BeginnersBlogGuide

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Add Wibiya Toolbar To Your Blog.

This post is all about adding the Wibiya toolbar to your blog. This toolbar floats at the bottom of the page and has a lot features like language translation, facebook fan page, recent posts, blog search etc. Adding this to your blog can significantly improve user experience of your blog. Wibiya toolbar is very light-weight and can be added to any blog or site just by embedding a small piece of code. In this post, I will show how to add it to your Blogger blog. Although this can be added to any blog or site using the same procedure. So, go ahead and have a look.

To add the Wibiya toolbar, you have to first submit a request at Wibiya website. Its still in its beta stages. Go to Wibiya site and click on "Get it Now".

A page opens up where you need to give your name, email-address and your site url where you want the toolbar to appear.

After you fill this form, it takes around 3-4 days for approval. Once approved you will get an e-mail notification along with the beta code. You have to login with e-mail as your username and the beta code as your password. Once you login for first time, you can change your password. When you login for the first time, you have to create your account, select a theme for the toolbar, add applications to your toolbar and finally get the code and add it to your blog or site. All these steps are quite self explanatory. Below are few screen shots. Just in case you are confused, have a look at it.

Create your account.

Select the toolbar color.

You can directly add the toolbar code to your blog. Just select the blogging platform and click "Done". Thats it, the toolbar will appear at the bottom of your blog.

Don't worry if you screw up things during configuring your account, you can always change it later. Just click on "Edit Toolbar" and you can add and remove applications.

Friday, August 14, 2009

Optimizing Your Blogger Title For Search Engine.

Search Engine like Google, Bing, Yahoo, MSN etc help drive traffic to your blogs or sites. Higher the search engine ranking, the more traffic you get and the more you earn. So, its very important for you to optimize your blog as much as possible for the search engine crawlers. Even if you do everything right, it won't guarantee you no. 1 spot in search engine rankings. But it will surely make your blog appear in the first couple of pages of search engine results. This post is just one of the many optimization techniques that will help you improve your search engine ranking.

All search engines first looks for the title and page link and then it looks for the content. To improve search engine ranking we need to optimize the title. This optimization is applicable to Blogger blogs. But ideally, this should work with other blogging platforms as well. By default the title is "Blog Name: Blog Post Title". It looks something like the the following:

For optimization, the "Blog Post Title" should come first and then the "Blog Name". It will look something like the following:

Take a backup of your template before making any changes to it. Go to Layout >> Edit HTML. Click on "Expand HTML Widget". Then search for the following line of code:

Replace the above line of code with the following line of code:

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "index"'>
<title><data:blog.title/></title>
<b:else/>
<title><data:blog.pageName/> | <data:blog.title/></title>
</b:if>

Click on "Save Template" and you are done.

Sunday, August 9, 2009

HTML Parser.

As the name suggests, this post is about HTML parser tool. You paste a code in the post and it gets executed and not displayed. How many times did it happen to you? In such situations you need to parse the HTML code. When you parse a HTML code, the > sign has to be replaced by > and < sign has to be replaced by <. This job becomes very tedious if the number of lines of code is very large. For this, I have found a new tool provided by BlogCrowds. Using this tool is very simple. Just copy and paste the HTML code here. Click "Parse" and BINGO!!! The parsed code appears before you. So guys, whenever you are required to parse a HTML piece of code don't struggle, just click here.

Monday, July 27, 2009

Add A 5-Star Rating Widget to Your Blog.

Hey guys, i have found a great widget to talk about. Do you really want your readers think about your post? Do want to enhance user experience? So that your writing skills get better and better. If you do, then this one is for you guys. Its a 5-star rating widget by outbrain. By adding this widget to your blog or site, you will not only get immediate feedback from your readers but also provide them similar useful contents. You can add this widget to Blogger, Drupal, WordPress, TypePad and to sites as well. Go ahead and have a look at the full post.

In this post I will show how to add it to Blogger. A similar procedure should be followed to add it to other blogging platforms and sites.

Go to outbrain homepage. Click on Blogger.

Choose the language and on "Get Widget Now".

This will open Blogger in a separate window. Login to your account and add the widget to your blog. It will by default add the widget to a particular spot in your blog. You can later copy paste the code anywhere you like on your blog. If you want the ability to track your audience then you have to register with outbrain. To register click on "Register Here".

Give the necessary information like username, password, email-id and select "yes- I want to install the outbrain widget and/or access my blog reports".

Select the blog url and blog platform and click "continue". It will open a new window and add the code to your blog. Thats it, done.

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Place A Signature In Your Blog Post.

Introducing a signature generator tool. Do you have a signature of yours at the end of each of your blog post. If not, take a look at this. It can generate signature of different colors and sizes. It also takes care of the inclination of signature. You can also animate your signature but that service comes with a price tag. Take a look on how to place a signature in your blog post.

Go to MyLiveSignature website. Register and login.

Select "My Sigs" tab and create your first signature.

Enter your name.

Select the font.

Select the font size.

Choose the color.

Select the signature slope.

Name your signature and click on "Finish".

If you want to animate your, signature click on the animate button. But that does not free of cost.

Click on "Use Sigs" tab and then select "Generate HTML code".

Click on "Generate a code for yout 'handwritten' signature".

Select the signature and click on "Generate Code".

Now copy the code.

Now you can place the code at the end of each post. In the post go to "Edit HTML" tab and place this code at the end of each post. If you are tired of doing this, can place the "Post Template" part. This code will then appear on every post. For this, go to Customize >> Settings >> Formatting. Scroll down and place the code in "Post Template" and save it. Make you write the post at the top and the code lies below. Otherwise, the signature will appear at the beginning of the post.

Regards,

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Add A "Recent Posts" Widget To Blogger.

This post is about adding a "Recent Posts" widget to your Blogger blog. Its pretty simple. You need not paste any code for this. The only thing is to burn your feed in FeedBurner. Note down your original feed url. You will need this to create the widget. Go, check it out.

Your feed url will look something like this.

http://YOUR_BLOG.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

Now login to your Blogger account. Go to Customize >> Add a Gadget and select "Feed" from the list.

Now type your original feed url under "Configure Feed" and press "Continue".

Here you can make changes to your widget. Give a title to your widget, "Recent Posts" or anyhting you would like to call it. You can also decide to add date and author name. You can decide the number of posts to be shown in the widget. It can show a maximum of 5 recent posts on the widget. Configure your widget and click save. Thats it. Job done.

Friday, July 10, 2009

Turn Your Readers Into Listeners.

Do you have a favorite blog which you listen to daily? Download it to your ipod, laptop, moblephones etc and listen to it. Not many i guess. Do you want to give the readers of your blog the same privilege I am talking about. If yes, then this one is for you. Odiogo is service which converts the text in your post to podcast. This turns you from a blogger to a podcaster and gives you an edge over other bloggers. It expands the reach of your content. Odiogo provides automatic podcast generation with near-human quality text to speech. The listen button can be deployed in Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, TeraPad etc in a minute. Want to hear a demo!!! Click on the listen button at the top of every post on my blog or suscribe to my podcast. The next few paragraphs will teach you how to add this to your blog. In this example, I am adding it to a Blogger blog. Well, i forget I gives a detailed download statics of your listeners. You can also earn money from embedded ads after your listenership reaches a significant level. All these and more at absolutely no cost. Check it out.

How It Works.

There are 3 types of servers that make it possible. The Odiogo Podcast Producer Server, the Odiogo Advertising and Billing Server and the Odiogo Storage Server. The Odiogo Podcast Producer Server produces high quality audio files from the textual post in a RSS feed. They monitor the feeds on a regularly and keeps track of new posts so that it can generate MP3s as we post new content. The Odiogo Podcast Producer Server are basically used for normalization, phonetization and speech sythesis. The Odiogo Advertising Server insert audio spots into the content while the Odiogo Billing Server calculates the revenue share among the parties. All the Odiogo-enabled RSS files are stored on the Odiogo Stirage Server.

How To Add It To Your Blog.

Its very simple indeed. Just go to Odiogo site. You will see two fields called "Your Blog or Feed URL" and "Your Email". Fill them and click "Go". Now a page opens up which has a "Add Odiogo Listen Button Widget" button. Click on it. Now you have to login to your Blogger account and add the Odiogo suscribe button to your blog. It will by default add it to the top of your blog. If you want to change, you can copy the code and place it in any other location in your blog. Now refresh your blog and you can see a listen button at the top of every post.

Monday, July 6, 2009

Add A Feedback Button To Your Blog.

This is about adding a feedback button to your Blogger blog. This can added to other blogging platforms like WordPress, TypePad etc as well. It will float at the right-hand side of the blog, little above the "Go To Top" button. But you can always customize the position of the button according to your taste and requirement. Anytime the visitor wants to give a feedback about your blog, he/she can just click on it and give you a feedback about your blog. Feedback is very important. It a is tool to improve your blog and your blogging skills. In almost all blogs you see something called "Contact Me". It looks pretty harmless but if it is used in the right way it can be very useful. Sometimes your readers may be too lazy to go to the "Contact Me" button. Most of the time it is at the top of the blog. It goes out of sight as the reader scrolls down. But this feedback button will always remain in sight. It leaves you with a better probability that the reader will give you a feedback. Your blog runs because of your readers and if they are not happy, they wont visit again. You may or may not listen to all of them (sometimes the feedbacks may not be constructive enough to be followed), but whenever a constructive comment or feedback is given, its for your own good to follow them. And whenever you do follow some of the feedbacks do leave a comment on the blog. This will make your reader comfortable when they know that their voice is heard. So, go ahead and add it.

To embed the Feedback button, do the following:

First place the Feedback button in photobucket, picasa or any other image file sharing service. Note down the direct link of the image. You will need it later. I have used photobucket for my blog. At the end of the post there are some button images. You may choose to use them or have button images of your own.

The content in blue should be replaced by your respective links. In href give the url of your "Contact Me" page. For title give any relevant for your Feedback button. For img src give the direct link of your button image that you had saved before. Now go to Blogger --> Layout --> Add A Gadget --> HTML/Java Script and the paste the above piece of code after the modification. Now can you see the Feedback button. Click that and verify whether it works or not. If it takes you to your "Contact Me" page and then its perfectly done. Treat yourself for a job well done.

Here are a few Feedback button images that you can put to use.