Blogger Beta Update!

Grease Caution is the word:

Jason Goldman of (Google) Blogger warns:

The biggest thing we’ve heard thus far is “When can I get it!” Believe me, we want to let everyone move over to Beta as quickly as possible. While we continue to increase the number of eligible users, we are doing so in an incremental way.

This is important because our highest priority is protecting user data during the migration process. By taking the approach we have, we’ve been able to fix bugs before they affect larger numbers of users. As it stands now, only a very small percentage of users have been affected by migration issues and we have fixed most of those problems. If you have experienced a problem related to migration, let us know and we will fix it (and don’t worry your blog posts are safe!)

Meaning: Although Jason tries his best to minimize the risks, the message is those who have made the switch are being used as “beta” users. Really? Yes really. So maybe that’s why they call it “BETA“. (Do you notice the tongue in my cheek?)

So again I reiterate, if you value your hard work or you are confident in your geek abilities, I recommend that you play it safe and don’t switch your existing blogger account over yet! Create a test account like I did and play around with it if you wish, but don’t put your existing blog at risk until they get all of the kinks out.

He goes on to say:

Fortunately, it’s always been part of our plan to introduce a new Edit HTML system for Blogger in beta. This system will not only let folks have the degree of customizability they desire, but it will let you create templates that are customizable with the Layouts system. Right now we are finishing the first version of this system and will be introducing in the “days not weeks” timeframe.

Again, as I warned earlier, there is currently NO HTML editing feature yet, so all the more reason why you should not be in any hurry to migrate your blog over to Blogger Beta.

This has been a public service announcement from your friendly Blog Bloke.