Monday, May 10, 2010

Restore Your Missing Blogger Comments

I moved this blog to a custom domain about two months ago. Blogger makes the process very simple if you already own your own domain. I was up and running at blog.coditate.com after just a few clicks in the Blogger dashboard, and adding a new CNAME record for this domain.

A short time later I realized all the comments were missing from this blog. Apparently this has been quite a problem for months and based on the hundreds of unanswered complaints in the Blogger help forum, Google hasn't been very responsive or helpful in explaining why this happens or how to fix it.

Following the advice on this thread, I switched back to my old blogger-hosted address and the old comments reappeared. However, all new comments added since the domain switch had now disappeared. I switched back to my custom domain. Now both the old and new comments were gone!

Finally, after a couple more switches between my custom domain and blogger-address, all comments--both old and new--reappeared at once and seem to be sticking around. But the unreliability and lack of support from Google are not exactly confidence inspiring. In fact, it's downright scary when I think about how much of my important data is spread across Google's free services.

7 comments:

Affan Ruslan said...

Yup, I do have the same problem here
www.affanruslan.com

AT said...

@Affan: Hope the tips helped you out!

Affan Ruslan said...

In my humble opinion, I think it's just a luck!

Many people address the same issue here. Some of them tried the same trick but still did't work.

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/blogger/thread?fid=7399bc42018e9b020004892350449e4d&hl=en

AT said...

@Affan: As I mentioned in my post I had to switch back and forth several times before the problem was corrected (all comments restored). My recommendation is to keep trying, even up to half-a-dozen or more times if necessary.

Christy said...

I am having the same problem. Did you switch back and forth on the same day or wait a day between switching?

www.giveawaytrain.com
http://allaboardthereviewgiveawaytrain.blogspot.com/

Affan Ruslan said...

the same day if i'm not mistaken.
the best way I think you can use Disqus or Intense Debate instead for your comment.
I do know that Disqus has a tool to transfer all your previous comment.

To make it better, you can switch back to blogspot, then register for Disqus comment, then you change your domain.

Hope it helps.

AT said...

@Christy: Yes, I switched back and forth multiple times within the same 1-2 hours until the comments were all restored.

 
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