Google to kill Google Friend Connect for non-Blogger blogs; Feedburner issues

Attention, all non-Blogger bloggers! Google is killing Friends Connect for all non-blogger sites.

 

That means, I understand, that you won't be able to use the widget that displays your following, unless you have a blog on Blogger! Here is the quote by Urs Hölzle, Google Senior Vice-President, Operations from the Google official blog:

Google Friend Connect—Friend Connect allows webmasters to add social features to their sites by embedding a few snippets of code. We're retiring the service for all non-Blogger sites on March 1, 2012. We encourage affected sites to create a Google+ page and place a Google+ badge on their site so they can bring their community of followers to Google+ and use new features like Circles and Hangouts to keep in touch.

I don't think it's fair, readers! It seems, Google is trying to stop exodus to Wordpress and other platforms... Independent Fashion Bloggers Community writes more about it. By the way, join this site - you will always be up-to-date on important developments.

Meanwhile, Google seems to be clumsily tinkering on other products as well. If you are using Feedburner by Google, you will notice that your Feedburner widget shows 0 subscribers today! No panic, all your subscribers still receive their feeds, but you should go your Feedburner page and switch to a new Beta version, you subscribers number will re-appear. As for the widget, I haven't heard of any solutions on this one. Let us wait... (Actually, Google has become extremely user-unfriendly! They just cannot handle issues in a transparent and timely manner!)

Back to Google Friend Connect, Blogger sites won't be affected!  However, if you have a non-blogger blog you still have three months to promote other options and let your GFC followers  know about them! Good luck!

Sorry for a non-sewing post - but it affects all of us! What do you think about this move by Google, readers?

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I am clean, malware messages on blogs and how to solve the problem

First thing! My blog does not contain malware! If you want to check the status of your blog or of any other blog, follow this Google Safe Browsing diagnostic link and type the blog URL you want to check in the following address:


http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=http://your-blog-name.blogspot.com


The problem mentioned by several bloggers this week appears to be a link on their (and my) blogroll that redirect to a flagged blog. This is a screenshot of a malware alert I saw when I typed in the URL of the flagged blog:

In my case the culprit was a link to a flagged blog Making the Seam makingtheseam(dot)blogspot(dot)com (I am not linking to it here to avoid another malware message on my site). Of course, I had to remove this blog from my blogroll and this should stop any malware alerts generated when you visit my blog. 


You will see the same message, if you add the link to this site using the diagnostic URL above you will see that the site is flagged as unsafe. Unless, of course, the owner has recovered the blog. By the way, see how the Alert message refers to the Google Safe Browsing diagnostic page? This is the link I included above.


Now, if your site is safe according to Google Diagnostics (check the link above using your blog URL), you can try using this experimental tool to see whether there is a link on your blog that links to a hacked blog, such as Making the Seam, for example. The tool will analyze the code of your blog and give you possible culprits. The tool works with Blogger blogs only. It seems to be a safe tool as it only accesses the publicly available code. It doesn't ask you to install any code on your blog or similar. For me it was the only available way to identify the problem-causing link.  


Alternatively, if your blog is safe but generates a malware alert, you will see in the alert what site is causing this warning. If you haven't seen the alert yourself, but some of your readers told you about it, ask them to make a screenshot of it. 


If your problems are more complicated, read this great post on further solutions. It is written by the author of the tool I referred you to. 


Stay safe, readers, and let me know if you encountered any malware alerts recently! 

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