Blogger Issues

Have to say I don't find Blogger the easiest of systems to use.

I've used two other website editors and Blogger is definitely the most difficult of the three. It's made worse by the fact that the only support is via articles on the website. If you can't find the information you want there, well that's just your hard luck.

However on the plus side it's free and I've met lots of other lovely bloggers there so I'll stick with it. I assume it will gradually improve. I just wish there was some way you could feed back your suggestions to them to help improve the system.

Back to my current problem of inserting photographs.

Recently I can't understand why my photos never enlarge when you click on them now.
I follow the instructions given on the Blogger website and was sure that I was inserting them in the same way every time. Most of my photographs on previous postings do enlarge when you click them.

Recently I'd also been having a lot of problems with formatting and aligning text and photographs, so I decided to use the centre layout for the photographs on the Blogger upload when I inserted them instead of formatting them later.

(If you find this hard to read you can click on this photo and it will enlarge)

This certainly resolved the problem of the text jumping about and centring when I wanted it left aligned.

However I do have a problem with getting the photos to enlarge on my postings when you click on them. I have searched Blogger and Googled the problem but couldn't find a solution.

In desperation I tried lots of different ways to insert the photos. Now after spending ages on inserting photos and checking Blogger help (no help at all) I think I know what has happened.

I discovered that when I inserted photographs, if I didn't choose a layout and centred it afterwards, I could enlarge the photos on my postings by clicking on them. Eureka!

(If you find this hard to read you can click on this photo and it will enlarge)

I had the problem with left aligning the text again but at least the photos now enlarge. Why on earth is there a difference and why doesn't it give you any information about this anywhere? What a weird system Blogger is!

Update - The plot thickens!

I posted some information about this on my other Blog and Myra got in touch. She said she uses the centre layout to insert the photos and they always enlarge. So I tried a test posting and used the centre layout to insert a photo and guess what! It enlarged.

What a weird system this is. Why didn't it enlarge the photos last week when I did my posting on Michelle's Mailart. I also had to re insert every photo on my Rhodes Flora posting when they wouldn't enlarge.

Just disregard all the instructions above. I give up!

My other problem is that if you insert the photos after you have written the text the formatting goes absolutely daft. I get huge spaces all over the place. I think I'll try inserting all the photos in the correct order when I start a posting and then put the text in later.

I'm considering learning html as I do everything with the Compose tab and not Edit Html. At the moment I haven't the time to explore what this involves.

If anyone has any advice about inserting photos and easy ways of formatting text I'd be really grateful.

Post 3

Holy Moly!

Jesus and Satan were having an ongoing argument about who was better on the computer. They had been going at it for days, and frankly God the Father was tired of hearing all the bickering. Finally fed up, he said;

"THAT'S IT! I have had enough. I am going to give you a test that will run for two hours, and from the results, I will judge who does the better job."

So Satan and Jesus sat down at the keyboards and typed away. They moused, faxed, e-mailed (with attachments), downloaded, did spreadsheets, wrote reports, created labels and cards, created charts and graphs, did some genealogy reports and basically, did every computer job known to man.

Jesus worked with heavenly efficiency and Satan was faster than hell. Then, ten minutes before their time was up, lightning suddenly flashed across the sky, thunder rolled, rain poured, and, of course, the power went off.

Satan stared at his blank screen and screamed every curse word known in the underworld. Jesus just sighed.

Finally the electricity came back on, and each of them restarted their computers.

Satan started searching frantically, screaming: It's gone! It's all GONE!!" I lost everything when the power went out!"

Meanwhile, Jesus quietly started printing out all of his files from the past two hours of work. Satan observed this and became irate.

Wait!" he screamed. "That's not fair! He cheated! How come he has all his work and I don't have any?"

God just shrugged and said,

"Jesus saves ..."

I got this from a religious website LIFE 4 Seekers so hopefully it won't offend anyone.

Post 2

Me No Technical!

I’m no techy, I’ll be the first to admit that and on occasions computers drive me potty!

I decided to create a separate blog for my computer witterings, not everyone is interested in them and I also wondered whether someone more technical than me could maybe give some advice on occasions. The Blogging fraternity is a very generous one.

So here's the first posting and my most recent computer frustration!

Computers were a major part of my job when I worked in the Careers Service as we recognised how important they would be in the future for everyone’s jobs. However I’ve been left work for over two years now and I’m obviously lagging behind with my knowledge as I’m on my own now, no technical back up available.

My latest problem occurred just before I went on holiday in mid May. My grandson and I were both on the Internet when suddenly we were disconnected. Now this has happened before and it usually comes back again within a minute or so. It's irritating but it just comes and goes sometimes. Not so this time! I tried again and then later that night and the next day with no success.

If I had been the only one on the Internet, I would have assumed it was my computer at fault. Well it’s getting on a bit now, three years old and in lap top years that quite aged. However it’s working quite well, just not as fast as my husband’s new one which my grandson was using when the Internet went down.

Next day it was the same story so I checked with a friend who uses the same Internet supplier. She said she had no problems but we could possibly have been using different servers. When things hadn’t changed the following day I decided to get onto Tiscali who provide my Internet connection.

Yes, I got an awful answering system to plough through. I kept getting part of the way and then being left on hold with a message every now and again suggesting I use their website to solve the problem. What a bunch of wassocks! I wouldn't have bothered phoning if I could have done that. Eventually I did get through and the chap was very helpful. He talked me through the problem and how to fix it.

It turned out my wireless router had to be reset and the settings reconfigured on both computers. Also the WPA Key Number (whatever that is) was incorrect. When I asked how this happened he suggested I had done something to the computer. I assured him I hadn't and that the system regularly disconnects and reconnects. He finally admitted that their server had gone down on the day I lost connection and they had a lot of these type of calls but he didn’t know how the WPA Key Number had been changed. Must have been the gremlins. So I’ve kept a record of how to reset the router and the WPA key number.

So this was not the computers to blame, nor me, it was Tiscali, but I had to sort this problem out. Goodness knows how much the technical support calls cost as I was on the phone for ages. The company didn’t contact me but then again even if they had, I couldn’t have accessed the email. However they might have notified us later that their server had been down out of courtesy. No, no, no, I’m just being stupid there expecting them to do that!

Post 1