BloggerStop.Net - Blogger Widgets, Templates, Help!

Spam Comments Moderation In Blogger/BlogSpot Blogs

bloggerstop.net@gmail.com (Divya Sai) — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 20:27:00 +0000

Being closely associated with Google, Blogger has always been focusing on improving the SEO attributes of its blogs. Working in the same direction, the recent development is the integration of Google's Spam filtering technology into Blogger. For you, it's just another new tab in your Blogger Dashboard: Comments...

NOTE: This feature has not yet been added in all the blogs. So, if the tab is currently absent from your dashboard, then do not worry - it will be added soon.

If the tab is already present in your blogs Dashboard, click on it. Now if you have activated "Comment Moderation" in your Blog Settings ( -> Comments), then you will see three sections under the tab "Comments", like this:

NOTE 2: To better manage your blog-comments, moderate them directly from your email.

And if you haven't activated "Comment Moderation" in your blog, then you will see only two options under the tab Comments, viz. Published and Spam.

Now, this "Comments" section not only allows you to manage all your comments from one place, but the "SPAM" sub-section is the main advantage and purpose of adding this new section to the dashboard.

According to Blogger;

Blogger now filters comments that are likely spam comments to a Spam Inbox, much like the spam folder in your email. When someone leaves a comment on your blog, it will be reviewed against our spam detector, and comments that are identified as possible spam will be sent to your blog’s Spam Inbox, found at Comments | Spam.

You can help improve our ability to automatically detect spam comments by checking your Spam Inbox and deleting spam comments and marking real comments that may have been flagged as spam as Not Spam.

NOTE 2: Spam filtering currently only applies to new comments.

So, log in to Blogger and see if you already have the new tab or not. And moreover, you can report any issues with the new spam system by clicking on the “Report spam filtering issues” link on the bottom of the Comments | Spam page, or by visiting this Help Forum page.

Image Credits: Message Defense

3 Blogger Business Card Templates - Your Online ID Cards

bloggerstop.net@gmail.com (Divya Sai) — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 09:49:00 +0000

In the this highly competitive 21st century, you must have your unique online identity, which can be accessed from anywhere in the world. By registering your own name as a domain name you get an edge over others during interviews and business deals. So make sure that you do have your unique domain where you can host your profile, achievements etc.

To make a business card like website, all you need is a domain with your name in it and a webhost where you can host your website. As it is highly possible that your name has been already registered, so try some different combinations of your name like these:
yourname.com or your-name.com (around $10 per year)
yourname.me or your-name.me (around $10 per year)
yourname.im or your-name.im (around $11 per year)
yourname.name or your-name.name (around $9 per year)

You can register these domain names from www.Name.com

You may add some other words too, like DrJade.com, PainterJohn.com, WriterAlen.com etc.

Once you register the domain, you need to host a website at that domain. For that, either you can buy web space from any web-host or simlpy redirect your domain to Blogger. Read these articles on how to use custom-domains with blogger:

1. Blogger Custom Domain, Unlimited Hosting And Bandwidth For Free
2. Blogger Custom Domain - Subdomain vs. Naked Domain (Use Both)

So, once you are ready with the domain and a blog, your next job is to give a it a professional business card look. For that, download and use any of these templates:

The Antagonist

DEMO | Instructions | Download

Visiting Card

DEMO | Instructions | Download

MiniCard

DEMO | Instructions | Download

Read the correct way to change your Blogger Template.

Image Credits: WD-Depot

Compare And Find The Best Affordable Web Host

bloggerstop.net@gmail.com (Divya Sai) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 03:15:00 +0000

Blogger.com, no doubt provides all the features and benefits to bloggers for completely free, and thus till date, it stands as the most famous Blogging platform on the Internet.
But nowadays, most of the bloggers don't want to limit their blogs to just some posts and widgets. To add additional blogs/websites (based on other blogging platforms like, WordPress and Joomla) and CMS (content management systems) to your current blogs, it is necessay to have your own domain and hosting on the Internet.
Although you don't have to search a lot to find a good domain-seller, but it does take a lot of time and intense search to find a host that offers great features at an affordable price.
While searching a web-host, you must focus on 5 main criteria, viz.:

1. Web space - More means better. Presently most of the web hosts are providing unlimited web space, so it's better to avoid those with any kind of limitation in providing space.
2. Bandwidth - Bandwidth is the amount of traffic that is allowed to visit your blog each month. So, again with increasing popularity of a website any limit on bandwidth can potentially harm the website. Therefore just like web space, you should prefer a service that offers unlimited bandwidth.
3. Uptime - All the good web-hosting sites claim to have 99% uptime. But you must refer to their reviews at various forums and blogs. Or at least refer to some good web-hosts review site.
4. Scripts and Special Features - The host must support and offer all the various latest scripts. Look out for other special features like free domain names, Photo-Gallery platforms, Shopping carts, secure servers etc. And of course the interface must be user-friendly too.
5. Price - This is where most of us change our decisions and sometimes even settle for a sub-standard deal just because of the lower costs. But with some basic search on Google and other web-host guides, you can easily get a list of best website hosting sites.

WebHostingRating as the name says, reviews and rates other webhosts. The results are available on their website which can be accessed by anyone and so you can find the best web host for your needs:

WebHostingRating Awards and Certifications are given to the best web hosts in the industry, who have proven themselves by delivering exceptional service to their customers. All of our certified web hosting providers are carefully examined by experienced webmasters to provide the service you require!

At WebHostingRating, you will find sites ranked and categorized based on different parameters like Best Budget, Windows, Linux and Reseller hosting, (Best of 2009) location of servers (country), price range and based on different hosting platforms. Along with their own reviews and ratings you will also find reviews by other users too on their website. Moreover every hosting service has been reviewed by them separately to focus, comment and rate every feature offered by that service.
So do pay a visit to WebHostingRating before you finalise a web host for our next website.

Image Credits: Divyun.com

10 YouTube Videos About Writing That Are Worth a Look

bloggerstop.net@gmail.com (Divya Sai) — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 12:50:00 +0000

A guest post by James Adams, editor and contributor to the CreativeCloud blog.

There are two primary aspects of good writing: technical and content. Technical factors include the proper use of punctuation, spelling, grammar and form. Content speaks to the purpose, reader interest and composition of a written piece. Here are ten YouTube videos which address the different factors of good writing.

1. Writing Lessons: How to Write a Feature Story

John Graden discusses how to write a feature story for a magazine or newspaper. He relates the importance of having a good headline and talks about the 'So What?' factor. This three minute video is packed with useful information.

2. How to Write a 5 Paragraph Essay

This short series of five videos discusses the steps to writing a five paragraph essay. The author talks about pre-writing, preparing your word document, writing your essay, proofreading and formatting. This video stands out because of the cogent examples that it provides.

3. 7 steps to Better Blog Entries

This video takes four minutes to discuss the seven essential steps to receiving a better response to your blogs. The instructor's style is entertaining. He shows quite a lot of interest in the subject that he's talking about.

4. How to Use Commas in English Writing

Many writers miss the function of commas. The instructor clarifies the proper use of commas in writing and explains when they should be utilized. The video itself is nearly seven minutes long and thorough in its approach.

5. Writing Tips: How Can I Become a Better Writer?

Read as often as you can and study the techniques that superior writers use in their works. Though this video focuses on how to become a better creative writer, the tips contained within can be extrapolated for non-fiction.

6. 7 Tips to Get Into the Article Writing Zone

One complaint that writers have is that they are not completing the articles that they start. The author of this video attributes that to not being in the proper mindset. He then outlines many ways to get writers into the 'article writing zone.'

7. Top 10 Reasons for Article Rejection

Why do articles get rejected on EZinearticles? Meet Gary, a stick figure guy who has decided to write the top ten reasons for article rejection. Some issues include stolen or ripped content, blatant sales pieces and localized niche articles. This offers valuable information to would-be article marketers.

8. Power Writing (1 of 2) Brian Tracy

This YouTube posting is strictly audio and makes it on this list because the content stands out. The ways to create content are covered within the span of two ten minute offerings. The ideas presented center around the fact that the writing phase and editing phase should be separate within any piece of writing.

9. How to Write a Strategic Marketing Plan

This informative video takes the best practices for creating a marketing plan and distills them into a precise and easy to watch format. Creation of a great business plan is vital for both online and brick and mortar businesses.

10. Ray Bradbury speaks about writing

Ray Bradbury encourages writers to read often and have passion about their writing. He states that if you don't enjoy the writing, do something else. Bradbury is a living legend. His stories have won nearly every writing award in existence. Sometimes, the best advice is given to you by the masters.

Hopefully, these insights and tips will help you become the best writer that you can be.

James Adams is a full time writer who reviews products such as the HP 901 for Cartridge Save. He also writes posts on their blog about advertising, art and design.

How To Track Visitors And Optimize Your Website

bloggerstop.net@gmail.com (Divya Sai) — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 15:00:00 +0000

Post Updated (9th July, 2010): Now "Stats" is an integral part of Blogger.
If you haven't used Blogger in Draft (Beta-Blogger) till now, then do it right away. It is where, Blogger releases all its new features before officially adding the services to Blogger blogs. To access Blogger in Draft, instead of logging in to www.Blogger.com log in at draft.Blogger.com

The latest Beta add-on from Blogger is a "Stats" section in the Dashboard - to monitor and analyze your visitor traffic in near-real-time.

Tracking your visitors' activity on your blog is an important part of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). So, if you haven't yet accessed the "Stats" section of your Blogger-account - then do it right now. And as of now "Blogger Stats" is relatively new and limited in terms of the information these tools provide, so even now I advise everyone to sign up at the below mentioned websites/services, start tracking to give your visitors what they want (that's what SEO is all about)...

You would have seen many fancy and flashy visitor counters in hundreds or rather thousands of blogs, but simply counting the number of visitors or page views is totally of no use to any blogger or webmaster. Visitor-Tracking is a much more advanced and useful method as compared to those simple counters.

So here's a list of important tracking websites, providing free and fabulous features to all the bloggers...

The tracking reports and statistics from these websites mainly contain:

1. Of course, unique visits & page views, averaged and archived to weekly, monthly and yearly graphs. (And all the reports are in real time)

2. You can also view the details like, visitors IP addresses, time spent by them browsing your website, pages visited, and their returning visits. Moreover, you can even check the operating system your visitor is using, their screen resolution, their browser with version and whether Java or Flash is enabled on their system or not.

3. And the most important statistical-reports for you are of course related to Search Engine Optimization (SEO); these include the keywords through which they entered your site, list of search engines which referred visitors to your website.

You can easily track the activities of your visitors for completely FREE, by placing simple JavaScripts on your blog provided by websites like StatCounter and Google. Statcounter gives a simple script, which when placed in to your template starts collecting all the above mentioned information, which is then displayed to you. The stats are simple to browse-through and understand. Using these stats you can improve your blogs structure & content. You should also focus and improve the important posts of your blog which bring maximum traffic to you.

The most important tracking site of course belongs to Google. Being a blogger you cannot afford to miss this one: Google Analytics. Although it may take a little more time to understand all the statistical data displayed at G-Analytics completely and even more time to analyse the data and use it to effectively plan your SEO strategies, but being a Google product it will not only provide complete tracking details as provided by other similar services, but it does help a lot in Search engine optimization (SEO) too.

In Statcounter, to get some of the advanced features, including an increase in log size, a paid account or an upgrade is needed, but at Google-Analytics everything is free, rather they even have an advanced beta section for interested members.

And finally a must for everybody is an account in Google Webmaster Tools, where you have to simply submit your websites sitemap to access the most important SEO details.
The stats shown by GWT are not directly about your visitors, but are
You can see the number of pages indexed by Google, pages/articles deleted by you, pages restricted for Google. And you can even see how many website/webpages around the Internet have linked to your website (and to which specific page). How well are your internal pages are connected. And again, one of the most important, you will be shown how many pages of your website has high, medium, low or no PageRank.

So finally I will suggest you to get an account in:

(1) Google Analytics, (2) Google Webmaster Tools and (3) Statcounter

And just for fun, if you want to know how many people are online on your website at a time (real time), then put a widget from Amung.us, that doesn't even need you to register :)

Blogger Custom Domain - Subdomain vs. Naked Domain (Use Both)

bloggerstop.net@gmail.com (Divya Sai) — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 06:21:00 +0000

NOTE: This post will be easier to understand for those who have registered their domains at 1and1.com and for the rest, this post will surely give you a hint to redirect your custom-domain to Blogger blogs in the best possible way.

After publishing the recent post on BloggerStop about a free domain offer from 1and1, I received a number of mails and queries from fellow bloggers with similar doubts on how to redirect their newly registered domains to their already existing Blogger blogs.

Although I have already posted a tutorial explaining the procedure to redirect a custom domain to a Blogger blog, but due to recent changes at Blogger some new issues have cropped up in this process.

An important and major issue of concern to many bloggers is the restriction imposed by Blogger on using naked-domain-names (domain names without WWW or any other sub-domain) with their blogs as a custom-domain.

As for many newbie bloggers, even this problem is difficult to understand, so let me first explain it in simple terms, what exactly the problem is:

The Basics...
A domain name, just like an email address, is simply a name registered online where a website can be hosted:
example.com is a domain name (example.net, example.org and example.info - all these are also domains with different TLDs).

Now anything to the left of these domain names (including WWW) is a sub-domain of that domain:
WWW.example.COM is a sub-domain of example.com
BLOG.example.COM is again another sub-domain of example.COM

WWW.example.INFO is a sub-domain of example.INFO

Now the Problem...

In Blogger you can use any custom (SUB)-domain (XYZ.example.com) instead of the blogger address (SOMETHING.blogspot.com) presently in use. That means, once you do this redirection, whenever somebody enters the address example.com s/he will see your blog's (SOMETHING.blogspot.com) content but the address shown in the address bar will be example.com

Earlier Blogger allowed naked as well as sub-domains to be used as custom domains. But recently it has changed its system and now it ONLY allows sub-domains.
Therefore, if presently your blog address is "SOMETHING.blogspot.com"
then you can only use sub-domains like "www.EXAMPLE.com" or "blog.EXAMPLE.com" as your new custom-domain and NOT "EXAMPLE.com"

And due to this restriction you MAY lose some of your visitors who may enter your blog address as "EXAMPLE.com" instead of "www.EXAMPLE.com". Moreover it may create some SEO issues too.

And The Solution...

To avoid these problems, you should redirect your naked-domain (EXAMPLE.com) to your sub-domain (WWW/BLOG.EXAMPLE.com) where your blog is located. Now, this can be done in three different ways:

1. A simple url-redirection (strictly NOT advisable)

2. Through DNS management (by changing CNAME records) - the general method advised by Blogger, but NOT by me (but REMEMBER that cname method is the only method you should use while redirecting your sub-domain to your Blogger blog).
This is because, once you redirect your domain to Blogger using CNAME, then you will lose your email address located at your domain (admin@example.com or info@example.com etc.)

3. Through DNS management (by changing "A Name Records") - Advised by both Blogger and Me.
To do this, once you have redirected your sub-domain to your Blogger based blog, go to the DNS management section of your naked-domain (example.com) and edit its "A Name Records" paste exactly this value in to it:

216.239.32.21

Once this is done, go to Blogger.com -> Settings -> publishing
and mark the tick-box "Redirect EXAMPLE.com to www.EXAMPLE.com "

Advantages of following this method:
1. Your blog will be hosted at the sub-domain your choice...(WWW.example123.com or BLOG.example123.com)

2. Your domain will also be redirected to your sub-domain, so if someone enters this address:
example.com/2010/07/test-post.html (a test post on your DOMAIN)
s/he will be redirected to this address:
www.example.com/2010/07/test-post.html (the test post on your SUB-DOMAIN)

3. You can access your emails on the same domain name, for example admin@example.com or ANYTHING@example.com

NOTE: To create emails on your domain name, along with editing the "A Name Records", you have to change the "MX Records" too. And edit these MX records to point them to "Google Apps" where you can create up to 50 free emails and use the free space and features provided by gmail to store your emails.

In case, you have more doubts please use the comments form below which may solve others queries as well.

*UPDATE: How to Use Naked Domains As Custom Domains.
Thanks to Rae, now you CAN use naked-domains too, with Blogger based blogs.
To do this, keep all the settings at 1and1 as it is, viz.
(i) your naked domain (example.com) - redirected to Blogger by changing "A Name Records" (Also, edit the MX Records to access your emails via Google-Apps).
(ii) Your sub-domain (www.example.com) - redirected to Blogger by changing the CNAME value.

STEP #2
At Blogger -> Settings -> Publishing
If the tick-box "Redirect EXAMPLE.com to www.EXAMPLE.com has already been marked, then remove the mark and save the settings.

STEP #3
Then change your blog's address to Example.com (the naked domain).
NOTE (Important): As naked domains are not allowed by Blogger, so you have to enter the address with a "SPACE" before the domain name.
So enter it as " example.com" (without the quotes, but with the space present between the opening quote and the domain name).
Save Settings.
Fainally mark the tick-box "Redirect www.EXAMPLE.com to EXAMPLE.com" and save the settings.

Now your blog will be hosted at your naked domain (example.com), your sub-domain (www.example.com) wii be redirected yo your naked domain. And you will also be able to access all your emails hosted on your naked domain.

References:
1. A naked Domain
2. Using Custom domains on Blogger - Part 1 and Part 2
3. Image credits: Gp2b

Grab a Domain for FREE - Offer Ends on 30 June 2010

bloggerstop.net@gmail.com (Divya Sai) — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 18:29:00 +0000

1and1 is offering a .COM domain for completely FREE.

Domain name registered by me: DivyaSai.com

You won't be paying a single penny for the first year and after that, you will be billed at the regular price of $ 8.99/year. Even existing customers are allowed to register a free domain. You can register only one domain and for each additional domain that you order, you will be billed at the regular price. The offer is valid till 30 June, 2010. So without any further delay grab your free domain today. First check for domain availability here:

When you register at 1and1, you not only get a domain or hosting from them, but you also get a chance to earn more income (upto $300) by referring your friends/readers to them. Many bloggers are making a lot of extra income by joining affiliate programs. 1and1 has a link on the bottom of their site that says “AFFILIATE.” They also provide you with a lot of great tools to make it easier to earn money with them and they offer more commission than most web hosting affiliate programs.

PS: An (internationally accepted) credit card or a verified paypal account is needed to verify your identity. You won't be charged anything for the first year, but next year onwards the normal charges of $8.99 will be charged from your credit card or paypal account. If you do not wish to continue with your registered domain, then you can cancel your registration and your domain-name will expire.

New Fonts For Blogger Blogs | Google Web Fonts

bloggerstop.net@gmail.com (Divya Sai) — Sun, 23 May 2010 20:46:00 +0000

Last Wednesday Google launched a set of new web-fonts, fonts which can be used anywhere on any website freely. The Google Font API allows you to use all these fonts in your own blog.

Check out this new font as an example:

New Fonts For Blogger

So, how to use these fonts on your blog?

For every new font you want to add to your blog, you simply have to paste a single line of code in your blog's template. Once you are done with it, remember the name of the font and use it anywhere in your blog (in any post or part of a post or in your widgets).

Steps to add a new font:

STEP #1
Visit this page: Google Webfonts Directory

and click on the font you want to use.

STEP #2
In the next page, select the blue colored tab "Get the code".

And copy the FIRST code.
IT will look something like this:

<link href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Tangerine' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' />

The code highlighted in RED, is the name of that font. You have to either remember this, or save it in a textpad/notepad.

STEP #3
Now, log in to Blogger, go to Layout/Design and then click on the Edit HTML link.
Find this code in your template:

</head>

And immediately ABOVE/BEFORE it, paste the code which you got in STEP #2.
And save the template.

STEP #4
Now, whenever you want to use that font in your blog (either in posts or in widgets), simply use this code tags around the text:

<span style="font-family: Tangerine; font-size: 24px;">YOUR TEXT/POST HERE</span>

The font family name (highlighted in RED), should be same as written in STEP #2. You may also adjust the font-size. Replace the text highlighted in BLUE with whatever text you want.

That's it, now you can deliver your posts in a new style. As Google says, make your blog and the web more beautiful...

Browsers compatibility:
* Google Chrome: version 4.249.4+
* Mozilla Firefox: version: 3.5+
* Apple Safari: version 3.1+
* Microsoft Internet Explorer: version 6+

This project is an open source project, just like many other projects by Google. For more details on these WebFonts you may visit the FAQ page.

My Blog is My Marketing Tool - Says Erin Ferree

bloggerstop.net@gmail.com (Divya Sai) — Sat, 15 May 2010 09:15:00 +0000

Blogger of the Week: Erin Ferree from Elf-Design

Erin Ferree, founder of elf design, helps small businesses stand out from their competition so that they can connect with their best customers. She does this by working with business owners to define their brands, and then using that definition to create logos, marketing materials and websites that show how they shine.
She also believes that all of a business's brand materials should be not just pretty, but also designed effectively and strategically. This produces a winning combination of materials that communicate visually, look stunning and are designed effectively, which help her clients reach their target audiences.
She writes about design, branding and marketing through her eBooks, blog and in free articles in her newsletter, "Stand Out" [subscription link].

BS: Welcome to BloggerStop, Erin. How long have you been in the Blogosphere? And who/what inspired you to start a blog of your own?
Ans.: I started not-just-pretty.com back in 2006. The original intent of the blog was to help me write a book on small business website design by blogging it one topic or sub-chapter at a time. I wrote the book on the blog, but then never got around to taking the chapters down off the blog and putting them into a book. (If you’re curious, the entire book is available on the blog under “Web Design” – just look for the posts starting in 2006).

BS: How will you describe your blog in one line/less than 20 words?
Ans.: Small business branding needs to be “not just pretty” – but also effective.

BS: What do you blog about? Is this blog devoted to a single theme or do you have more than one quite unrelated categories in your blog?
Ans.: I blog about small business branding – logo design, website design, marketing materials and creating your underlying brand story. My blog is the place where I publish my thinking on design so that small business owners can learn more about the branding process and what really goes into creating a brand that will help them create bottom-line results in their businesses.

BS: One post from your blog that you want to share with my readers…
Ans.: A Small Business Brand's 7 Jobs
http://www.not-just-pretty.com/notjustpretty/2009/12/a-small-business-brands-7-jobs-.html

BS: Are you the only author in your blog or do you have co-bloggers to manage the blog? In future are you planning to team up with like-minded bloggers?
Ans.: I am currently the only author. I wouldn’t mind finding a few like-minded people to pal around with, though – especially if they were in complimentary professions and served the small business market.

BS: Do you blog anonymously or your readers know well who you are?
Ans.: I certainly don’t blog anonymously – I want people to know who I am and what I think. For me, that’s the whole reason that I blog – so I can organize my thinking about what I do, and then get that thinking out to clients, potential clients and people who are interested in small business branding.

BS: Do you have any specific goals/expectations from your blog? Have you already achieved any of these goals (or would you like to share any milestones that your blog has achieved)?
Ans.: The first was to write my book – which I achieved early in 2007. Since then, I’ve just been writing the blog as a service to small business owners. I want to offer advice and information on branding. And, getting those thoughts out there seems to be helpful in bringing me occasional clients and growing my mailing list.

BS: How much time do you devote to your blog? Do you blog on weekends and do you think Blogging is eating too much of your time and is it affecting your day-to-day (offline) life too?
Ans.: This is a great question – I have been working on blog time management this year. I used to spend a lot of time (roughly 1 business day/week) writing blog content – but since I run my own design firm and the blog is just one promotional arm of that, all that time wasn’t practical. So now I’m trying other techniques to make sure I blog regularly – like batching posts (writing several at a time and scheduling them to go out evenly).

BS: What are your present blog stats, i.e. number of daily visitors, subscribers, your global reach etc.?
Ans.: Not as high as I’d like them to be (low enough that I’m embarrassed to list them here). I need to get serious about growing my readership and promoting the blog – I’ve been so busy coming up with original content that the publicity side of things has been a bit ignored.

BS: What do you think is a better source of traffic - search engines, traffic exchange sites, social networking sites or paid traffic (like Google Adwords)?
Ans.: I have only gotten leads through search engines – I haven’t signed up for any traffic exchange sites or Adwords. And, I’ve been busy promoting my website through social networking sites – it’s a fabulous idea to promote the blog more strongly there.

BS: Do you regularly respond to your readers and do you think it is important for a blogger to always comment back or reply back to his readers?
Ans.: I do respond to readers – and I take the time to answer questions, point people towards resources and give my opinion on what they’re doing in their businesses. I think interaction is a big part of blogging and of being online these days.

BS: What are your unique strategies to survive and to perform better in your blogs niche against your competitor blogs?
Ans.: I’m not approaching this as a competitive thing – I blog because I want to share my thinking.

BS: Other than Blogging what are your other hobbies or what do you do in your leisure time?
Ans.: I love to cook, paint, read, host parties, exercise and sew. Oh, and not least – to relax! Not that there’s a ton of leisure time, as I keep pretty busy between running my business, elf design, blogging, and everything else.

BS: Is blogging for you just a passion or a medium for earning too? Are you earning enough to quit a 9 to 5 day job?
Ans.: My blog is a marketing tool for my business, elf design (www.elf-design.com). The blog helps me to build interest and credibility, and to connect with entrepreneurs who are curious about the branding process. Then, I can work with them through elf design.

BS: Do you sell any of your products, work as an affiliate partner or advertisements are the only source of income for you?
Ans.: I have written several ebooks on brand design for small businesses and one on search engine optimization. I promote these through the blog.

BS: Are you planning to employee someone to help you in blogging or outsourcing some of your work like blog-designing, social networking or someone for your PR department?
Ans.: Not at this time – I do it all myself. I’m the whole show!

BS: Blogs you follow and read regularly…
Ans.: How About Orange, Pink Loves Brown, Swiss Miss, Productivity 501, Smitten Kitchen…

BS: Communities/Forums you have joined (that help you in blogging):
Ans.: I’ve been pretty much blogging on my own so far!

BS: Have you done any mistakes in your blogging life? And what have you learnt from these mistakes?
Ans.: Not promoting my blog enough! I’d love to have more readers, and to have a more active blog in general. I have some ideas about redesigning and reworking things to encourage that, but would welcome resources and advice on how to do that.

BS: Has blogging added any special flavor to your life? Would you like to share it with us?
Ans.: Blogging forces me to develop my own thinking about design – which keeps me constantly thinking. It makes me think deeply about the strategy and reasoning behind my design choices and the advice that I give my clients. And then I can bring that back to my work, which creates better work for my clients.

BS: Something you really want to change in your blog or in yourself being a blogger?
Ans.: I’d love to increase the interactivity and readership of my blog.

BS: Say, you are sponsored to travel to 3 world destinations. Which destinations would you pick up, and why? Would you like to take someone along with you? If yes, whom?
Ans.: I would go to Greece, because it always looks so relaxing and calming. I’d love to go to Egypt and see the old stuff there – but I’d like to find some places there to go that aren’t too saturated with tourists. While I’m in that corner of the world, I’d love to see the Nile and some of the wildlife. For my final destination, it’s a multi-way tie between going to Alaska to see the glaciers and Northern lights, Australia to see the huge red rock and the Great Barrier Reef, seeing some wondrous rain forest, or going to pretty much any Asian country to eat!

BS: Bloggers generally love to read books? Do you agree with this and if yes what you’re your favorite books/novels?
Ans.: I do love to read – and try to do so for at least a few minutes every day. Some of my favorite books are Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, Jitterbug Perfume and Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins and Bulfinch’s Mythology.

BS: If you could meet one person, dead or alive, who would it be?
Ans.: I would love to meet Thomas Keller and to talk bizarre food pairings with him. Or, to meet Michael Stipe or David Byrne and just talk them about lyrics.

BS: Which is your favorite television show? & favorite movies and songs?
Ans.: Project Runway is my current favorite show. I’m a bit behind on my Tivo watching, but I’m really enjoying Defying Gravity and Mad Men as well.
My all-time favorite movie, hands down, is The Shawshank Redemption.
My favorite songs – that’s a really hard one, but I can narrow it down to one artist – R.E.M.

BS: What’s your favorite food? Any particular dislikes?
Ans.: I’m a sucker for vinegar – especially interesting ones. I’m currently growing my own vinegar with a starter. As for dislikes, I really hate olives. They taste like metal to me, and can ruin an otherwise great dish.

BS: Blogs are replacing personal diaries, magazines, journals and today more than just being a hobby we can see corporate blogs too, so what do you think is the future of blogs?
Ans.: I see blogs being used more often as full websites – with pages being fully implemented. I’m making more and more website-blogs for small businesses that are built on the Wordpress platform.

12 Tips To Increase Subscribers to Your Blog

bloggerstop.net@gmail.com (Divya Sai) — Tue, 11 May 2010 08:54:00 +0000

A guest post by Melissa Tamura

Sites such as Blogger and Wordpress are making it increasingly easy for anyone and everyone to start a blog. There are blogs on every topic imaginable, from food to pets to finances to shopping, all of which are easily lost in a sea of similar sites. Do you have a blog that you’d like to make standout in the endless onslaught of sites available online? The list below details twelve simple steps you can take to build readership and increase the number of subscribers to your blog.

Content - The most important thing you can do is to offer relevant, authoritative content on your blog. Write about something you know and are passionate about to avoid sounding stilted or naive. If your blog features information people want or need, they will visit it.
Update Often – Even if you’re providing useful, pertinent information, no one’s going to return to your blog if you only post once a month. In the meantime a newer, more current blog is likely to steal their attention, so be sure and post as often as possible to keep your site fresh.
Guest Blog – Do you know other people with blogs? Have you ever considered using guest blogger services? The more content out there on the web that links or refers to your own blog, the better, so look into becoming a regular guest blogger on someone else’s site. Any exposure you can get is helpful for your numbers.
Comment – If you have your own blog, odds are you read other blogs, so leave comments whenever appropriate. This helps you build rapport with other bloggers, but also provides you an opportunity to post a link to your blog, where appropriate. Be sure only to make useful, well thought out comments in order to seem like you’re attempting to SPAM a site.
Forum Posts – Much like commenting on other blogs, posting in forums dedicated to subjects that relate to the topic of your blog can help drive subscribers to your blog. Always be polite and knowledgeable when you post to avoid garnering a negative online image.
Contact Other Blogs – Are there a number of blogs you read religiously? Consider writing a post on your own blog about the value these sites provide to you, then contact the other blogger and send them a link to your post. Ask if they would mind returning the favor, as a link on their site could drive traffic to your own.
Have a Subscriber Page – Build a page or at least a widget into your blog that is dedicated specially to subscribers. A special page can feature information you’d like your followers to know, while a widget featuring pictures and profiles of your subscribers can encourage more to join.
Offer an RSS Feed – An RSS feed is an option you should offer all your visitors. This feed updates as you update your content, and users will find it an easy way to not only cross-promote your blog but to access the information they’re looking for as well.
Link Yourself – It seems simple, but make sure to include your blog URL anywhere you can: at the bottom of your email signature, on business cards, and even on your Facebook or MySpace accounts.
Network – Be sure and tell everyone you meet about your blog. In meetings, casual conversation, or even at retail stores, if you find an opportunity to promote yourself, do it.
Make it Easy – Don’t hide your subscriber page or RSS feed option at the bottom of the page. Make it a prominent part of your site to encourage easy-click sign up.
Offer Benefits – Let your subscribers in on special deals, new information, or hot topics that regular visitors can’t access. This builds loyalty and buzz around your blog – which is the ultimate goal!

Melissa Tamura recently ranked the best psychology schools for the Zen College Life online degree directory.

10 Tips to Take Your Writing to the Next Level

bloggerstop.net@gmail.com (Divya Sai) — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 18:45:00 +0000

A guest post by Tom Walker, editor and contributor to the CreativeCloud blog.

So you would like to give your writing a little more pizzazz huh? Taking your writing to the next level may sound simple in theory, but is often easier said than done. It is often easy to get set in your ways when it comes to counter productive writing habits, and breaking those habits can be difficult to say the least. But with some effort, and by making use of certain tips and techniques, you may be able to shed those habits that are keeping you from advancing your writing to the next level.

Here are some tips that might assist you in taking that next step in your writing, making your work clearer, easier to read, and more effective in conveying your thoughts, theories and ideas.

1. Tighten Up
Tightening up your work by looking for and eliminating unnecessary words and sentences can be a great way to better your writing. By reducing the clutter within your work, you may be able to present your thoughts in a clearer, more concise way that is easier for your readers to follow.

2. Watch Your Length
Whether you’re writing an article, essay or a post for your blog, it’s important to remember that with faster technology and access to more information, the attention span of a large portion of readers is dwindling. Long sentences, paragraphs, even articles may be a turnoff for readers of an increasingly ‘need to know now’ world.

3. Slow Down
In many instances, it’s fine to blow through a rough draft. Doing so might even help you get your ideas down faster without leaving out pertinent information, but when reviewing your work it can often be helpful to take it slow. By taking your time and focusing on the words you have written and the information you are attempting to convey, you may catch a multitude of errors you made during your initial work.

4. Re-read
While you might think you’ve just written a perfectly formed essay or article, you may be surprised at how much you missed or how many mistakes you made along the way. By proofreading your work, you’ll likely pick up quite a few spelling and grammatical mistakes as well as possible content and structure issues as well.

5. Re-read Again
For many writers, just reading a rough draft once isn’t enough. Consider re-reading your work in another form to get a different perspective on it. If you wrote and proofed your initial draft on a computer, consider printing it out to read it a second or third time on paper. Maybe reading your work on paper isn’t enough though. You may want to read it aloud, which could help you to catch mistakes you would have scanned over otherwise. It’s quite possible that you’ll still be finding mistakes or adjusting the work on the second, third, or even fourth reading.

6. Let It Sit
If you have the time, letting your writing sit for a while may increase the odds of catching mistakes when you re-read it. Allowing your brain time to rest, recuperate, and forget the words it has just put to paper can provide a fresh outlook when you come back to proofread.

7. Write For Your Readers
Knowing your audience may sound like common sense, but it can make a big difference in how you write. For example, using overly complicated terms for a younger audience or modern slang for an older audience can make your writing seem awkward.

8. Don’t Overindulge
There are varieties of ways in which you may overindulge with your writing. Telling personal stories, making jokes, talking too much about yourself, using profanity, making sweeping assumptions or generalizations, taking a ‘holier-than-thou’ approach -- you probably get the picture.

9. Sources and Interviews
Citing credible sources or utilizing interviews in your work may increase the strength of your writing, grab your readers’ attention, and give your work more conviction.

10. Take a Chance
Getting outside your comfort zone and trying or learning something new can be a great way to raise your writing to the next level. Experimenting with your writing and the techniques you use can lead you to knew ideas and increase your abilities.

It can be important to remember that when it comes to your writing and elevating your skills, it’s often about continued practice and the reading of other writers’ works. Often, the more you are exposed to writing and the techniques involved, the better you can make your own writing. Constantly being on the look out for new ideas, tips, and methods that other writers use can help get you to that next level.

This guest post was written by Tom Walker, a writer who works with an online store offering HP 363 ink and toner. He manages their blog about print design, vintage advertising and the arts.

The Best SERP Tool Ever | SEO For Blogs

bloggerstop.net@gmail.com (Divya Sai) — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 19:01:00 +0000

If you are new to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), then SERP or 'Search Engine Results Page' is simply the search-results page that is returned to a user when s/he searches something on the Internet (Google/Yahoo etc.), and that "something" is the "keyword" or the "key phrase".

A Typical SERP for 'San Francisco'

As you know that the position of your website/webpage on the search-results page is very important in bringing quality and converting traffic to your site, so SERPs ranking is now an important part of SEO.
There are several hundreds of SERP-tools available on the Internet, which claim to give you detailed information about the SERPs for different keywords. So, finding the BEST-SERP tool is quite a difficult task. But my job has been made a lot easier, as this tool belongs to the Search Engine Giant itself: Google.

If you are registered at Google-Webmaster-Tools, then simply log in to it, and go to the recently updated "Top Search Queries" section of the website (under "Your site on the web"). In this section, now you can see the number of impressions given by various keywords/phrases and how many of these impressions got converted to visits (click through).

You might have noticed that different TLDs of Google (Google.co.in, Google.co.my, Google.co.uk etc.) give different results page for the same search query (depending on many factors, like your demographics etc.) and even the same TLD keeps on changing the position of the results.
Now, Google has made it easy to filter those results. Instead of the data from all the countries, you can select a single country from the top drop-down menu. And by simply clicking on a specific keyword/phrase you can see the details, like in which position how many impressions got converted to visits.
Finally according to your observations you should then focus on optimizing your blog/website for the popular keywords/phrases. Three simple strategies to improve your ranking on SERPs for the popular keywords/phrases are;
   (1) Write more articles on that topic.
   (2) Try to use that specific word/phrase in the titles of your articles.
   (3) Include the most popular keywords/phrases (receiving maximum impressions and not necessarily having a high value of click through) in your meta description and keywords tags.

NOTE: Although you may see the changes/improvements within a month too, but to get a significant level of optimization you should experiment with these strategies for at least 4-6 months.

Official Google Buzz Buttons [With Share-Counter] For Your Blog

bloggerstop.net@gmail.com (Divya Sai) — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 09:04:00 +0000

Yesterday Google officially released the Google Buzz Share and Follow buttons.
These buttons will directly post your articles to Google-Buzz, instead of Google-Reader as it was the case in the previous method. Moreover one set of these buttons has a counter too, to count the number of ReBuzzes your article gets.
You can see the working demos of these buttons in many popular websites and blogs including The Washington Post, Blogger, YouTube, The Huffington Post, GigaOM etc.

Instructions to add these official Google-Buzz buttons (to Blogger Blogs):
STEP #1
Visit this page: G-Buzz Stuff
Click on the link "Post To Buzz" and in the next page, select the type of button you want to use on your blog.

Against "URL to post" keep the option "Containing Page" and against "Image to post" let it be None.
Now copy the code, from the code-box.

STEP #2
Log in to Blogger, go to Layout -> Edit HTML and tick the tick-box "Expand Widget Tempaltes".
And find (CTRL+F) this code in the tempalte:

<div class='post-header-line-1'/>

STEP #3
Immediately AFTER/BELOW it, paste this code:

<div style='border:0px !important;text-align:right;margin-top:-42px;'>

PASTE_CODE_FROM_GOOGLE-STUFF-PAGE_(Step #1)_HERE
</div>

Replace the line highlighted in RED, with the code you got in STEP #1.

NOTE #1: By default, the alignment of these buttons is kept to "Right", you may change it to "Left" too. To change the position of the button, change the value -45 pixels (in margin-top:-42px;).

NOTE #2: If the code-line (in Step #2) is not present in your blogs template, then find these two lines:

<div class='post-body entry-content'>
<data:post.body/>

And paste the code from STEP #3, immediately ABOVE/BEFORE these two lines.

Finally, Save the template.

Image credits: UnmatchedStyles

Add StumbleUpon Buttons [With Counter] To Blogger Blogs

bloggerstop.net@gmail.com (Divya Sai) — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 13:10:00 +0000

Now you can add "Stumble It" buttons/badges to your blogs, along with a counter to show the number of stumblers stumbled on your site/post via StumbleUpon.com
The buttons are straight from StumbleUpon, with no modification required. Your readers will simply click these buttons to submit your pages to StumbleUpon and all the visitors coming to your page from SU will be counted by SU and the number of visitors will be shown in these buttons.
Of all the social bookmarking sites I have ever used, I prefer StumbleUpon for the massive traffic it provides. Two of my posts (Post #1 and Post #2) already received over 20,000 visits each, from StumbleUpon. BTW if you liked any of those posts, I would be happy to get a thumbs up from you :)

STEPS TO FOLLOW:

STEP #1
Go to this page [StumbleUpon Buttons] and select the type of button you want to use on your blog.

In the second step, select the first option "Any web page or blog".
And finally copy the code in the third step. It will look something like this:

<script src="http://www.stumbleupon.com/hostedbadge.php?s=2"></script>

STEP #2
Now log in to Blogger, go to Layout -> Edit HTML and mark the tick box "Expand Widget Templates". Then find (CTRL+F) this code in your template:

<data:post.body/>

And immediately ABOVE/BEFORE it, paste the code you just got from StumbleUpon, with two more additional lines of code (highlighted as BOLD, below) to hide these buttons in your blogs homepage.

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
<script src="http://www.stumbleupon.com/hostedbadge.php?s=2"></script>
</b:if>

Save the template and Show off your big numbers!

Design Your Own Blogger Templates!

bloggerstop.net@gmail.com (Divya Sai) — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 12:17:00 +0000

This post will help you to design your own templates by using the newly launched feature by the Blogger Team - Template Designer.

Image © Terence J Sullivan

There are several hundred, in fact thousands of Blogger templates available for free to download and use. But most of the bloggers usually do not find everything they want in these templates and to avoid the hectic tweaks and coding stuff, they finally settle for a template that covers the maximum number of their requirements and compromising on some other features.
But now you can yourself design a complete template for your blog;
To design a unique template for your blog, you have to focus mainly on four aspects of the template:

Overall template-layout structure :- This is the most important and the basic structure of your template. You can select the one of your choice, from 8 different available options - no sidebar, 1 sidebar (either to left/right), 2 sidebars, a large sidebar - followed by two small sidebars etc. (see below)

You can also adjust the widths of different sections viz. sidebars and the post-area, with a simple drag-tool.
Footer Layout :- Select 1 or 2 or 3 column layout.
An attractive Background :- You may use a single large image or a small repeating image as a background-pattern for your blog, or you may simply use a background color instead of images.
Finally, Styling everything from Header to Footer: Font styles, size and colors for header-text, body-text, widgets-text, footer-text etc.
And it also includes coloring different areas/parts of the blog-template, like central post-body background, header background and outer-wrapper background.

Now the procedure to follow; Make your first self-designed template...

Blogger Template Designer

STEP #1
Log in to Blogger In Draft and create a NEW test-blog, we'll use this blog to create the template and then the template will be transferred to the original/main blog. Write at least two test-posts with a few test comments.
NOTE: At the time of creating this new test-blog, initially select any blogger template (Minima etc.) randomly.

STEP #2
Go to Layout -> Template Designer.
Now select the template that best matches your taste; with/without header, transparent background etc.
Click on Apply To Blog.

STEP #3
Now again in the Template Designer, go to Layout.
Select the Body Layout, Footer Layout and adjust the widths of different sections (optional).
Click on Apply To Blog.

STEP #4
Now go to the Background tab and select either an image or a color as your blog's background. [Read Step #4 cont. to add a background image of your choice].
Click on Apply To Blog.

STEP #5
Finally adjust the background colors for different areas of the blog, font styles, size and colors etc. from the Advanced section of the Template Designer.
Click on Apply To Blog.

STEP #4 cont...
To manually change the background, go to Dashborad -> Layout -> Edit HTML
and find a code SIMILAR (and NOT exactly the same) to this, in the template:

<Variable name="body.background" description="Body Background" type="background"
color="$(body.background.color)" default="#111111 url(http://themes.googleusercontent.com/image?id=1OACCYOE0-eoTRTfsBuX1NMN9nz599ufI1Jh0CggPFA_sK80AGkIr8pLtYRpNUKPmwtEa) repeat-x fixed top center" value="#111111 url(http://themes.googleusercontent.com/image?id=1OACCYOE0-eoTRTfsBuX1NMN9nz599ufI1Jh0CggPFA_sK80AGkIr8pLtYRpNUKPmwtEa) repeat-x fixed top center"/>

Change the code highlighted in RED, with the DIRECT LINK to the image you want to use as the background image. The code highlighted in BLUE will adjust the position and the characteristics of the image.

Check out the Template designed by me, while writing this tutorial: Sample - New Blogger Template Designer Blog.

That's it...Now you have a new template, entirely customized by you...ready for your actual blog. Download the template from your test-blog and upload it to the main blog. But before you add this template to your main blog, download the template you are currently using in your main blog as a back-up and also read this post to know the correct way of changing templates in Blogger without losing any of your content/widgets.

Examples...
Impress me with your work and get your blogs displayed here...

6 Tips to Get People to Join Your New Forum

bloggerstop.net@gmail.com (Divya Sai) — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 17:51:00 +0000

A guest post by Tom Walker, editor and contributor to the CreativeCloud blog.

A Bloggers Community © Baratunde

Starting a new forum can be daunting, especially if you don't know where you're going to find the people you need to keep it active. Luckily, there are a few steps you can take that will go a long way toward turning your new posting ground into a vibrant and busy internet community. Read on for a few tips you can do that will encourage new people to join your forum.

1. Be Active In Your Own Forum

Nothing makes a forum seem dead quite like an owner who doesn't post. Make sure you start a topic at least once every day to make it clear that you are an active forum participant. Try to make at least one appearance in every thread on a new forum as long as it remains feasible to do so. This will let your budding community know that you are active and interested in what everyone is saying.

2. Stay Visible In Your Niche

If you have a forum about car parts, visit other forums and blogs about car parts and make a valuable contribution. Don't advertise your forum directly unless you are in an advertising section, but make yourself an active member of as many car part communities you can find.

Stick a short note about your forum in your posting signature with a link. If you are active and helpful wherever you go, you will find that many of the other people reading in these communities will be interested in checking yours out.

3. Encourage Forum Members To Help Your Community Grow

If the members you already have are happy with your community and find it helpful, they will probably be more than willing to encourage other people to join. Talk about trying to grow your forum in a sticky post and give community members simple ways to share your link with their friends.

Give your forum community an HTML link with text to copy and paste to make sharing a link simple. Use buttons that allow them to share a forum link with various social networks as well. If a forum member mentions sharing your forum somewhere, be sure to thank them.

4. Help Search Engines Find Your Forum

Many lists will tell you to submit your forum to search engines to get it listed, but sometimes this can actually slow you down. If you are actively promoting your forum with signature links in other blogs and communities, chances are major search engines already know it is there.

Help these search engines know where to list your forum by making sure most of the links pointing to your forum use the text people will be likely to use to look for what you provide. If your forum is about car parts, make sure your links say "car parts community" or something similar. Any time you write something for a blog or website include a note about your forum with a properly formatted link.

5. Make Sure Your New Forum Looks Good

No one wants to use a forum that is unreadable or painful to look at. Keep the interface clean and make sure the colors and skins you choose are nice looking and highly readable. If your forum members say something is making things hard to read, listen to them and change it. Customize everything, from the smiley options to member titles. Nice custom options will help your forum stay memorable.

6. Contests Can Be Useful

Run a few contests that will increase meaningful post counts. Host a contest requesting meaningful posts about a specific topic, and use the voting options that come with most forums to have the community vote on the winner. For prizes, you can give out anything from physical items to custom forum titles.

This is a guest post from Tom Walker, a blogger and designer based in the UK who works with a supplier of HP 363 inks and refills. He is the editor and a contributor to the CreativeCloud blog where he focusses mostly on his two passions: art and design.

Find Out Who Owns The Blogger/BlogSpot Blog !

bloggerstop.net@gmail.com (Divya Sai) — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 18:58:00 +0000

Today while replying to a mail, I realized that finding out the ownership of a (blogspot) blog hosted on Blogger is really difficult. But fortunately there's an easy way to find out the ownership details, at least in some cases...

Just like Gmail, Blogger is completely free to join and once you are registered at Blogger, you can create & register as many free blogs as you want (although there's a limit of 100 blogs per account, but of course you can use another email-id of yours to register another 100 blogs). Thanks to this freedom of creating free and unlimited blogs, now there are several thousands of blogs owned by anonymous Bloggers filled with illegal/copied content or just empty and useless blogs.

One may contact these bloggers, only through their Blogger-profile pages (provided, they have created a profile-page and it does have some appropriate information).
Mostly these anonymous bloggers try their best to remove all their personal information from their blogs, and leave no links to their profiles. Now this tutorial will guide you to easily get the link to the authors profile page of any blog based on Blogger/BlogSpot.
Please note, that this is NOT a fool-proof method, as most of the anonymous bloggers do not even have a profile-page. And even if they do have a profile page, either there won't be any other blog in their blog-list or other blogs will be similar to the one you are tracking (without any links to contact the author).

But just in case, the blogger has left some information in his/her profile page, that can be used to contact him/her, then this method will help you to quickly reach his/her profile page without contacting any employee of Blogger/Google.

So if you are ready with your James Bond hat, then simply open a Blogger blog and find out who's behind it!

Open the homepage of the blog (www.Example.BlogSpot.com)
NOTE: You'll get the link to the profile only from the homepage and not from any other page of that blog.
Now view the "Page Source" or "Source Code" of that blog. To view the "Page Source", either hit "CTRL+U" in Firefox and Opera or Under "View" in the main menu select "Source" in Internet Explorer.

Then a pop-up or new window will open displaying the source code of the blogs homepage.
Now, find a line similar to this in the code:

<link rel="me" href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#" />

And open the link highlighted in red color in a new window/tab. That's the profile of that blogger.

But unfortunately this method may not work for all blogs (for some unknown reasons)

And if you are trying to locate your own lost blog or log-in information, then try this: Blogger-Forgot

Logo Designing Contests - Art of Making Money Online

bloggerstop.net@gmail.com (Divya Sai) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 03:18:00 +0000

A Logo is almost as important as the company name itself. In fact once a company goes famous, we don't even have to mention the name of the company, the logo says it all:

And the same is true for a blog/website. Depending on the popularity of their blog/website, people are ready to pay several hundreds of dollars to get the best possible logo for their websites.

So if you think you can put all your creativity in the right direction and create what they want, then register for FREE at LogoMyWay, participate in the logo contests and start making hundreds of bucks instantly.

And if you are looking for a great logo for your website, then also head over to LogoMyWay, announce the contest, encourage the participants - give them ideas and suggestions and finally get the best possible logo design within a few days (contests usually last for 7-14 days).

So, how does it work?
- A contest goes live at LogoMyWay [With prize amounts ranging from $200 to $1000]
- Designers start working on the project.
- The contest organizer gives ideas, suggestions and feedback to the designers and ultimately the best logo wins.
- The selected design is mailed to the contest organizer and the designer gets the award money.

Benefits to designers:
- Anybody can join for FREE and start participating in the contests, as logo designers.
- Understand the requirements, show your creative Photoshop skills and if your logo is selected as the best design then you will be awarded anywhere between $200 to $1000

Benefits of organising contests at LogoMyWay
There are a number of reasons to select a logo contest over individual freelance designers and logo designing companies. First of all, here you will have tens and hundreds of designers working for your logo (i.e. hiring them all at the cost of one). You can suggest and give your ideas to any/each one of them, so that the final product will exactly look like the one you want or even better than that...and for all this, you will not pay to each one of the designer but only to the best one, selected by you.

Add A Free Forum To Your Blogger/BlogSpot Blog

bloggerstop.net@gmail.com (Divya Sai) — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 15:05:00 +0000

I strongly recommend all the readers to bookmark this post. A forum is a must for every blog with increasing readership.

A Bloggers Community © Baratunde

Forums are entirely different from blogs. Forums let your readers interact with each other, create new topics/discussions and some of them even moderate the forums along with you.
1. Forum from Wikipedia.
2. The popular Digital Point Forums

A few weeks back, even I started a forum - BloggerStop-Community (closed due to some problems) on a sub-domain of my website (main.bloggerstop.net).

[Please join and participate in the NEW BloggerStop Forums]
But in free Blogger/BlogSpot blogs, you are not allowed to create a sub-domain or even a new directory (an online folder). So hosting a forum seems impossible, but not anymore. Before you read any further, see these 2 examples:

1. A Blogger Blog completely changed in to a Forum.
2. A simple (static) page on a normal Blogger blog, converted to a Forum.

Instructions to Add a Forum To Your Blog:

STEP #1:
Create and publish a new static page on your blog, exclusively for a forum. As an example, check out my forums-static-page here:

http://bloggerstop.net/p/bloggerstop-community.html

STEP #2:
Create a new forum at Nabble: Free Forums at Nabble [You will do this within 5 minutes]
Copy the HTML code...

STEP #3:
Go to Blogger Dashboard -> Design -> Edit HTML and mark the tick-box "Expand Widget Tempaltes".

STEP #4:
Find (CTRL+F) this code, in your template:

<div id='content-wrapper'>

If you are not able to find the above mentioned code, then find (CTRL+F) this one (for new templates made for Blogger Template Designer)

<div class='columns fauxcolumns'>

And immediately ABOVE/BEFORE it, paste the code you got from Nabble, with this ADDITIONAL code (Highlighted in BLUE and RED):

<b:if cond='data:blog.url == "http://bloggerstop.net/p/bloggerstop-community.html"'>
PASTE_CODE_FROM_NABBLE_HERE
</b:if>

NOTE (Important): Replace the code in RED, with the link to your forum-page.

STEP #5:
Save your temaplate.

STEP #6:
This step will HIDE everything from your blog (post content, sidebar widgets etc.) and ONLY forum will be visible in your forum-page.
Find this code in your template:

</head>

And immediately ABOVE/BEFORE it, paste this code:

<b:if cond='data:blog.url == "http://bloggerstop.net/p/bloggerstop-community.html"'>
<style type='text/css'>
#content-wrapper {
display:none !important;
}
.columns, .fauxcolumns {
display:none !important;
}
</style>
</b:if>

NOTE (Important): Replace the code in RED, with the link to your forum-page.

That's it, a new forum on your blog is ready.
Now, Invite your readers and friends to join you at your forums.

NOTE: If you want to replace an entire blog with a forum, as shown in the first example (Forum In A Blogger Blog), then, first create a new blog. Download the template as a backup. Now, replace everything between the BODY tags in the template:

...
<body>
..
..
..
</body>
...

with the code copied from Nabble. So your template, code will look something like this:

...
<body>
<a id="nabblelink" href="http://n3.nabble.com/BloggerStop-Demo-Forums-f6****.html">BloggerStop Demo Forums</a>
<script src="http://n3.nabble.com/embed/f6****"></script>
</body>
...

And save the template.

DEMOS:

1. OnPause Community
2. KSRTC Fans Community

Showoff your work in the comments below, the best two forums will be displayed here to other blogger.

Add Google Buzz Buttons To Blogger/BlogSpot Blogs

bloggerstop.net@gmail.com (Divya Sai) — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:58:00 +0000

13th Feb.: Code updated to replace the word null with your blog's name.

14th Apr.: Now official Google Buzz buttons are available (with a share-counter).

Follow BloggerStop at G-Buzz

First it was Facebook, then Twitter and now it is Google-Buzz.

Being a blogger, you don't have to worry on who's copying whom! All these websites let their users interact more easily and for webmasters, it means free traffic with minimum efforts. So, keep all your options open as you never know which of them may bring a big wave of traffic to your blog!

Now talking about G-Buzz, although Google has not yet provided any official "Buzz It!" buttons, but it does allow you to synchronize your blog-feed with the Buzz, so that all your posts are directly sent to your Buzz account. Simply add your blog to the connected sites list...

Inspired by Mashable, now I too have created the Google Buzz It! buttons for the readers of BloggerStop. Here's how you can add these buttons to your blog:

STEP #1
Log in to Blogger, go to Layout -> Edit HTML
and mark the tick box "Expand Widget Templates"

Now, find this code in the template:

<div class='post-header-line-1'/>

STEP #2
And immediately BELOW/AFTER it, paste this code:

<a expr:href='"http://www.google.com/reader/link?url=" + data:post.url + "&title=" + data:post.title + "&srcTitle=" + data:blog.title' target='_blank'><div style='border:0px !important;text-align:right;margin-top:-42px;'><img alt='Buzz It' src='http://i46.tinypic.com/121wg9e.jpg'/></div></a>

It will display a small Buzz It! button like this:

Or, paste this code:

<a expr:href='"http://www.google.com/reader/link?url=" + data:post.url + "&title=" + data:post.title + "&srcTitle=" + data:blog.title' target='_blank'><div style='border:0px !important;text-align:right;margin-top:-42px;'><img alt='Buzz It' src='http://i47.tinypic.com/2j0b02c.jpg'/></div></a>

to display a larger Buzz It! button like this one:

NOTE: By default, the alignment of these buttons is kept to "Right", you may change it to "Left" too. To change the position of the button, change the value -45 pixels (in margin-top:-42px;).

STEP #3
Save the template and let the Buzzer Buzzzzzzz...

*Update: Soufiane from LeBlogger, has suggested a new javascript based code to display these G-Buzz buttons; wherein if the readers select any part of the post before hitting the Buzz This button, then the selected text (and images too) will also appear in their G-buzz updates. Here's the new code:

<a href='javascript:var%20b=document.body;var%20GR________bookmarklet_domain="http://www.google.com";if(b&&!document.xmlVersion){void(z=document.createElement("script"));void(z.src="http://www.google.com/reader/ui/link-bookmarklet.js");void(b.appendChild(z));}else{}' title='Buzz It!'><div style='border:0px !important;text-align:right;margin-top:-42px;'><img alt='Buzz It' src='http://i47.tinypic.com/2j0b02c.jpg'/></div></a>

PS: Use this code, instead of the one from STEP #2, if you want those additional benefits. The above code will display the larger icon by default, change the image-url to show the smaller icon.

Thanks to Mashable for the larger Icon !

Unable To Paste Text While Commenting In Blogger Blogs ? [Problem Fixed]

bloggerstop.net@gmail.com (Divya Sai) — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:53:00 +0000

NOTE: If you haven't yet found any problem in pasting text, while commenting in a Blogger based blog, then you may ignore this post.

I used to face this problem in the previous version of my Internet browser and till date some of my readers do complain that they are unable to paste text/code in the comment-form while commenting on BloggerStop and some other blogs.
In Blogger blogs (Blog*Spot), comment-forms are separate frames (webpages) embedded in to the blogs. And if you are using Firefox v 3.5.x, then you might have experienced this problem too...

The best way to avoid this problem is to upgrade your blowser to the latest version of Firefox (v 3.6). Download and install it from here.

But for any specific reason, if you don't want to upgrade, then in your present browser, i.e. Firefox 3.5.xx, while commenting, you just have to separate the comment-form frame from the blog (then you can easily copy/paste any text in to it).
To seaparate the frame, while commenting simply right click inside the comment-form, then go to "This Frame" and click on any of these options: "Show only this frame", "Open frame in new window" or "open frame in new tab".

Once you open the comment-form frame in a separate tab/window, you will be able to comment normally.

Image Zoom [JQZoom] For Blogger Blogs

bloggerstop.net@gmail.com (Divya Sai) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:43:00 +0000

Here's a creative and innovative way to display large pictures in limited area:
that's JQzoom !

Purpose of this hack:

While the smaller thumbnail image is displayed in your post, the corresponding larger image is displayed inside a floating window only when the reader hovers his/her mouse cursor over the thumbnail-image. The image displaying-style inside the floating-window is exactly like that of a view through a magnifying lens or that of a microscopic view.

To get a clear idea of the hack,
check out the Live Demo... (in a Blogger blog).
And another standalone DEMO

Now follow these instructions to add this hack to your Blogger/BlogSpot blog:

STEP #1
Log in to Blogger and go to Layout -> Edit HTML
then, find (CTRL+F) this code in your template:

</head>

And immediately ABOVE/BEFORE it, paste this code:

<script src="http://files.main.bloggerstop.net/uploads/3/0/2/5/3025338/jquery-1.3.2.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="http://files.main.bloggerstop.net/uploads/3/0/2/5/3025338/jquery.jqzoom1.0.1.js" type='text/javascript'></script>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://files.main.bloggerstop.net/uploads/3/0/2/5/3025338/jqzoom.css" type="text/css" />
<script type="text/javascript">

$(function() {
var options =
{

zoomWidth: 275,
zoomHeight: 275
}
$(".jqzoom").jqzoom(options);

var options2 =
{

zoomWidth: 275,
zoomHeight: 275,
zoomType:'reverse'
}

$(".jqzoom2").jqzoom(options2);

});
</script>

Default width and height of zoom-window is fixed as 275x275 pixels. You may change the values if you want.

STEP #2
Save your template.

STEP #3
Now whenever you want to add this image-zoom effect to your images, simply add the class "jqzoom" to your a href tag.

So, if this is the usual code you use to display an image in your blog:

<a href="DIRECT_LINK_TO_THE_LARGER_IMAGE" title="IMAGE_TITLE"><img src="DIRECT_LINK_TO_THE_SMALLER_IMAGE"/></a>

Now to implement the hack, the new code becomes:

<a href="DIRECT_LINK_TO_THE_LARGER_IMAGE" class="jqzoom" title="IMAGE_TITLE"><img src="DIRECT_LINK_TO_THE_SMALLER_IMAGE"/></a>

In the DEMO, this is the larger image used while this one is the thumb-nail.

NOTE #1: To display the images with Reverse Opacity Effect (second image in the DEMO), add class="jqzoom2" instead of class="jqzoom"

NOTE #2 (IMPORTANT): For this hack, you should have two sizes of the same image. The smaller image is displayed in the blog, and the larger image is hyperlinked to the smaller image (displayed in the floating window).
You may use any image-editor (MS-Paint/Adobe photoshop) to create the smaller thumbnail-image (displayed it in the blog posts).

Browser Support:
6+ | 2+ | 1.0 | 2+ | 9+ |

This hack is similar to Blogger-LightBox, where the zoom effect is seen in the entire image (where image-zoom is observed only on mouse click instead of mouse-hover).

Project Author:
Renzi Marco from Mind Projects, presently working on the next release of
jqzoom with thumbnail image switch.
R. Marco is an Italian Engineer skilled in php, CodeIgniter, javascript, JQuery, XML and SOAP... He is actually looking for a full-time job in a collaborative and innovative web team. Hire Him.

Friday Blogger BackUp #4 - Protect Your Blog!

bloggerstop.net@gmail.com (Divya Sai) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 19:50:00 +0000

Another reminder to all the readers of BloggerStop.net, to protect and save all their content.

It is important to take regular back-ups of your template and blog-content, to avoid circumstances like these:
Example 1 - Template lost
Example 2 - Comments deleted
Example 3 - Blog banned and marked as spam

Official word from Blogger: Mistakes do happen.

So, precaution is aLwAyS BeTTer than Cure !!!

1. Tutorial for blog posts and comments backup.

2. Tutorial for template and widgets backup (read the first 6 steps of the tutorial).

BEST Method To Truncate Posts In Blogger/BlogSpot Blogs

bloggerstop.net@gmail.com (Divya Sai) — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 12:36:00 +0000

This post is important for all the bloggers, blogging on Googles Blogger platform. Whether you are presently using any post-truncating method or not, you should read this post at least once.

Truncating posts on homepage/archives/label-pages is a must for every blog. If you care for your readers and search engines, then you should know that truncating the posts will make both of them happy.
By showing only a small part instead of the complete post, you will save some bandwidth and time of your readers. And similarly search engines will load your pages quickly too. Moreover your readers will not miss the posts present at the bottom and when they click on the "read more" links to read the posts in detail, it will increase your pageviews too.

If you are working on Blogger/BlogSpot platform, then you have at least 3 ways to truncate the posts. Two of them involve javascripting to truncate the posts and the third one (that is officially announced and suggested by Blogger) is non-javascript based. You would have seen all three of them being used by different bloggers. Some of the newly developed Blogger-Custom-Templates use the javascript based automatic-read more hack.

Sponsored Ads

What's the problem?
As the first two hacks, (viz. automatic read more hack, and manual read-more using <span class="fullpost">) use javascript to truncate the posts, so most of your readers (at least 90%) will be able to see the truncated posts, but search engines like Google/Yahoo without javascript support in their browsers will not see your blog-pages with truncated posts. So, even though you are using the truncating (read-more) hack in your blog, they are of no help in optimizing your blog for search engines.

If you are also using one of those javascript based techniques to truncate your posts, then I will advice you to stop using that method and better switch to the third option (non-javascript based).

The solution
So I will suggest you to use the official method of truncating posts suggested by Blogger: i.e. use  anywhere in the blog-post to truncate it. Read the complete post here.
And if you are facing any problems in using this method, then read; how to fix errors in Blogger Read-More hack.

Benefits you will get by using this method:
1. Posts are truncated for both your readers and search engines.
2. Decreases loading time of your blog (you can check it in your Google Webmasters account), as posts are truncated for search-engine-bots too.
3. Increases page-views.

A suggestion to further optimize your blog:
Limit the non-truncated part of the posts to only 1 image (that means, show only 1 image per post in the homepage). Hide extra images in the hidden/truncated part, as it will decrease the loading time of your hompage/archive pages.

Check it yourself... - Immediately after implementing this hack in all the blog posts (being shown in the homepage), you can check and see the improvements your blog has made:
1. Go to Pingdom-Tools and note down the loading time of your blog.
2. Now apply this hack to all the posts present on your blogs homepage, and then again check the loading time of your blog at Pingdom.
You'll notice the difference;
- in the total HTML size of the blog (it will decrease) and,
- in the loading time (it will also decrease, that means your blog now loads faster).

Image credits

"Be Unique" Says Mohammad !

bloggerstop.net@gmail.com (Divya Sai) — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 09:30:00 +0000

Blogger Of The Week: Mohammad Mustafa Ahmedzai (author at MyBloggerTricks)

About the Author:
I am Mohammad Mustafa Ahmedzai, a Computer System Engineering Student and the author of the blog MyBloggerTricks.com
I am an addicted blogger,designer, web enthusiast and a certified SEO. I write first heard tutorials on Blogger tools, resources and their uses with main focus on CSS and HTML.

BS: Welcome to BloggerStop, Mohammad. How long have you been in the Blogosphere? And who/what inspired you to start a blog of your own?
Ans.: Firstly let me thank you Divya Sai for your extreme love, respect and keen interest in knowing about me through this friendly interview. I have no words but to wish you a successful and memorable life online and offline.
Dear I started blogging in August 2008 after completing my A Levels. I came across Blogger while doing a Google search for "What is a Blog?" After watching some videos I signed up for a Blogger Account and started my first blog i.e. Tecfun.co.nr where I share my experiences with my college friends and teachers. Honestly speaking, it were the videos made by Blogger team and commoncraft.com which inspired me to start the blogging career. It was in fact this visual interaction that brought about a dramatic change in my life.

BS: How will you describe your blog in one line/less than 20 words?
Ans.: MBT has the reputation of publishing unique and first heard Blogger tutorials which includes mainly CSS based widgets, Magazine style templates and Social Media icons.

BS: What do you blog about? Is this blog devoted to a single theme or do you have more than one quite unrelated categories in your blog?
Ans.: Well my tutorials are mainly focused on areas like CSS and HTML, Blog Optimization, webmaster tools, Blogger widgets, templates and most importantly Blogging Goodies. By Blogger tricks I generally speak of all blogging platforms and not just Google Blogger. So in short the categories are all related and speak of nothing but weblogs.

BS: Are you the only author in your blog or do you have co-bloggers to manage the blog? In future are you planning to team up with like-minded bloggers?
Ans.: Unfortunately at present I am the only victim who is shedding sweat and tears day and night :((. Blogging really requires a lot of precious time and I am feeling a dire need for a trustful partner who could help me in writing interesting tutorials. For your second question, I will surely join hands with niche blog partners in near future but only after I have stabilized MBT more firmly on Blogosphere.

BS: Do you blog anonymously or your readers know well who you are?
Ans.: My blog is an open Bio of myself in brief. I share everything their with my readers from my home, University till Blogging. Many readers have become so much socialized with me that many wish me on special occasions through chats, emails, blog comments and some even through phone calls. I think by blogging anonymously one can never achieve true appreciation, love and self confidence. It is indeed the true identity of a Blog author that keeps him spiritually comfortable with his online work.

BS: Do you have any specific goals/expectations from your blog? Have you already achieved any of these goals (or would you like to share any milestones that your blog has achieved)?
Ans.: The biggest blogging ambition that I have is to revolutionize the importance and significance of Blogging in my country. Only 6-7% people living in Afghanistan and Pakistan use internet and those who use it, don't even know what a blog is. Since I am a student myself still exploring the ever expanding Blogosphere, I am waiting for the day when I will have a true professional cap on my head with enough confidence to explain the advantages and value of Blogging to young generation living in developing countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The biggest milestone that I achieved is that a shy guy with a blog that is only 10 months old, is now being interviewed by one of India's finest young Blogger i.e. Divya Sai. I think there can be no better milestone than this within my one year of blogging career.

BS: How much time do you devote to your blog? Do you blog on weekends and do you think Blogging is eating too much of your time and is it affecting your day-to-day (offline) life too?
Ans.: Man Blogging is tough! It demands a lot of time, motivation, continuous hard work and plenty of patience. I spend about six hours daily in front of the computer but still I feel as if I am devoting less. My mom and dad often shout at me due to my late night work! :D
Blogging can affect your health also if you don't work carefully. During the recent days I had complains of eye sight issue and backache but as soon as I realized these side effects I started going gym and luckily things have improved a lot. I have now a screen filter on my monitor and a comfortable darling seat to help me blog safely :D To be honest my social background i.e. my friends and family members are not affected at all. I spend day time with my friends and family and night with my readers.

BS: What are your present blog stats, i.e. number of daily visitors, your global reach etc.?
Ans.: Now this is a risky question..! I will try to be more honest with you. Since MBT is only 10 months old, it is receiving 10,500 page views monthly with 230+ subscribers, 229 Facebook followers, 70+ Google friend connect followers and 1100+ twitter followers. The numbers are still increasing MashAllah! The MBT homepage has a PR-2 with some pages with PR-3 and all internal pages with PR-1 to PR-2 . This is what I achieved so far. Hope that was an open answer!

BS: What do you think is a better source of traffic - search engines, traffic exchange sites or social networking sites?
Ans.: I guess traffic from search engines is never constant but it is huge for sure. For me personally as a SEO, driving Traffic through search engines is more interesting, easy and less hectic. Traffic from search engines is everlasting with no doubts. If any of your page hits the first page with a rich keyword then you can enjoy an ever-growing readership through that one keyword for a longer period as long as you keep working hard on that specific keyword. Social networking sites and traffic exchange sites are also good sources of Traffic but this kind of traffic is more hectic. You will receive Traffic only if you actively participate in forums and talks and undoubtedly doing so requires a lot of time and energy.

BS: Do you regularly respond to your readers and do you think it is important for a blogger to always comment back or reply back to his readers?
Ans.: Well I am pretty serious when it comes to reader's queries. I deal it so seriously that most readers receive replies within seconds and minutes or at most within 24 hours. No matter whether the question is relevant, irrelevant, a feedback, suggestion or criticism, I welcome them all with a smile. :>
The true self confidence that an author achieves is when readers leave comments. No doubt the best identity of a good Blogger is his good and friendly attitude towards his readers. I personally hate giving feedback to well established blogs (xyz) just because I feel it morally an insult when your feedback or query is left ignored and not replied.
It takes months and years to build up a good number of subscribers but it takes only a week or a month at most to lose precious loyal readers due to lack of communication on the author's side.

BS: What are your unique strategies to survive and to perform better in your blogs niche against your competitor blogs?
Ans.: My strategy is the word "unique" itself i.e. I believe in offering resources that are never published or shared anywhere else may that be blogger tutorials, templates or blogger goodies. In short the best strategy to survive against your niche competitors is to beat them with unique and first heard content. One should not just blog about what is already shared on famous major blogs rather he should explore and discover his own talent and must come out with his own creative ideas. No doubt God has blessed us all with equal senses.

BS: Other than Blogging what are your other hobbies or what do you do in your leisure time?
Ans.: Unfortunately I don't have any leisure time. I go university early in the morning, teach O Level students in the evening, go gym at night and do blogging late night. Now tell me where goes my leisure time :(

BS: Is blogging for you just a passion or a medium for earning too? Are you earning enough to quit a 9 to 5 day job?
Ans.: I started it with passion but now as I am investing more and more time in it, I must accept the fact that I am trying hard to achieve some revenue in return.
For your second question I would say, no... not at all! I am not a richi rich blogger :D. At present Blogging keeps me happy spiritually but not very much economically.

BS: Do you sell any of your products, work as an affiliate partner or advertisements are the only source of income for you?
Ans.: Since I started blogging just a year ago (i.e. 2008-2009) I rely much on revenue through advertisements. But as days are passing, I am receiving good offers from some niche blog authors to start a niche partnership. I will pay due respect if any offer appears appealing.

BS: Are you planning to employee someone to help you in blogging or outsourcing some of your work like blog-designing, social networking or someone for your PR department?
Ans.: As you know I am an Engineering student and hiring someone one at this stage will not be affordable to me. Though I have plans to offer Guest posting at MBT. The Guest poster will be provided all legal blogging rights like a link in signature, Adsense revenue sharing and many internal links that will help him with rich links, traffic and some good bugs in return :>

BS: Blogs you follow and read regularly…
Ans.: Friendly speaking I follow no blog! Just for the reason that I read all blogs randomly. It is natural that not all posts of one specific blog are entertained. So instead of flooding my inbox with lots of emails I prefer reading a blog relevant to the query I am searching for at that specific moment. But I really don't recommend this style to other bloggers. Indeed subscription helps you keep track of all your favorite blogs and saves a lot of time but I prefer bookmarking a blog.
The blogs that I often visit and read are indeed those of my niche friends which include Bloggerstop.net with no hesitation.

BS: Communities/Forums you have joined (that help you in blogging):
Ans.: Facebook, Youtube and Yahoo Answers are my best friends! Among them Yahoo Answers is the best traffic resource I can recommend with full confidence. Wiki Answers are also as good as Yahoo answers but I have not signed up for an account as yet and will do so shortly.

BS: Have you done any mistakes in your blogging life? And what have you learnt from these mistakes?
Ans.: My first mistake was to create a blog with many topics like Internet, Social Media, Computer, Software and Blogger. But later I realized that I was really getting no good traffic neither were people taking interest in receiving my regular newsletters. Then I focused on one single topic and that was Tutorials on Google Powered Blogger. This was the best decision I ever made. Things have really changed dramatically thereafter. This experience taught me that the success of blogging indeed lies in just one strong Topic!

BS: Has blogging added any special flavor to your life? Would you like to share it with us?
Ans.: Blogging is the best experience one could have. You make new friends everyday. You have a large crowd to read and appreciate your efforts. You socialize with people from different cultural backgrounds and with different tones and colours. You learn everyday for every single day in Blogosphere has a different message to deliver. No matter what some clumsy people may say but Blogging. is for those who want to enjoy the world far different from the real world we live in.
I find peace and satisfaction in blogging and verily I will blog till death! :D

BS: Something you really want to change in your blog or in yourself being a blogger?
Ans.: I want to speedup my publishing process. I really try hard to publish one post per day but since I have uni(versity) in morning and students in evening, no matter how hard I try, I can not make it. This is one main problem I am struggling hard to combat and I am sure in the coming few days I will really knock it down!

BS: Say, you are sponsored to travel to 3 world destinations. Which destinations would you pick up, and why? Would you like to take someone along with you? If yes, whom?
Ans.: I would pick up a wildlife zone especially in South Africa. I have seen and learnt enough of Humans and wish to see with my own eyes how our neighbor species live and survive in their lush greeny Natural Habittes. Wildlife zones are areas where true beauty of planet Earth actually lies. Anyone would love snow capped mountains, dense green forests, volatile rivers, cute little creatures, singing trees and birds and united groups of animals. Wildlife has a lot to offer for the peace and tranquility of our souls.
I would take with me my laptop! :D

BS: Bloggers generally love to read books? Do you agree with this and if yes what you’re your favorite books/novels?
Ans.: Of course I agree. One who writes more actually reads more. I read my field related books like Physics, Further and applied Mathematics and my dearest subject i.e. Chemistry.
You said Novels??..... Oh never!!, I have always scored bad in literature :D

BS: If you could meet one person, dead or alive, who would it be?
Ans.: Prophet Mohammad (PBUH). He taught me the purpose of this life and identified to me the Almighty force Who is responsible for balancing the system of the Universe. I know God because I know Mohammad (PBUH). He was the last amongst Prophets after Adam, Solomon, Abraham, Moses and Jesus (May Peace Be Upon Them All).

BS: Which is your favorite television show? & favorite movies and songs?
Ans.: Honestly speaking, no television show or movie did ever impressed me for none offered peace of mind. As far as songs are concerned I love Nasheeds (Arabic Songs) by Ahmed Bukhatir and Zain Bikha. I find peace and a good lovely message in these Nasheeds. They make me cry, laugh and smile. The Nasheed "Last Breath" by Ahmed Bukhatir brought about a turning point in my life.

BS: What’s your favorite food? Any particular dislikes?
Ans.: I love an Afghani Dish called "Kabuli Palow". It is an extremely healthy and tasty dish consisting of rice and beef with a sprinkle of dried grapes on it. One of the most beloved dish in Afghanistan. We serve every guest with Kabuli Palow! :>>

BS: Blogs are replacing personal diaries, magazines, journals and today more than just being a hobby we can see corporate blogs too, so what do you think is the future of blogs?
Ans.: I see blogs as an ever expanding medium for quality education. Blogs have revolutionized the web and have made the Cyberspace a rich source of education and entertainment. Journals, magazines and other classical source of knowledge are dead papers which can only be read but can not be questioned. On contrary Blogs are an open medium for communication between the author and a reader. People ask questions, bring problems and they receive answers and solutions within minutes. After 10 years or more you will find every child saying "Did you read Mr. X's blog? and not "Did you read Mr. X's book?

BS: Any special message you would like to share with our readers as well with everyone else?
Ans.: As a blogger one should think more about the content than the revenue. Many bloggers often underestimate the importance of this beautiful learning experience by turning their blog into a fish-market occupied with ads. I believe that only those bloggers succeed who pay more attention towards providing useful and unique content rather than that content which is already published somewhere else. It is good to spread the voice of one blogger to your readers by sharing his content but try to play your own individual roles in bringing something interesting, inventive and creative to the blogosphere. Every one of you is a genius and it is only a matter of time to realize it. Invest your time and energy for at least one year and then expect a fruitful outcome in terms of revenue. I believe that If you really want to be a really successful blogger then share what is revolving in your mind and dress this idea and present it in a manner so that it may look appealing to your readers. For a desired succesful blogging career do not work harder but smarter! Wishing you all a good luck and success and an ever growing readership. Keep blogging for the generation ahead needs you!

BS: How can we connect with you?
Ans.: At present the best way to contact me is my blog and the secondary is Facebook. It would be an honour to connect with you guys.
Twitter ID: MBT-Twitter
Facebook Profile: Facebook-MBT
Contact Me Page:- Contact Mohd.