Hacks n Tips for Bloggers

Add Google Translator widget to your Blog

Written by Basis-Consultant on 3:40 PM

Google is providing Google translator widget to translate your web page from English or your website's language to 24 other languages. This is one of the interesting tool i have been searching for months. If your visitors selects on of the language from the drop down list your blog will be translated into that language by Google translator. Well is it any useful? It can be if the visitor don't know how to read English. You will be providing him/her an option to read your blog in their native language. I prefer this widget since it is simple and don't occupy much space.


Here is a snapshot of my blog translated into deutsch



To get this widget goto http://translate.google.com/translate_tools?hl=en
select the language of your blog and copy the code as shown in figure



Now paste the code in any HTML/Javascript Gadget or add a new HTML/JavaScript gadget/element to your blog.
Here is a tutorial how to add javascript/html gadget to your blog.

Social Bookmarking Button providers

Written by Basis-Consultant on 9:54 PM

There are many social bookmarking button providers. These buttons are used to bookmark sites or web pages in many popular social bookmarking websites. Addthis, sharethis and AddtoAny are most popular among them.

Addthis provides simple social bookmarking widgets



Addthis provides two type of widgets one is plain HTML button which popups a window with list of social bookmarking websites like this



All popular social bookmarking websites are listed in the window. They also provide a JavaScript button which un-clutters on hovering showing all major and more frequently used sites.



Click here on how to add addthis button to your blog.

Addthis buttons are simple and loads faster. They also provide statistics of pages that are bookmarked. Blogs on blogger.com usually use addthis buttons.

ShareThis
They provide a variety of services. Their buttons usually load slow ( i have seen many bloggers complaining about that).
Two types of buttons are provided by them. One is standard and other is rotating icon button. This button has options to bookmark, send through mail and post your webpage to various services.

First Register at sharethis.com then goto http://www.sharethis.com/getbutton and you will goto this page...


Select your platform to add the button. You can use code for other websites n you will be redirected to other page. Share this is highly customizable. You change the color of tabs, length and width of button along with the sites that appear for bookmarking. After customizing your widget click on get sharethis code button and you will get a javascript code to add to your blog.


Share this button is highly customizable and gives a lot of options to your visitors but it is reported that it slow downs you website speed. Try it first and if does slow down then switch to addthis button.

Add to Any
There is one more provider that provides social bookmarking buttons. Add to any has one feature like search for service you have to bookmark. It is same as addthis button also has options for bookmarking and email the page link.


They also provide button to allow visitors to subscribe to your rss feeds in client of their choice like google reader or netvibes or bloglines etc..


Any way these social bookmarking /subscription buttons make easy for visitors to bookmark of subscribe to the blog they like

Where to host your files?

Written by Basis-Consultant on 7:40 PM

Bloggers do make tutorials and text documents for viral marketing or promotion of blogs. Some of them make blogger templates or wordpress templates. They find problem in storing files. Blogger do not provide a way to store files.

To share files like tutorials of books on your blog you need to upload your files to a server which provides bandwidth and disk space. There very large no of free file hosting websites that provide your free space and bandwidth to store and share files. But most of them are ad financed.



Mediafire is on of them and provides best service in the industry.
Here are some of the features they provide on their free account.

• Unlimited storage
• Up to 100MB per file
• Unlimited uploads
• Unlimited downloads
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Image galleries

Even though Sign up is not required, it is recommended as you will have more powerful interface to manage your files.
Here is a picture how your files look in mediafire account.


You can created folders, organize files by moving them in to relevant folders, email links of all files at a time, tag items/folders according to category, add description to each and every file.

Click on My Account Tab and you can see total space occupied by files and bandwidth they have used till now.

Downloading from mediafire is a nice experience for your visitors. Ofcourse it is ad financed, but they don't have to wait or enter any captcha to download files. I have been using mediafire for long time now and i recommend all bloggers to use it.

How to create additional Pages in Blogger

Written by Basis-Consultant on 1:30 AM

How to you create additional posts which are not indexed or not shown to your regular readers. These are useful in using for making a contact me page.


1)Click on create, enter the name of you blog post and click post options as shown in figure.
2)Change the year (last two numbers highlighted) in date a shown in the figure.



and publish it now. You can also use this pages to create about us,disclaimer or privacy policy pages.

Be wary of what you say

Written by Basis-Consultant on 1:14 AM

Watch about what you read & confirm before you admit it. Here is a good joke that shows how people mis-communicate if you don't confirm what you have heard. It is also important that you write blog posts properly if you are making them after researching on web. Be careful of what you say on your blog post or your might end up as below

Choose a short Blog Title

Written by Basis-Consultant on 11:33 PM

I have search for one my blog in Google to test whether it is indexed or not. But, unfortunately I saw only the main page indexed and rest of the pages are omitted as supplementary results which you have to click show omitted results to be displayed. I have researched about and found out that my blog's name is too long and all of my post's title starts with my blog name and continued by the post's title. This can be devastating results in bringing Google's traffic. I have modified the blog to display the post's title first and then the blog's title which has increased the search results from Google. So always remember to choose a short title for your blog. But if you want to choose a long title for your blog i suggest you first apply the hack Swapping blog's title with post title. After applying this hack fill your post title with good keyword that bring Google traffic for that post.

Use Google Analytics for detailed Statistics Analysis

Written by Basis-Consultant on 11:09 PM

I have installed google analytics on my blog and i am impressed by the data it provides. It is not a real time statistics provider. Your website stats are updated every 24 hours. It collects upto 5 million page views per month. I have been messing with statcounter but i think one must try google anlytics first. It gives a lot of information like depth, keywords, referrers to a single webpage level. Very deep stats are given which are not provided in other website counters. You can even connect your adwords campaign with google analytics. It also displays the no of clicks on each of links. It provides many useful stats like keywords with which visitors found your website and the

Referrers page like

This give me info that for my linuxtuts.blogspot.com come from tuxmachines.

Browser statistics.
As you can see many of my visitors use firefox and so i have to check my blog/website compatiable with firefox and other major browsers.



Operating Systems of visitors that visit my webs.

This is the list of operating system of users who visit my websites.
These stats are very useful. I have written a post on what these statistics provide you and how they are helpful. Just don't get suckered in those website counters which provide realtime stats. Although google analytics updates you websites which once in 24 hours it provides very deep analytical stats like with which keywords visitors found one of your webpage and time spent on that webpage. Google analytics is very useful for long term analysis and i recommend all webmasters use it.

Add a Contact Me page

Written by Basis-Consultant on 12:43 AM

You have to provide a way for visitors to contact you. This can be achieved by creating a page making it dated back to before pages. Just write in this post to comment if you want to contact you. But on one of my website i have observed that most of the visitors like contact form to contact. They might post a comment in most cases but providing privacy for visitors of blog is important. I highly recommend using contact form from Kontactr. They have word verification to prevent spam. But the konactr form for contact produces large space when you post it in a blog as shown in figure.


To remove the above space introduced, copy the code from kontactr form and paste it in a note pad. Now remove all the carriage return or newline from the end of each line. All the code must be in a single line. Now paste the code in blogger and above bank space will be removed. Contact Me forms are easy to use. Kontactr also provides a popup contact form which i have explained how to add in your blog in this post .

Turn on Word verification to prevent comment spam

Written by Basis-Consultant on 11:07 PM

The no follow tags in the comments section are not that efficient in preventing comment spam. You prevent comment spam by enabling word verification for comments. This verifies whether the visitors are humans or spam bots. To enable word verification for comments go to settings-> comments and scroll down until you see a field like show "word verification for comments" and enable.



When visitors comments they will see a word verification like this before their comments are submitted.




Enabling this option is a good way to prevent many unwanted comments.

Maximum No of Post on Blogger

Written by Basis-Consultant on 10:41 PM

I have been moving one of my blogs from other platform to blogger and i was posting very fast after 50 post i was asked for word verification.This is one of the feature that prevents spam blogs. So you can only post 50 post in 24 hours and it will be reset only after 24 hours. You have to enter the word verification if you need to post more.. You have to enter this word verification if your blog is marked as spam. To remove the blog flag as spam you have to contact blogger's team. Click on learn more part shown in the figure and you can send a message to blogger to whitelist your blog (if it is flagged as spam).

If you have very high posting rate then you have to enter the word verification regardless whether your blog is white listed or not.

Linking to others website from your posts

Written by Basis-Consultant on 12:24 AM

If you found a good article or a reference and want to refer in your post you can link to it using < a href > tag like this

< a href="http://www.google.com" > Google </ a>

Google

But above format of hyperlinking opens the webpages in the same window as current page. It will result in visitor to navigate away from your blog.

You can make the link open in a new window using target = "_blank" in the a href tag like this

< a href="http://www.google.com" target="_blank"> Google </ a>

Example
Google

By this way you will not loose visitors due to redirection.



You can also use a href and a name tags to navigate or move int the same webpage
visit this post to know how to navigate or goto specific section within a page

How to make popular pages widget?

Written by Basis-Consultant on 11:24 PM

The popular widget will display the killer posts on your blog. How is this determined? There are some who just display their popular post just based on no of comments but the posts with large no of comments might not be the popular posts.

This widget is just a link list widget based on your traffic results. If you are using statcounter as your site analyzer goto stats and click on popular pages and pick up the first five or ten popular posts and make a link list widget. Visit this page to learn how to make a link list widget . You have to do it manually. Update the widget once in a month. By the way getclicky provides you with various widgets you can display popular posts and visitor map. Ofcourse you have to install its site counter.

How to navigate withing a page using Anchor tags

Written by Basis-Consultant on 11:03 PM

Suppose you have a long article divided into parts. Now if the visitor wants to see that part then he have to scroll down all the way to that part. But you can help visitor to navigate to different parts of the webpage using anchor tags.

For example visit this webpage A tutorial on wget.

If you click on Download all pdfs link it will goto the end of the page where there is a heading called Download All PDFs .

How do you do this?

First choose the heading where you want to navigate or goto in the page when the link is clicked.

Suppose the text to which you want to navigate is Dowload All PDFs in that web page then insert the following code instead of that heading.

enter the name of the anchor your want for that heading (in this example the anchor tag is dnlpdf)
<a name="dnlpdf">Dowload All PDFs</a>

Now if you want to link to this text from any where in this page just enter

<a href="#dnlpdf">The text which you want to point to download all pdfs</a>

If you click on above text then you will got to the place in webpage where there is Download all pdfs heading.

Click on below links and you will return to the top of that page.

Return to top

Where to upload pics if your blogger account is full?

Written by Basis-Consultant on 12:21 AM

There are many good pic hosting websites like photobucket and imageshack which host your files for free and provide a lot of bandwidth.
Photobucket gives you 1gb of space and 25GB of bandwidth.
Of all services i have used photbucket is reliable.

Imageshack is another good hosting service.
They allow 300Mb of bandwidth per image per hour. Thats a lot.
But some times images might not load properly.

If One of your photo bucket account's bandwidth is full you can create and use another. That's easy anyway.

I recommend using .gif pictures instead of .jpg . GIF images are lot smaller than JPG/JPEG pics and your blog will load faster if use gif images.
Also mention the size of the images in the <img > tag. This will help the browser to arrange the webpage fast and so your blog will load faster.

Links List Gadget / widget

Written by Basis-Consultant on 9:27 PM

This gadget is used to display links to a collection of your favorite sites, blogs or web pages.



Visit your blog's layout and click on add a gadget link and you will see a window with gadgets or widgets. Now scroll down and you will find the link list gadget as show above. Click on + sign and you can customize the widget now...



You can enter the title for you gadget like Cool Blogs or My fav Blogs etc.
Set the no of links to be diplayed (leave blank if you want to show all of them)
Now Choose the option to by which the links to be sorted like alphabetically or reverse alphabetically. Enter the Name for the Blog and its url in the fields given below. The beauty of this widget is it makes link managements very very easy. You can add or delete links on fly. See the below figure of my cool blogs gadget..



You can change the Name & url for each link and reorder them very easily. You can delete the links that are dead. If you use the old plain html code it will be hard for you to reorder the links and remove them (esp if the list is too large).

The key board shortcuts for posting?

Written by Basis-Consultant on 12:50 PM

As you know using mouse to post consume time. You have to use mouse to scroll up & down and click on buttons to format text. Keyboard shortcuts make your life easy and you can edit of format your articles fast.
There are some handy keyboard shortcuts supported by blogger in compose mode.

They definitely work in Internet Explorer 5.5+/Windows and the Mozilla family (1.6+ and Firefox 0.9+), and might work in other browsers. Here they are:

• control + b = Bold
• control + i = Italic
• control + l = Blockquote (when in HTML-mode only)
• control + z = Undo
• control + y = Redo
• control + shift + a = Link
• control + shift + p = Preview
• control + d = Save as Draft
• control + p = Publish Post
• control + s = Autosave and keep editing
• control + g = Indic transliteration

Source help.blogger.com

How to backup your blog

Written by Basis-Consultant on 9:04 PM

There are some ways to back up your blog like

use blog collector
You can convert your blog pages into pdf files.

HTTRACK
Use this program to download all blog post from blogger. This program is used to download websites.

Blog Send Address
Send all of your post to email.
Go to settings and click on email in your blog's control panel and you will see a field named
BlogSend Address, enter the email to which your post to be sent when published.
This one good option but i recommend you to create a separate email account so that all of your blog posts will be in another email that is not personal.

Use Draft.blogger.com
The next option is to export your blog from draft.blogger.com
yup
they are providing the features. All of your blog including settings is imported in a xml file for you to store in a safe place and restore it when you lost any of your blog or any unforeseen incident.

Login at draft.blogger.com

Go to settings -> basic in your blogger settings and you will see blog tools
Just click on export and your blog will be exported in blog atom format.


even your comments are saved. You can also import the blog by clicking on import & importing from .xml file.
I recommend you to back up blog atleast once a week or month (if you are lazy).

How to Schedule Future Posts in blogger

Written by Basis-Consultant on 8:28 PM

Blogger allows you to schedule post to be published at a future date and time.
To set post to be published at a future date
click on post options as shown in figure and you will see options to set time when the posts are published. Just change the date and time as shown in the figure below.


You can disallow visitors to comment on the post. Now click on publish button and you will see your post scheduled to be published
.

How to display scrolling texts in blog.

Written by Basis-Consultant on 5:46 PM

If you need to display scrolling texts in your blog use <marquee> tag.
Here are some properties you can use for marquee tag

Simple Scrolling Text

<marquee> Simple scrolling Text</marquee>

Simple scrolling Text

You can limit the width in which the text can scroll like

<marquee width=200 > Simple scrolling Text</marquee>

Limit width = 200 pixel

you can even limit height also use height = 50 etc..

you can even fill the background color.

<marquee bgcolor=yellow > Simple scrolling Text</marquee>

Scrolling text with yellow background

You can sytle the text inside the marque tags and insert images like

<marquee> Google Logo <img src="http://img373.imageshack.us/img373/2590/earthday08ww6.gif"> </marquee>

Google Logo

Any way don't rely on them too much as they might distract your visitors.

Swaping Blog's Name with Page's Title

Written by Basis-Consultant on 10:33 PM

You have observed that in many blogs the Blog Name appears before the Page's Title like

Hacks n Tips for Bloggers: Categories or Labels
| | | |
`------Blog Title--------- `-------Page Title/



This Format is not good for search engine optimization. If your blog's Title is especially large all of your blog pages appears to have the same title.
There is a hack to swap you page's title with blog's title.
Go to your blog's template ---> edit html & click on expand widget templates.
Now seach for

<title><data:blog.title/></title>

and replace above code with

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
<title><data:blog.pageName/> - <data:blog.title/></title>
<b:else/>
<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>
</b:if>

Here is the result after applying above hack

Now fill you post title with lot of keywords. This will help you pages to show up in relevant search results in high position.

How to insert google ads between posts

Written by Basis-Consultant on 8:23 PM

Blogger provides option to insert google adsense ads between posts.
They don't earn much anyway.
I am just adding this for information as they might be profitable for you.

Here are the steps you need to follow

1. Log into your Blogger at http://www.blogger.com .
   
2. Goto your blog's Template tab and click on the Page Elements link.
   
3. Click Edit in the Blog Posts section.

4.Click on the Show Ads Between Posts, you can choose the ad format and the frequency the ads appears like after every 1 or every 2 posts and customize the colors & save it.



Here is a video Tutorial

Online Videos by Veoh.com

How to show a message for visitors before they comment

Written by Basis-Consultant on 11:37 PM

Some of you might have observed in some blogs the authors write a message in the comment form not to spam or just post because of back link value. Most of the bloggers user this to prevent spam and give any instructions to the commentators on their blog (or warn not to spam) or just sya a thank you for commenting on their blog.
Here is how you display a message in the comment form.
go to settings ---> comments and scroll down for Comment Form Message
Now type your message here. When ever a visitor opens the comment form they view the message you have typed as shown in figure.
See the message encircled in red area

How to parse Adbrite Code for Blogger

Written by Basis-Consultant on 10:17 PM

How to change adbrite code to embed in a blog on blogspot.com
To parse adbrite code to embed it in blogger's post you have to replace

& with &amp;
< with &lt;
> with &gt;
" with &quot;

But its becomes problematic if you start replacing < , > or " before replacing &
You first replace & with &amp;
then start replacing others.

Use notepad to replace them
open notepad paste your adbrite code in notepad and press ctrl+h



click on replace all and all of & will be replaced by &amp;
Now start replacing others and your adbrite code will be ready to embed html of blogger template.

here is a video tutorial on how to replace the code

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Add Search Engine to earn more revenue

Written by Basis-Consultant on 8:46 PM

Adding Search Engine to your blog not only earns you more revenue but also enhances user experience. You can earn from the search results of google. Google has linked its adsense with google custom search. Google CSE provides many options and gives more flexibility than the default search provided in google adsense search. It has highly customizable look & feel. You can refine and crawl into the links attached in that website partially or fully. You can even embed the search results in you own blog or host them on a page on google. You can search only website you find useful and omit all other websites in web or emphasize on websites you have mentioned. You can even add your own logo to the search engine. It is a fully customizable. See the post below about how to optimize search boxes for earning more revenue and enhancing visitor experience.

Inside AdSense: Optimizing your search box

How is your adsense revenue determined?

Written by Basis-Consultant on 8:00 AM

The targeted traffic concept rules indeed which depends on quality of your content.
Here is a post on google's Adsense blog about how Adsense and Adwords are related. Adwords is for webmasters who want to improve their business. Adsense is for who sell ads on their websites.

If you send more targeted traffic to your advertisers they will bid more to place ads on your blog/website and your adsense revenue will be more. If your website brings less targeted traffic adword bids on your blog/website will be low hence your adsense revenue will low. SImple to get more revenue through google adsense program try to build website with full of useful information which inturn brings targeted traffic.

Inside AdSense: Relating AdSense to AdWords

Be careful when posting Ads on Pages with Images

Written by Basis-Consultant on 10:06 PM

Here is a post on official google adsense blog mentioning how to place ads on a page where there are images. Violating google TOS is one of the way you can get your adsense account disabled. You can place images or post images in your blog but they should not look like they are related to ads or you should not line up images as if they are part of the ads. Below is an example of violation of TOS.
Note: Image is from Google's Blog

So be careful when posting images in your blog or webpage.

Ratings for blogger posts

Written by Basis-Consultant on 11:44 AM

Why do you need ratings?
Apart from comments ratings are also a type of feed back. They show the quality of your articles or blog posts. Blogger has provided they own rating system in draft.blogger.com . You can use the ratings of outbrain. They also provide step by step instructions how to install this ratings widget.
Here are the step by step instructions how to active ratings through blogger

1) Go to draft.blogger.com
2) Click on the particular blogs layout and click on edit option on posts page element



3) now you will see options to include in blog posting. Check the Show Star Ratings and save.




You will see the rations as shown in belowfigure



Its better to get feed back and let others know how popular your content is ...

How does you blog look in the eyes of google bot

Written by Basis-Consultant on 9:32 PM

Google bot is just another spider that crawls on your blog and indexes the pages and stores in its database. You have to see how your blog looks likes when indexed by Google. If your blog doesn't contain any readable information & links are just broken, Google bot ignores your pages. Content generated by JavaScript and embedded objects. So try to fill your blog post with keywords and relevant information. Below service simulates how the Google bot or any search engine spiders view your blog. Search Engine optimization is import to get your blog indexed and to be shown in SERP(Search Engine Result pages).

Search Engine Spider Simulator Enter URL to Spider

What is a blog?

Written by Basis-Consultant on 8:55 PM

Blog is just another site (well its true), but a blog is different and much more than a website. Blog is a type of content management system. Blogs are popular as resources for information. Blogger and Wordpress are one of the most popular blog applications. Ofcourse wordpress is the most popular among blog, there are lot and lots of beautiful blog templates for word press. Blog can of many types. Blog is a website that gets updates frequently. A new post always appears in the front page. Here is a video made by common craft about blogs.
You can start a blog at
Blogger
Wordpress
Blogs in Plain English

How to create a blog at Blogger

Written by Basis-Consultant on 1:20 AM

When is saw this video at you tube i was surprised that such a video to be created? Of course there are people who even don't know how to create a email account. Any way this video is official video from Google. This simply explains how to create a blog. There are people who don't know how to create a blog (my sis). She uses internet but she doesn't know what a blog is and how to create on (because she has no reason to create one). So does this video exists to show people how to create a blog with blogger.

How to add a gadget or html/javascript element to your blog

Written by Basis-Consultant on 1:01 AM

Gadget/widget is a html or javascript that add additional functionality to your blog.
Google provides many attractive and useful gadgets that makes your life as a blogger easy. Page element or gadget are one and same. There is a name change in the newer version of blogger. Here is a video explaining how to add a gadget or page element to your blog


Just go to layout and click on add gadget button and you will see a large no of gadgets appearing.. Click on + symbol and you will be able to configure and add the gadget

Adding Shout box or Chat Box to Blog

Written by Basis-Consultant on 7:15 PM

Shout box or chat box is one of the easiest and convenient way to communicate with your visitors. But your communication with visitors is public (visible to every one). So you have to be careful while interacting with them. Chat box are most popular on blogs related to entertainment industry or blogs related to comics or movies. There are two chat box service providers which attracted my attention. Shoutmix and cbox . The theme of cbox isn't that great but the functionality is good. Shout mix has very good look. You have to register to get code for your blog shout box and paste them in HTML/JavaScript Widget. Here are the screen shots of chat boxes

Shout Mix Chat box




Chat box of CBOX



You can moderate comments at cbox and shoutmix. But you have to enroll for premium service to reserve some users like webmaster etc.... You can also ban Ip's. In cbox the no of message limit is 100 messages.

Backup your template before modifying

Written by Basis-Consultant on 11:11 PM

Always remember to backup your blog's template before modifying. I always forget to do that. I messed up today with some scripts today and every thing was in jeopardy. Fortunately somewhere there is a backup of my template which saved my time. Else you will have to do all those customizations like adding widgets, changing backgrounds and adding adsense units in the blog posts etc.. which take a lot of time (may be more than 2 hours..)
How do we backup our template?


click on Download Full Template and save it.

You can restore the template by uploading the xml file which is downloaded in above process. To restore
Goto layout ---> edithtml
Upload the file downloaded in above process using the form which appears in that page.
Template backup is very important and can save you lot of time.

Ucomment Ifollow is only for Beginners ?

Written by Basis-Consultant on 2:22 PM

As i have explained the ucomment ifollow movement which give back link value for comments. But is not fruitful. The way bloggers give back link value to comments it attracts a lot of spam. It just that the whole Ifollow movement is for beginners to attract attention or to receive feedback. Once your blog is large enough you have to enable nofollow tag to prevent spam and those who comment only to get back link value adding no value to discussion. Here is one of the popular blog Jackbook's comment form with warning not to comment only for back links....