Where is the Blogger help forum now?

This quick-tip is about how to find the current version of Blogger's support forum.

27 July update:   I noticed yesterday that Google have changed the process back, and that Blogger's help link now leads directly to the summary page which includes a Community button.   I guess this means they listened - if not to me, then at least to everyone else who complained.




For as long as I have been using Blogger, Google have provided two types of support:

• A set of support articles - some of which aren't up to date - that describe how to do standard things
• A support forum, where people can ask questions, which are answered by other Blogger users. This forum has some people who are tagged as "Top Contributors" who have special rights, like being able to send questions to the Google staff who are also using the foru - but who obviously don't have the time to read all the posts.

Unlike some people, I don't have any problems with the peer-support model. It's 24x7. It supports lots of languages. It gives ordinary people a way to learn more about Blogger, by preparing answers to other people's questions.   It let me build up reputation as a helpful person, and so encouraged other helpers to help me when I got stuck.   It was also a place I could refer to in my own comment moderation policies:   I would rather that people asked for help with their blogs on a public, peer reviewed forum than here on Blogger-HAT where there is not regular review process.

I wasn't to thrilled about the move to a Google-groups based help forum. I can see why using a standard tool is good, but the Group software just doesn't work so well on my small netbook.

And I'm less-than-happy about the way that Google seems to be making it ever-harder to find the forum: a few weeks back they added another click to the process (Gear-wheel > Blogger Help > Community), and now I see there's yet another one (Gear-wheel > Blogger Help > More (the down-arrow at the bottom of the page) Blogger).

So here's a quick link, which I'm going to keep up to date, and put on my sidebar too. Click it to go straight to the Blogger help/product forum:      https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/blogger

Blogger Help Forum (English) is moving

The English-language Blogger Help Forum (BHF) is moving to a new Google Product Forum, based Google Groups, from 9 March 2012 (that's this Friday).



There's nothing about the change in Blogger Buzz, but they've posted a long announcement in the current BHF, and linked to a Getting Started Guide which shows the base features of Google Product Forums, and an example working GPF-based forum (the one for Google Plus).

Key facts about the change:

• Posts from the current forum will not be moved into to the new forum (since most of them refer to the old Blogger interface). 
• You will need to join Google Groups to use it.
• All user levels will reset to Level 1 (presuming not TCs though) - but if they look to make more TCs, your post-history in the old BHF will be checked.
• The only way to get a picture with your profile in the new forum is to have it linked to your Google + account.   (I tested with an account that's not +'d, these do  basic Google profiles that don't include pictures).
• The existing BHF will be archived, so the current content can still be found.
  (Not sure what "archived" means - probably that write-access to it will be turned off, but read-only access will be continued).
• All help-links inside Blogger will go to the new forum, once it's live. 
• The new forum will be at:   https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!forum/blogger

One fantastic feature of the new forum is the keyboard shortcuts, eg "space" to move down a page.    (Bringing back fond memories of the first use-net reader I ever met, back in the days of Vax VMS  :-)