Google stopping FTP publishing via Blogger

Google has recently announced they're stopping the ability of Blogger to publish via FTP to your own domain.  So from March 26th, that means no more using Blogger within your own domain (although all the previously published files will stay on your hosting server).

It's a shame - although low-spec, Blogger does (or did) offer an easy-to-use, difficult to get wrong option, and you could use your own HTML template to fit the blog with the theme of your own site.

The reasons they state focus on the resource needed for a small amount of their user base, especially as some Google foundations they use are going offline, hence requiring even more effort.  I suspect there's also the matter of making Blogger profitable - and registering domains etc with Blogger (as opposed to FTP'ing to you existing domain) is their only current revenue generator.

But whatever the real reason, the fact remains that soon, it dies.  Time to head over to WordPress - even though there's more time needed, probably by shifting your whole site over, as well as the blog - it's worth it in the long run: more flexibility, easier to update all the pages on the site, and plenty of plugins that continue to offer new ways of finding & displaying information.

For those who do go down this route, here's a good place to export your Blogger posts to WordPress

Labels: online-marketing