Image Resizer is a must for celebrity bloggers

Long ago, i had a celebrity blog where i was posting hundreds of images each week.Those were crazy times when i was concentrating madly on a celebrity blog – i want to show the blog here but since i totally fucked it up,i could not.Anyway that is not needed here.If you have a celebrity blog then the image resizer becomes a must since you could save lots of upload time and also save disk space in blogger.

 

So here is a resizer that does the job brilliantly.Since i am a AIR apps lover,i searched for such an app.Here it is:

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/marketplace/index.cfm?event=marketplace.offering&marketplaceid=1&offeringid=10740

 

And i suggest you use windows live writer since it has got a lot of cool features.If you have 10 or 15 blogs then this will become a necessity.But remember that if you use a blog editor then you will not be able to add jump breaks which has been the latest update from the blogger team.

If you know of any other cool tool that could be of any use to bloggers,lemme know.

stay cool

Contact form for Blogger blogs – blogspot widget

Do you know what sucks with giving your email address in the blog?You seem to get e-mails that look like shit.Ever since i added the e-mail address in this blog,i have been starting to get these shit e-mails which i have no idea how to get rid of.

Anyway,this is a lesson that you all need to know - never give your e-mail addresses in the blogs openly as e-mail harvesters are going to crawl and spam you to death.

What is the solution then?

Use the contact form given by the below web site.You just need to display the contact form and there is no need to display the e-mail address at all.

this is the service i am talking about:

http://visitorcontact.com/

it works for all blogs.You can either place the code just before the end of body tag [as suggested in the web site there] or you can place the code higher if you want the contact form to appear sooner.Use your own discretion for this.I have added a contact form here so that you can share some cool widgets with me and i may also add your guest posts.Feel free to send me a ‘hey’ message or a guest post.

Stay cool.

Blogger turns ten – List of most wanted Features in blogger

“Blogger” has turned ten – i know the effect of this platform on blogging and it has been phenomenal.I just hope that it gets better – but am really disappointed by lack of updates in blogger.

Here are some things that i really want to see in blogger:

=>way to add unique meta keyword and meta description elements to each page – most people say that search engines do not depend on these tags anymore.yes,i agree with that.But still,having a proper meta element helps a lot when very low competitive keywords matter.

=>commenting in thread form – just like digg.I see many blogger admins struggling hard to reply to comments.So this is something i want to see in the future,

These are the two updates i really want to see in the future.There have been certain updates recently – many gadgets have been added.But still i feel that these are useful only for people who want to spice up their blogs.What i want to see is REAL updates that are going to optimize the blog for search engines.We want the blogger to become as good as wordpress – hardest and next to impossible ,but still why not give it a try?

One thing that is slowly making blogger a real treat ….

Yes.Despite all these disappointments by the blogger team,certain things have impressed me.Wonder what?Recently,there have been many releases of blogger templates that match the awesomeness seen in WP templates.Hats off to people like bloggerstyles.com who has give a huge list of templates that are simply superb.

Here is a recommended source for blogger templates:

Best blogger templates

Best Widgets for Blogger blogs

Here are awesome widgets that can supplement the already existing the blogger widgets:

http://www.widgetbox.com/tag/blogs

My Favorite widgets among all these are:

http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/comments

and

http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/contact-us-xprt

It is better to use the contact form instead of giving out e-mails.Spammers are very intelligent in collecting e-mails through blogs.So better use these “contact us” widgets to mask your e-mail.Let me know other resources for widgets through comments.

Recording desktop screen with audio for bloggers – Blogging tool

I have always wondered how people give videos with good clarity along with audio for giving out tutorials for their readers.Here is a nice web tool for you to record the desktop screen along with audio.The best thing is that you could host the video in the same web service with which you recorded the video.

 

This is the service to record your desktop screen with audio :

http://goview.com/goldwyn/spring/play?method=indexPage

 

I came to know about this tool from Amit’s blog post here :

http://www.labnol.org/software/goview-screen-recording-software-review/7828/

Credit goes to Amit for informing about this service.

4 things in which you should concentrate less to improve your blog

1.Dont think of connecting with the bigger bloggers like problogger or shoemoney – you might be able to get connections to them but dont think that one day you will get a blogroll link in problogger blog or problogger would blog about your blog some day because he finds you too cool.It might happen [although very very hard] but you could have used the same time more effectively ;i say this because i find some of them doing so many long detailed comments regularly in some bigger sites – its good to express yourself but if you want anything in return for regular blog commenting and dont get it , it will be more frustrating .

 

2.Dont be always aiming for getting lots of RSS readers – they are important – but not much.The only thing you must aim for is keywords and getting rankings for them in  Google search results ,

 

3.Connect with bloggers more but if you find it to be too tiring to get a proper networking with your fellow bloggers then just leave it – some people will find it too difficult to do discussions with others and create a nice impression about themselves in the minds of others.But dont worry its just one of the ways to improve your blog .

 

4.Dont be worried about the number of articles in your blog – say you just have one single article in your blog regarding “starting a blog” and you want to rank for it in google.Then do enough link building until you see it coming up on top of SERP.

 

Some people just assume that by doing lot of regular blogging , they will rise in SERP ; One blog post is capable of making over 100 dollars a month if you do the job properly.

 

Hope this was useful to you.I will be giving you more such specific tips in the coming weeks.So keep checking the feed .

Live blogging – another coolest widget for Bloggers

Have you heard of live blogging ? I hope not.Here is a coolest widget for all bloggers to live stream their views to their readers.YES! you can give tips in real time to your readers and they can respond to those tips or ask you questions .Its just like instant messaging and every reader who is visiting your blog will be able to participate in it.

This is the site which allows live blogging .The steps are pretty simple.You can just login with your twitter account [other options also exist] and start your live stream.The below snaps will give you an idea :

 

 

 

 

Hope the snaps above are self-explanatory.You can add your own live blog stream by visiting this site :

http://www.scribblelive.com/

 

This will go a long way in building a brand for your blog.Try it and tell me how you used it for building your readership.

Contact form for blogger blog – coolest widget for blogspot blogs

Its always good to have a contact form in your blogger blog so that people may give you suggestions personally through your mail or ask for guest blogging or link exchanges.You can give the mail address directly in your blog and tell your readers to contact you.The other option you have is not to disclose your e-mail id but yet allow the readers to contact you.How is it done ? Very easy.just sign up with the following service :

contact form for blogger blog

 

The more coolest thing about this widget is that it gives you an ajax form and also a button stating “contact me” .nice service from kontactr .

how to add a stumbleupon button to my blogger blog ?

Although social media may not be good for earning money through adsense its the most effective method for gaining readers to your blog provided you have great articles.The method for adding a stumbleupon button is pretty simple and is explained by Antonio in the following article :

http://woork.blogspot.com/2007/12/add-stumbleupon-button-in-your-bloggers.html

 

If its not good for earning money through adsense then why i should i install it ?

Its not that you wouldnt earn through social media – you might get some odd clicks from them – but the major advantage is developing close contacts with the bloggers of your niche.By meeting the best bloggers of your niche you can have a link exchange with them or you might also ask them for guest blogging.One or two guest blog posts in the most popular blog will get your blog to greater heights in the eyes of Google Bots .So dont always aim for money and start networking with your niche bloggers.

Chat with your blog visitors using this cool tool

Google provides a tool for chatting with your website or blog visitors.The tool is called “google talk chatback”. By this way you might get suggestions from your readers or your readers may ask questions to you.This tool is a pretty old thing.But one of the users in a forum stated that he did not know about it.So i thought i could blog this.

 

The installation is pretty simple .so i dont think you will need me do a big lecture on its installation.Just go to the following page and you will be given a script.Then paste it in your blog :

http://www.google.com/talk/service/badge/New

 

This is what it will look like once you install the blogger widget

 

 

Here is the official page on google talk chatback :

http://googletalk.blogspot.com/2008/02/google-talk-chatback.html

Blogger template – Revolution – 3 column template

This is a nice theme designed by Ivan .Actually it is a wordpress theme and has been ported to blogger now.It looks really nice with 3 columns.Here is a snapshot of the template :

 

There is a section above at the right side of the template especially for displaying the ads.So it is very well optimized for ads.Download the blogger template from the link below :

REVOLUTION BLOGGER TEMPLATE

 

For more blogger templates see the below post :

 

Download Top and best blogger templates

Windows 7 offers a cool blogging tool to its users

I just finished downloading windows 7 and it does seem to be quite fast.But one thing i hate in windows 7 is that when i press ctrl+alt+del i would rather need it to take me directly to task manager instead of a big screen.I hate everytime seleting the task manager from that screen.Anyway i just wanted to tell you how cool the MS Windows 7 people to have given us bloggers a nice blogging tool - "SNIPPING TOOL".I personally use winsnap to take pictures and then open up photoshop and do the editing.Although the snipping tool is not as feature-rich as photoshop or winsnap it does help us in certain times .

Here is a snapshot i took using this blogging tool and i have used some more features in snipping tool :

As you might see above the snipping tool also has a PEN TOOL and a HIGHLIGHTER to show some important things in the snapshots to our readers.

How to track blog visitors or add a counter to blogger blog

Histats is one of the cool sites that tracks site visitors.It provides a script and when pasted in our blog it could track every site visitor we get – it would tell us how many visitors came per hour and how many page views we have received .There are more cool features that would be helpful to you.So lets add a counter to our blogger blog.

STEP 1 :

visit this site :

http://www.histats.com

Fill all the required details in the registration form and register .

 

After clicking on continue , you will be given a series of options – select which counter you need and click on it.For example in the figure below i have selected ANIMATED COUNTERS .

There will be 2 more steps in which you need to click on continue – in the fifth step you will be given a counter code to be added in the blogger blog which looks like below :

 

copy the code presented above and save it in a notepad file or just have it in the clipboard – it is also possible to hide your counter in case you want others to restrict seeing your stats – this can be done by selecting “HIDDEN TRACKER CODE” option as shown below :

 

 

STEP 2 :

Our job is over in the histats website – just have a small job in the blogger before we get that cool blogger counter to track visitors.So login to blogger blog and goto “EDIT HTML” section  of your blog.

 

 

 

Remember the code you copied in the histats website paste it here [ in the place as shown below ] :

After giving a title for your widget click the save button.Thats it.You now have a cool counter in the blogger blog tracking your blog / site visitors  .

 

Hope the tutorial was clear to you.Bye .

How to add Social bookmarking buttons to blogger blogs

The best way to share your articles with others is using a social bookmarking button “Addthis” button makes this process easier to blogger.Making viral posts is the primary and best way to make your blogging successful and the best way to achieve it is via this button.So stop being lazy and signup for this button.Little things do wonders , remember ?

This is the website :

 

ADDTHIS

The process is very easy , so i dont think it might be helpful to you if i make a lengthy post about how to add the button.Signup and you will be given a script and it would tell you where to add it in the blogger template .But if you still have doubts DO NOT hesitate to contact me .

Insert multimedia easily in Blog posts using apture.com

I came across this service in a popular web design blog.At first i thought this was not of so much importance to me because there are already 4 to 5 scripts in my blog like those i have in the sidebar [the apple accordion effect] or the tabs effect in the main section in my blog.So i thought i should limit myself to such scripts as it causes slow loading time.But no i was wrong.Because apture.com provides perfect widget to give your readers a little more knowledge about things you mention in the blog posts.It is one of the best blogging tools .

 

What does that mean ?

Say you mention the term adwords in one of your blog posts – you could either link that term to the wikipedia article or to thehome page of adwords.But my option would be to show the reader just a paragraph of what it is , in the blog post itself.To know more just hover mouse over the link below :

 

                                                          ADWORDS

 

How was that ?

 

The process to add apture widget is not a complex one.Just signup and add a script in your blog template.Then visit your blog and press “e” – the editor opens up.Now you can edit the terms for which you want link to a wikipedia article or any other url or a video.

It is also possible to add a video and more multimedia in between articles after you publish a blog post .

To know more visit that apture website :

 

Blogging tool - multimedia

How To create or install Recent Posts widget for Blogger blogs

You could have seen the recent posts widget in my blog .It is cool isnt it ?It helps your readers in effective navigation and it is a superb blogging tool.When i was a blogging starter i did almost 60-70 google searches to get this functionality but i never understood the background stuff going with the web design,blog design etc ,.So it was very tough earlier.But later on i learnt basics of web design then learnt javascript and the process is going on.But dont worry !Iam here to explain you how to install a recent posts widget for the blogger blog.shall we start ?

STEP 1:

login to feedburner and goto the “publicize section”

 

 

now click on the buzzboost section and activate the service .

 

 

give the necessary settings – i have given the no. of items to display as 10 in my blog – but its your choice .

Now scroll up and copy this section [the script ] in a notepad file or any other editor :

 

 

There is no work in the feedburner after copying the above section.

STEP 2:

Login to blogger and come to the “EDIT HTML” section .

find this line there : style type='text/css'>

And paste the below code  below the above line  :

 

.recent-post{
width:300px; margin:20px 0px 20px 20px; font-size:11px;
line-height:16px;
padding:6px 0;
margin-bottom:20px;
background-color: #E8F1F3;
padding:6px;
}
    .recent-post li {
        padding-bottom:6px;
        border-bottom:solid 1px #d8d8d8;
        margin-bottom:6px;
        background:url(http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg285/itcoll/star.png) no-repeat left top;
        padding-left:18px;
    }
    .recent-post a:link, .recent-post a:visited {text-decoration:none;}
    .recent-post li a:hover {text-decoration:underline; color:#555555;}

 

see the below picture if you are not sure where to place the code :

 

 

STEP 3 –LAST STEP :

The major part of the job is over – just a little more to do to get the cool recent posts widget .

Remember the script we copied in the feedburner website  to notepad ?

paste it in the blog template whereever you want the ”RECENT POSTS” Widget to appear .Its your choice.Now a last thing to do :

After pasting the script of feedburner you need to add two more lines –one above the script and other below the script – see figure below :How was that ? Hope i made it very easy for you bloggers .Bye :)

 

how to add a comment box or shout box to a blogger blog

One thing that every blog requires is a shout box otherwise termed as a comment box.Although nowadays it is most likely to be used as advertising [ hee hee .. i have seen many sites filled with urls in their comment box ] , it is always good to have a comment box so that others may easily contact you or give a suggestion on how you can improve the blog or what is going wrong with the blog currently.Blog is all about networking and socializing  along with powerful unique content – remember .

Follow the below steps to add a comment box to a blog :

1.visit http://www.cbox.ws/getone.php and fill the form and  submit it

2.you will be sent a confirmation message in the mail inbox – visit the inbox and click on the specified url in the mail

3.your account has now been confirmed .

4.log in to cbox now you will now get a script – copy the code

5.log in to blogger.com and goto the “layout” tab

6.you will find “Add a gadget” link on that page .There might one or more links like that.select where to place the comment box and click on the appropriate  “Add a gadget” link .

 

i hope you could see “Add a gadget” option in the above screenshot .

7.now goto the “html/javascript” and paste the code you copied earlier by using “ctrl+v” option .

8.save and  see how cool the comment box looks in your blog .

 

how to give special formatting to code tag in blogger blogs

There are times when you want to use any codings [ html ,css or any other major language ] – in those cases it is best to give them special formatting like changing their background color . Let me show you how you can do special editing to the <code> tag :

1.goto blogger->layout->edit HTML

2.paste the below code anywhere in between the <style> and </style> tag :

code { background:#CCFFFF; border:thin gray dashed; display:block; }

NOTE:YOUR CODE WILL LOOK LIKE ABOVE AFTER YOU ADD THE ABOVE CODE TO YOUR BLOG TEMPLATE .SO GO ON :)

That is it ! The next time you want to add any special programming code in your blog post use as follows :

“<code>printf(“I Love Blogging”);</code>”

Cool text shadow effects for bloggers from css 3

I have been amazed by things that could be done by css , especially after getting to know so many tutorials from web development blogs.One thing i prefer to use for certain important points in my blog post is the “block quotes”.But now since the blockquotes require two images to be used i would prefer some other cool technique to use and here is one to all our rescue and i feel its as cool as the block quotes.

The technique is introduced by css 3 – and could be found here :

http://www.css3.info/preview/text-shadow/

After using the technique of css3 your text looks like this :

This is really effective way to highlight important points in our blog posts .go away blockquotes . welcome css3 !

NOTE : HERE IS A COMPLETE TUTORIAL ABOUT MORE COOL TECHNIQUES IN CSS3 :

http://www.css3.info/preview/

How to add a new blogger template/theme to blogger blog

When i first started blogging , i knew nothing about web designing, blogs etc,.i was a complete noob and it was harder for me to know how to add a custom template – even harder to know how to edit them.So let me show how you can add a new template to your blogger blog.

STEP 1 :

DOWNLOAD THE XHTML FILE

There are so many websites offering nice looking ,well organized blogger templates .just google them and you will get a huge list.select carefully which one to choose.

I recommend you visit these pages and see if you like them:

http://mashable.com/2007/09/13/blogger-templates/

http://mashable.com/2008/05/17/70-plus-new-and-beautiful-blogger-templates/

After you choose which theme you need , download the xhtml file .for example this is what i have selected :

http://blogger-templates.blogspot.com/2007/04/colibri.html

You could see a link stating “ download xml “ .click there and download the file.

 

STEP 2:

now login to blogger –>layout->edit html

click on the browse button at that webpage and select the xml file you had downloaded [ in this case the xml file is named “colibri”.after selecting it click on the upload button.

After you click on the upload button , you will get a message  as shown below :

 

click on “confirm and save” .

Your new blogger template/theme is now ready.Generally instructions are provided on the website from where you downloaded the theme file on how to customize the template.so make sure you see it.

NOTE:always make sure you backup your template before editing it .To backup you may either copy paste the xhtml file [ the contents within the small window when you visit the “edit html” page] in to a notepad text file or you also have an option in the same page stating “Download Full Template” [ just below “Backup/Restore Template ] .so now you know how to add a custom template to a blogger blog.cheers pals .