find it on the help page.

Contact Blogger Help

There's a small caveat to this: many of the topics have been redirected to help pages, so instead of a form at the end, as you would expect, you find a link to the Blogger Help Group, which simply dumps your gripe on the rest of us. Not to worry, though. There still are some forms that are still there: "Blogger is down" under "Report a bug" still works, and so do the forms under "Report a Terms of Service violation." The form for "Suggest a feature" also still works. If you try to access bug reporting under "I found a bug in Blogger," this too is another dead end. Use "Blogger is down" instead.

Examples for my tips

This template:

<b:includable id='main'>
<hr/>
<h2><data:title/></h2>
<hr/>
<data:content/>
<hr/>
<b:include name='quickedit'/>
</b:includable>

should always be enclosed in the underlined, bolded tags. A template without b:includable tags will not upload to Blogger.

Any "plus sign":

<a expr:href='data:blog.homepageUrl + "index.html"'>

should always be led and trailed by spaces, because the form handler doesn't know the difference between a plus sign and a space (which becomes a plus sign in the query string) and may change it to a space, rendering expressions unparsable and forcing your entire widget out of your blog! But if a leading and trailing space are included, " + " in the form variable becomes "+++" in the query string, which magically turns back into " + " when the string gets parsed.

Form data in the template:

<a href="http://not-a-domain.com/example.php?sample1=always&sample2=expand&sample3=ampersands">

should become, in the add-widget form:

<a href="http://not-a-domain.com/example.php?sample1=always&sample2=expand&sample3=ampersands">

The first amp; is to overcome a deficiency in the publishing engine. The second amp; is to ensure safe passage through the form handler. If you were hard-coding this example in Template edit, you would need only one amp;:

<a href="http://not-a-domain.com/example.php?sample1=always&amp;sample2=expand&amp;sample3=ampersands">

The publishing engine will automatically change & to & in your page.

I’ve already given the code for the quickedit icon, but here it is again:

<b:includable id='main'>
<hr/>
<h2><data:title/></h2>
<hr/>
<data:content/>
<hr/>
<b:include name='quickedit'/>
</b:includable>

Tips for including widget templates in add-widget forms

Here are a few tips that might help you avoid the posting mistakes that add-widget makes:

1. Always enclose your template code in <b:includable id='main'></b:includable> tags.
2. Always include a space before and after every plus (+) sign.
3. Always substitute & for every & in all your code. This is not a mistake. The extra amp; is actually necessary.

These tips, if followed religiously, will ensure a safe and successful upload of your widget! Oh, I almost forgot.

4. Always include the quickedit icon: <b:include name="quickedit"/>

That last one is because if you write your own widget template, the quickedit icon will not automatically be included.