All you computer geek / gurus can quit reading now. This post is for the rest of us.
It came to my attention last night that a rather large quantity of the pictures on this blog had gone missing. Those of you who have been following this blog for awhile know that Tim complains about my nearly obsessive backing up of things and backing up the backups, so while this was not one of those "Oh my God all my pictures are missing!" scenarios, it did mean I was going to have a very long day. Fortunately, it rained all day so I had a good excuse not to be sealing the toe rail.
Recently a change was made at Google, and for those of you not paying attention it may come as a small surprise. Google is beginning to wrap all of its various free-standing applications into one behemoth, Google +. If you haven't noticed it yet, you're now being asked to log in with your Google login for all the remaining programs (One Google - One Login). In the process, many of the most beloved programs like Google Reader and Picasa Hello were sunsetted, and there are strong rumors that Blogger will also fall to the Google + knife next year. In the mean time, there has been some fuzzy stuff going on with your blogging world.
If you have a Blogger blog, the pictures from your blog have been stored on Picasa Web, whether or not you used Picasa to edit those photos or to upload them to Blogger. The fuzzy stuff started when Google + came along because now your pictures are stored there. In addition, any pictures you take on your Android / Google phone are uploaded automatically to Google + which on the surface all seems great - automatic uploads to back up your pictures. The problem begins when you decide to delete a picture from your Google+ account, thinking it's still in your Picasa Web album, which it's not. If you delete the picture in Google + it deletes across the platform. Another issue with the change is that all of your albums in Picasa Web that you have shared with someone can be re-shared with their friends unless you change the settings for the album to lock it. I have also found that not all of my pictures are being backed up from my phone.
In spite of all this information, I still have no idea how the pictures disappeared from our blog. Nothing changed, nothing was deleted, they just disappeared. So backup is the key, and if you think this is difficult and you don't have the time? There's a simple and fairly fast backup system on this tutorial. If you have a blog with pictures you value, back it up. Then back up your backups. Shit happens.
It came to my attention last night that a rather large quantity of the pictures on this blog had gone missing. Those of you who have been following this blog for awhile know that Tim complains about my nearly obsessive backing up of things and backing up the backups, so while this was not one of those "Oh my God all my pictures are missing!" scenarios, it did mean I was going to have a very long day. Fortunately, it rained all day so I had a good excuse not to be sealing the toe rail.
Recently a change was made at Google, and for those of you not paying attention it may come as a small surprise. Google is beginning to wrap all of its various free-standing applications into one behemoth, Google +. If you haven't noticed it yet, you're now being asked to log in with your Google login for all the remaining programs (One Google - One Login). In the process, many of the most beloved programs like Google Reader and Picasa Hello were sunsetted, and there are strong rumors that Blogger will also fall to the Google + knife next year. In the mean time, there has been some fuzzy stuff going on with your blogging world.
If you have a Blogger blog, the pictures from your blog have been stored on Picasa Web, whether or not you used Picasa to edit those photos or to upload them to Blogger. The fuzzy stuff started when Google + came along because now your pictures are stored there. In addition, any pictures you take on your Android / Google phone are uploaded automatically to Google + which on the surface all seems great - automatic uploads to back up your pictures. The problem begins when you decide to delete a picture from your Google+ account, thinking it's still in your Picasa Web album, which it's not. If you delete the picture in Google + it deletes across the platform. Another issue with the change is that all of your albums in Picasa Web that you have shared with someone can be re-shared with their friends unless you change the settings for the album to lock it. I have also found that not all of my pictures are being backed up from my phone.
In spite of all this information, I still have no idea how the pictures disappeared from our blog. Nothing changed, nothing was deleted, they just disappeared. So backup is the key, and if you think this is difficult and you don't have the time? There's a simple and fairly fast backup system on this tutorial. If you have a blog with pictures you value, back it up. Then back up your backups. Shit happens.
8 comments:
Good advice. Thanks.
I realize Google Reader for blogs is now gone, but I haven't read or heard anything about the Blogger platform going away. I hope it doesn't because despite what the pros say, I just don't care for WordPress.
I hear you on that. I'm thinking of just going to my own domain but I'm not going to do it until I'm forced to. In the mean time I just keep multiple, current backups so I can move if need be.
Thanks for the warning! I am very non-technical and never think of these things. Backing up my blog is not number 1 on the to do list today. Cheers - Ellen
Oops - that should say "now on my to do list", not "not on my to do list". I just did it and it was really easy.
If you haven't already figured it out...you might check the url links of the photos. When they migrated from Picasa to G+, the url of the photo might have changed. Just a thought.
Mike
www.siochana.us
p.s. I'm a geeky type and I read the post anyway...lol
@Mike - I did a lot of research on the issue before I started replacing them. There was no rhyme or reason to the ones that were missing. They weren't on G+, they were no longer on Picasa, they were just missing. The weird thing was that the photo title was still in the html so I was able to make a list of them to replace without having to remember which ones I had put there. Evidently I'm not the only one with this problem, at least if all the forums are to be believed.
Hmmm, that is very strange. I've been following how Google is streamlining their products over the last couple of years. Some good...some not so good (for the users).
It'd be nice if there was some advance notice that issues like that might come up, but I guess they can't account for everything.
At least you were able to resolve it and repair it easily.
I keep my blog on a self-hosted WordPress site and thankfully haven't had many technological issues. Like you, I have mine set to auto backup a couple times per month...just in case.
Mike
www.siochana.us
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