Technical Issues Update

 I did receive this email from a reader on the technical issues here:

I deleted the Google ads script node in the source code and that fixed the problem, so it may be due to a Javascript error in the ads script.

You are a more technical person than I am - I do little source code work. So please send me an email with perhaps a step-by-step instruction (I do have someone else working on this but I like to learn new things).

Also Readers, whatever is happening is not allowing comments. Send your comments directly to me:

sss.westbrook@gmail.com

And I can post them.  Thanks!

Comments

Anonymous said…
I've been fiddling around to see if I can diagnose the problem. Basically there is something wrong with the CSS file for your page. CSS is just the Javascript "recipe" for how to lay out a web page, almost all websites have CSS files that do this. If you right-click your blog home page and select View Source, you should be able to confirm your CSS file is listed in the code somewhere pointing to this CSS file: https://www.blogger.com/static/v1/widgets/1529571102-css_bundle_v2.css

In some browsers, you can delete a line of code and see what the effect is, and deleting that line fixes the problem. Deleting that line or "node" in my browser fixes the problem, but that only fixes it on my browser.

I don't see the problem at all in mobile devices, which use CSS differently, so the problem seems to be specific to the CSS that controls how your blog displays on computer desktop browsers.

This all could be due to someone having hacked in and added custom Javascript, but I doubt it. Scenarios like the following seem much more likely, such as...

Maybe there is some conflict between the CSS and some latent script present in text you copied-and-pasted into a post (Microsoft Word often has a lot of invisible script if you paste formatted text). The solution to this problem is to always paste text only, not formatted text.

Maybe there is a problem with Google's many ad scripts. Those scripts usually live in the CSS file too.

Maybe you are using custom CSS (custom Javascript) and don't know it. In your blog's display settings, you can check and see if anything has custom CSS in it. Try deleting any custom CSS you see.

Maybe there is something wrong with the Theme you're using for your blog. Forgive me if I say so, but the theme is outdated anyway, so if this really is the problem, it's a chance to give the blog a needed visual refresh!


I would suggest trying the following. First, reset the theme you're using for the blog to a default theme. https://support.google.com/blogger/answer/1227173?hl=en
If the problem goes away, then the problem was in your old theme. You could then pick a new theme or stick with the default theme. Don't revert to your old theme.

If that doesn't work, try this. First save your last several posts so they're backed up, then try deleting the last several posts one by one and see if the problem is fixed. If deleting one of them fixes the problem, the conflict with the CSS was in that post. The other posts can be reposted or restored, and the offending post can be re-typed using text only to avoid the conflict.

If the problem persists, after these steps, we still know the problem is in the CSS file: https://www.blogger.com/static/v1/widgets/1529571102-css_bundle_v2.css
I don't know how Google/Blogger lets you control that CSS file, or if you can point to another one, or an older one, or none at all. But that file is the crux of the problem. Have a friend, or a teenager who codes, help.

Good luck!

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