Deleting Blogs and Blog-Posts

This article is about the issues involved in deleting a Blogger blog.

Before you start:

If you need help with deleting a blog, make sure you understand the words that are used to describe things in Blogger (ref Blogger, Blogs and bloggers, Posts Pages and Screens: some basic definitions) - many people say "blog" when they really mean "post", and are then surprised when they follow some simple instructions and all their "blogs" (sic) disappear.

Also, make sure that you understand that your Blogger account is just a Google account (except for Blogger accounts created pre 2006). If you want to "delete" a Google account (not just a specific blog), think about whether you really need to delete it as opposed to just never logging in to it again.

Deleting a blog:

If you own the blog and know the password of the Google account

Log in to Blogger, using the owning account
In pre-Sept-11 Blogger: Choose Settings > Basic > Delete Blog.
In post-Sept-11 Blogger (aka the new interface):
Choose Settings from the drop-down main menu, then
Choose Other from the left-hand bar
In the Blog-tools row, click Delete Blog.

Only do this if you want to delete the URL (ie blog address) and not use it again.

If you want to keep the URL, then just delete all the posts (see the next sections). If you want to give the URL to someone else, delete the posts and then transfer the ownership.

If the blog has an pictures stored in Picasa-web-albums, then they will not be deleted. If you want to delete them, you need either manage them from Picasa-web-albums directly, or delete all the posts individually (not using the bulk-selection method) before you delete the blog.

If you don't know the password

The first step, if you don't know the password is to use the the Forgotten Password screen, which asks for the blog's URL or the email address that you used to identify the Google account.

If that doesn't work, Google have some more suggestions for you.

The very last option, if nothing else works, is to take Google's Account Recovery Exam. This attempts to re-connect you with the account using the email account that you had listed with it and/or any other security information that you (or Google) provided in the past.

You will need to convince Google that you really did make the blog: this could be difficult if you don't have access to the email address that you originally associated with the Blogger account, but it may not be impossible if you can answer some other security questions correctly. There may be cases where this seems harsh or unfair, but it's necessary so that Google doesn't start deleting blogs based on malicious requests from people who don't own them at all.

If your blog was created before 2006, you may not have converted your original Blogger account into a Google account. In this case, use the Legacy claim form.

If the blog belongs to someone else

You cannot generally get blogs that don't belong to you deleted, unless the person who published it is willing to delete it themselves - the first step is to try asking them.

There are some exceptions, including:

Taking action against a blogger who has used copyright material without permission, and
Dealing with someone who is impersonating you or breaking Blogger's terms and conditions in some other way - in which case you need to use this workflow.

If the blog belongs to someone who has died

In this case, Google have a special procedure which lets the person who is legally responsible for the blog-owner's affairs get access to their Gmail account: once they have access to the Gmail account, they will also have access to the blog via www.blogger.com, so they can delete it as described above.

Note that this procedure requires the legal representative to:

Have an email account themselves, and
Have received a email message from the deceased person, and
Send in a copy of the full message header from this email message.

So, thinking ahead, if you want someone to be able to access your blog(s) after you have died, it's a good idea to make sure that you've emailed them from the Google account associated with the blog - or give them some other way to access your password(s).

Deleting blog-post(s), without deleting the blog:

To delete one blog post:

Log into the dashboard
In the list of Posts for the blog, hover the mouse over the title for the post: this lets you see links just underneath it for Edit, View and Delete: click the Delete link..
You will be shown a summary of the post and asked to confirm the delete.

If the post contains any photos that are stored in Picasa-web-albums, you will be asked if you want to delete them as well. If you do want to delete them, tick the check-box. It's not automatic because these photos may be used in other blogs or posts as well.

To delete many (or all) blog posts, but not the Blog/URL:

Log into the dashboard
In the pre-Sept-11 blogger inteface:Choose Posts > Edit posts,
Use the tick-box at the left of the post titles to select all the posts you want to delete
Scroll to the bottom of the screen and click Delete
In the Sept-11 Blogger interface:In the list of Posts for the blog, use the tick-box at the left of the post titles to select the posts you want to delete. (There are links in the top row for selecting All, Published, etc)
Click the trash-can icon at the very top of the list, just beside Revert to Draft..

The number of posts per screen is limited by a drop-down arrow at the top right, and defaults to (I think) 50: if your blog has more posts than you are displaying (some of mine have several hundred posts), then you may need to do this several times.

Removing a blog from your Profile:

If you have a blog that you don't want to delete, but which you do want to delete from your Blogger profile, then:

Log on to Blogger
In pre-Sept-2011 Blogger: From the Dashboard choose Edit Profile > Select blogs
In post-Sept-2011 Blogger, from the drop down menu beside your email address in the top right hand corner of the dashboard, choose Blogger Profile
Un-tick the blogs that you don't want to show
Press Save Settings at the bottom of the page)

Deleting a Google account:

Make sure that you are certain you need to delete the Google account: in many cases, it may be safer to leave it in place, even though you never use it again.

To delete your Google Account, follow the instructions on this page.

The page doesn't say what will happen to your any Blogger blog(s) that you Google account owns. However at the moment it looks like the blog(s) are not deleted. If you want to delete the blogs, you must do this separately (see above), before you delete the account.

If the blogs contain pictures from Picasa-web-albums, these pictures may be deleted.

And if the blogs contain items from other Google-hosted products (eg Docs, custom-maps), then it's likely that these items will also be deleted.

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Saturday, November 13, 2010

Deleting Blogs and Blog-Posts

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