Friday 3 December 2004

Blogger problems deleting comments

From: Richi
Subject: Can't delete comments or edit from blog
Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2004
I'm logged into blogger.com, but I don't see the trashcan icon by the comments, and I can only edit posts via blogger.com, and not from the blog itself.

Can you either help me make it work from the blog, or at least tell me how to delete comments from blogger.com, please?

I've tried using IE6 as well as Firefox 1.0. OS is Win2003.

To which they replied:
To delete a comment, first make sure you're logged into Blogger, then visit the Post Page where the comment is displayed. Next, click the small trash can icon next to the comment.

The problem with your trash cans seems to be due to the fact that you are using frames within your blog. You will need to modify this in order for the trash can icons to appear properly.

Currently, Blogger Support does not support questions regarding customized template code or CSS/HTML in general. Please see our Blogger Help article for a pointers to more resources: http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=115

Hmmm, I'm not using frames. Oh, wait, I might have been briefly while they looked at the problem. Nuts. Let's try this...
I already tried everything you suggested. I also tried with frames and without. I also tried republishing the blog after resetting the URL to use the underlying web host (www.richi.nildram.co.uk). I also tried using Blogspot. None of these made any difference. Despite being logged in to Blogger, no trash icon appears in the Post page, whether using Firefox 1.0 or IE6.
To which they came back with...
Unfortunately we don't provide support for template modifications such as these.

Your best bet is to back up your custom template to a text file, then start from scratch with one of Blogger's default templates, where Blogger's template tags are listed in their original context. Then, insert the tags into your custom template with this context in mind.

Blogger Help's Template Tags section is also a good resource: http://help.blogger.com/bin/topic.py?topic=39

You might also want ot try changing your publishing settings to not publish through frames or try publishing to Blogspot.

You might also want to try
Have fun!

I might want to try to have fun? What, are they telling me I need to get out more? ;-)

So I fiddled a bit more, reset the template, and it still didn't work. Then their Tags help page got me thinking, and I went to look in the generated source for the post. There I found where it was trying the draw the icon!

OK, I saved my modified template, reset it to the original, republished the entire thing, and I still get no trashcan icon by the comment in the Post page.

Makes sense, 'cos I didn't mess with that bit of the template. I can see that <$BlogCommentDeleteIcon$> is there where it should be in the template. In fact, I looked at the generated source and could see where it was trying to draw the icon. It looks like this:

(can't seem to paste HTML into a post -- grrr)
So I manually went to http://www.blogger.com/delete-comment.do?blogID=... and sure enough it worked! The comment got deleted. So at least I have a workaround now. Thanks for the link to the tag help page.

Could it be that you can't nest span class="..." tags? Otherwise, I'm stumped as to why it doesn't work as advertised, but thanks for the help. If you want me to try anything else to help you get to the bottom of this, let me know.

So there you have it. If you can't delete comments, go to the post page, view source, and look for the "delete-comment.do" URL. Go there manually and voila!

11 comments:

Daryl said...

There are a few Blogger kluges like this. After they did the update in May the archive index option went missing. Since I use a PHP script and edit my sidebar completely separately, I can't use Blogger tags in them so I can't put my archive nicely there... so I came up with workaround which again involves scouting down a URL that will do the trick for you...

Matt said...

Thanks Richi! I was having EXACTLY the same problem as you, and in fact I just sent Blogger an e-mail explaining the problem. Logged in, no trash can, I've got abusive comment spam, what do I do?

Well, you have just saved me days of frustration. I went directly to the URL specified in the post page. Thanks to you, I can stay one step ahead of the Evil Web Surfers whose sole mission in life is to post nasty comments on my blog. ;-)

Matt

Foxy said...

Thank you, thank you! I had the same problem and your instructions about going to the source code worked like a charm.

Rachael Narins said...

To post code try using {{ }} instead of [], it works. And thanks for the explainations!

Anonymous said...

I was having the same problem and, seeing Larry's comment, experimented with Norton Internet Security.

I found that switching off "Enable browser privacy" in the Custom Level setting of the Privacy Control did the trick. So if you're running Internet Security, try changing this setting.

As an addendum to this, I see that there are some Advanced options in Norton, where I can set different privacy levels for different sites. My next task is to see if I can have Browser Privacy on by default, but off for Blogger.

Anonymous said...

OK, I've discovered the exact setting.

You can still have Norton's Browser Privacy switched on, as long as you go into the Advanced settings, and add the server www.blogger.com.

The exact setting is "information about visited sites", which has to be set to "permit" for www.blogger.com. If you set it to "permit same site" or "block" this won't work. Either this is a quirk of Norton, or Blogger insists you tell it where else you've been surfing before you can edit posts or delete comments.

a-per-ture said...

hey.. I am still getting frustrated. It just wouldn't work.
I changed browsers .. tried going to that link directly (which just says only takes me to my dash board. :( )..
I stopped my firewall / norton.
but just wouldn't work .. :(
btw. i am trying to delete a comment i posted on someone else's blog..

Richi Jennings said...

a-per-ture, assuming you're logged in to Blogger, go to the post's permalink page and view the source. You're looking for a URL that looks like:

http://www.blogger.com/delete-comment.g?blogID=XXXXXX&postID=XXXXXXXXXXXX

Copy that to the clipboard and then paste it into the browser's address bar.

Anonymous said...

Thanks. The Norton advice worked a treat for me!

Daniel said...

I know, I'm a late-comer (this is an old post), but this post was one of the first results in a search for this exact no-trash-can problem I've had recently.

Here's my long-winded solution, using some javascript:

http://myplace2yammer.blogspot.com/2008/11/holy-guacamole.html

Karen said...

Thanks, this is really helpful.

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