Please Blogger, Restore My Deleted Blog!! #2

In 2009, Blogger Support became weary from handling too many problem reports from blog owners who had made such a simple mistake.

I hit the wrong key, and deleted my blog! Help Me!!

They started archiving deleted blogs, and gave us a wizard to un delete a newly deleted blog, from the archive. Unfortunately, that ability to un delete a blog has two major limitations.

1. A deleted blog can be un deleted within 90 days.
2. A deleted blog can be un deleted by a blog administrator.

Some blog owners find out the relevance of the second limitation the hard way - after they delete their blog, then find out that they have two (or more) Blogger accounts.

From a cursory examination, two similar symptoms

I hit the wrong key, and deleted my blog!

and

I can't find my blog on the dashboard!

would result from the same problem, and have the same solution - un delete the deleted blog. However, the second symptom has an equally common diagnosis

You are logged in with the wrong Blogger account.

This diagnosis is generally derived from ownership analysis, of the missing blog.

Unfortunately, ownership can only be determined when the blog in question is online. And that is the problem seen, too many times, when people try to un delete their deleted blog.

If you just deleted your blog, there are two diagnostic procedures, commonly used in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, that you'll not find useful.

• Account recovery. The Blogger "Forgot your username or password?" wizard is useless, for a deleted blog.
• Ownership analysis. You cannot determine the owner, without examining live blog content.

If you just deleted your blog, and you don't have access to an owning Blogger account, you're going to have to brute force your way back to control. For each possible email address (GMail or non GMail), you must

1. Clear cache, cookies, and sessions (yes, all 3!), and restart the browser.
2. Use the Blogger "Forgot your username or password?" wizard, and plug in an email address.
3. See if you get email and can recover access to a Blogger account.
4. See if you can un delete anything from the dashboard, for that account.

This is going to be a frustrating exercise - but it's probably your only solution possible. There are only two ways to avoid this exercise.

• Don't delete your blog, by mistake.
• Always maintain access to your blog.