Kathy T.

I'm sure many of you are more technically advanced with your quilt blogs than I am, but I was taken by surprise recently by new policies of Blogger that were put into effect on April 12, 2012. I didn't see any warning of this change.

They have always stored the photos that you upload to your blog in Picassa Photo Albums with 1 GB of free storage. You had the ability to pay an annual fee of a nominal $5 for about 10 GB (don't hold me to that exact amount - I didn't write it down, it is slightly different from the below) with the ability to choose to pay more for more space.

Since the policy change, the free GB remains the same, but the monthly (NOT annual) fee will be a minimum of $2.95 for roughly the same size extra space (that amounts to $25/year) if you exceed the 1 GB limit of free photo uploads. You will have the ability to choose to pay for more space, but you will not have a choice to pay annually. Those that had an existing paid account as of the Apr 12th date will be grandfathered in and their rates will not change unless they change their account in some way and as long as their payments are current. If they make any changes, they will be moved over to the new policy charges.

I apparently just exceeded the 1 GB free limit and started to receive the notices that I could no longer upload photos on my Blogger blog. I just wanted to warn quilt bloggers that use Blogger so you aren't taken by surprise like I was. You might want to reduce the size of your photos that you upload to maximize your free space for as long as you can. Note, this is only on Blogger, not Wordpress or Typepad, but many of the quilt blogs I have seen have used Blogger so I thought I'd pass this on.