BLOGGER TRICKS

How to place Google Adsense for Maximum Clicks

2009-08-25T08:39:00.000-07:00

Google AdSense Optimization Tips for maximum CTR

The best performing ad units for AdSense are 160×600, 336×280 and 300×250. For text only ads, you should go with the 336×380 format but in all other situations, 300×250 may be a better format since it is most popular among advertisers and also supports rich media. 160×600 can easily fit in the sidebar of your blog.

Web visitors have a very short attention span and majority of them may simply leave after a quick glance. Their eyes follow a F pattern so you can get good results if the Google ads are placed in the areas colored red on the heat map. Sidebars and leaderboards at the top are often ignored.

Heatmaps from user eyetracking studies of three websites. The areas where users looked the most are colored red; the yellow areas indicate fewer views, followed by the least-viewed blue

Make AdSense units border less and that the background color of the ads matches with the background of the page.

Text ads are better than image ads. Like before, people are more responsive to text than images. In a way it is considered as a part of the online document and is more clickable.

High Paying Adsense Keywords 2009

2009-08-25T08:38:00.000-07:00

mesothelioma $84.08
mesothelioma attorneys $80.93
mesothelioma lawyers $69.04
malignant pleural mesothelioma $55.95
Asbestos Cancer $54.17
mesothelioma symptoms $53.66
peritoneal mesothelioma $52.27
trans union $51.91
lung cancer $43.12
search engine optimization $30.19
mesothelioma diagnosis $28.70
home equity loans $20.06
Baines and Ernst $18.47
consolidate loans $17.74
Lexington law $17.68
Lexington law firm $16.81
debt problems $16.28
register domain $15.74
home equity line of credit $15.61
affiliate programs $14.33
refinance $14.21
video conferencing $13.63
payday loans $13.21

credit counseling $13.02
asbestos $12.79
debt solutions $12.64
cash loans $12.13
refinancing $12.09
broadband phone $12.08
debt management $11.86
fast loans $11.81
credit card processing $11.75
credit reports $11.59
making money on the internet $11.58
merchant account $11.46
line of credit $11.42
money magazine $11.27
Adsense $11.13
credit counselors $11.02
identity theft $11.00
make money at home $10.84
free credit $10.76
cash advance $10.64
consumer credit counseling $10.63
freecreditreport $10.61
make money from home $10.35
free credit reports $10.26
make extra money $10.21
domain registration $10.19
adwords $10.08
citifinancial $10.06
my fico score $10.01
web hosting $09.88
American express credit $09.71
airlines credit card $09.52
credit report $09.52
earn money $09.51
hard drive recovery $09.49
hard money lenders $09.44
credit counseling service $09.44
consolidate $09.41
claims $09.20
debt consolidation $09.10
poor credit $09.09
low interest $08.89
web host $08.64
student credit cards $08.63
secured $08.60
merchant account application $08.59
loans $08.57
send money to India $08.43
discover credit $08.40
merchant accounts $08.39
hosting $08.35
money on the internet $08.34
credit loans $08.33
consumer credit $08.32
money making ideas $08.26
credit card applications $08.23
money lenders $08.10
discover credit card $08.09
money loans $08.08
dept help $08.01
credit card services $08.01
consolidation $07.94
ways to make money $07.84
student credit $07.73
online credit report $07.66
how to make money $07.51
accept credit $07.47
accept credit cards $07.43
student loan $07.43
internet money $07.39
credit repair $07.32
free credit check $07.28
bad credit $07.26
money making $07.21
SEO $07.18

University Degrees Online $07.16
credit card application $07.05
consolidating $07.05
people with bad credit $07.05
car loans $07.05
money fast $07.03
money now $06.88
household automotive $06.76
personal credit $06.73
money at home $06.72
bad debt $06.69
lenders $06.68
auto loans $06.63
making money online $06.61
Point of sale software $06.55
interest credit cards $06.53
credit history $06.53
lending $06.39
business credit $06.32
money to India $06.31
debt $06.17
online credit $06.15
student credit card $06.14
hard money $06.10
webhosting $06.06
credit cards $06.04
make money $05.97
credit application $05.96
online credit card $05.96
chase credit $05.90
interest credit $05.89
Equifax credit $05.89
video conference $05.88
credit card offers $05.88
American credit $05.86
credit card fraud $05.82
best credit card $05.82
no credit check $05.79
credit card $05.75
bankruptcy $05.64
best credit $05.59
money market account $05.55
mbna credit $05.54
for credit $05.48
webhost $05.48
pengar $05.47
college credit $05.44
money market accounts $05.43
best credit cards $05.40
credit reporting agency $05.39
credit card debt $05.36
credit checks $05.36
visa credit $05.36
credit check $05.29
secured credit cards $05.26
one credit card $05.25
Credit report $05.24
i need money $05.16
low interest credit $05.15
credit services $05.08
credit reporting $05.06
preapproved $05.04
online approval $05.04
credit card rates $05.02
credit score $05.00

Formula for Adsense Money making

2009-08-25T08:37:00.000-07:00

AdSense Revenue = Optimally Positioned, Sized & Blended Ads + Traffic Volume + High Paying Ads + Relevant Ads
1. Position Ads Above the Fold The part of a web page that is visible (without having to scroll down) after it has loaded is the part that is "above the fold". Therefore AdSense ads that are visible above the fold are more likely to get clicked on than those that only become visible if the site visitor scrolls down the page as they are less likely to scroll down than just view what is immediately visible. In fact check out Google's heatmap which shows the positioning for the best performing ads.
2. Blend Your Ads As web surfers are becoming increasingly blind to ads your AdSense ads should be blended into the content of your site in terms of the text & background colors. If the fonts can be matched this will also increase your chances of having the ads clicked on & thereby earning you more of that much loved AdSense revenue.
3. Best AdSense Ad Sizes The following is a list that is generally accepted as of the highest performing ad sizes... * 336×280 large rectangle * 300×250 inline rectangle * 160×600 wide skyscraper Whilst the above size ads may not always be suitable for your website or blog it is worth noting that these are the ones that out perform other AdSense ad sizes.
4. Links Should be Blue One of the most important factors affecting AdSense revenue is to ensure that the links are blue. Web surfers view the color blue as a sign that a link is present . The whole point of this entire process is to get people to click on your links - especially when they are attached to AdSense.
5. Set Up Channels Google's AdSense program allows you to create channels for each ad unit which provides you with an excellent tool to compare your various ad units performance on each page.
6. Click through Rate (CTR) Its important to monitor your CTR as it reflects the percentage of clicks generated per page impression. You can therefore compare your pages' CTR and tweak things to improve the lower performing pages and so on.

PDF E-books collection on Adsense secrets , tips and tricks, optimization tips, Make Money With AdSense

2009-08-25T08:35:00.000-07:00

1.Untold AdSense Facts - Download
2.5 Expert Tips for using Chitika & AdSense - Download
3.Google Adsense Secrets Revealed - Download
4.AdSense Optimization Tips - Download
5.Understanding Google AdSense -Download
6.Free Adsense Secrets - Download
7.Getting Started With Google Adsense - Download
8.How to Profit from Adsense with RSS to Blog - Download
9.10 Powerful Secrets To Make Money With AdSense - Download
10.Adsense Profit Tactics - Download
11.Using Google AdSense To Make Online Profits - Download
12.Google Adsense - The Easiest Money To Make Online? -Download
13. 3 Reasons Why Adsense Is Essential For Content Sites - Download
14.The Secret Of Google Adsense -Download
15. Earn through google adsense - Download

How to insert Adsense below Blogger post title

2009-08-25T08:34:00.000-07:00

After this process , Adsense ads would appear as shown in above screenshot . Remember to keep " advertisements" label , not to violate Google adsense Terms .
How to Do :
Open your Blogger templates' edit HTML section and expand widget templates .Now find out the div for post header line . In my case this line looks like this

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

. Next step is to generate your Adsense code , preferably 336*280 rectangular block or 468*15 text links . These ad codes should be parsed , before they can be applied to the Blogger template . Go to this page and make your adsense code friendly . Now copy the converted ad code and paste in the section as described above .

How to insert Adsense ads below post content

2009-08-25T08:33:00.001-07:00

Here, text links and rectangular ad blocks would bring good CTR ,just shown as in the screenshot . Generate the friendly Adsense code as explained the first case . Now you have to locate post footer section

and paste the code just below that . Preview the changes and save your Blogger template . Remember to keep the number of advertisement blocks limited to 3 and the advertisement label(should be added manually at the top of the ad code ) in the ad section below Blogger post title .

How To Place Google Adsense to the Header (Above the Title)

2009-08-25T07:52:00.000-07:00

If you want to add Google Adsense to your header for instance above the title you can by adjusting your template to give you the option of adding more than one widget to the header area.

1. Login to Blogger and navigate to Layout > Edit HTML

2. Back up your template as a precaution by downloading the full template to your computer

3. Check the Expand Widgets Template box

4. Find the following code. Easiest way is to select CTRL + F to bring up the toolbar. Then enter &ltdiv id='outer-wrapper'> into the find box:

<pre></head>

<body>
<div id="'outer-wrapper'">

<div id="'header-wrapper'">
<b:section class="'header'" id="'header'" maxwidgets="'1'">
<b:widget id="'Header1'" locked="'true'" title="'Blog" type="'Header'">

</pre>

5. Replace maxwidgets='1' with maxwidgets='3'

6. Save Template

7. Navigate to Layout > Page Elements and view the new option to add a gadget to the header area

8. Click on Add a Gadget and select Google Adsense.

9. Choose the type of ad unit you want. For this example I chose a new linked 728x15 ad unit from the dropdown format menu for an ad that would sit above the title. Configure colors if necessary. Color blending is usually done automatically by Blogger according to the color schema of your template.

10. Click Save

11. Click View Blog to see your new Google Adsense unit in place. all going well your new ad unit should appear look something like the image below

Effective adsense layout or positioning for maximum clicks

2009-08-25T07:50:00.001-07:00

Placing the Ads in the places with greater visibility and maximum probability of clicking, yields best results. See the images below with colored blocks which kind of tell us that those are the areas with maximum visibility and higher chances of getting clicked. Placing your AdSense in the areas as per the images below may increase the chances of your visitors clicking on the Ads but remember there are other things also which must be kept in mind to increase the click ratio, such as color blending of Ads, keywords in content, number of impressions, visits etc,. And since every website is different, you may experiment and determine the best Ad position yourself.

Layout #1. Ad positioning for a web site with header[top], footer[bottom], navigation bar[left], content in the middle. Good for either static or dynamic content on the page.

Layout #2. Ad positioning for website with lengthy article/content on the page. People when scroll down after reading the article will see an Ad and chances of clicking it to navigate out of the page is quite high.

Layout #3. Another way of placing Ad in the site with the skyscrapper placed on left. It more or less looks will like a navigation bar with links, right blending of colors increases click rate.

Layout #4. Placing the Ad Link unit on left hand side inside the navigation bar makes it look like a part of navigation and provides different topics on which people can click on. On the right and in the content, placing a square 125×125 or 200×200 ad format layout is always good. It increases the chances of someone clicking on it if it also serves image Ads.

Layout #5. Same as above but placing the square Ad in the navigation bar on the right hand side.

Layout #6. Same as #4 but with the square Ad unit in the content is placed on left. If you blend it well with the site color, you will see an immediate increase in the click rate.

Layout #7. One of the unusual site designs. I have seen it on a couple of websites which are highly successful with Ads. Of course, you can replace the skyscrapper on right with small units of AdSense or Ad units of any other Ad programs.

Layout #8. For a site with no footer, place a wide Ad unit as a footer. An Ad Links unit can be placed in the right or left navigation bar.

Please do focus on your content too! Your AdSense optimization will be more successful with more number of people visiting your site.

Insert Adsense Block in the Middle of the Blogger post

2009-08-25T07:47:00.000-07:00

Go to your blogger account, and navigate to Layout >> Edit html, and check check Expand Widget Templates

Find the tag :

<data :post.body/>

And replace it with the following code.

<div expr:id='"aim1"   data:post.id'></div> <div style="clear:both; margin:10px 0">       <!-- Your AdSense code here --> </div> <div expr:id='"aim2"   data:post.id'>       <data :post.body/> </div> <script type="text/javascript">var obj0=document.getElementById("aim1<data :post.id/>");var obj1=document.getElementById("aim2<data :post.id/>");var s=obj1.innerHTML;var r=s.search(/\x3C!-- adsense --\x3E/igm);if(r>0) {obj0.innerHTML=s.substr(0,r);obj1.innerHTML=s.substr(r 16);}</script>

Note that you must replace

<!-- Your AdSense code -->

Now you are done, just to put your google adsense block in the middle of the post, you have to put this code in the exact place you want to put AdSense block.

Which AdSense Format Size Earn More Money?

2009-08-25T07:39:00.001-07:00

AdSense publishers can earn most income from three types of ad formats. This formats are very familiar for expert web masters. Wider formats are successful because the ads are compact, easy to read and are complementary to the content. The top three Google AdSense formats are:

Large Rectangle (336 x 280)
Medium rectangle(300×250)
Wide Skyscraper (160 x 600)

Another successful format is the 468×15 horizontal ad links, that can be placed under your navigation bar.

Adsense Revenue

2009-08-23T00:17:00.000-07:00

AdSense revenue is based on a very simple formula you aught to know by heart :

Revenue = Traffic x click Through Rate x Average Revenue per click

This is also called The AdSense Business Model.

Revenue

This is the result of the formula, the amount of money that goes into you pocket.

Traffic

In this context, traffic is the number of times a google ad is displayed on your website for the considered period of time. If your pages are seen 10.000 times during a month, your traffic is then 10.000 provided you place adsense ads on all your pages. To get 10.000 page impressions a month you can, for example, have 5.000 visitors viewing an average 2 pages per visitor or 8.000 visitors viewing 1,25 pages per visitor...
Please note that google can also show "public service" ads that are not taken into account which will reduce you traffic.

click through rate (CTR)

CTR is how many clicks you get out of 1 (one) page impression. It is generally close to 1% or 2%. A CTR of 3% means that a traffic of 10.000 resulted in 300 clicks.
CTR indicates how well the ads are doing, of course the higher the better but do not dream of a 30% CTR!

Average Revenue per click

As the phrase indicates, this is the amount of money Google pays you (in average) for every click. It can be 5 cents, 20 cents or many dollars.
The process that determines the revenue per click is complexe and will be discussed in other articles.

6 steps to make your adsense do better

2009-08-23T00:13:00.002-07:00

Step 1
Improve your site's content. Find out which are the highest paying keywords in your niche, write keyword-rich site content and add the keywords to your meta-tags so that the search engines can find your site. You will get more traffic that is interested in what your site has to offer.
Step 2
Know that if you want to double your ad income, you need to either double your traffic or double your click-thru rate. However, increasing your click-thru rate is usually much easier than increasing your traffic in a short amount of time.
Step 3
Make your AdSense ads appear as if they are a part of your website. For example, if your website background is white, the ad background should be white as well. Since you can't actually tell people to click your ads, you want them to think that the ads are beneficial. The text links in the ads should also be the same color as the text links on the rest of your website.
Step 4
Remember that placement of ads is very important. Trial and error has shown that ad placement toward the top of the page and on the left hand side of the page are usually the most successful. However, some people have success by putting an ad in the middle of an article. For example, they have to look past an ad to continue reading the remainder of an informational article.
Step 5
Incorporate Google search boxes on some of your pages. You may even be able to blend one into each page. The great thing about these search boxes is that there are ads on the search results pages that people can click on as well.
Step 6
Set up AdSense channels when you are making and placing your ads. Keep track of how well the different ads and placements are working and stick to the ones that get the best results.

Double your adsense Earnings instantly

2009-08-23T00:13:00.000-07:00

As you probably already know, AdSense is revolutionizing the way many
infopreneurs are creating revenue from their web site traffic. The reason for this is its simplicity. Through AdSense, revenue is generated when someone simply clicks thru the AdSense ads displayed on the webmasters web site.
In this article I want to give you a few simple ways to dramatically increase your AdSense income.

The bottom line:
To increase AdSense income all you must do is increase the number of click
thrus you receive.
There are two ways for you to increase your total number of click thrus. You can either increase your website traffic or you can increase your AdSense click thru rate. Now, getting more traffic would be great, but let’s be honest increasing your web site traffic is much easier said than done. So, let’s focus on increasing your AdSense click thru rate instead.

4 Tips to Increase Click Thru:
Match your AdSense to your website:
You want your AdSense ads to appear as seamless as possible. Your goal is to
match every aspect of your AdSense ads to the theme of your website. What
you want to do is remove the borders from your AdSense ads and match the
background color of the ad to your website. Additionally, you want to match the color of the AdSense links to the rest of the links on your website plus choose an ad format that makes the ads look seamless.

For example, if your web site has a white background and the default color of
your hypertext links is blue you will want to remove the border from your
AdSense, make the background white, choose either a square or a rectangle as your ad format instead of a skyscraper or banner, and yep you guessed it…
make the links blue.

Placement Matters:
Where you place your AdSense ads is just as important as how they look.
Luckily, there are only a few concepts that you need to worry about in order to increase your click through rate.
•The more white space around your ads the better
•The closer to the top of the page the better
•The closer the left of the page the better
Follow these concepts and I can assure you that you will see an increase in your AdSense click thru rate. (It really is that simply!)

Google Search:
Now this is one that I rarely see webmasters take advantage of. The Google
AdSense program gives webmasters the ability to add a Google search box to
there web site.

Why should you use this function?
Well, when a website visitor chooses to use this search box from your website
your AdSense ID will be imbedded in ALL of that visitors Google searches. If that
person does 1 search or 50 your AdSense ID will still be imbedded throughout
process.

Why is this so great?
If that visitor clicks on any of the sponsored listings while surfing from your web site guess who makes money. YOU! If they hit the back button and click on another ad guess who makes money? YOU! This is absolutely huge. Through this function you now have the ability to earn multiple click thrus from the same visitor on the site visit. Please don’t overlook how powerful this is. Besides, most of your website traffic will just be browsing anyway, so I why help them find what there looking for and make a little coin along the way?

Tracking:
Just like any other type of marketing, you won’t know what’s working the best
for you on your web site unless you track the different things that you’re
experimenting with. Set up a few Google AdSense channels for the different ads that you’ll be placing on your website. Then just see which channels are working the best and stick to those.

Follow the tips above and I can assure you that you will absolutely double your AdSense click thru rate and your AdSense income. The best part about the four tips I’ve shared here is that you can put them into action immediately and see how they will work on your website right now. Who knows… you could be making twice as much by tomorrow by just making a few simple tweaks here and there.

HOW TO DOUBLE YOUR ADSENSE EARNINGS

2009-08-22T20:44:00.000-07:00

I have been working with Google's Adsense program for a while now. If you're not
already in the program, why not take a look at it now at
https://www.google.com/adsense.

I really like Adsense. It makes me money
and it's easy to work with. Just some simple copy & paste into your webpage
and you're done. Right?

Wrong! You can do it that way if you want. Who knows? Maybe you'll get lucky
and get a lot of clicks. But if you're really serious about making a lot of money
with the program, you're going to have to tweak it a little.

I've invested quite a bit of time experimenting with the program. When I first
signed up, I got some clicks and made a tiny bit of money. That wasn't good
enough. I knew there must be a way to get more of my visitors to click on the
ads.

Google has a strict policy about not pointing to the ads in any way or asking
people to click on them, so there were two things I couldn't do. What else was
there?

Then I remembered reading an article once that discussed the psychological
impact of colors on the human mind. I started researching everything I could
find on the subject.

After a lot of reading, many tests and periods of watching my clicks go up and
down, I found the one color combination that seemed to work the best.
Testing previously done at supermarkets had revealed that the same product
could pull more sales from just changing the colors of the label. What were
these colors? Red and yellow! The combination of these two colors has an
immediate impact on the person who sees them. They make your eyes stop and
focus. They pull your eyes right to that part of the page. They grab your
attention! I'm not sure exactly why the combination of red and yellow does this,
but it does. On one of my sites, I changed my Adsense ads to a bright red
border and a yellow background with black text and URL.

My click through rate more than doubled with just that one simple change.
That's what worked on my site. Your site's color scheme may work better with a
slightly different color combination. Try lots of different color variations. Make a
change in the morning and let it ride for the whole day. The next morning, try a
different set of colors. Change the border, background, text. Change everything
you can. Most importantly, keep detailed records of the color scheme you used,
click ratio and revenue generated.

After you've done all the experimenting you want to, go back to the most
profitable one and let it run for a week or so and see how it does. I'm always
trying different colors even after my run of good clicks with red and yellow.
There are a lot of color combinations to choose from. You never know when
you'll find just the right one.

Blog Widgets, Gadgets and Add-ons

2009-08-21T01:05:00.000-07:00

The free, popular, and interesting web widgets and gadgets that you can consider adding to your Blog. Widgets are elements that extract the services or content from other sites. Some of these widgets are useful, providing your readers with news, information, and reference tips. Others may be just fun and games which make your Blog a little more interesting and promote interaction among your readers. Because there are so many applications, developers and sites, this article will be split into parts and we shall update them now and then.

Many of the sites offer easy to install HTML or JavaScript codes. All you need to do is to copy the code and place them into your layout. For instance, if you want a widget to appear in your sidebar, login to your Dashboard, go to Template -> Page Elements and click “Add a Page Element” at the sidebar. Select “HTML/JavaScript”. Paste the code generated by the service provider and save. Every time you create a new page element, it appears at the top of all the other elements. If you want it somewhere near the bottom of the sidebar, just left-click that “Page Element”, drag and drop to the place you want. Click “Save” at the top right hand corner of the page to save the new layout.

A note of caution when adding widgets. While you may be tempted to have as many widgets as you can lay your hands on, having too many may clutter the Blog and cause slower page downloads. Also, since many of them work on JavaScripts, readers who configure their Firefox or IE browsers to block scripts may not see these features. For these reasons, we have added only a couple of widgets to let you have an idea, but have not included all the widgets listed in this article. Take your time to pick those that truly complement your Blog contents.

Google Gadgets

Take a look at the directory of widgets at Google Gadgets and you will instantly know what widgets are all about.

Many of the applications are created by different developers and users. There is no registration required at your end. When you have chosen one, click “Add to your webpage” and you will be asked to customize the title, width, height and border of the gadget. If the width of your sidebar is e.g., 150 px, you may want to set the gadget width to something less than that. It is alright to have a larger width, but readers will have to scroll to view the gadget in its entirety. When you are satisfied, click “Get the Code”. Copy the code and paste it into your “Page Element” described above.

Widgetbox

If you think Google Gadgets are great, you would love the directory of web widgets at Widgetbox. They provide ready installation codes for TypePad, WordPress, Blogger, MySpace and most other blogs, sidebars or websites.

Register for a free account. Search for the widgets that you like. Determine the display settings and click “Get Widget”. You can either “Get Widget Code” and paste it into your Blog layout as described above, or let them do it for you by clicking “Add to Blogger”. We prefer the first method.

If you have several widgets, you can also “Make a New Panel” under “My Widgets” and add these widgets into your panel. The advantage is that when you “Install”, you will have one code generated for the panel rather than several codes.

Snipperoo

In a similar fashion, Snipperoo has a directory of widgets that you can use. You can pick several widgets, arrange them into a panel, and the site will generate one code for you to place on your Blog. We think that configuration was much easier previously. With their new interface and a scheme to pay you for putting the widgets in your Blog, we would rather stick with Widgetbox.

In any event, if you want to have a look, register for a free account. Once you are logged in, begin by creating a “New Panel”. To the left, you will see “Get Widgets”. Add the ones you like into your Panel. Drag and drop to arrange them in the desired positions. Click “Publish” to update and generate a code.

AddThis

This is a useful service. The widget allows readers to easily bookmark your Blog, or subscribe to your feeds. It supports many feed reader as well as social bookmarking services. The design looks neat and saves up a lot of space.

Register at their AddThis site. You can either have a Bookmarking widget

or Feed widget

If you are prompted to enter your Feed URL, you could use your Blog URL with “/atom.xml” or “/rss.xml” after it. In this Blog, you will see that the Bookmarking widget has been inserted into the template such that it automatically appears after every post. To do this, go to Template -> Edit HTML and click the “Expand Widget Templates” checkbox.

Next, look for this line: -

<div class='post-footer'>

Paste the generated Bookmarking widget code either just before or just after that. You can preview the Blog to see the difference in the position of the widget. Should you want the widget to appear on the left or right, you can align it by adding the following alignment tags to the widget code:-

<div align='right'>WIDGET CODE</div>

Lilypie

If you have a baby, child, or are expecting one, the tickers you find at Lilypie will be nice inclusions in your Blog.

You don't need to register to use the service. Simply choose the background, select marker and input personalized text to create a ticker code. Paste the HTML code into your Page Element.

TickerFactory

This is another tracker that you can add to your Blog. Visit their TickerFactory site and choose something that you would like to track. The popular ones are weight loss progress, baby's age and anniversary countdowns. No registration is required.

Customize the ruler and ticker slider designs, copy the HTML code and paste it into your Page Element.

AuctionAds

Sign up for an account at AuctionAds to display an eBay auction widget. The displays are related to the key words you assigned. According to their FAQ, their ads are compatible with AdSense and other ad systems. In short, you can have both AuctionAds and AdSense ads in your Blog. You get a commission when someone buys an item from eBay and it is an additional way to earn some revenue through your Blog.

BLOGGER DIRECTORIES-INCREASE TRAFFIC

2009-08-20T21:02:00.000-07:00

How do you attract more readers and visitors to your Blog? To make your Blog more visible, the solution lies in submitting your Blog URL or RSS Feed to as many good Blog directories as possible. There are hundreds of websites touting themselves as blog search engines, blog directory hosts, feed aggregators, and traffic exchanges. A couple of the website creators are out to make a quick buck, selling their sites and member database on eBay the moment they attract sufficient traffic.

Over the past few weeks, I have submitted this Blog and RSS feed to many of these Blog directories for free. The first submissions were of course to Google and Yahoo; if you have not submitted your Blog URL to them, you may read the earlier articles on submitting sitemap to Google and submitting sitemap to Yahoo. At the same time, submit the Blogger Sitemap to MSN and Ask.com too.

Although my blog is only about 2 months' old at the time of this writing, if I were to enter my blog title “tips for new bloggers” into Google search, I am able to see it appearing at the top of the search results. Many of the other results are those of the blog directories in which this blog was listed. Listing in directories therefore helps in promoting your blog.

Before you proceed to submit your site to these directories, my personal advice is that you create a free web-based email account solely for this purpose. Should the directory hosts decide to sell their sites and database in future, your present email account would not be compromised. This is also to prevent flooding of your personal email with updates sent to you by the many directory administrators.

The aim of this article is to relate to you my experience in those free blog directories that I have tried submitting to. While I appreciate comments on these, please refrain from posting suggestions of new blog directory sites. A number of them may be fly-by-nights and I will not recommend them unless I have personally used them. Others may have specific requirements such as blogs having to be older than 6 months, or blogs covering specific news contents.

Different directories have different forms to fill when submitting your blog. Their instructions are usually easy to follow. However, you may want to note the following:-

1. Some directories require you to register before adding your Blog. While most of them allow you to submit more than one Blog, some may require you to use a different login name for each Blog. What I did in these situations was to create different login names but using the same email address.

2. If you are asked for the RSS Feed or your Feed URL, check that under your Settings -> Site Feed, the “Allow Blog Feed” shows either “Full” or “Short.” Do not choose “None.” Your Feed URL is yourblogURL/feeds/posts/default or yourblogURL/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss where yourblogURL is the URL of your Blog beginning with http:// Do not type in “www” for Blogger blogs. For example, our Atom Feed URL is http://tips-for-new-bloggers.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default You can test it by typing your feed address into a web browser and view. If you have an external Feed address like a Feedburner Feed address, you may submit that too. I shall go into the details of Feed and Feed directories in a separate article.

3. Where you are to create a picture, banner, or link button to represent your blog, you can use Google's Picasa or any image editing software to create a new picture, or resize a current one to the required dimensions. Normally, you are required to upload it onto a free image host or server and provide the URL of your banner or picture. You can read about using free hosts like Google Page Creator and Google Groups. We also have a rather comprehensive list of free Image Hosts and File Hosting Services in our article on Manage Blogger Image Storage Space. Check out those sites and choose one that is fast, reliable and enables hotlinking to the uploaded files.

4. The “Reciprocal Link URL” is the main page where you will be putting a link to their blog directory. More likely than not, this will be the URL of your Blog.

5. The “meta keywords” or “tags” are keywords that represent your blog's content. Similarly “meta description” is a short few sentences describing your blog. Basically, “meta” tags provide information about your Blog for search engines to identify and match.

As the directory list is long, the article will be split into several parts, and updated as and when I try out the sites. Some sites track the number of the visitors to your blog. You may see voting gateways, which basically give visitors a chance to vote for your blog if they wish to. If they do not want to vote, there is always an option for them to enter the site without voting. Have a look at the directory sites and submit your blog to those you like.

Traffic Exchange Sites

A number of traffic exchange sites have blog directories which can include links to your blog.

Blog Directories

Technorati

They supposedly track 75.2 million blogs. Quite naturally, you would want your blog to be one of them. Register with them and submit your blog. Follow their instructions to claim your blog. They will provide you with statistics like the number of blogs that link to you. You can also invite other members to favorite your blog.

Wikablog

If you are familiar with Wikipedia, this is the equivalent for blogs. It faces the same problems as Wikipedia i.e., while it is easy to list your blog, it is equally easy for others to edit your listing. Nevertheless, for a new blogger, this is one of the fastest way to have your blog appear in a directory. [Update: This site has been down for quite a while and link is therefore removed.]

Fuel My Blog

This is an interesting directory. Unlike the usual text-based blog directories, this site goes by images that you create to represent your blog. When your visitors click a link on your site that says Fuel My Blog!, your image will move up the ranks and appear on the front page, making it more visible to directory viewers.

Blogtoplist

A blog directory listing that is sorted by the number of unique visitors to your blog. Your visitors can also cast a Vote to increase your ranking. The scores are reset every week to allow new bloggers like us a chance to be placed among the top.

Topblogsites

Here, you are ranked by unique hits based on the Votes you receive from your visitors. Many of the comments posted on the directory site are spam comments, and if you can disable comments, you might want to do that. [Update: This site has been down for quite a while and link is therefore removed.]

Mybloggingarea

Another directory that ranks you based on the Votes and the number of unique visitors to your site.

Topblogarea

A blog directory that tracks unique visitors. Unlike the earlier ones, visitors do not vote at this directory.

Blogflare

This is a simple, nice blog directory that tracks your unique visitors and pageviews. [Update: This site has been down for quite a while and link is therefore removed.]

Topblogging

Here, you are ranked based on unique visitors. Although there is a count for votes in, somehow the code provided by them did not track this vote count.

Blogroll

I joined this directory only about a week ago. A simple directory that monitors the Votes and unique hits.

Worldtopblogs

Ranking is by the Votes cast by the visitors to your blog.

Topbloglists

There is a voting gateway for your visitors but ranking is based on unique pageviews.

For more visibility, you may want to submit your Blog to Feed Directories and ping your Blog every time your contents are updated. Also, submit your Blog to the various Search Engines for maximum exposure.

While you are looking at blog directories, you may also want to consider earning money while you are surfing the net. AGLOCO seems to have a nice scheme for you which you may want to take a look. You may also want to consider having AuctionAds to display an eBay auction widget which is compatible with AdSense and other ad systems. No harm trying it since it might give you an extra income.

Make Blog Private and Unsearchable

2009-08-16T15:06:00.000-07:00

Many people write blogs to share their thoughts with everybody and anybody. However, you may also use your Blog as an online diary, penning very personal and private thoughts. Like all diaries, you can either allow a select few persons to view the Blog or allow no one but yourself the right to view it. Also, you may not want it to be indexed by search engines, so that people searching for it on the net will not find it in the search results.

This article lets you know how to create private Blogs. If your intentions are the exact opposite, and you want to publicize your Blog to the whole world, follow our other guides to submit your Blog to Blog Directories, Google, Yahoo and Feed Directories.

First the caveat. These guidelines will only show you how to make your Blogger blog as private as you can get. As we shall explain, there is no guarantee that search engine spiders will never find your Blog because any site that is available on the net will be crawled by search engines. What we can do is to minimize that possibility.

Note that these steps are to be taken BEFORE you create the blog. If you already have an existing Blog, it has in all likelihood been indexed. These tips will at best prevent future contents from being seen.

Title and Blog URL

Do not want people to associate that Blog to you? When you create a new Blog, select a Blog URL and Title carefully; choose words that have no bearing or relation to you or what you do. After the Blog is created, DO NOT post. Post only after you have completed the following steps.

Permission

We start with the most crucial and essential step. Blogger has made it easy for you to create private Blogs. When you are logged in, go to Settings -> Permissions. You can restrict your Blog Readers to only people you choose or only the blog authors.

People who enter the Blog URL into their browsers can still see the Blog Title but will be prompted to enter their Google account particulars and password. If they are not given the rights to view the Blog, a message will be shown: “It doesn't look like you have been invited to read this blog. If you think this is a mistake, you might want to contact the blog author and request an invitation.”

While the contents cannot be seen, people do know that this Blog URL with that Blog Title exist and it is a private blog. As we had mentioned, if you don't want anybody to know this Blog is yours, it is important to have a Blog URL and Title that are not obviously connected to you.

Listing on Blogger.com

These are the further steps to take, just to be sure. Under Settings -> Basic, you can see a “Add your Blog to our listings?” option. Choose “No”. Click “Save Settings” at the bottom. This will do three things –

i) Your Blog will not appear when people search Blogger.com.

ii) This Blog will not be shown in the Blog List on your Profle page.

iii) The Blogger homepage showcases a list of recently updated blogs but this Blog will not be shown.

Ping Setting

Go to Settings -> Publishing and under the “Send Ping” option, choose “No”. Save the Setting. Whenever a Blog is updated, Google will notify some of the tracking services of the updates. If your Blog is private, there is no reason why these services ought to know of your Blog updates.

Site Feed

Your Blog contents can be read through your Site's Atom and RSS Feeds. People can catch up on news and articles by subscribing to these Feeds and viewing the material using their Feed readers. If you do not want your contents to be read or syndicated, go to Settings -> Site Feed and to the question “Allow Blog Feed?” select “None” and click “Save Settings”.

Meta Tag

Now that we have altered the settings for the Blog, we can add a further meta tag into our template to tell search engines not to index the site. Click Template ->Edit HTML and you can see the source code. Somewhere at the top, just below <head>, insert this line (shown in red):-

<head> <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" />

Leave this tag there. Search engine robots which visit your site will not index the Blog pages and contents.

Profile

We thought we should cover this for completeness. In the top right corner of your Dashboard, you can go to the “Edit Profile” page. Under “Show my blogs”, if you see a blog that you do not want people to know about, remove it from the listing. People who view your Profile will not know about the Blog. You can also choose not to share information about your Profile by not ticking the box next to “Share my profile”.

External Links

The steps outlined above are within your control but this one is not. It is also the reason why we said we can only minimize but not eliminate the possibility that people know of your Blog. Anybody can link to your Blog URL since it is a valid URL. If your friends happen to know about your Blog and write a post mentioning your Blog or linking to your Blog, there will be an external link to your Blog. Whatever they write about it will be public knowledge. Hence, to have an online diary that only you know about, remember that a secret shared by two persons is no longer a secret.

Sticky Posts in Blogger

2009-08-16T14:55:00.000-07:00

In all Blog platforms, new posts are always shown first and older posts are archived. With a simple trick, we can have this earlier post remain on the Home page, above all the new posts.

Create a Page Element Method

One recommended way to have a piece of writing permanently on top of the Blog Posts is to work it into the template by creating a Page Element.

1. Follow our article in Add Page Element to Blogger Header and Blog Posts. Enable the “Add a Page Element” function in the Blog Posts and if you'd like, the space between the Header and the Blog Posts. This is an interesting location, because it is right after the Header and yet does not follow the style settings of the Header. For people who want to insert a Horizontal Menu and Navigation Bar, this might be an ideal location. Once you have done that, you should be able to add new elements above the Blog Posts or right underneath the Header.

2. The second step is to create the Post. Login, go to “Posting” and create a New Post under the “Compose” mode. If you don't see a “Compose” mode, go to Settings -> Basic and at the bottom, to the question “Show Compose Mode for all your blogs?” choose “Yes” and save the settings. Type your Post contents, upload your pictures, create your links, etc. While you don't have to insert the labels, put in the Title of the article within the contents. Make the title large, bold or change the font color. Preview the post and if you are satisfied with it, you can save the draft Post and go to the next step. [Note: To check the Post Title font-size and color code settings, go to Template -> Edit HTML and look for .post h3{ You would be able to see the font-size, font-weight (if any) and color. Apply the same style to the Title that you have typed in the contents of your draft Post.]

3. Click to view the post under the “Edit HTML” mode.

4. There are some things you must do. If in your Settings -> Formatting -> Convert line breaks you have chosen “Yes”, whenever you press the “Enter” or “Return” key on your keyboard, the Post Editor will convert that into the HTML tag <br/>. We must now enter these tags into the HTML of the draft Post. Go to your draft Post under the “Edit HTML” mode.

Example 1:

At the places where you press an “Enter” key to create a line break, add the HTML tags as follows:-

Line One <br/> Line Two

Example 2:

Between each new paragraph, add this HTML tag:-

Paragraph One <br/><br/> Paragraph Two

Example 3:

You can also add this instead:-

Paragraph One <p> Paragraph Two </p>

5. Once these are added to the Post, we can now block copy the entire chunk of the draft Post HTML code. Go to Template -> Page Elements -> Add a Page Element in the Blog Posts section and choose “HTML/JavaScript”. Paste the entire draft Post HTML code and save. View your Home page, and you will see the Sticky Post permanently displayed above the Blog Posts.

6. Finally, we can delete the draft Post. If you have uploaded pictures, you will be asked whether you want the pictures deleted. Since you are using these pictures in your Sticky Post, uncheck the box to keep the pictures in your Picasa Web Album.

Change the Post Date Method

When you are creating a new post, you can see at the bottom left of the Post Editor a “Post Options” link. When you click that, you will be able to amend the “Post time and date.” If you want the post to be always on top of all the other new posts, change this date to a future date like the year 2015. Once the post is published, the post, being the latest post in the reverse chronological date order, will always appear on the Home page as the first post.

Important Notes:

i) In the new Blogger platform, the URL of Posts follow the month and year that are specified in the “Post month and date” option. In our example, we specified the month as August and the year as 2015. The Post URL will be http://BLOG URL/2015/08/TITLE.html. This URL will remain unchanged even if you edit the post and alter the date. Good for us. It means that we can change the date of an earlier post without affecting the backlinks to that post. People who linked to that URL will not have to change the link address.

ii) You can therefore alter an existing post in the same manner. Edit the Post. Change the year to a much later year and the post will always appear on your Home page.

iii) The other point to note is that when the year 2015 arrives, you may have to alter the post date yet again to another later date. Who knows, perhaps by then you may not want that post to appear on your Home Page anymore.

iv) If you want a recent post to be stored somewhere at the end of your archive list, and never to appear in the list of recent posts, use the same method but change the date to an earlier date, a year like 1950.

Images not shown in Internet Explorer

2009-08-16T14:52:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, the photos, images, pictures or graphics do not show or display in a website in Internet Explorer (“IE”) browser or an email in MS Outlook Express. Instead, where the pictures ought to be, there is a Red X or a placeholder.

Several factors could have caused this problem of images not being displayed in IE. In this Help guide, we'll look at these reasons and the solutions to show images in IE. Some of the possible causes may only be resolved by the webmaster. If you are an owner of a Blog or a webmaster, these tips might be useful to note when you are uploading images onto your Blog or webpage.

1. Image type not supported by IE

When you see a red X or placeholder, right-click on it to view the “Properties” of the image. Look at the image “Type” and “Address (URL”). IE supports images with .art, .avi, .bmp, .emf, .gif, .jpeg, .jpg, .mov, .mpeg, .mpg, .png, .wmf, and .xbm extensions. As a webmaster, if you have to put images on your website, try to stick to the usual image formats or have alternative images in these formats.

2. “Show Pictures” option in IE not selected

If you are using IE 7, under Tools -> Internet Options -> Advanced tab, there is an option called “Show pictures” under the “Multimedia” heading. Select this option and press OK to save the change. In other IE versions, the option may fall under a different heading.

3. Scripts disabled in IE

Webmasters may use Active scripts, Scriptlets, Java applet, ActiveX control, or cookies to display the images on their sites. If the security setting in IE browser is set to “High”, these features may be blocked. To enable them, go to Tools -> Internet Options -> Security tab. View the “Internet” zone and under “Security level for this zone” change it to “Medium” or “Medium-high”. You can also reset the zone to “Default” level. Likewise, under Tools -> Internet Options -> Privacy tab where you define the cookie settings, you may set it to “Default” level. Click OK to save.

4. Scripts disabled by Firewall

Other than IE, the configurations in your Firewall program (Norton Personal Firewall, Zonealarm, McAfee, BitDefender, etc.) may have disabled some of these scripts. View the help file of the program you are using and follow their instructions to enable some of these scripts. For this reason, webmasters should avoid using too many scripts for the main contents of the sites. Consider adding text using <noscript> tags to cater to those who have scripts disabled.

5. Web bugs

Be careful when you are configuring the above settings. The web pages you view or emails you receive may sometimes contain hidden web bugs. These are usually small little graphics 1px by 1px that track user statistics like location, usage, pages visited, or whether an email has been read. This is even used in organizations and companies to find out how many times a message is forwarded or read by the staff. They do not pose major threats, but there are those who do not like this infringement of privacy. Take a stand and configure your security and privacy settings accordingly.

6. Images blocked in Outlook Express

We touch briefly on the problem of images not displayed in Outlook Express email program. When you are in Outlook Express, go to Tools -> Options -> Security and you'll see a “Download Images” configuration. If you want to view images in your email, do not tick the “Block images and other external content in HTML e-mail” option. Click OK and save the change. You should now be able to view images in Outlook and not see the red X symbol.

7. Images not sent in Outlook Express

Also, if you are sending email with images, you could have disabled these images in the configuration. Those receiving your email will only see the red X or placeholders rather than the images. The solution to this is to go to your Outlook Express Tools -> Options -> Send tab. The “Mail Sending Format” should be “HTML” and not “Plain Text”. Click the “HTML Settings” button and check the box next to “Send pictures with messages.” Click OK to save.

8. Character Set not recognized by IE

This sounds rather technical. In layman terms, the browser interprets the code page or encoding of the web page. If your IE browser does not recognize this character set, or if a file in your browser software is corrupted or missing, the images may not be displayed when viewing the web page. For instance, the web page may be in a foreign language. If so, see that this language has been added to the browser settings. In IE, go to Tools -> Internet Options -> General. Under “Appearance” there is a “Languages” button. (In other versions of IE, the Language option may be under a different heading.) Add the languages that you would use to read the web page and click OK to save. If you are still unable to view the page, it is possible that a file or registry key is corrupted or missing. To resolve this, you may follow the Microsoft Help guide on your desktop to restore or repair your Windows software.

9. Image Server is down

Since free blogging platforms including Blogger.com have limits on the amount of storage space taken up by the Blog photos, images and graphics, it is worth considering hosting these images on an external server and linking to them from your Blog. We wrote about using free hosts like Google Page Creator and Google Groups. These too have limits on space and bandwidth. There is a comprehensive list of free Image Hosts and File Hosting Services in our article on Manage Blogger Image Storage Space which may provide a bigger storage space. All servers, even Blogger.com, can have downtimes. When these image hosts are busy, undergoing maintenance, temporarily suspended, offline, or when the download bandwidth has been exceeded, the images linked to the Blog will not be displayed. The problem could be temporary, and should you need to see these images on a particular Blog, revisit the Blog an hour or so later.

10. Image links are broken or dead

Since the images are hosted on another platform and linked, there could be instances when the webmasters typed a wrong URL, placed the " at the wrong places or omitted the closing image tags. The image HTML code and attributes are discussed in Hyperlinks and Image Links. The image links could be broken or dead when webmasters delete the images from the server or switch image servers without updating the image links. It is also possible that the image is not hotlinked. By this we mean that when the image is stored on the image server, the link given is not a direct link to the image, but a page containing the image and other contents. Hotlinking takes up bandwidth and some image servers do not provide that service. If such URL is used in the image HTML code, the image will not show.

11. Cache not cleared

The Browser cache stores web page content of the sites you have visited on your hard disk. These are the Temporary Internet Files which supposedly speed up the page download when you revisit a site since some of the contents are already stored. However, these files can comprise cookies and JavaScripts too. Make it a habit to clear the cache regularly to remove these files. In IE, go to Tools -> Internet Options -> General and under “Browsing history” click “Delete” button. Delete all the Files and offline content. These are temporary files that can be removed. If you are unable to view images, sometimes deleting these Temporary Internet Files may solve the problem.

Submit Blog to Search Engines

2009-08-16T14:44:00.000-07:00

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) aims at increasing the volume and improving the quality of traffic to a website from search engine results. Search engines work on different algorithms to analyze the contents and keywords, and present the search results. Google, for instance, assigns page ranks to the sites and sites that rank highly will appear early in the results. Of course, many other factors are considered by search engines, such as relevance, unique content, coding and quality of links. The major search engines know that revealing these factors will only encourage manipulation of the ranking system and have thus been secretive about how the ranking algorithms work.

While no SEO consultant can be absolutely certain about how each search engine views your site, the common agreement is that the more visible your site is on the internet, the higher your ranking will eventually be. Having your site linked to by many other sites and indexed by different search engines increase its exposure and visibility. We have given readers a list of Blog Directories and Feed Directories. In this article, we shall provide a list of search engines where you can submit your website or Blog URLs for Free and have your site or Blog indexed by the search engines.

Website Indexing

Unless you have Created a private blog, it is a matter of time that your blog is indexed by the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. One of the fastest ways to have your site indexed is to get another site that is already in the search engine listings to link to you. When the search engine crawlers visit that site, they will find your site and index it. We tried this out by linking to our new Blog and it appeared in Google search listings within three hours. Hence, try this method if you do not want to wait for search engines to approve your site submission.

Before we proceed to the list of search engine sites, there are a few points to note:-

1. To check if your site has been indexed by a search engine, enter the full URL into their search query. For some search engines like Microsoft Live Search, enter site: followed by the full URL. If you see your site appearing in the search results, it has been indexed and there is no need to resubmit the site.

2. If your Blog has been linked to by Blog Directories, websites or Blogs, you may see these other sites that mention your Blog appearing first in the search results. More likely than not, they have a higher page rank. Scroll through the remaining search result pages and you will probably find a listing that is solely about your Blog.

3. When submitting your site, you do not need to submit the URL of each individual webpage. Submit only the top-level webpage and for Blogger Blogs, it will be an address like this http://blogname.blogspot.com without the www. before the blogname.

4. You can submit your sitemap to Google and login to Google Webmaster site to know the status of the indexing and view traffic statistics. Also, submit your sitemap to Yahoo! to find out more about the index and links to your site. Submit Blogger Sitemap to MSN and Ask.com too.

5. If you add your URL in Yahoo!, it will appear in their other search sites like AlltheWeb and AltaVista as well. Similarly, AOL Search uses the data by Google.

6. Some of the sites send advertisements and newsletters to you in exchange for free submission. If you don't want that, remember to opt out of it. Avoid having your regular email account filled with these mail by creating another free web-based email account just for website submissions.

7. Since search engines have different standards of content, design and technical specifications, submission of your site does not guarantee that it will be included in their database.

List of Search Engines

You may submit your site URL to these search engines for Free. If you lack the time, submit your site to the top few leading search engines.

Website Submission Services

There are many sites on the internet offering free website submission services to search engines. The list of search engines are by and large the same. For a fee, some of them offer to send your URL to more than a hundred search engines. Is it necessary to have your webpage listed in all the smaller search engines? We think that Google, Yahoo! and MSN have cornered such a large share of the market that it is sufficient just to have your website listed there. However, the decision is yours to make. For a start, you may want to use their free services and monitor the traffic.

Feedburner - FeedCount Chicklet Text

2009-08-16T14:20:00.001-07:00

Feedburner is a very popular feed aggregator and provides a host of services which you can tap on to publicize and promote your Blog. One widely used service is their FeedCount Chicklet which displays your Blog Feed's circulation statistics. The chicklet can be static (displaying the number of “readers”) or animated (showing the number of “readers” via feed). Although you can change the background and text color for the graphic display, there is no option for you to change the text. This hack will explain how to change and personalize the FeedCount Chicklet text as well as to change the animation settings so that it rolls the text more than once.

For those who have yet to sign up for a Feedburner account, consider doing so right away. Now that it is under the Google family, there is an easy way for you to channel all your Blogger feed subscribers to Feedburner. Login to Blogger, and under Settings -> Site Feed, enter your Blog's Feedburner Feed address into the box beside “Post Feed Redirect URL.” Readers who click the “Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)” link or the RSS icon in their browsers will be redirected to your Feedburner Feed.

FeedCount Chicklet

When you are logged into Feedburner account and are viewing your Feed details, click the Publicize -> FeedCount tab. This is where you can generate a code to display a chicklet in your Blog which shows the subscriber count. Whether or not you already have a high number of subscribers doesn't really matter. A nice chicklet can draw readers' attention and make it easy for them to click the Feed link.

Choose the custom colors of the body and text and click “Activate”. You will be given a HTML code for the Chicklet. We have to edit this code. Open MS Notepad (usually found under All Programs -> Accessories in Microsoft Windows) or a word processor program. Copy and paste this code.

Static FeedCount HTML Code

The static FeedCount code will look something like this:-

<p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/ TipsForNewBloggers"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~fc/ TipsForNewBloggers?bg=99CCFF&fg=444444& anim=0" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p>

This is the standard FeedCount chicklet you see:-

To change the word “readers” to some other text such as “Viewers”, insert this other code (shown in red). You can change the word “Viewers” to other text, but because of the space constraint, keep it to no more than 7 characters.

<p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/ TipsForNewBloggers"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~fc/ TipsForNewBloggers?bg=99CCFF&fg=444444& anim=0&label=Viewers" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p>

The FeedCount chicklet now looks like this:-

You can change the text to capital letters or include characters, e.g., “*FANS*”, and your new FeedCount Chicklet will look like this:-

Animated FeedCount HTML Code

The animated FeedCount code is rather similar except that the animation value is set as “1” instead of “0”.

<p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/ TipsForNewBloggers"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~fc/ TipsForNewBloggers?bg=99CCFF&fg=444444& anim=1" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p>

When the page is loaded, viewers will see a one-time rolling text of number of “readers” via feed.

The word “readers” can be changed to other text like “Members” by inserting the code (shown in red):-

<p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/ TipsForNewBloggers"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~fc/ TipsForNewBloggers?bg=99CCFF&fg=444444& anim=1&label=Members" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p>

This is the new FeedCount Chicklet you will see. Insert the relevant text that suits your Blog.

Animation to play more than once

Other than the change in text, you can also set the animation to play more than once by changing the anim value to something greater than 1. Since readers are unlikely to stay on a page for too long, it need not be too big a value. When the page is refreshed, the animation count will start all over again.

<p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/ TipsForNewBloggers"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~fc/ TipsForNewBloggers?bg=99CCFF&fg=444444& anim=50&label=Friends" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p>

Our animated FeedCount Chicklet will now look like this:-

Author Comments - Different Styles

2009-08-16T14:20:00.000-07:00

Bloggers generally welcome constructive comments and feedback on their posts. Among the ways to encourage comments are to remove the “nofollow” tag and to add a Recent Comments widget into the template. Comments highlight issues that readers might have faced, and the author's reply to these comments may be useful to other readers as well. If you have many comments posted in your blog, it would be nice to add different styles to the author's comments to make them stand out from the rest. Readers with questions on commonly asked issues may easily find their answers in previous posted comments. This tutorial shall explain how the author comment styles can be added to the template.

After 7 months of blogging, we have today hit the 300,000 visitors mark. It is not a big deal to many bloggers but it means a lot to us, knowing that whatever leisure time we had given up to write these articles was worth the while. Thanks to all! While we were reviewing our articles earlier, we realized that there were so many comments in several of them that we had a hard time finding our own comments. We have therefore decided to highlight our comments to make it easy for our readers to sieve through and check if their issues have been addressed. An important point to note is that some of the answers we posted may have been superseded by events and you are still free to post the questions again.

Modify Template

Since this article is about setting a style for the comments that appear after a post, we assume that you have configured your Blog to display the comments. Check Settings -> Comments and select “Show” Comments.

Before you begin to do anything, remember to backup your template. Go to Template -> Edit HTML. Click the “Download Full Template” link to save a copy of your template.

Click the check-box next to “Expand Widget Templates”.

Press Ctrl+F and search for the word “comments-block”. You should come to these lines. Insert the code (shown in red):-

Comment Styles

After you have inserted the above code, scroll upwards in the template and Ctrl+F to search for the word “comment-body”. In the Minima template, you should have this code:-

#comments-block .comment-body { margin:.25em 0 0; } #comments-block .comment-body p { margin:0 0 .75em; }

According to our Poll, the second most commonly used template is the Rounders template. In Rounders, this is what you will find:-

.comment-body { margin:0 0 1.25em; padding:0 0 0 20px; } .comment-body p { margin:0 0 .5em; }

In other templates, you should see “comment-body” classes similar to the above. This is the current style for the display of all comments after the posts. To have a different comment style for the author, copy what you have in your template, paste and rename the class. For example, in the Minima template, we shall add the code (shown in red):-

#comments-block .comment-body { margin:.25em 0 0; } #comments-block .comment-body p { margin:0 0 .75em; } .blog-author-comment { margin:.25em 0 0; } .blog-author-comment p { margin:0 0 .75em; padding:5px 10px; border:1px dotted #254117; background:#C3FDB8; }

You can name the new class anything you want by changing the “.blog-author-comment” to something else. (Don't omit the full-stop in front.) Just remember to rename that bit of code discussed in our earlier section. In our example, we have used the same margin settings but added a padding (space around the text) of 5px at the top and bottom, and 10px on the left and right. We introduced a thin border surrounding the text and added a background color. For more color codes you can refer to our Color Code Chart. The author's comments block will look like this:-

If you are using the Rounders template, follow the same steps as above, copy the “comment-body” styles and add the new classes. For example, the code can look like this:-

.comment-body { margin:0 0 1.25em; padding:0 0 0 20px; } .comment-body p { margin:0 0 .5em; } .blog-author-comment { margin:0 0 1.25em; padding:0 0 0 20px; } .blog-author-comment p { margin:0 0 .5em; padding:0 0 0 20px; color:#F6358A; font-style: italic; }

Did you notice that we have not changed the margins and padding? The author's comments will be different though as there is now a text color and the font-style is in italics. This is what you will see:-

If you are using other templates, do the same by copying the current “comment-body” styles and inserting the new classes and new styles. Experiment with the different style options and colors. If you need more ideas, you can refer to the list of properties in our article Links - Hover and Rollover Effects.

You can even insert a background image to the author's comments and change the font to a larger font or a different font typeface. The code will look like this:-

.blog-author-comment p { margin:0 0 .75em; padding:5px 10px; font-size:120% font-family:courier; background: url("URL OF IMAGE"); }

Try out different blog author comment styles and settle on the one that best suits you. Refresh the blog every time you make the change. You will notice that there is a “Post a Comment” link at the Comment footer.

Change the background color of the Header

2009-08-16T14:14:00.000-07:00

To change the background color of the Header, first determine what color you would like to have. You may look at the HTML Color Chart for the colors you can experiment with. For example, if you have decided on a color code #B38481, go to Template and click “Edit HTML”. Scroll to the part where you see this:-

#header-wrapper { width:660px; margin:0 auto 10px; border:1px solid $bordercolor;

Add right after this an extra line:-

background:#B38481;

Save the template and refresh your Blog site. You may have to change the Header and description font colors. Simply go back to the “Fonts and Colors” tab, and change them accordingly.

Note that in different templates, instead of #header-wrapper, you may see #header-wrap or #header or #head. Try to insert the color code and preview the change. If there is a background color, you've probably got it right.

Hide or Remove Navbar

2009-08-16T14:09:00.000-07:00

The Blogger or Blogspot Navbar is a default feature that appears at the top of every Blogger powered blog. It is a useful navigation tool which allows readers to search the blog for targeted content, mark the blog as objectionable, and randomly view other member blogs.

The Navbar can be disabled for users who publish contents via FTP, but it will appear on all freely hosted BlogSpot blogs. While the feature is undeniably useful, some people find that its position at the top of the page looks obtrusive even with a choice of 4 colors. Some therefore pick a template with a black background to blend well with a black navigation bar. There are also parents and educators who find the 'view random blogs' feature inappropriate, as their children may inadvertently view objectionable blogs.

Nevertheless, this article is not a discussion on the merits or demerits of a Navbar. That is for you to decide. Here, I am assuming that you have made a conscious decision to hide or remove the Navbar. Having so decided, this is the guide on how you can do it.

Log into your dashboard, go to Template -> Edit HTML. Scroll to anywhere on the template and insert the following CSS style definition in red within the head section.

#navbar-iframe { display: none; } </head>

Preview the template. You will notice that the Navbar is no longer displayed, and (depending on your template) your contents might shift upwards to take up the space reserved for the Navbar.

[Update:

This code display:none no longer works. Those who have used this may want to try out the other 2 methods (height and visibility) instead.]

Now, try this style definition:-

#navbar-iframe { height: 0px; }

This will reduce the Navbar height to zero, effectively removing the Navbar. You can also explore this other style:-

#navbar-iframe { visibility: hidden; }

You will notice that your contents do not shift upwards. The space is still reserved for the Navbar, but the Navbar is now hidden and not visible.

Either one of the above codes would do. You can also combine them if you'd like. For example, giving a numerical value for the height of the Navbar and hiding the visibility will give you a margin at the top and yet without the Navbar. Choose one that best fits your blog design. If you change your mind in future, and wish to have back your Navbar, simply remove the style definition.

Search Box

If you decide to remove the Navbar, you can still place a Blogger Search Box within your site. This is one of the great features in the Blogger Navbar.

Difference - HTML and XHTML

2009-08-16T14:08:00.000-07:00

When inserting codes into the Blogger template, page element, or blog post, you may have seen error messages that the code could not be parsed, was not well-formed, was broken, or that the elements were not closed properly. These errors can be corrected if you understand the rules that must be adhered to in XHTML documents. Blogger templates use the XHTML 1.0 Strict Document Type. In this article, we shall explain some of the XHTML syntax or rules, so that you may troubleshoot and resolve the problems if these error messages should occur.

XML, HTML and XHTML

We shall keep this short. Just so as you understand what we said about document type, view the Page Source or Source of your Blogger blog. You should see this document type declaration at the very top:-

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

The terms – XML, HTML and XHTML - refer to the markup language used to write the web pages. Many of us would have heard of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), invented by Tim Berners-Lee, and used since the early days of internet. XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a meta-language, used to create other markup languages. The traditional HTML was later recast to use the rules of XML and that resulted in a new XML application, called XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language). Because XHTML rules are strict and unforgiving, not conforming to them when attempting to modify the template would result in error messages. So, what are these rules that Bloggers like us should take note of?

Basic Rules of XHTML

1. Codes to be in lowercase

Since XML is case sensitive, all the element keywords and attribute names used in XHTML should be in the lowercase. For example, the template code is not this:-

<TITLE>Tips for New Bloggers</TITLE>

but this:-

<title>Tips for New Bloggers</title>

If you have noticed, the elements and attribute names between the lesser than (<) and greater than (>) signs have to be in the lowercase. However, the value, which in this case is “Tips for New Bloggers”, can be in the uppercase, lowercase, or mixed case.

2. Attribute values to be in quotation marks

All the attribute values have to be enclosed either in single or double quotation marks. The following examples are not accepted by XHTML:-

<div id=header-wrapper> <a href=http://tips-for-new-bloggers.blogspot.com>Text Link</a> <img src=photo.jpg/> <table width=200 border=0 cellpadding=2>

Instead, they should be written as such:-

<div id='header-wrapper'> <a href="http://tips-for-new-bloggers.blogspot.com">Text Link</a> <img src="photo.jpg"/> <table width="200" border="0" cellpadding="2">

3. Container elements must have closing tags

This is not correct:-

<p>A paragraph.

In XHTML, there must be a closing tag with a forward slash (/) at the end:-

<p>A paragraph.</p>

Examples of the many non-empty elements that have opening and corresponding closing tags are:-

<ul> ... </ul> <li> ... </li> <table> ... </table> <h2> ... </h2> <div> ... </div> <span> ... </span> <dt> ... </dt> <dd> ... </dd> <a href> ... </a>

4. Standalone elements to be closed

Some of the elements are empty or standalone. They do not have associated closing tags. Common examples are:-

<br> <img> <input> <frame> <hr> <meta> <link>

Nonetheless, in XHTML, these elements must be terminated or closed. There are two ways to do that. One way to terminate the element is to put a forward slash (/) at the end like this:-

<br/> <img/> <input/> <frame/> <hr/> <meta/> <link/>

The second way is to add a corresponding closing tag like this:-

<br> ... </br> <img> ... </img> <input> ... </input> <frame> ... </frame> <hr> ... </hr> <meta> ... </meta> <link> ... </link>

5. Elements to be properly nested

This means that elements must be closed in the reverse order. For example, this code is not accepted in XHTML:-

<form><table> ... </form></table>

It is improperly nested because the form was created first followed by the table. To close them in the proper order, the table must be closed before the form, like this:-

<form><table> ... </table></form>

6. Document to have only one root element

In the XHTML document, you will see that except for the document type declaration, all the codes are nested between <html> and </html>. This is the root element and all other elements or sub elements are in between. The document structure will look like this:-

<html> <head> ... </head> <body> ... </body> </html>

7. Attribute minimization is not allowed

In XHTML, all attributes should be in the form name="value". Even if the value is the same as the name, it cannot be minimized to one word.

<textarea readonly>Hyperlink Code</textarea>

but this:-

<textarea readonly="readonly">Hyperlink Code</textarea>

XHTML Character Entities

Quite a number of readers had asked why they were unable to display HTML codes in their blog posts or why their codes were not well-parsed when inserted into the template. If you have noticed by now, the codes are wrapped in the lesser than (<) and greater than (>) signs. The moment these are posted, they will be interpreted as codes and will trigger an action by the browser. Should you want to display these as part of the text, use their character entities instead.

"	"
&	&
<	<
>	>

The next time you see an error message to the effect that the code is not well formed, not well parsed, not properly closed, etc., take a look at this guide, troubleshoot the problem and try out the possible solutions.