Blogger Beta Buggy

Posted by Laura Bergells

November 29, 2006

I have only four clients who currently use Google’s Blogger as their blog tool. And three have asked, “Should I upgrade to Blogger Beta? The Blogger dashboard button tells me I should.”

But I told ‘em, “No! Don’t do it! Don’t touch that Blogger Beta button!”

Then I gave them two reasons for my unexpectedly negative answer.

1. The Blogger Beta is Buggy. Implicit in the word “Beta” is often the word “Buggy”. Not all of the kinks have worked themselves out yet. I’m currently testing the new Blogger three different FTP servers, as well as on blogspot. Every single test post on every single server is having, er, “issues”. In just a few days, I’ve experienced idiotically long post times, timeouts, and posts that just plain disappear. What business needs this kind of hassle, just in time for Christmas?

2. Be patient. I understand the temptation to hit that upgrade button right away. Blogger Beta is touting all these neat new features…. from better security, to new templates, trackbacks, layouts…all sorts of features that most business bloggers long for. But once you hit that button, you can’t go back! So don’t hit that button until you at least a) back up your entire blog content and b) relentlessly test the new Blogger Beta.

Let’s face it: Blogger will eventually force all of its users to upgrade when it moves out of Beta: so give Google time to fix all its problems first. Bottom line: if Blogger is working for you now, why upgrade to a world of pain? Just read some of the Blogger Beta user forums. You can feel the frustration pour forth from your monitor!

Undoubtedly, Google will learn from the pain of its many frustrated Beta testers. Hey, it’s called “Beta” for a reason. If you upgrade now, you will spend an inordinate amount of time writing to Google support and telling them about all the problems that you encounter after you hit the upgrade button.

And that’s not the way I want to spend my holiday season.

(All that said, I have high hopes for the new Blogger….when it moves out of Beta. Because all of its highly touted features have been a long time coming!)

I can hardly wait!