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Google owned Blogger has become an important tool for web publishing. Blogger is easy to learn, customize and is being preferred as a free alternative to professional blogging platforms like WordPress. Blogger users don’t need to care about the hosting configuration, subscription charges and other associated problems. However, any blogger user has only the option […]
Read More How to add a forum in Blogger blogspot blogs
How to add a forum in Blogger blogspot blogs
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There is a bunch of reasons why you are losing your readers. So, I?€™ll say up front that this articles is entirely based on my own experiences and what I’ve learned so far from blogging for almost a year. This is a list of some reasons why your readers never come back.
This is the first thing strongly make your readers dislike your blog or website. Your content is what drives users to your site, and what differentiates your site from the next guy. If you didn’t have content, you wouldn’t make money off of ads. Focus on your content first to build a great subscriber-ship, then think about how to make money from your content. After 6 months of using Google Adsense to make some tiny money from my blog, I decided to remove all the ugly banners of Google Adsense to refresh the air(I will place them again, but in the future). The rule is don’t just place your ads anywhere, make them look like content.
Nice read: → When Should You Put Ads On Your Blog? – This is how $40,000/month blogger makes money from his blog.
This happened to me before I move to another hosting provider. I used a very cheap hosting which I paid a year just compared to this one of 3 months. Remember, your readers don’t like 1 minutes loading to read just a quicktip post. Make sure you stay away from super-cheap hosting and optimize your website’s speed.
Here is some good tips: → WordPress Optimization: How I Reduced Page Load Time by 75%.
Another good way to ruin your blog is publishing posts which already published before or elsewhere. Google and other search engines definitely also get involved when your content found is largely the same as some content in your blogs or other websites. If you want to gain traffic and readership, try to be unique. In case you don?€™t have the resources to write and publish on your own blog, or your budget isn’t allow you to hire someone to write, the easiest way is → Stop Launching Blogs, Start Contributing. It would be great if you can write quality content day-to-day, otherwise great quality articles sometime are better than having a lot of filler articles.
Read this before start blogging: → Four Common Steps Every New Blogger Would Face When Starting A Blog.
Tips to be unique: → 7 Tips for Creating Unique Content That Doesn?€™t Suck.
Helpful article for blog content development: → 10 Ways To Find Inspiration To Develop Content For Your Blog.
Beware of content submitted from contributors when your blog has multi-authors. You should make sure to edit all the posts submitted carefully. I personally made a same mistake twice by publishing contributed posts without reviewing it carefully and I got warning from the original author immediately. If you are the only one who maintains your blog, don’t ever think about copying the whole content from other blogs. However, it doesn’t mean you cannot do ethically stealing. The rule is never copy and paste entire paragraphs from original article because it?€™s rude and wrong. I cannot find or don’t know if there is any penalty for content infringement; Thus, it is free when it’s on the Internet??? If you have any idea about this, the comment section is open for discussion.
Worth reading: → How To Steal Blog Content: Ethically.
Giveaways is one of the most effective ways to gain more traffic and readers. It hooks visitors so that they return to your blog again and again. However, the giveaways makes your blog attractive only and only if those giveaways are from popular companies who offer good products or services. Don’t accept or just simply deny some of them which are not good great for your audiences. Don’t publish giveaways too frequently because you run blog to share your knowledge, not team up with some companies to give away things. Thus, people comes to your blog because they want to learn new things.
You should do give aways things because: → Hosting a Giveaway As a Blog Marketing Tool.
You should know: → How to Host Effective Blog Giveaways.
This is how you ruin your relationship with other bloggers. Marketing a blog takes time and patience. If they like what you are doing, they will promote you without your demand. Asking for favors all the time doesn’t harm anyone, but it’s a bothersome type of communication which people do hate.
Off-topic link but useful: → Building Relationships: 11 Rules for Self-Promotion.
You call yourself web design blogger, so that means you are talking about design stuff, and pretty much only design stuff… Don’t try to do something “new” by going off your niche into other things like proxy software, or other stuff. Most people in a niche market have a loyal following, because there aren’t often many other people covering that sort of stuff. (It happened to Woorkup recently. He went off with a lot of articles, news about some phone companies. Hope he will have more success with new Woorkup).
You cannot just write and publish. Beside the time you do blogging, spend some time to be active in community and social networks. Keeping trying to stay in touched with everyone to catch what people are talking about and join their conversations.
You should read: → How To: Be Active On Twitter Without Getting Burned Out!.
You blog/website needs at least a contact page for people to reach you. You can put your social ids over sidebar, footer, but don’t forget to implement one page for a contact form. This is typically the gateway to allow people to submit their questions, even suggestions to you. You need to keep your contact form really simple as you can, because they will close the page right after seeing a lot of required field. You better put your email beside the form in case one day, the form is broken. (Don’t write in email format, just like this: “magazine at aext dot net” – to avoid spam bots catching your email address.)
For a proper contact form: → <a href="http://www.smarte-commerce.com/5-important-steps-to-design-a-p
roper-contact-form/”>5 Important Steps to Design a Proper Contact Form
Contact form tips: → 10 Useful Tips for a Captivating Contact Form
Sometime, I don’t want to subscribe to a feed of a blog, but I really love to follow that blog in Twitter(or just be a fan on Facebook). However, where the hell is the Twitter link to its Twitter profile? I’m an Facebook addicted but I cannot find the fan page of this blog. That’s fine, I will subscribe to the feed and receive its updates via email, but … where can I put my email? (It happened to Smashing Magazine before they redesigned)
Make sure all of your Javascript is working properly because JS is so annoying to the readers when it doesn’t work properly. Slow loading, web browsers get crashed… are typically caused by javascript. I once went mad when I couldn’t click on the tabs list then my mouse got broken. Oh, that’s my own blog!
Links for Javascript developers: → List of Really Useful Free Tools For JavaScript Developers.
Good link: → Good Ways to Implement Javascript on your site.
If you speak in design terms to a non-designer, they will think you?€™re mad. Then, if you write about design stuff in “doctor” language, they’ll definitely think you are crazy. I’m not a writing expert, but my advice is you will need to have a good understanding of standard terminology in design. Let’s write easy to understand instead of making the readers get confused.
Check it out: → Art and Design Terminology.
These are how I’ve done blogging for almost a year. There’s a bunch of tricks and tips for a better blog I have learned, but these above are the most important things I would like to share. If you have any suggestions, please let us know in the comment section.
Related posts:
12 Ways You’re Scaring Away Your Readership
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We haven’t shared any freebie for our readers for a long time and it’s so weird when we have one category for Freebie section but there is nothing in there. This template is a PSD template in high-quality that maybe useful for you to design modern style for web hosting sites. Not sure if publishing post on during the weekend is a good idea but we hope you will get something interesting. More will come!
This template is free for any purpose, even sharing it on your own blog but don’t forget to credit back to this page.
What type of freebie are you looking? Feel free to drop your request in comment section.
Related posts:
Free High-Quality Layered PSD Modern Hosting Website Template
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One question I am asked often is how to create a sitemap, where posts are organized by category (label) and link directly to blog posts.
There are several ways this could be achieved, such as manually coding a sitemap, or using a service to generate the feeds for each individual label.
In this article, I’ll explain my favourite method for creating a sitemap/table of contents for Blogger blogs: using a modification of Google “Feed Control” to generate a sitemap automatically using the minimal amount of code.
Creating a sitemap using Google’s Feed Control is a relatively simple task. You need not know anything about JavaScript or HTML code in order to use this tutorial: so long as you’re able to copy and paste, this should be fairly easy to install!
The sitemap we will create will list all post titles from your blog, organized by their category/label on a post page. We can then link to this post page from elsewhere in the Blogger template, such as a link menu beneath the header, or a link list in the sidebar which details links to other important pages of your site.
Once complete, your sitemap will appear something like this, featuring the title of your label, followed by links to each post filed under this category:
You may also like to take a look at the sitemap I’ve created for Blogger Buster to see how this works in more detail.
Abu Farhan has created a very simple Table of Contents/Sitemap script for Blogger users which can be installed very quickly and easily.
This alternative script uses only two lines of code, and can easily be pasted into a post page (or even a sidebar widget if preferred). All we need to do is change the URL of our blog.
Once installed, this script automatically parses and displays each post under label headings and displays in alphabetical order. What’s more, the latest 10 posts from each category are highlighted with “New” so readers can easily notice the most recent posts.
Unlike my Google Feed Control script, this installation is not limited to 100 posts per category.
Be sure to take a look at this excellent script and installation instructions on Abu’s site as this is much easier to install and generated a very clean, organized sitemap with little effort.
Thank you for sharing your script, Abu!
There are four main steps to creating a dynamic sitemap with Google Feed Control:
Let’s look at each step in detail.
In order to use Google’s Feed Control, you’ll need to generate a unique API key for your blog.
This key will be unique to your particular blog, and may only be used on the domain you specify during sign-up. If you have multiple blogs and would like to install a sitemap on each blog, you’ll need to generate a new API key each time.
Your API key is provided free of charge, and enables you to utilize scripts which are hosted on Google servers (so we don’t need to upload and host these scripts elsewhere!).
So, first things first! Generate a Google AJAX API key for your site, and copy this long string to your clipboard (or your favourite text editor) for later use.
The next step to installing a sitemap is to paste the “template” on which your sitemap will be based into a post page.
Simply go to your Blogger dashboard and create a new post. Using the tabs at the top, switch over to the “Edit HTML” section of the post editor (if you do not usually use this function), then paste the following section of code into the content section:
? /**
?? * Suppress everything except for title
?? */
? #feedControl .gf-snippet,
? #feedControl .gf-author,
? #feedControl .gf-spacer,
? #feedControl .gf-relativePublishedDate {
??? display : none;
? }<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/jsapi?key=YOUR_API_KEY">
??? /*
??? *? How to use the Feed Control to grab, parse and display feeds.
??? */
???
??? google.load("feeds", "1");
???
??? function OnLoad() {
????? // Create a feed control
????? var feedControl = new google.feeds.FeedControl();
???
????? // Add blogger label feeds.
????? feedControl.addFeed("http://URL-OF-YOUR-LABEL-FEED?max-results=100", "TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL");
????? feedControl.addFeed("http://URL-OF-YOUR-LABEL-FEED?max-results=100", "TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL");
????? feedControl.addFeed("http://URL-OF-YOUR-LABEL-FEED?max-results=100", "TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL");
????? feedControl.addFeed("http://URL-OF-YOUR-LABEL-FEED?max-results=100", "TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL");
????? feedControl.addFeed("http://URL-OF-YOUR-LABEL-FEED?max-results=100", "TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL");
????? feedControl.addFeed("http://URL-OF-YOUR-LABEL-FEED?max-results=100", "TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL");
????? feedControl.addFeed("http://URL-OF-YOUR-LABEL-FEED?max-results=100", "TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL");
????? feedControl.addFeed("http://URL-OF-YOUR-LABEL-FEED?max-results=100", "TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL");
????? feedControl.addFeed("http://URL-OF-YOUR-LABEL-FEED?max-results=100", "TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL");
????? feedControl.addFeed("http://URL-OF-YOUR-LABEL-FEED?max-results=100", "TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL");
??? ?
????? feedControl.setNumEntries(-1);
???
????? // Draw it.
????? feedControl.draw(document.getElementById("content"));
??? }
???
??? google.setOnLoadCallback(OnLoad);
???Loading, please wait...
The section at the head of this code prevents the summary (usually printed by the Feed Control script) being displayed, so that only the linked title is displayed on the sitemap page.
You may notice I’ve also highlighted other sections in bold coloured text. These are the sections we need to edit for your particular blog, as outlined below.
In the code you have pasted in your post page, you need to replace “YOUR-API-KEY” with the unique API key you generated at the beginning of this tutorial.
It is easiest to have your API key copied to your clipboard; then highlight YOUR-API-KEY and key CTRL+V (or CMD+V) to paste the key instead of the phrase.
This step of the tutorial is a little more complex.
We need to paste the URLs of the label feeds we would like to use for the sitemap in place of YOUR-LABEL-FEED-URL, and replace TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL with an explanatory title for each relevant line of the Feed Control script.
Each line we need to edit looks like this in the script we have pasted into the post editor:
????? feedControl.addFeed("http://URL-OF-YOUR-LABEL-FEED?max-results=100", "TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL");
In total, I have used 10 lines (for 10 different labels) in the template script. If you require more, simply duplicate this line and add your label feed urls and titles as appropriate.
Similarly, lines may be deleted if you need to use less than 10 labels for your sitemap.
Your label feed URLs will be something like this:
http://your-blog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/-/LABEL-NAME
or
http://www.yourblog.com/feeds/posts/-/LABEL-NAME
where LABEL-NAME is the name of the label you are using in your blog.
We also need to include the variable “?max-results=100” at the end of the label feed URL to ensure the maximum 100 posts from each label will be displayed. Otherwise, only the first 25 posts will display in our sitemap.
For example, the URL I use to display all posts filed under the Gadgets label is
http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/-/Gadgets?max-results=100
If any of your labels include spaces, you must replace the spaces with %20 instead.
Here’s another example, using my Customize your Blogger Template label:
http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/-/Customize%20your%20Blogger%20Template
Finally, the URLs of your label feeds are case sensitive. If you use any capital letters in the names of your Blogger labels, you will need to match these in the label feed URLS.
The LABEL-NAME element of each line is where you need to type the name/title of the label feed. This aspect is not case sensitive, since it is not generated by your label feeds. If you like, you can use a title which is not the same as the label feed to offer a more explanatory title for your readers.
Here is how I have coded the sitemap for Blogger Buster:
? /**
?? * Suppress everything except for title
?? */
? #feedControl .gf-snippet,.gf-author,.gf-spacer,.gf-relativePublishedDate {
??? display : none;
? }
??? /*
??? *? How to use the Feed Control to grab, parse and display feeds.
??? */
???
??? google.load(“feeds”, “1”);
???
??? function OnLoad() {
????? // Create a feed control
????? var feedControl = new google.feeds.FeedControl();
???
????? // Add blogger label feeds.
????? feedControl.addFeed(“http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Customize%20your%20Blogger%20Template?max-results=100”, “Customize your Blogger Template”);
????? feedControl.addFeed(“http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Customize%20your%20Blogger%20Template?start-index=101&max-results=100”, “Customize your Blogger Template (Part 2)”);
????? feedControl.addFeed(“http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Blogger%20News%20and%20Issues?max-results=100”, “Blogger News and Issues”);
????? feedControl.addFeed(“http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Gadgets?max-results=100”, “Gadgets”);
????? feedControl.addFeed(“http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Free%20Blogger%20Templates?max-results=100”, “Free Blogger Templates”);
????? feedControl.addFeed(“http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Resources?max-results=100”, “Resources”);
????? feedControl.addFeed(“http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Custom%20Domains?max-results=100”, “Custom Domains”);
????? feedControl.addFeed(“http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Images%20Icons%20and%20Badges?max-results=100”, “Images and Icons”);
????? feedControl.addFeed(“http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Labels%20Categories%20and%20Tags?max-results=100”, “Labels, Categories and Tags”);
????? feedControl.addFeed(“http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Monetize%20Your%20Blog?max-results=100”, “Monetize Your Blog”);
????? feedControl.addFeed(“http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/RSS%20Feeds%20and%20Syndication?max-results=100”, “RSS Feeds and Syndication”);
????? feedControl.addFeed(“http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/SEO%20and%20Blog%20Traffic?max-results=100”, “SEO and Blog Traffic”);
????? feedControl.addFeed(“http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Blogger%20Template%20Resources?max-results=100”, “Template Resources”);
????? feedControl.addFeed(“http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Announcements?max-results=100”, “Blogger Buster Announcements”);
????? feedControl.setNumEntries(-1);
???
????? // Draw it.
????? feedControl.draw(document.getElementById(“content”));
??? }
???
??? google.setOnLoadCallback(OnLoad);
???
Loading, please wait…
Once you have finished adding the Label feed URLs and titles to your Sitemap post, you can publish your post and enjoy using your new Blogger sitemap!
Here are a few issues which you may encounter when installing your sitemap:
The sitemap takes ages to load!
This may happen if you use a large number of labels in your sitemap. Few label feeds will load quickly, while many will take a long time to load.
If this is of particular issue, try to reduce the number of labels/feeds in your sitemap.
The sitemap does not display!
If the sitemap does not load at all, this may be due to an error when pasting the initial template code, your API key or a label feed.
The best advice would be to begin the installation again, making sure you use the Edit HTML mode of your post editor and are careful not to accidentally delete any other elements of the code.
You should also take care not to switch to “Compose” mode while editing your sitemap as this sometimes makes involuntary changes to HTML code which could corrupt the sitemap script.
Certain Labels do not display any posts
This may happen in cases where the URL of your label feed is not quite correct, for example, the title is not capitalized, or spaces are not replaced with %20.
In this case, edit your template and check the URL of the offending label feed carefully for any involuntary errors. Make changes as appropriate, and save your template.
I have more than 100 posts filed under a particular label. How can I display all posts?
Google’s Feed Control can only be used to display up to 100 posts from a particular feed. In order to display more results, we need to add a new feed variable, in which the start index is 101.
In the Blogger Buster sitemap, for example, I need to display more than 100 posts for the Customize your Blogger Template category. In the line after the first 100 results for this category, I paste a new line where the start index of the feed is the 101st post, like this:
????? feedControl.addFeed(“http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Customize%20your%20Blogger%20Template?max-results=100”, “Customize your Blogger Template”);
????? feedControl.addFeed(“http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Customize%20your%20Blogger%20Template?start-index=101&max-results=100″, “Customize your Blogger Template (Part 2)“);
If your label includes more than 200 posts, you can add a third variable where the start index is 201, and so on.
It is possible to add extra content to your sitemap page, for example, a explanatory paragraph or links to other important pages of your template.
Ideally, you should add this content while editing your sitemap in Edit HTML mode. Be sure to add this content above or below your sitemap script to prevent any errors which would prevent the sitemap displaying properly.
If you would like to style elements of the sitemap, you can achieve this using CSS (either by adding to the section in the Sitemap script, or within the section of your Blogger template.
Here are the classes you can use for styling your sitemap:
I hope this tutorial offers a comprehensive guide to using Google’s Feed Control to create a dynamic updating sitemap for your Blogger blog! I understand this is not a simple “one click install” sitemap, though as this sitemap updates automatically each time we create a new post, I find this is the easiest, most flexible option to use.
I would love to know of any simpler installations for this sitemap, so if you have written one (or have discovered a tutorial), please feel free to let us know in the comments.
Download your copy of The Blogger Template Book
Your complete guide to choosing, installing and optimizing Blogger templates (PDF 114 pages)
How to Create a Sitemap with Google Feed Control
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Yet more treats for Blogger’s 10th birthday celebrations were released for us today!
An additional button in the Blogger Navbar now enables us to share our posts via Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader and by email:
When a reader clicks the “Share” link on your blog’s home page, they can opt to share the URL of your blog by Twitter, Facebook or Google Reader. On item pages, the pop-up box includes the additional option to share by email:
When readers share your blog and posts, additional parameters are added to the URL which helps you track the syndication of these posts using Google Analytics in the format “?spref=nn” where the nn part is changed to fb for Facebook, tw for Twitter or gr for Google Reader.
For example:
You can then search for URLs ending with these parameters when using Google Analytics to view details of how your posts have been shared.
Of course, this new feature is only available to those who have not chosen to hide the Blogger Navbar!
If your Blogger template does not display the Blogger Navbar and you would like to make it reappear in order to use this new feature, here is what you should do:
1. Go to Layout>Edit HTML in your Blogger dashboard.
2. Using your browser’s search function, locate the following section of code:
#navbar-iframe {
height:0px;
visibility:hidden;
display:none;
}
This should be located within the or section of your template.
Delete this section of code, then preview your template. If all is well, the Blogger Navbar will be visible again, enabling your readers to syndicate your posts with ease. Instructions to hide the Blogger Navbar can be found here.
I admire the determination of the Blogger team to roll out so many new features for this platform in just a few short weeks! The addition of this sharing feature will be useful for many bloggers, though those of us who choose to hide the navbar for aesthetic purposes will need to adopt other methods of sharing our posts.
What do you think of this latest birthday gift? Will you find this useful? Is this enough to persuade you to display the navbar again (if you have currently chosen to hide it)?
Please feel free to leave your comments and opinions below.
Download your copy of The Blogger Template Book
Your complete guide to choosing, installing and optimizing Blogger templates (PDF 114 pages)
Share Posts from the Blogger NavBar
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As I logged into Feedburner today, I realised Blogger Buster has reached an awesome milestone – we now have 10,000 RSS subscribers!
It doesn’t seem that long ago when I set my first target of achieving 500 daily readers, when Blogger Buster was in it’s infancy. How far this site has come since then!
So today I wanted to extend a great big THANK YOU to everyone who subscribes to this site! I’m awed that 10,000 of you enjoy reading my Blogger posts enough to read my updates in your feed readers and by email subscription. This truly makes my blogging ventures worthwhile 🙂
For those of you who may read on occasion, who have bookmarked Blogger Buster for future reference or have simply stumbled upon this post, why not join the other 10,000 subscribers and also receive regular updates on the latest Blogger tips, tricks and news? Just click the subscription button below and choose how you would like to subscribe – I promise it will take only a few moments of your time.
Once again, thank you all for subscribing to Blogger Buster, for leaving comments, sending news tips and templates, and for your engagement in improving the Blogger community!
Download your copy of The Blogger Template Book
Your complete guide to choosing, installing and optimizing Blogger templates (PDF 114 pages)
Thank You to my 10,000 RSS Subscribers
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Infograbbit is a premium resume template designed for those wishing to promote a simple yet stylish online presence:
Infograbbit is available to purchase from ThemeForest for $17 (or $15 for pre-paying members) and includes six colour variations for this theme.
This template is designed to be used primarily as a one-page portfolio site, making it a cost-effective and reliable solution for those wishing to develop a simple online presence to show off their skills.
It uses infographic-style presentation, including some exclusive Blogger gadgets and is very easy to customize to your individual requirements. Take a look at the live demonstration to see this template in action.
The home page features a unique anti-layout offering visual representations for your online resume including:
This template is coded in HTML5 with CSS3? enhancements for supporting browsers, and is compatible back to Internet Explorer 7 (it will display in IE6, but I no longer actively code for this archaic browser and cannot guarantee all effects will work).
I had initially designed this template in response to ThemeForest’s “Out of the Box” competition. My concept was to design a new spin on the traditional “resume” using interactive graphical elements. In choosing to design this for the Blogger platform, I hoped to ensure required customizations are easy to implement, and that users of this template can set up an online presence using Blogger’s free service at minimal cost.
Infograbbit is available to purchase through ThemeForest for $17 (with a $2 reduction for pre-payment). The download package includes all template files, images, gadget codes and documentation required to install and edit this theme.
I hope you enjoy using this theme as much as I have in designing it! Please feel free to offer your comments below.
Download your copy of The Blogger Template Book
Your complete guide to choosing, installing and optimizing Blogger templates (PDF 114 pages)
Infograbbit: New Premium Template
>
Aneesh of Blogger Widgets has developed a new “Related Posts” script for Blogger which displays thumbnails of images in addition to linked post titles:
In appearance, this Blogger “add-on” is similar to the LinkWithin script. Each section is highlighted in a complementary colour when the mouse hovers over it, and the entire section is clickable, leading to the URL of the “related post” displayed.
Unlike the LinkWithin script, this add-on links directly to the post page it references, and relies on Blogger’s label feeds to display posts of true relevance to the post on which it appears.
Aneesh’s script seems relatively easy to install. Furthermore, almost all aspects of this add-on may be customized including the style (by editing the CSS), the number of related posts to be displayed and the title of the section in which it is contained.
The image thumbnails displayed for each related post are generated from the thumbnail associated with the relevant post page. Therefore, only images which you have uploaded to each blog post (rather than referencing by URL) will be displayed. In instances where no image appears in the related post, a generic “No-Image” replacement will be be displayed instead.
Overall, I am very impressed by Aneesh’s related posts script – it is neat, easily customizable and as the JavaScript is hosted by Google Code this loads very quickly..
Be sure to visit this page on the Blogger Widgets site for full instructions of installation and customization methods to add this useful script to your own Blogger blogs.
Download your copy of The Blogger Template Book
Your complete guide to choosing, installing and optimizing Blogger templates (PDF 114 pages)
Related Posts with Thumbnails for Blogger – New Version by BloggerWidgets
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Those of you who have visited Blogger Buster over the past few weeks will have noticed gradual changes to the site, complete with a countdown timer to the date of relaunch.
Several weeks in the making (and still with a few tweaks to finalize), Blogger Buster’s new look is finally unveiled:
Although it seems some readers were rather fond of the old design, I felt it had become too cluttered and heavy in the context of information presentation. I wanted to clean up the overall visuals of the site, make it easy to navigate and reflect my own personality as a web designer.
As part of this redesign, I decided to re-brand Blogger Buster by incorporating a new logo and identity design by Switchcode (which will also be filtering through to my Twitter and Facebook pages):
Using conditional Blogger template tags, I’ve revamped the home page to offer better access to important areas of the site, and of course I now utilize Blogger’s native post-summary technique which is far preferable to my previous preferred method.
Being somewhat fanatical about CSS, I’ve also introduced some CSS3 techniques to enhance the overall visuals of the site in supporting browsers:
While best viewed in Chrome or Firefox 3.6+, these techniques are degradable to ensure this site can be viewed in all browsers. However, I no longer support IE6 in my designs (and neither do the Blogger team!).
If you are among the unfortunate few to still be using this archaic browser, please please please upgrade to a modern means of browsing the web! (And here are even more reasons to upgrade from IE6 in case my pleas hadn’t already convinced you.).
Though the Blogger team have added many new features during my hiatus, I’ve managed to stay up-to-date. While working on other web projects I have discovered loads of new techniques and Blogger template adaptations which I’ll be sharing with you all over the forthcoming weeks including:
Please feel free to let me know if there are any particular tutorials you’d like me to cover and I’ll do my best to write on the most popular suggestions.
After freelancing my web design skills for the past few months, I’ve decided to take the leap and offer my skills with Blogger and will be accepting requests for new projects in the next few weeks.
I’m currently updating my portfolio and working out the details but feel free to contact me if you’d like to know more.
I’d love to know what you think about Blogger Buster’s relaunch, so please feel free to leave your comments and suggestions below.
Download your copy of The Blogger Template Book
Your complete guide to choosing, installing and optimizing Blogger templates (PDF 114 pages)
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As many Blogger Buster readers have reported, the links to download my eBooks had become corrupted during my extended hiatus.
Today I have uploaded both The Blogger Template Book and The Cheats’ Guide to Customizing Blogger templates to Google Documents, a relocation I hope will prove far more reliable than my previous hosting solution!
I’ve updated the download links for these eBooks and hope everyone can now read and download these resources without any problems.
It’s been a long time since these eBooks were released, so here’s a quick overview of both offerings for new readers and those who may have missed the documentation upon their initial releases:
Choosing and using a new template for your Blogger powered blog can be
quite a daunting task. What is the best method for installation? How can
you choose the design and layout most suitable for your blog?
The Blogger Template Book is a free complete guide to Blogger templates,
from choosing the best layout and design to suit your content, to
foolproof installation methods and optimization.
Download The Blogger Template Book (PDF, 114 pages)
Originally published back in January 2008, this eBook will offer you
many options and examples to customize your existing Blogger template
quickly and easily, whichever style of
template you are using!
Admittedly some of the techniques described in this eBook are outdated in lieu of Blogger’s new Template Designer, though I hope many will still find this useful for learning the basics of Blogger template customization.
Download The Cheats’ Guide to Customizing Blogger Templates (PDF, 53 pages)
I’m currently working on a new premium eBook for Blogger users which I hope to release in the summer.
The Blogger Book will provide a comprehensive guide to using Blogger’s publishing service: from initial creation through to designing custom-made templates and hosting an entire website on Blogspot, this guide will help you learn tips and techniques for developing a truly amazing Blogger-based site.
Stay tuned by subscribing to the RSS feed or the new email newsletter and you’ll receive updates (plus sneak previews) of the forthcoming book in addition to our regular content.
Download your copy of The Blogger Template Book
Your complete guide to choosing, installing and optimizing Blogger templates (PDF 114 pages)
Blogger Buster eBooks – Updated Links
Uthman Ali 