Gee, Thanks, Blogger!

Call this a Public Service Announcement.  I am going to pass on some information from Blogger/Wordpress that has had my stymied for awhile and another fix for a problem from a change that will happen next week.

1. I haven't been able to get email notification on comments on my blog for weeks and the info on the forums and Blogger was no help.  This is from DJan's blog, DJan-ity,

and an easy fix, in case anyone else is having the same problem.  She says:

Open your blog dashboard, that is where the compose button sits and all those buttons are on the left, along with the list of your posts, published and drafts. Go down to Settings and click Email. If you were receiving emails of blog comments, your email address will be there in the box next to 'Comment notification email'. Delete your email address within the the box and at the top right, click 'Save Settings'. It has been suggested that you should close down and restart your computer. Do so if you wish. 

Then, go back to where you were at, Settings/Email and add your email address to the box 'Comment Notification Email' and again click Save Settings.You will receive an email and within the email there are two options. Select 'Subscribe'. Voila, you will now receive an email when someone comments on your blog. It may take a little time to start working though.

2. And I received this this morning from Silver Willow at A Gentle Breeze.  I hope I have forestalled another Blogger problem-to-be.

According to Blogger yesterday, Blogger blogs that don't change their https settings by the end of the month, well, in their words  "Otherwise your blog will no longer work properly in popular web browsers starting next month."

So/but don't worry.  I followed the easy directions, and within 5 minutes all was fixed and working properly.  But I want to explain to you here

1.  how to determine (if you don't know) if you need to do this,
2.  how to fix it if you do need to
3.  what to do if you have a private domain name and need to fix it to.  It's easy.  :)

First, this applies only to Blogger blogs.  But if you have a Wordpress.org or .com, you might want to check with them re https settings, if they aren't already set up.

To know if you, as a Blogger user, needs to do this, look at your url line.  Does it start with https?  If so, you must've made the changes Blogger told you to make and didn't ignore then 'x' out of the Admin Panel notice a couple months back.  But if you DON'T see 'https', please follow these directions.  Also, if you have a private domain, please still check the steps below, just to be sure.

1.  Go to your admin panel, and click 'settings' and then 'basic.'  
2.  Scroll down to 'https availability.'  
3.  In the first box, if it says 'no, change it to yes.  Then you will get a notice that it could take a few minutes to activate.  Wait a few minutes-up to five minutes, but it was only a few minutes for me.
4.  when it seems to be done (it will tell you to wait, otherwise), then click the 2nd box 'https redirect' to yes as well.  Once it takes a moment or two, to permanently change to 'yes', you are done.  There were no hiccups for me, and that's it.

Apparently this all has to do with the British or Europe changes taking place, web safety wise, next month, whether you live in that area or not.  So you definitely need to make sure you are set.

It seems like Blogger could do a better job of explaining fixes in plain English (or German. Or Dutch.  Or Urdu).  As explained above, it was easy and quick to do.  And hopefully next month my blog will still work now!  

Sunset last night from the beach last night after an afternoon storm.  

...and a box turtle in the driveway when we got home.

Aren't her colors and markings gorgeous?