My Blogger Tricks

Fix For Blogger Favicon Visibility in Internet Explorer (IE)

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Mustafa Ahmedzai) — Thu, 24 May 2012 19:15:00 +0000

Favicon is a 16 X 16 small graphic icon that appears in your browser address bar next to a website domain name. It is also known as a shortcut icon, website icon, bookmark icon or even a URL icon. Its gives branded look to your blog and makes it stand out. By default in all blogger blogs you see a small orange icon that shows next to all subdomains with BlogSpot as the extension.

HostGator's Special Summer Discount Coupon - $116 OFF!

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Mustafa Ahmedzai) — Thu, 24 May 2012 19:09:00 +0000

Its always overwhelming when we see such a great deal of concession from one of internet's largest web hosting companies. Each month or on special occasions, HostGator gifts us with a special discount coupon that gives us 25% off on any hosting package we buy this Summer. The discount this time has been really exciting and we would surely not keep it with us but would share it as usual with all our loyal readers so that you get a cut-off price as high as $116. The exclusive coupon code that we received today will give you $44.55 OFF for Hatchling Plan, $71.55 OFF for Baby Plan and over $116.55 OFF for Business Plan! We are really pleased with the uptime and server response and unlimited disk space and bandwidth that Hostgator provides. Both our blogs and un-released project websites are proudly powered by this blue Alligator and I feel no hesitation in giving all credits to the great customer support service of hostgator who help us 24/7 with all technical help needed . This time we have a lot of time to sign up and kick off a new blogging or business plan. We have a total of 2 Months which means our coupon would expire by the end of June 30 2012. But before you may sign up make sure you learn in detail on why this web hosting company has become a brand for all pro bloggers. Lets see some of its features and hosting plans.

How to Show Adsense Ads in Dynamic Views?

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Mustafa Ahmedzai) — Wed, 23 May 2012 19:09:00 +0000

Dynamic Views are 7 different flavors of interactive layouts that blogger introduced last year. The team is working hard to introduce new widgets and features that may support Dynamic Views (DV) Templates. In today's tutorial we will learn how to integrate Adsense Ad units inside these templates. Ad units which are supported at present are 728 X 90 Leaderboard and 160 x 1600 wide skyscraper. Both these ad formats are high performance Ads which gives impressive returns because the click through rate for them is high. Since HTML/JavaScript can not be used yet in Dynamic views therefore if you try to embed AdSense Code into your layout you wont be able to see any ads on the blog. There is a dynamic approach required in order to display ads on your blog posts. Lets get to work now!

Blogger in Draft Blog Retires but Service Remains

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Mustafa Ahmedzai) — Tue, 22 May 2012 19:13:00 +0000

This is a quick update to let you all know that Blogger team has put an end to Blogger in draft blog which was introduced in 2007 in parallel to Blogger draft service which lets users to try new things before they are released at Blogger.com. The blog was used for keeping users up to date with the latest features, widgets and other miscellaneous developments. Updates will now be shared on their official Google Plus page and you can follow latest news by adding them to your circle. This surely is a step to promote Google's giant project which is their social networking tool: Google+. You must keep in mind that Blogger in Draft service is still alive and you can continue playing with unreleased features of Google blogger through your Draft dashboard. Its only the blog that will no more be updated.

Google's Response To Our Post On Dynamic Views

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Mustafa Ahmedzai) — Tue, 22 May 2012 19:09:00 +0000

Last year in September 2011, Blogger Team launched Dynamic views which offered seven different ways to share your blog with your readers. Few months later in December 2011 we pin pointed some of the flaws linked with these new graphical interfaces. We mentioned 10 reasons to avoid blogger dynamic views. The post highlighted both pros and cons of using these new themes and focused mainly on whether these new layouts are optimized enough and whether or not they can be monetized and customized. As a response Blogger software engineer, Antin Harasymiv, who announced the launch of these interactive new layouts commented on our post and shared some of the recent developments and major changes applied to these new non-traditional templates.

Pre-requisites for Entrepreneurship: Blogging & Students

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Mustafa Ahmedzai) — Mon, 21 May 2012 19:09:00 +0000

Business is all about planning and making that plan work. The better you plan; the faster you grow. We have seen how to make a plan for your blog and track its productivity in the post describing our aim. We have also discussed some details about blogging stages and your targets. Today, we will find out what is the step before you become an entrepreneur? We are not sharing any future dreams now; we will find out what do you need to do right now? Your present will make your future, thinking and planning too much about future makes you forget your present; and we do not want you to waste any of these precious moments. So all the future entrepreneurs! Are you ready to make up your today’s plan?

Create Floating Bar For Pinterest & Other Sharing Buttons

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Mustafa Ahmedzai) — Sun, 20 May 2012 19:09:00 +0000

This is one of the few social sharing widgets that took a lot of my time in designing it. You have seen the trend of floating sharing count buttons on popular blogs. The traditional icons are now replaced with auto incremented counter buttons that are updated in seconds. We created different versions of this bar applying both Jquery effects and CSS3 styles but this widget is different because it contains custom twitter, pinterest and an Email button. Services like Addthis and Sharethis are both doing a great job but they still need to work on some of their plugin integration conflicts. Pinterest pin it buttons are causing great trouble and it badly fails in fetching the correct thumbnail image. In most cases it does not even select a image thus making the entire pinning concept tasteless. We however redesigned the widget provided by shareThis to create a new one by correcting all flaws. This sharing bar would float to the left of your blog posts and would float as the visitor scrolls up or down. This widget contains counters of important social networking sites that has the potential to bring you traffic by circulating your content to a wider audience. We have tested the widget on major browsers like IE7+, Firefox, Chrome etc. and found it working just fine with no compatibility issues or design conflicts.

Developers and bloggers are requested to link back to this post if in case they wish to share our code with their readers. Lets get to work now!

30 Free Web Tools To Create Favicon For Your Website

noreply@blogger.com (Qasim Zaib) — Fri, 18 May 2012 19:09:00 +0000

Every big website has an icon or image associated with it. This is what makes the website unique and gives it its identity. Look at Facebook. It has the 'f' icon, which is immediately recognizable. Google has the 'g' icon, and so on. These icons are displayed on browser tabs right next to the page title, and are known as favicons. In essence, these favicons are a means of branding your blog. Every blog or website needs to have a brand. Without a brand, a blog has no credibility. It's a small, but essential step you need to take. In fact, it is one of the first steps you need to take when you start a blog or website.

10 Crispy Tips To Write Optimized Blog Post Titles

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Mustafa Ahmedzai) — Thu, 17 May 2012 19:09:00 +0000

Title is the most crucial part of a blog's overall structure. It can either construct or demolish our entire post. Selecting an ideal title may become complicated if we don’t concentrate on accurate strategies. Every blogger wants his post title to be enriched with rich keywords words so his readers can taste the sweetest part of the blog. Generally a post title represents whole content in small peace of words. A post title not only enhances our blog but also has some significance towards SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Ad Sales Widget: Create Advertise Page With BuySellAds

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Mustafa Ahmedzai) — Wed, 16 May 2012 19:09:00 +0000

Buysellads recently introduced their first ever Ad sales widget that displays your Ad spots price listing right on your very own blog. This tool can be added easily to both wordpress and blogger blogs. Sponsors and direct advertisers can buy an ad spot from you using the advertise page. You don't need to manually update the prices on your static Advertise page. Using this Ad Sales widget, the prices and Page impressions will update automatically. You can display Ad inventory type, available ad spaces, ad spot price, size and Ad description. You can also display your BSA blog description using this tool.

Display Guest Author Box Automatically in Blogger

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Mustafa Ahmedzai) — Tue, 15 May 2012 19:09:00 +0000

Guest posting saves great time when you are stuck in exams or engaged in some other off-side work. Google Blogs provide the best blogging experience when it comes to ease and comfort. The user interface and over all control options are extremely easy to set and play with. Unlike wordpress where you can display author box using a plugin, in blogger we will have to code things ourselves. Displaying author info at the bottom of the posts can be done in two ways. The first method as you may know is pasting the author info box manually below each post yourself. The problem with this method is of course precious loss of time. Manually adding an author box below each post could turn out to be a headache, therefore an automatic way would be the best. You have seen the above author box displaying introduction of Qasim below all his posts. This box appears automatically below each post published by his shared blogger account. We used conditional tags to make it work and its really just two lines of code, the rest is all design. Lets understand few things before jumping straight at the tutorial

Exams Over! Lots Of Surprises On Their Way

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Mustafa Ahmedzai) — Mon, 14 May 2012 19:09:00 +0000

Finally I can open this little diary and get back to work! :). We surely deserve a party after a consistent mental torture but then comes planning future goals that should never be neglected. University Exams badly affect daily routine activities and it is a complete schedule mess for those who blog for living. In my absence, our co-author, Qasim Zaib fulfilled his responsibilities with great care and came up with some extra ordinary topics. His exams started two days back and now you will only see his scheduled posts at "Smart Earning Methods" We humbly apologize for bringing out no new templates and widget updates. Since I am on a month long vocation now so we have got plenty of time to play with tools and invent again some cool creative gadgets out of scratch. Our main focus would be on Jquery Sliders, Image Galleries, HTML5, CSS3 transitions and animation and some cool new social sharing plugins, controlled widgets and accordion effects.

Hide Pinterest Activity Updates On Facebook

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Mustafa Ahmedzai) — Sun, 13 May 2012 19:01:00 +0000

We have recently shared a number of posts on Pinterest. The good thing about pinterest is that it accepts your existence on other social networks and encourages you to promote visual pin board everywhere. You can login to pinterest using your Facebook id and password. If you are already logged into Facebook, you just need to click on "Login with Facebook" and you are logged in. No need to enter id and password again. This is only because your account is linked with the Facebook and you can enjoy this connectivity in many ways. Your activities on pinterest can be directly displayed on Facebook timeline but unfortunately there is no option yet, which can display your Facebook activity on pinterest. Today, we will see how you can manage your pinning activities on your timeline profile. How you can restrict the access and how can you enjoy auto-posting on your wall.

Add Free Speech Recognition To Your Website Using HTML5!

noreply@blogger.com (Qasim Zaib) — Sat, 12 May 2012 18:21:00 +0000

Every website has some sort of a text input field, which the visitors can use either to interact with the author or other visitors, or to perform a search. Users can either input text in search boxes, comment fields, or contact forms. This input, of course, comes from keyboards, i.e. the 'written text' input. But don't you sometimes get the feeling that in this digital era where technology is taking giant leaps, things should be a bit automated? Automated in terms of ease-of-use for the users. Well fortunately, there is another, cooler input method you can employ to provide your blog visitors a better user-experience, and that is speech recognition, all thanks to HTML 5!

Speech recognition is great. And so is HTML 5! It gives your blog a wider range of functionality. Now, instead of typing keywords and phrases in search boxes, all the users need to do is connect their microphones to their computers, and speak the words right into it! Sounds great, huh? Well let's see how you can do that.

What is the ideal Word Count limit For an Optimized Blog Post?

noreply@blogger.com (Qasim Zaib) — Fri, 11 May 2012 19:00:00 +0000

Nowadays, there are no constraints on digital media, as compared to the print media. There is no limit to the physical resources available, there is no cost for writing extra stuff, etc. Indeed, there is little limitation to what you can do to your content online. This liberty comes at a cost, however. For a lot of bloggers, especially new ones, the question as to "Where to stop?" can be challenging. You see, there are no clearly demarcated boundaries that dictate how long a blog post should be. You might be able to convey your message in 200 words, or you might need more than 2000 for the same purpose. So how long should your blog post be? In my opinion, it's more a matter of best practices than it is of predefined do-and-don't rules. So let's talk about how an ideal blog post should look like.

How to identify SEO Over Optimized blog or website?

noreply@blogger.com (Qasim Zaib) — Thu, 10 May 2012 19:00:00 +0000

If you were anywhere near this blog or other blogs about SEO and stuff these past few days, then you'll know what the fuss is all about with Google's updates. Google has been pretty active lately, what with the Penguin and Panda and 50 other minor updates. In essence, it has been going to great lengths to return good quality search results to users. Google is coming down, and coming down hard on "spam" websites that are over-optimized with respect to SEO. We've been hearing a lot about this "over-optimized" thing. So what exactly is SEO over-optimization? And how do you know when your site, or some other site is over-optimized?

When Will The Next Google Penguin Update Take Place?

noreply@blogger.com (Qasim Zaib) — Wed, 09 May 2012 19:00:00 +0000

Google has been quite active lately, introducing new algorithms and other minor updates. These updates dictate how well your website performs and how much traffic you get from the search engine. Now Google doesn't want webmasters finding a comfort zone for themselves, because if they do, they will trick Google and effect the quality of results returned on the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). To achieve this, Google introduces lots and lots of updates, both major and minor, to counter web-spam. So it might be kinda hard to keep up with them. But blogging is all about flowing along with the wave currents, or with the trends, if you will. So it is very important for webmasters to understand the nature of these updates.

How To Recover From Google Penguin Update Penalty?

noreply@blogger.com (Qasim Zaib) — Tue, 08 May 2012 19:00:00 +0000

Like the previous updates from Google, such as the Panda, the latest Penguin update has left much destruction in its wake. And since there's been just a few days since this update was released, people are all eyes and ears on this topic. Indeed, these algorithm updates from Google have become sort of like tsunamis for webmasters, which leave the ones close to the edge, devastated. Google Penguin was no exception. Although it wasn't the same magnitude as the Panda, it still caused widespread damage, and effected around 3% of websites.

Top 10 SEO Strategies To Protect your blog Against Google Panda Update

noreply@blogger.com (Qasim Zaib) — Mon, 07 May 2012 19:01:00 +0000

With the recent release of the Google Penguin, the talk is all about Google's algorithm updates and how they effect websites. Yesterday, I wrote about what these updates are all about. And as promised, I am here to share some tips for recovering from the Google Panda update. Google Panda was the first radical change in the search model since many years. And basically, it was aimed at getting rid of low quality websites and bringing higher quality websites in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). Many bloggers saw a drop in their traffic, drastic in some cases, while some also benefited from this update. The impact was negative by far, and this update effected 12% of the total websites when it was first released.

With this update, we can say that Google raised the quality bar for many bloggers. Now, much more was expected from them. Good quality and basic level SEO became mandatory for keeping up in accordance to the wishes of Google.

Google Penguin and Google Panda Penalty - What's That?

noreply@blogger.com (Qasim Zaib) — Sun, 06 May 2012 19:01:00 +0000

As we all know, Google is a pioneer, and the world leader in internet search. It owns around 2/3rd (66%) of the shares in the industry at the time of this writing, making it bigger than any other internet company. It has been around for quite some time now, and has been updating its search functionality regularly. Since the past few years though, we have seen some radical changes in its search model. For example, it was only last year that the dreaded Panda update was unleashed onto the world! And these days, everyone is talking about the new Penguin update that rolled out just a few days back. Head of Google's web-spam team, Matt Cutts tweeted a picture of a stuffed penguin along with a stuffed panda. How cute :). Or is it?

10 Best Strategies To write Quality Content To Increase Traffic

noreply@blogger.com (Qasim Zaib) — Sat, 05 May 2012 19:01:00 +0000

People are always going on about how SEO is important for their rankings, how marketing will popularize their blog, and how important updating your content with regular postings is. But if there's anything that has the most say in how successful and viral your posts will get, it's your written word. Contrary to spoken communication, writing depends solely upon the quality of words, the expressions, and the writing style, rather than your tone, your body language, and your facial expressions which are visible only in spoken communications.

Google PageRank Update May 2012!

noreply@blogger.com (Qasim Zaib) — Fri, 04 May 2012 19:01:00 +0000

Google's latest PageRank Update May 3rd 2012, which has just been rolled out, has given bloggers all over the internet something to say and think about. For some, it came as a pleasant surprise, as their PR increased, while others were shocked to see their PR drop as a result of this update. Indeed, we weren't expecting an update until June, but PR is updated every 3-4 months, so it didn't totally come put of the blue. It was just a minor update, as Google has already been implementing changes in the last few months. Amid high anticipation among bloggers, this update benefited more blogs than it harmed.

After this update, PR for MBT remains the same. But there is good news! The PR for our sister blog Smart Earning Methods jumped directly to 2 from 0! So as a treat for our readership at SEM, we have opened up guest posting on SEM, and we have already received some guest posts! You can submit one too now!

Create Your Online Shopping Store In Seconds - Start Selling!

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Mustafa Ahmedzai) — Thu, 03 May 2012 19:08:00 +0000

Though I am having exams but I just could not resist sharing one of the best software tools for developing an ecommerce site. It took me months to learn php, years to practice design skills but despite all these skills, I badly failed in developing an online store where I could sell logos, buttons and icons that I often design during leisure time. After the successful launch of our second blog we look forward to sell our merchandise online by building an online shopping store where people could buy our design resources online with a click of a mouse. I was looking for a highly secured, reliable, easily customized and affordable online store management software tool and fortunately just last week I came across IzzoNet - E-Commerce Website that has now dramatically over excited me with the new creative idea of selling logos online.

How To Design and Create INFOGRAPHICS Yourself?

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammad Mustafa Ahmedzai) — Wed, 02 May 2012 19:01:00 +0000

We have shared an introduction to info-graphics sometime back. Today, we will have a better understanding about creating an info-graphics; answering queries like why is it difficult? What makes an info-graphic? What are the popular and professional tools available and what do people say about it. Are you ready for this mix plate? What are we waiting then? Follow up

Announcement For Willing Guest Authors

noreply@blogger.com (Qasim Zaib) — Tue, 01 May 2012 19:07:00 +0000

Guest posting is one of the surest way of increasing you chances of online success. First of all, guest posting can boost your website traffic. It gives you the opportunity to interact with new people, gain follower ship, and get a backlink out of it! Posting at a blog more popular than your own can bring you immense benefits. A fellow guest author has written about his experience about guest posting at MBT. He, and countless more have benefited from the practice.

Note: This offer is only for our loyal readers. Link builders stay away!