Well this year started out a little shakey on the technology front. I have been attempting to post about malware for 2 hours using my Blogger.com account and kept receiving the following error:
java.net.ConnectException: Connection timed out
Just so you know, I use Blogger.com to post my blog to my own webserver using the FTP publishing built into Blogger. This has worked out great now for a couple of years – I have 4 blogs that I maintain with the service. This morning when I tried to publish my blog though – it just decided not to work.
A little research shows that this has been a recurring problem with Blogger and Google with no real resolution. It’s very aggravating to say the least so I wanted to share what fixed my account since Google has not posted any sort of resolution – and contacting Google for support is lackluster at best. They have claimed repeatedly that the problem is fixed but it just keeps cropping up. Apparently some time around Christmas and January 1, 2009, it started showing up in many accounts.
Some posts from Google suggest that it may be an active vs passive FTP issue. Typically Google suggests the issue the on the side of the website host – this is obviously not the case. The problem is Google/Blogger side.
Come on Google and Blogger Team – post the problem AND the resolution.
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Resolution for my account:
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- In your Blog account settings, go to FTP publishing.
- Set the ftp server to: yousite.com
*I use FTP publishing to publish my blog from blogger to my own website. If you don’t use the same setup, this may not work for you.
Previously, I had entered ftp.smartergeek.com – just as Google’s instructions said. This has worked fine for 2 years and still works fine in other blogs I have under the same Blogger account using the exact same settings. Who knows – but this worked for me.
Thanks for your post it was the first step in solving my problem. I got the same problem on my first blog post of 2009.
I changed the FTP address as mentioned but this did not solve the problem. I assumed it was something to do with the archiving.
I added an Archive URL. Which for me was simply my blog path … http://mackney.com/blog
It now publishes OK. Hope this helps.
@mackney
I had the same issue with my first post of 2009. I removed the ftp from my domain name, but that did not resolve the problem. Instead, I entered my IP address in the FTP server settings, and everything publishes okay.
i didn’t ever have FTP in it, tried the ip, tried with http://FTP... nothing works.
this is one of the benefits of offering a free service i suppose… you have no real obligation to ensure the service works because it’s free. 🙁 my wordpress site is still working just fine.
Hallelujah! Rex, thank you for this simple fix. I fiddled with my settings for over an hour and your suggestion worked. Let’s hope it doesn’t break again.
Thanks,
Kia
It did not work for me…
I managed to find a new way to solve this problem. More can be found here.
I changed my ftp server address from domain.com to http://ftp.domain.com and this fixed the publishing problem.
Oddly enough, mine quit working again. I changed it back to http://ftp.smartergeek.com and it started working again.
Come on Google???
This is so frustrating that I might just switch to wordpresss
I tried all the suggestions mentioned here, still no luck… Any other suggestions?
The only thing I can suggest (at this point) is to switch to WordPress. Of course, WP isn't perfect either. Everything is a give and take.
At least with WP, I can install it on my own server and dig into the underlying code if needed. I am going to switch in the next 30 days – I'm just trying to decide what to do with the ASP pages since I will most likely switch to Linux hosting when I do.
I finally figured this one out for me!!!
I tried all of the fixes listed on this page with no success and was about to switch to wordpress. My website is hosted with Lunarpages. I sent a support ticket in to Lunarpages and they finally figured it out:
"It appears that one of the IP addresses that google blogger uses was blocked on the server, and it has been unblocked at this time.
For future reference, the IP addresses are:
74.125.66.132
74.125.112.132"
So if you are having this problem you should try contacting your hosting company, and give them these IP addresses to make it easier for them.