If you find that one or more of your blog entries does not appear on your site, you may need to edit your entry text using the tools in your Yahoo! 360° account. You may be able to solve the problem simply by opening and saving the entry (see below). Learn more about how your blog works with Yahoo! 360°.

We have discovered that special characters are being interpreted incorrectly by our system. Any entry containing one of these special characters (and sometimes several consecutive entries) will be prevented from displaying properly on your site. A similar problem can affect your blog comments: Special characters in a comment may cause that comment to disappear from your site.

You may also find that you are unable to view or edit your blog entries or comments from the "Review Blog Entries" area of your Blog Manager.

Why is this happening?

Complex programs that include text-editing features, such as Microsoft Word, often insert formatting elements into your text as you type. These elements are generally invisible but can be included when you copy and paste the text into another program.

These invisible "special characters," plus other non-standard characters, such as letters with accent marks, "curly" quotation marks, and non-Roman letters, may display perfectly in some programs but confuse others.

Yahoo! 360° does not understand these special characters, and when you view your blog at your Yahoo! 360° web address, you'll find that your blog has either ignored the character or replaced it with a symbol (often a small question mark).

Unfortunately, at this time, the blog tools in your Web Hosting account fail when they encounter one of these characters. This failure prevents your entry (or comment) from appearing on your site and can break the tools in your Blog Manager.

What do I do?

We are working to fix this problem as soon as possible. In the meantime, we recommend editing your blog in your Yahoo! 360° account to remove the special characters that are causing your blog to fail.

1. Before you begin, view your blog on your site and look for a missing entry or comment. (You may see the entry title and related links even if the entry content is missing.)
2. Sign in to your Yahoo! 360° account using your Yahoo! ID and password.
3. Here you can review your complete blog entries. Using your mouse and the "Prev" and "Next" links at the top and bottom of your page, locate the entry you noted in step 1.

See the steps below for broken entries or comments.

Entries:

1. Click the "Edit" link under the entry.

   

2. Click "Save."

We've found that in most cases, you simply need to open and save the entry in your Yahoo! 360° account to remedy the problem. If you return to your site and find that your entry is still missing, you'll need to find and delete the special characters that are causing the issue.

1. Return to the entry using the steps above and click the "Edit" link.
2. Next you have two options:
   
   
   • If you're viewing the page using the Firefox browser, you'll likely see one or more small question mark symbols somewhere in your entry. The symbol represents a broken special character. Delete each symbol, then click "Save."
   • If you're using the Internet Explorer browser, you won't see a symbol in place of the broken character. To ensure that all special characters are removed, you'll need to retype the entry in the "Entry Content" field. We do not recommend copying and pasting the text into another program, which could reintroduce special characters into your content.
   
   
3. If you removed all of the special characters, the entry should now appear properly on your site. If you find that this or other entries are still missing, return to your Yahoo! 360° account and edit your entries until all of the special characters have been removed.

Comments:

Because comments cannot be edited after they are posted to your blog, you'll have to delete the comment that contains the special character. Unfortunately, deleting a comment removes it permanently from your blog; however, deleting broken comments will ensure that you can view the other comments for that entry on your site and in your Blog Manager.

1. Click the "Comments" link under the entry in which the broken comment appears.

   

2. On the next page you can review all of the comments posted for that entry. To delete a comment, click the corresponding "Remove Comment" link.

Important note: Due to another known issue in the system that powers your blog, entries edited using the tools in your Yahoo! 360° account instead of your Blog Manager will be temporarily unable to accept comments from your site visitors. We recommend, then, that after you complete the steps above, you return to your Blog Manager and resave affected blog entries. Learn how.