Addressing a common question I’ve heard: SFTP support is also being discontinued along with FTP.
We’re playing a bit fast-and-loose with the terminology of these actually quite-different protocols, so whenever you read us saying something about “FTP” just add in “and SFTP” to it and you’re set.
For answers to this and other questions, take a look at our FTP (and SFTP) FAQ.
What about the missing files host? Is that functionality going away as well?
ReplyDelete@Cory Missing files host is not going away. It's essential for some custom domain bloggers.
ReplyDeleteHi. I have just received the email telling me of the ftp / sftp no longer being supported by Blogger.
ReplyDeleteI am (1) tech illiterate; and, (2) have my own personal domain - that I use blogger to publish to (http://www.onefemalecanuck.com).
- Will I be affected - I ask because I am getting confused by the language you're using. I thought people used ftp / sftp *only* if they had a personal domain (meaning, one that doesn't have the extension of .blogspot.com).
- If I will be affected, and I have to move everything, with this migration tool of yours, will I loose all of the comments that currently sit beneath each entry?
- If I will be affected, and I choose to leave Blogger and instead go to another source, is there a 'drop dead' date by which I should do this?
Sorry for the unclear Qs. I am totally clueless when it comes to this sort of a thing and so will ask that you please respond using baby language :)
Thank you.
Canuck
@ one female canuck - Custom domain and FTP are completely different. If you are using only custom domain, then you are not effected.
ReplyDeleteTo confirm this please go to Settings->publishing and see what the tab says. If it says "You're publishing on a custom domain", you are good. No change should be needed.
I can't believe Google is so concerned about the bottom line that they are making their products WORSE. After this change I'll have no use for Blogger.
ReplyDeleteI have over 300 posts in my archives on my ftp
ReplyDeleteblog. Will I be able to transfer them to the new
format without losing content?
@Charlotte Yes, you will.
ReplyDeleteWill I be able to keep my custom design?
ReplyDelete@sharondippity Yes, you will.
ReplyDeleteFirst and foremost I can not believe you are removing FTP support. How in the world would the web function with out FTP? It is one of the largest protocols for websites! I myself host my customers domains with dreamhost and then use blogger for my customers to publish directly to their site for updates, including google calendar and other google apps.
ReplyDeleteSince blogger is free and easy to use, and has tons of features I setup my customers with blogger and then format the CSS to post nice and simply to their web site. In the past I used to use local programs hosted on the server however it looks like google is leaving me no choice but to move back to that or try and hide website.blogger.com through an iframe :(
Is there any integrity left in the world wide web?!?! Darn you google for hooking me on all your great products and then slowly but surely changing them on me. Just because the majority rules doesn't mean you have to push out the minority. /me shakes my fist at google!
@Joey - a custom domain is definitely *not* a domain owned by Google (website.blogger.com). It is a domain you own (blog.joeytroy.com, if you owned joeytroy.com). And there's nothing in this announcement that prohibits you from using files hosted on your own server - this announcement covers the blog content that we maintain.
ReplyDeleteThere's been some confusion on this point, I'm going to put together a blog post explaining more about what this means.
So the only way to have a Blog on blogspot is for Google to own the blog but not the domain?
ReplyDelete@J We don't "own" anything. If you want us to maintain the blog, we are moving all users to a system where we host the content. My blog is a good example: I own rklau.com, but www.rklau.com is not hosted by Blogger. The name of the blog is "tins", so I created a CNAME and currently host tins.rklau.com at that URL. The other content on rklau.com remains hosted by me, on my server.
ReplyDeleteSo... slightly confused here. Even IF we purchase another reg and get a "custom domain", we won't be able to use a stylesheet to put out a simple page to slip say in an iframe?
ReplyDeleteWhat about those with a custom domain that mixes content from Blogger along with other content (such as ASP and ASP.NET driven content)? Or multiple blogs from our own domain?
ReplyDeleteHow are we to export Blogger content into our custom websites?
If nothing - then we're left out in the cold with 10+ years of posts in the Blogger format with no tools for managing the content? I've advertised 'I Power Blogger' for 11 years...I can't help but feel left out?
If it costs you more to support it, why isn't there a pay option to continue FTP support?
We have 27 different blogs that all feed into one website: www.restorationmn.org We use blogger to update the site's content. Do we need to find another way to update our site?
ReplyDeleteThank you guys for 2 years together! And bye-bye...
ReplyDeleteNow I've discovered WordPress - its import from Blogger works pretty well ;)
Unless you tell me why I shouldn't move to Wordpress, I'm gone the day you kill FTP. My car restoration blog at www.therustynuts.com lives on server space I pay for separately, mainly because of the large amount of photos I post. The photo hosting you DO offer is lame, clunky and alters the resolution of my photos (I've tried it on one of my other blogs and it really blows). So, as it stands now it looks like you're driving me and a bunch of us away.
ReplyDeleteWhat say you.
I've tried to read through all the posts and I'm not clear yet on how images will be handled. Image questions:
ReplyDelete1. Currently there's a directory on my site called "uploaded images" where blogger puts everything I've uploaded through the blogger tool. Are you saying that that directory will remain on my site and you're not going to attempt to move those images?
2. After migrating, where will newly uploaded photos go? Will I be able to see a list of photos that have been uploaded after the migration (like an ftp directory listing or the equivalent) so that I can easily find and reuse the same photos?
@Elf 1. Yes, that's correct.
ReplyDelete2. Newly uploaded images (those uploaded through the Blogger post editor) will be uploaded to Picasa. Should you choose to handle your image uploads separately (i.e., through a self-hosted photo gallery, your own FTP client, or a photo managing app) you can simply use our photo picker to point to a URL instead of uploading an image.
@Dave We're not forcing you to abandon your current approach w/r/t photos. You don't need to use our post editor image uploader, and so long as you have dedicated file storage (which you do) you can continue to host images there and point to them from within the post editor. You're not forced to use Picasa.
ReplyDeleteI a totally clueless, I am pc illiterate and need things very simple.....for a start I have no idea what FTP means so telling me that this is disappearing means nothing to me. I have looked through the FAQ's and unless you know what all the terminology means, it doesn't help.....why can't there be a 'normal speak' section which will tell mem in plain english what this means for my blog.....will it still exist? will it still be easy to use? do i have to change my domain name? Come on guys, not all of us is versed in the why's and wherefores's of pc's.....some of us just know to click on the text box and add a new entry to our blog.......help and clarity would be very much appreciated
ReplyDeleteI have been running 9 blogs through blogger for over 6 years with over 4000 posts, which are all hosted on my own URLs. Partially to maintain control of my content.
ReplyDeleteThese posts have amassed thousands of links on third party websites.
Your "suggested" renaming of blog files to blog.healthdirect.co.uk from healthdirect.co.uk blog is going to damage the page rank and potential customer experience.
I noticed last year that blogger userped my favicon in favour of blogger's.
If google aka blogger are going to break my links, I may as well move to wordpress now before you try and takeover any more of my sites.
Hi
ReplyDeleteI have just got an FTP set up with you in January, I spend ages transferring across from my old format to put into my blogspot, this cost me too as I suddenly was using up a lot of space for the month. I cant believe there was no warning before signing up that this was in the pipeline!
Now I dont understand what I have to do...I publish via FTP, and I am not very computer literate, I dont understand what I have to do now in order to keep using the blogger?
@Rick Please comment on possibility of reverse publishing the blog content through GData API: http://lkraider.eipper.com.br/blog/2010/02/blogger-reverse-publishing.html
ReplyDeleteHi again.
ReplyDelete@Shameela. I checked, and it says I am "publishing via FTP".
I clicked on the
Switch to Custom Domain (Point your own registered domain name to your blog)
And was about to follow the instructions provided by blogger:
First: How do I create a CNAME record for my custom domain?
So that I could then follow the instructions at: How do I use a custom domain name on my blog?
...the only problem is I got stuck at the first step, because godaddy tells me that is "Total DNS: (Not hosted here)", so I can't create a CNAME record.
Help, please.
Thank you...
Hi, I'm totally confused here. Why is this FTP protocol a problem?
ReplyDeleteWhy do I have to transfer my files from my provider website to Google servers (so called Custom Domain)? Why do i have to post pictures in Picasa that i never used (i use Flickr)?
I'm looking at Wordpress and I don't see anything about FTP problems.
Eryn
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete@Rick Klau February 3, 2010 12:36 AM - Thanks for the clarification. If I understand it correctly then, the change will require me to upload my photos (to my existing server) first, before I post a new entry to my blog. Seems that this will add a couple more steps to my process as I'll have to manually upload my images then go out and verify their links so that I'll have them to add to the blog post.
ReplyDeleteLooks like I have some pondering to do. Thanks Rick.
@ one female canuck - I am afraid that you have to talk to godaddy about your DNS and why you can't create CNAME.
ReplyDelete@Dr Search: whether users use our migration tool (which will insert rel="canonical" links in the old template, pointing to the new post URLs) or users manually set up .htaccess to redirect content from the old site to the new, pagerank will be preserved.
ReplyDelete@Esta-Jane: your best bet will be the migration tool, which will walk you through the simple process of updating your settings.
@Dave: There are additional options. Authoring tools like Windows Live Writer allow you to compose the blog post in a dedicated authoring interface, which (I believe, it's been a while since I took a look) also allows you to upload images to a location you specify.
@Rick: Thanks for your photo answers. Next:
ReplyDeleteAs with @Dr. Search, I was a bit nonplussed to discover that my favicon had turned into blogger's favicon even though it was on my domain. I figured it must be some new configuration thing that I had to track down somewhere to fix and didn't want to take the time to do it. Now, well, since I have to adjust the whole site, might as well ask how we will go about making sure it's our favicon, not blogger's? Is there a faq somewhere?
Re: Favicons, BloggingTips has a good overview here.
ReplyDeleteCool. Next:
ReplyDelete1. The ability to edit a post's HTML remains, right?
2. Some images in my blog might have been included with urls like "../../foo.jpg"; will the conversion tool figure that out correctly?
3. I think I already read that, if we have a custom template, it's moved over exactly the same way, right? (Including if we use our own graphics, it correctly recognizes them as being on our own site?)
4. I'm not clear on the archiving/backing up thing. I need to continue to have exact copies of my blog post (the html) downloaded to my system. Does the backup/archive tool do this? (Is that what goes into the zip file?)
Why not continue to allow FTP but just not support it? I have over 600 Posts, oodles of pictures and completely customized layout.
ReplyDelete@Elf: 1. Yes. 2. You can enable the "missing files host" option in Blogger to handle those situations. 3. Yes. 4. You can see the export/backup file now by going to Settings | Import/Export. It's not a rendered collection of all HTML files in your blog, it's a full XML archive of the entire blog, suitable for import/conversion into other systems if you needed it.
ReplyDeleteWHere is the missing files host option? Would I see it on my current FTP-hosted configuration somewhere? (Because I don't--)
ReplyDelete@Elf No, it's a feature of our Custom Domains option.
ReplyDeleteI have about 30 client sites using blogger. All of these blogs are just part of a website, i.e. CompanyName.com/news.php, or ElectPerson.com/mythoughts.htm, etc. The whole point of my using Blogger was that it was so easy to set up as simply a subpage of an established site. In fact, there's often a different blog for separate subpages on each account, such as blog.php, news.php, upcomingevents.php, etc -- all on the same site.
ReplyDeleteThis seems like it will be a rather immensely time-consuming task for me to convert these sites and use blogger in the future, and I highly doubt my clients will agree to pay for these changes (I could even get sued for breach of contract by some of these, as our contracts guaranteed a working blog). You're talking about costing some of us small design firms many thousands of dollars, and we only have a little over a month to make these changes? I don't understand what you're expected some of us in my situation to do, here.
If you'd like to private message me Rick, I'd appreciate it. We're really pretty devasated over here.
Thanks for your help Rick but it sure looks like Google/Blogger is shooting itself (or maybe us) in the foot with this. Many bloggers, with a much larger presence than I are really being thrown to the dogs with this decision and I have to say, at this point even an option to pay a small fee for continued FTP privileges would be a preferred solution.
ReplyDeleteThis has the potential to spiral into a full blown mess (and PR disaster too).
Can ANYONE tell me if we can use a stylesheet aka css in custom domain? or if you HAVE to use prepackaged templates? I've already taken off my "what else but BLOGGER" and reconfigured my files to go elsewhere... I'd much rather stay even if I had to pay a small fee for ftp but... if someone would answer my question, anyone?
ReplyDelete@Kimberly, see Rick's answer ("yes") to my question above ("3. I think I already read that, if we have a custom template, it's moved over exactly the same way, right? (Including if we use our own graphics, it correctly recognizes them as being on our own site?)")
ReplyDeleteMy custom template includes all the CSS info at the beginning rather than having an external .css file.
Rick was right: My test blog under a custom domain not displaying was the result of a bad DNS result being cached (in this case inside my DSL modem).
ReplyDeleteNow that I can see my blog I can proceed to debug the use of my existing template. And so far the result is disappointing: There is some change to the way the page gets formatted (probably a stylesheet (CSS) doing that) and I got the Blogger Navbar forced upon me.
(When I was still using FTP publishing I could simply disable the navbar in a dropdown list above the template, this choice has disappeared from the dropdown list on the template page for my test blog.)
So now I have to CHANGE my template to make it work. Not only is the navbar displayed on the page, but it also simply OVERLAID onto my design, making the top half of the page title insivible.
Fortunately there are tricks to hide the nacbar anyway, (but the code remains on your pages, even though hidden).
Next problem will be to repair the damage done to the rendering of basic HTML-elements in the page.
For people like me who hate the new change. Easy ....
ReplyDeleteWordPress
@Rick,
ReplyDeleteI know you are getting slammed with questions. I just want to clarify that I can stil use Blogger to plublish post via FTP to say http://vcchess.net as long as my domain is hosted else where. Your just removing FTP ability to log into your servers locally to make changes? Is this correct?
Thank for your quick reponse!
Joey Troy
@ Joey Troy - Unfortunately no. You wont be able to use Blogger to publish via FTP
ReplyDeleteSo sad. This used to "just work".
ReplyDeleteGoogle's desire to help regarding this is so great they appear to have given up offering responses to questions on the various areas. I guess it's another drain on the bottom line.
ReplyDeleteThey have enough for a Super Bowl ad but not enough for ftp?
ReplyDeletehttp://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/02/08/0221241/Google-Airs-Super-Bowl-Ad
If someone chooses to make the switch to blogspot.com
ReplyDelete1) Will the option to post via email still be available?
2) Will an xml feed for the blog be maintained?
Thanks for the insight. Hopefully this won't be as traumatic as it might first appear.
@Rick: I seek this blog, English help forum, other blogs about the ftp issue, but ain't anything help or replies in Spanish. English is not my native language, I understand when I read but is so hard to me and other users have a fluid feedback. I post this issue on the Spanish help forum days ago without a single reply from the Google employer (http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/blogger/thread?fid=4471c34aabc65e4700047eedf1081102&hl=es). It's a hard issue for all of us who publish ftp, more hard for us who don't have any help in our language. Could the Blogger team give some support to Spanish users?
ReplyDeleteThanks in advance
@Toby - re:Will the option to post via email still be available?
ReplyDeleteYes it will be.
@MZ EXPRESS
ReplyDeleteThe migration tool along with help documentation will be translated into all of our supported languages. This should be in about two weeks.
I will also raise the issue of non English support with the team.
Thanks,
Noah
When going to the "Settings" on my blog, it still shows sftp as an option ("SFTP (secure publishing on your ISP server)"). Has this changed?
ReplyDeleteAre any other "transfer" protocols (scp, etc) possible?
ReplyDeleteSo does this mean I can no longer host blog entry files on my own host? Does this mean I will have to host them on blogger / blogspot?
ReplyDeleteMy concern here is basically losing ownership of my files and having to trust that nothing will go wrong with my files hosted elsewhere.
@Noah: Thank you very much for your reply. Me and other users need spaces like these so that we have streamlined and early communication. I worry about waiting until 22 feb... I've the same doubts that all users but ain't space for us to chat about these issues.
ReplyDeleteHi all - just noting that the FAQ is updated, addressing a number of recent questions raised on this and other posts.
ReplyDeleteThis is a rather unfortunate turn of events. Looks like I'm going to have to drop Blogger entirely for my family's use due to this. At least I don't have to poke those rediculous holes in my firewall anymore for it to function.
ReplyDelete*sigh* Wordpress or some other blogging system here we come... =o/
@Rick, You answered one of my question in FAQ about alternate transfer protocols, but I do not believe you have not answered my question about (1) "Blogger...Settings still showing "SFTP" as an option" and
ReplyDelete(2) "Loss of ownership of files (having to be stored on another site).
On the SFTP Setting options, will this remain until the end of ftp services? Seems silly to change to an option that will only be going away.
On the loss of ownership, I still see no answer here. I realize there may be some additional flexibility to having things with blogspot/blogger, but in the end if blogspot/blogger goes away or decides to start charging, or any such similar type of scenario, I am then my blog entries are in the control of whomever is hosting it, for whom I have no control (except for just leaving the service and taking my blog entries with me)
@Eric: SFTP will remain until we shut down FTP support on May 1. Regarding your other question about Blogger going away (it isn't, we continue to grow and are at all-time highs for users, pageviews, blogs, etc.) or start charging (we have no plans to charge, just like we don't charge for search, for Gmail, etc.) - you will always have the ability to export a complete copy of your blog, and our Data Liberation Front will be around as long as Google is to ensure that our users are never locked in.
ReplyDeleteI started my blog www.todaslasgalaxias.blogspot.com in September 2009. I do not know if I have FTP or if I don't, I don't even know what it means. I just want to know if my blog will be shut down and if I will have to pay in the future or what. I would also like to understand the procedure, as I am completely confused. I publish in Spanish as I am from a Spanish speaking country.Nobody that I consult understands the instructions you are sending.You are too technical, I believe for common mortals.Please try to help users. We are all worried, as you can see.
ReplyDelete@galactica: From who's affected:
ReplyDelete"If your blog URL ends in "blogspot.com", you are not affected"
You are not affected by this announcement.
I would like to know the difference in the approach to blog-pages:
ReplyDeletehttp://domen3.domen2.cz
and
http://www.domen2.cz/blog.htm.
What will be the difference in the CNAME?
Thank you.
A. Katolicky
Note: Comments are closed on this post. Please direct general questions to the FAQ page, and specific problems with the migration tool to the issue tracker. More details about support for the FTP migration are here.
ReplyDelete