Showing posts with label bloggers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bloggers. Show all posts

31 January 2016

365daysmasti

How to Add Facebook Comments System in Blogger


In the past, we have already covered How to Add Google+ Comments, Disqus Commenting system and LiveFyre Commenting system in Blogger. Recently, one of our users asked us how to add Facebook Comments in Blogger? Today in this article, we will show you How to Add Facebook Comments System in Blogger. We will also discuss the Pros and cons of using Facebook Comments on your website, so that you can make an ingenious decision whether to for it or not.



Advantages of Facebook Comments in Blogger

Facebook is the most viral social networking site, so it might be the reason why one should always think about making use of all the features that it provides to the publishers and developers. However, I would not push anyone to start using Facebook comments without knowing its advantage. Every site has their own priorities and concerns but for the sake of an ongoing argument, let us first take a look at the following pros of adding Facebook Comments in Blogger.

Whenever someone likes or reply to their comment, Facebook sent an automatic notification to user.  The author or other users might also receive the same notification if they are following the topic.

Unlike Google+ and others, it provides multiple commenting options. For example, if someone is not a Facebook user then he can use his Yahoo, AOL or Outlook id to comment on your website, so your visitor never gets locked out.

Whenever a registered user is caught spamming, Facebook automatically treats him with a security code while the rest of the loyal visitors keep on commenting without any worry. If that spammer didn’t even stop then, Facebook holds the authority to disable him from commenting.


Disadvantages of Facebook Comments in Blogger:

You are totally depending upon Facebook. Though it is a reliable brand, but sometime minor glitches happen. What would you do if Facebook suffers some down time. Since, all the scripts you are using is hosted on Facebook, so you never know when the comments get disappear.

Nonetheless, it is unlikely to happen because Facebook is a well-known site with quality backup server. However,  you never know what would be the next thing to come.


How to Add Facebook Comments in Blogger: 

Step#1: Creating a New Application:
The First thing you need to do is to create a separate App ID for your application and that can be done easily through Facebook Developer. Login to your Facebook account and go to Facebook Developers website. This places allow Developers to manage their apps hosted at Facebook, click on Create New App button.


A Small pop out will appear which would ask you to insert little information about your application. There are two fields, write the App name and press the continue button.


Now you will land of a new page which would provide you your application details like App ID, App name and etc. You need to copy these keys and enter them later.




Step#2: Installing Facebook Comments in Blogger:
The First thing you need to do is to Login into your Blogger account. Now from the dashboard go to Template >> Edit HTML and search for the following highlighted HTML attribution. (Quick Tip: This code is usually present at the first lines of your template’s coding).
<html ...... xmlns:expr='http://www.google.com/2005/gml/expr'>

Now just next to the highlighted code (as shown above) add xmlns:og='http://ogp.me/ns#'. Once everything is down, it would somewhat look like this. (Quick Tip: Make sure you leave a space between these two codes). 
<html xmlns:og='http://ogp.me/ns#' ...... xmlns:expr='http://www.google.com/2005/gml/expr'>

Now you need to search for the <body> Tag. After finding it, just below it paste the following code. Make sure to replace the YOUR_APP_ID with your Facebook application id. 
<div id="fb-root"></div>
<script>
window.fbAsyncInit = function() {
FB.init({
appId : 'YOUR_APP_ID',
status : true, // check login status
cookie : true, // enable cookies to allow the server to access the session
xfbml : true // parse XFBML
});
};
(function() {
var e = document.createElement('script');
e.src = document.location.protocol + '//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js';
e.async = true;
document.getElementById('fb-root').appendChild(e);
}());
</script> 

Now you need to add Facebook Open graph Meta Tags, We have written a detail tutorial on it that can be viewed from here. However, search for </head> and just above it paste the following code. Make sure to replace the YOUR_APP_ID with your Facebook application id. 
<meta property="fb:app_id" content="YOUR_APP_ID" />


Step#3: Adding Facebook Comments in Blogger: 
Last step is to implement Facebook Comments using the HTML Code. In the template, search for <b:includable id='comment-form' var='post'> and just below it paste the following HTML Coding. Incase, you are unable to find <b:includable id='comment-form' var='post'> then you can paste it just below <div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-1'></div> (Make sure you repeat the process because there are more than 1 tags on you theme)

<b:if
cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
    <div
    style='padding:20px 0px 5px 0px; margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;'>
        <script
        src='http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1'
        />
        <div>
            <fb:comments
            colorscheme='light'
            expr:href='data:post.url'
            expr:title='data:post.title'
            expr:xid='data:post.id'
            width='550'
            />
        </div> 
                </div>
                </b:if>
Note: You can also customize the widget of the comment box by adjusting 550 the numbers in the below code.
Congratulations: You have successfully learned how to add Facebook Comments  in blogger blog. You can also preview your posts to see everything is working in an order or not. 
We hope this tutorial has helped you in adding Facebook comments in blogger. Are you using Facebook comments in your blog? If yes, then please take few minutes to tell us about your experience in the comments below.


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17 January 2016

365daysmasti

8 Effective Tips To Increase Your Blog Traffic

Most bloggers and webmasters find themselves searching hopelessly for a way to attract new readers and visitors to their sites. Here are a few very simple tips that can be used to accomplish just that...
The Following are the Best Tips To Increase Your Blog Traffic...
Tips To Increase Blog Traffic
1) Perform Keywords Research Form Analysis While Writing Your Posts
Not amazingly, a big part of showing up in google is focusing on the terms and words your viewers are actually entering into a internet google search. It’s hard to know what these words will be unless you research, and fortunately, there’s a free device from Google to help called the AdWords Look for term Tool.
2) Excellent Content
Strive to create articles with the objective of it being released, introduced or attached to from other sites. But generally, create great articles that will keep customers returning for more.
3) Make Your Blog’s Articles SEO-Friendly
Search applications are a large chance of visitors, yet many people neglect this route for a wide range of factors that usually have more to do with worry and misconception than real issues. This year, The search engines obtained over 3 million everyday looks from all over the community, and that number is only growing.
4) Create Well And Create Often
Frequently changing your site with useful articles is the first thing to developing your blog’s viewers. The articles you compose is what will keep visitors returning for more. Create sure you have something significant to say to them and say it often to sustain their attention and keep them devoted.
Furthermore, publish regularly to improve the variety of possibilities you have for your blog’s articles to be discovered by the look for engines such as Google or Technorati.
5) Implement Public Bookmarking
Go one phase further and make giving easy for your customers. Add social bookmark submitting icons, such as Myspace and Tweets, to your site. The simpler your viewers can reveal, the more likely they will tell others about your great content, further improving weblog visitors.
6) Indication Up For Social Press Websites
If you never already have a professional Myspace page or Tweets consideration, it is a smart idea to start. It is an excellent way to advertise brand identification, but also publish new articles and entice new visitors to your website. Also consider starting a LinkedIn consideration, the search engines Plus and Pinterest, based on your websites content.
7) Use Hyperlinks And Trackbacks
You can take backlinks to other weblogs a phase further by departing a trackback on the other weblog to let them know you’ve attached to them. Blogs that allow trackbacks will involve a backlink to your site in content area of the publish that you initially attached to. People do press on trackback links!
8) Patience
Though these techniques are efficient, it may take a while to get the following you want. Be sufferer and constant with these techniques and you will see a rise in visitors and articles submitting in no time!
CONCLUSION:
Put a little bit of tender loving care into your website or blog and you will be able to build a solid base of readers and regular visitors. If you don’t worry about your site then visitors won’t bother coming by to read your work.
So what are you waiting for? Get out there and build your blog!
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11 January 2016

365daysmasti

Top 12 Reasons Your Website Needs to be Responsive to grow Your Business



Have you been outside lately? You know how you are seeing more people using tablets and smartphones? Well, it’s not a trend as much as the norm any more. Walking around, we are plugged in to our mobile device. At some restaurants, the waiter or waitress takes our order. Mobile is ubiquitous. So why, why, why are there still so many businesses that have not yet adapted? I don’t know, and the good news is that you have a way to take advantage of the new reality.
As smartphones and tablets are ever more capable of performing tasks that used to be only capable on desktop, one thing is crystal clear: Internet surfing, connecting on social media, checking emails and online shopping is being taken over by mobile.
Naturally, because mobile Internet usage is steadily increasing, you can see that it’s extremely important that your website is mobile friendly. In the past, you had a website designed for desktop users and another site specifically developed for mobile users. But, now we need a website optimized for desktop, tablet and, mobile. Are you really gonna build multiple unique sites to accommodate the various screen sizes?
There actually is a method to satisfy many types of users. It’s called responsive web design. According to a report by Morgan Stanley, Mobile Devices will overtake Desktop usage this year. 2013 may have been hailed as “The Year of Responsive Design”, but RWD is far from last year’s news. Put simply, having responsive design means a website adjusts depending on which device they are being displayed on, ensuring that whether the content is viewed on a phone, tablet, or desktop computer, the website will remain user-friendly, which is ultimately the most important feature of any website or blog. So as though you really needed them, here are the Top 12 Reasons to convert to Responsive Web Design.

1. Recommended By Google

Since Google is the primary search engine to impress with your website, it is smart to follow what Google loves. Google not only recommends Responsive Web Design (RWD) as the best way to target mobile and tablet users, and also favors mobile-optimized sites when presenting results for searches made on a mobile device. This is especially true when mobile users search for local services. It’s important to note more searches are originated on mobile devices.
Of course there is still debate whether a separate mobile website or a single, responsive site is the best route to take. From an SEO perspective, a single site is the better option (More on this later). Separate mobile websites have their own URL and different code, whereas responsive sites use one URL and one set of pages and files, making it simpler for Google more efficient for Google to crawl, index, and organize content and avoids issues of duplicate content.
With 67 percent search market share, when Google speaks, search marketing professionals listen. Google now states that responsive web design is the industry best practice.
When you think about it, it’s also easier and less confusing for users to share, interact with, and link to than content on a stripped down mobile site.
For instance, a mobile user who shares content from a mobile site with a friend on the Facebook app who then accesses that content using a desktop, which results in that user viewing a stripped down mobile site on their desktop. This creates a less than optimal user-experience, and because of the large emphasis Google is now placing on user-experience as a ranking factor, this is essential to take into account with regards to SEO.

2. One Website, Multiple Devices

Providing a great user-experience across multiple devices and screen sizes is the most appealing and most critical aspects of responsive web design for today’s uber mobile world. Take the following example. I search for a birthday gift on my smartphone during a break at work. I then continue researching this product on the same site on my MAC when I get home.
Because the site is responsive, won’t be frustrated with the extra steps to locate the desktop version of the site, and find the product all over again.

3. Easier to Manage

Having a separate desktop and mobile site requires having separate Google Adwords campaigns, SEO campaigns and separate Google Analytics reports. Managing one site is of course, far easier than managing two sites.
There can be an argument made for multiple sites though, such as having a mobile-specific Adwards and SEO strategy, such as optimizing for keywords that are more likely to be searched when someone is on their smartphone.

4. Positive User Experience Is Key

If a user lands on your mobile website and is frustrated or doesn’t see what they are looking for, according to Google’s Think Insights on Mobile, there’s a 61% chance they will leave and go to a different website. Data shows a positive experience with your responsive website a user is 67% more likely to buy a product or use a service.

5. Blogging and Social Activities Bring Mobile Visitors

If you’re like most smart Inbound Marketers and incorporate blogging and social media in your strategy, you have most likely been seeing increased mobile traffic. A recent study by ComScore cites that 55% of social media consumption happens on a mobile device. SHOCKER!

6. Responsive Design is Preferred for SEO

Typically, Responsive Websites perform better and are easier to maintain. One thing not mentioned above is that a challenge of having a separate mobile site is that you will need to build the authority of this site from scratch, and who wants to go to that extra trouble?

7. Responsive Helps Combat a High Bounce Rate

Even if your regular website is sitting pretty in search results, if it looks and performs like crap on my tablet or smartphone, bounce rate will be a big problem. Non responsive websites will suffer from a high bounce rate if the content is too stripped down, or just plain clunky and too challenging to work with compared to the content offered on the main/desktop site. Google will naturally interpret this high bounce rate as a sign that a website irrelevant, which will lead to your drop in rankings, which is why we don’t see mobile versions of sites ranked high.
RWD means that there is no more compromising on the content you choose to display!

8. A Speedy Responsive Website is Key

The content per page on a mobile or tablet device should load in under 1 – 2 seconds according to the Google PageSpeed Developers standards. I’m not sure how possible that is when loading a desktop website on a mobile device. I haven’t timed it, and I can tell you that I don’t wait long before I close the window.

9. Responsive Adapts to Future Devices

As alluded to earlier, the benefit of responsive design is that the size of the template is designed based on screen size not device. Obviously, regardless of what size screen someone is viewing your website it will display properly for that screen size.  Unless, there will be a worldwide movement to standardize on one screen size, responsive design is here to stay. Having a mobile website is no longer just a nice feature or after thought. Fully functional websites for all screen sizes are mission critical for the growth of your business. What’s the ROI? check out is this “Full Value of Mobile” calculator by Google. Input your different business and marketing variables to learn how your metrics can be increased with proper responsive mobile design.

10. Responsive Design allows you to keep track of who visits your site

The great thing about online assets is that you can see who visits them, which allows you to increasingly improve your targeting. It should go without saying that with multiple versions of your site, it is more challenging to track analytics. This is the same logic against multiple business listings on various directories like Yelp, Manta, Merchant Circle, Kudzu, etc. because traffic is diluted between the various versions of your site. As a user, it can be extremely frustrating when searching for a site and then needing to find the most current and accurate site listed on the SERPs. Just sayin.

11. Responsive Design saves you money.

Have you ever heard the saying: You get what you pay for? There is a reason that saying still lives today and applies to Responsive design. Sure, a complicated, well crafted, responsive design could be expensive to develop or implement (Unless you select one of the 1000 options available for WordPress websites), but once published, you can maintain it quite easily. This is much more economical to maintain one site rather than multiple sites, wouldn’t you agree?

12. Responsive Design has Pay-Per-Click benefits.

Google AdWords has now converted the web to “enhanced campaigns”. What this means for you is the targeting of various devices is the treated the same. The benefit for you is that a website using Responsive Design makes it a whole lot easier to manage your PPC. Businesses have much more flexibility and control in how they reach consumers which are, you guessed it, using more mobile devices. “Google’s enhanced campaigns represent the biggest single change in the past 10 years to the basic structure of AdWords campaigns,” says Larry Kim, founder and CTO of WordStream.
There you have it: The top 12 reasons to become responsive with your customers.
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6 January 2016

365daysmasti

How to Protect Your WordPress Blog From Being Hacked

Plugins are one of the main attracting core to wordpress rather than Blogger.. It makes job easy for you..
I recommend Wordfence plugin for your safety. Here are some of its features.
*. Scans your core files against a reference copy which you maintain in your cloud servers.
*. Lets you see what has changed, how the file has changed and even repair it.
*. Scans your comments, posts and all files including core, themes, plugins and everything else under your WordPress root directory for malware, virus signatures, vulnerabilities
 and (very importantly) URL’s that are known to host malware or viruses.
*. Wordfence keeps known dangerous URL’s, including ALL URL’s that are on Googles’ safe browsing list, out of your comments, pages, posts and files. This is by far my favorite feature because it’s virtually gauranteed to keep you off the dreaded red-page-of-death-malware-listthat Chrome and Google use to ban sites.
*. Wordfence comes with a complete firewall that lets youset up rules based on the type of traffic and either throttle orblock offenders with an SEO safe 503 (come back later) HTTP message.
*. Another favorite feature of mine is that you can block fake Google crawlers. I actually added this after I tested Wordfence on this site because I couldn’t believe how many scrapers were pretending to be Googlebot. So now they are all instantly blocked.
*. Wordfence uses Google’s recommended reverse-forward DNS verification to sift the fake Googlebots from the real ones.
*. It includes login security against every form of brute force attack out there including abusing your lost-password form.
*. And what’s the point of having all this awesome security if you can’t see who is visiting, who’s getting blocked and what humans and robots are doing? So Wordfence includes real-time traffic that wait..for…it…
*. …Includes crawlers, scrapers, robots and all non-human traffic. Something you can’t get from Google Analytics or any other Javascript based analytics package.
*. I’ve even broken out Googlebot, other crawlers, 404 errors, humans and there’s an All Hits view.
*. And of course it includes commercial grade city-level geolocation which is another feature that comes from our cloud servers.
*. Wordfence is also built using much of the knowledge I’ve gained building Feedjit’s real-time analytics so it is careful to minimize any impact on network, website and mysql database performance and keep your website running super-fast..
Always stay upgraded to latest versions. Also don’t forget to Upgrade all your themes and plugins to their newest versions as well.
- Never use your username as“Admin / admin / user/ your name etc..” and passwords as “12345 / admin123/
Password must be from 8 – 16char + digit + special symbols , you can use various online sites for creating strict passwords..
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29 December 2015

365daysmasti

Free Money from Rewards Sites


Free Money from Rewards Sites

1. InboxDollars – $5

InboxDollars is one of my favorite sites for making easy money. It’s an online rewards site where you get paid to take surveys, shop online, watch videos, complete free offers, you even get paid to read your emails.
Right now they are giving a $5 sign up bonus for anyone joining the site.

2. SwagBucks – $5

Swagbucks is perhaps the best known online loyalty program out there, and the famous site that pays you for searching.
They also give you a $5 free sign up bonus to get you started.

3. CreationRewards – $5

CreationRewards is another similar reward site that rewards you for everything from shopping online to playing games, taking surveys, watching videos and more. Earn 5000 points within 60 days of registering and you get a $5 bonus added to your account. You can cash out via PayPal, Amazon Gift Cards, as well as gift cards from a variety of online and offline stores.

4. iPoll.com – $5

Do you have something to say about the products and services on the market? iPoll will pay you for your to say your piece. New members get to enjoy a five dollars sign-up bonus here.

5. SendEarnings – $5.00

You may be aware that there are a lot of businesses that don’t mind paying participants who are willing to undertake surveys commissioned, product testings and sometimes simply reading advertisers e-mails. The problem is these activities are channeled through intermediaries and quite a fair number of them are actually scammers.
The good news is that SendEarnings does not belong to this category. There is no joining fee here. Instead, they reward you with a five-dollar bonus for willing to become their new member. Over at SE, the threshold for cash out is $30 and the payout is going to be made in checks.
I was asked if I want to be in the distribution list of AMF Bowling’s newsletters. It took me 15 seconds to register my consent and I got $0.50 in return.
On another occasion, I registered a new account at Turbotax.com and they rewarded me with $3.50.
My point is that there are loads of them and it doesn’t take effort (or much time) to participate in these programs.

6. CashCrate.com – $1

CashCrate is arguably one of the most popular GPT (Get Paid To) sites. The site presents a multitude OF offers and you get paid for completing them. There is also a $1 bonus now for new registration.

7. FusionCash – $5

FusionCash gives you cash as you go shopping. There is no upfront fee but a five-dollar bonus when you sign up. Sometimes they offer cash incentives if you agree to participate in various offers (both free and paid).

8. VIP Voice (formal NPD) – Chance to win $1,000!

VIP Voice is a survey site with a spin. There is no sign up fee but no free bonus either. Instead, you will be entered into a draw straight after your registration. The signing up takes just seconds and you stand a chance to win $1,000!

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28 December 2015

365daysmasti

How to keep your Google Friend Connect followers when moving from Blogger to WordPress



Step One: Cut a hole in the box.
Step Two: Put your…
Oh wait! That was the tutorial I wrote for Justin Timberlake…
Ok for real now!
1. Go here: http://www.google.com/friendconnect/ and sign in.
1a. If you have multiple sites listed, make sure you select from the one that has the GFC that you want to move to WP.
2. Click on Gadgets
3. Find Members and click Get This Gadget
4. Scroll down and click Generate Code
5. On the fourth line from the bottom, there is a code that looks like this:
{ id: ‘div-99999999999999999999’,

6. Copy that 20 digit number and paste it into notepad or something so you’ll have it for later.
7. On your WordPress Plugin page, install the plugin called Google Friend Connect Integration.  (Hint: If you put ‘google friend connect integration’ into the search term box, it’s the first one that pops up.)



Click ‘Install Now’ and then be sure to activate the plugin.
8. Under settings, you should see GFC Integration listed now. Click it.


9. Take the 20 digit code from before and paste it in the Friend Connect SiteId: box.  I chose to ignore everything else.   Click ‘Update Options’.


10. Go to your widgets page. Select GFC Members and slide it over to your sidebar.

From there you can customize the sizing and colors. The only thing I’ve changed on this site is the height- I made it 125 instead of the default 200


And that’s it!
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27 December 2015

365daysmasti

How to set the URL for Blogger posts

URLs and Blog Posts

When you first publish a post in blogger, an URL (called a permalink in blogger) is automatically generated for that post. It looks like:


www.yourDomain/yyyy/mm/WORDS-ABOUT-MY-POST

In this URL:

  • yourDomain is either your custom domain (eg http://get1deal.blogspot.com) or your blogspot domain if you aren't using a custom domain at the time (eg http://get1deal.blogspot.com)
  • yyyy/mm is the year and month of the post's original publication date.

Earlier in its life, Blogger chose the WORDS-ABOUT-YOUR-MY based on the title, or the first words in the post if the title was blank. They used some rules eg leaving out "the" and other common words, and putting numbers on the end so that every post has a unique URL (called a "permalink" in Blogger).

However Blogger have now provided a tool that lets you choose the WORDS-ABOUT-YOUR-POST separately from the post-title.



How to change the customisable part of the URL for a post

1  Edit the post in the usual way.

2  In the Post Settings area (currently at the right hand side of the editor), there is a section called Permalink.

3   Click on Links to show the options in it.

4   Click the custom URL radio button

5   Type the words that you want to use in WORDS-ABOUT-YOUR-POST into the Custom URL box

6   Click Done.

7   Finish the post, and Publish it.


Restrictions

The only characters you can use are:

  • lowercase letters (ie a, b, c ... z)
  • uppercase letters (ie A, B, C ... Z)
  • digits (ie 0, 1, 2 ... 9)
  • underscore (ie _)
  • dash (ie - )
  • full-stop, also known as a period (ie .)
It looks like there is no restriction on the number of characters you can put into the URL.  For example, I was just able to make a post in my test blog, with this URL:
http://bhat-draftarticlestore.blogspot.ie/2012/07/123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-.html
(you cannot see the post, because that particular blog isn't open for public reading.)


If the combinaton of yyyy-mm from post-date (which you can change - see Setting the Post Date) and WORDS-ABOUT-YOUR-BLOG is not unique, Blogger will leave out the last character(s), and put in numbers to make it unique.

It only applies to Posts, not Pages:  the only way to influence the URL / permalink for a Page on your blog is to choose the initial words in the page-title very carefully.   (Ref:  the difference between Posts and Pages)



Why should you bother? What words should you use?

Firstly, it's only worth changing the custom words in your post-URL  if SEO matters for your blog.

If you think the change is worth it, then you need to think about what specific words
1) accurately reflect the content of your blog, and
2) are likely to be the words that people search for.

Unless you're a spammer, there is no point in making your post url www.myBlog/2012-07/hot-and-sexy-topic if your post doesn't have any content about hot-and-sexy-topic. (And if you are a spammer, you may as well leave Blogger now, before you get kicked off anyway.)

Leave out smaller filler words like "the" "a" "and" - unless they are relevant to the post-contents. For example include "the Who" if your post is about the band called The Who, but leave it out if your post is about the cats who can fly.

Lastly, many SEO experts (self-proclaimed and otherwise) say that dashes are better than dots or underscores. Only Google and Bing know if they'are correct or not. But it's probably a good idea to use xxx-yy-aaaa instead of xxx_yy_aaaa or xxx.yy.aaaa, just in case they are.



Changing the post-title after publication

Google's help-article about the custom-permalink feature says:

"because Blogger automatically creates the URL from information from your post title, your URL would change should you decide to edit the title. This would result in broken links, and fewer visitors to your blog"

This isn't the way Blogger worked before: until now, I often published a post with one title using the words I wanted in the URL, and then very quickly edit it and change the title to the words I wanted in the title. For example, for a recent post

  • the URL is  http://get1deal.blogspot.in/2015/12/how-to-set-url-for-blogger-posts.html
  • the post-title is now:  Where to get the HTML code for popular gadgets in Blogger

I just tried this again in my test-blog, and found that it's still true: even if you change the title, the post URL doesn't change.



Changing the custom-URL words after publication

Originally, after you hit the Publish button for the first time, there was no way change the permalink:  if you click on the Permalink option in Post Settings, you are shown the custom value that you chose, but you cannot change it.


However you can now:

  • Edit the post.
  • Click the Revert to draft button.
  • Edit the post URL in the same way

and the URL of your post will be changed.  Note that if you do this, the post characteristics (view count, comments) are kept.   This means that Blogger must be associating them with the unchanged internal post-identifier, not the URL.
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25 December 2015

365daysmasti

Why RSS / Subscribe to Posts is important for your blog



Overview

Previously, I've described how to hide the Subscribe to Posts (atom) link that appears that the bottom of the screen on all Blogger's standard templates.

This is a sensible thing to do, because the link:

  • is ugly, 
  • is hard to find (except for hardened Blogger users who know what they're looking for), and 
  • uses words ("atom") that don't mean much to many readers, especially ones who don't use Blogger.
But providing an RSS feed for your blog is A Very Good Thing to do, and there are many ways of doing it which don't involve that link.


Why is an RSS feed a good thing?

When websites were invented, people found that it took a lot of time to visit all their favourite sites regularly just to check for any changes.   It was frustrating for sites that don't change often.  It was hard to spot changes in big sites.   And web-site owners realised that some people simply wouldn't remember to check back anyway.

A few approaches were created to solve this problem.  One is RSS ("really simple syndication"), which is based on the idea that

  • Websites are set up so that every time they are updated, they "publish a feed" of what's new, and
  • People who are interested in websites use "feed reader" software to check if the sites they are interested in have new material, and
  • Feed aggregator tools sit in the middle and keep track of what websites have published and what sites individual people are interested in what updates they have read so far.
Blogs that are made with Blogger are really just another type of website, so to work with RSS they needed a way to "publish a feed" of new material when posts are added.

The approach that Google originally used for Blogger involves "Atom" format.  The "Subscribe to Posts (atom)" link that appears on the bottom of most Layout and Designer templates is saying

 "Here's a link for your feed-reader to use, in our Atom format".
This works, but as I've said, it's ugly and not so obvious for non-Blogger-users.  The rules used to publish feeds on the internet have developed over time and different ways of organising the data in "feeds" (eg Atom 2.0, XML) have been adopted.  And website publishers have begun to look for more features in their feeds and in the statistics they get about who reads them.

Blogger also has a a Subscription-links gadget, which has buttons to let users subscribe to either your Posts or your Comments.  Recently I've had difficulty with this gadget:   I can add it, but it doesn't actually show up on my blog.   I've reported this via the Something-is-broken section of Blogger Help Forum, but not found a solution.


A better alternative is to use a tool like Feedburner.


This takes your blog's "raw" feed and delivers it to subscribers in the format your specify - and also offers a number of other features including tools to

  • Promote your feed (the small orange radar bar / chicklet, socialization via Twitter, social-networking links in the feed-reader)
  • Monetize it, by showing AdSense ads in feed items
  • Offer and manage an email subscription to it
  • Get statistics about the number of subscribers,
and many more.

Other alternatives?

There are other products that can be used to do similar things.

But Feedburner was purchased by Googe in 2007 (according to Wikipedia), so it's now part of the Google family of products.   Until I find some feature that I need but it doesn't have, I'm not likely to explore other tools, simply because it's often easier to use products from the same toolset.  
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24 December 2015

365daysmasti

Trick to Remove the numbers in blogger post URLs



When you first publish a post, Blogger assigns a permanent web-address (aka an URL or a permalink) to the post.  I've previously explained how you can control the words used in this hyperlink

A common question from people who are researching SEO for their blog is "how do I get rid of the numbers in the post-URL?".

Unfortunately the answer is not as straighforward as most people hope for.


Numbers near the start of Blogger URLS

As described in setting the content of your post's permalink, the URL given to posts published in Blogger shows the year and month of the original publication date for the post. I think this is because Blogger was originally set up as an on-line diary, with a lot of the features organised around the post-date.

Today, there are ways of giving your blog a home pageshowing your posts in pages, and changing the order of the posts, which let your blog be a lot more than a date-ordered web-log.

Some blogging software (eg Wordpress) lets you choose the structure of the URLs which are used, eg leaving the date out totally, or puting it after the words.

However Blogger does not currently have any way to remove the date-part of the post URLs. And I could be wrong, but my best guess is that this will not change anytime soon.

So what options are available to remove the year and month numbers?

If you just don't want people to know the correct month and year of the post, then you can change the date before you publish the post for the the first time. Maybe make it something non-sensical (eg 1/1/1990). (However do remember that your RSS feed will show the actual date of publication, not the assigned date).

If you have some content where any month-and-year are particularly irrelevantput it into a Page instead of a Post - because Page URLs don't contain a date.  But remember that you need to give users a way to get to these Pages, and that remember that they are not sent out in your RSS feed, so subscribers won't see the content.

The third - and least attractive - option: is to accept that this is how Blogger worksand that you need to live with it or switch to another blogging tool.


Numbers near the end of Blogger URLS

Blogger puts digits at the end of post-URLs in order to make sure that each post ever published has a unique address.

Notice that I said "ever published": if you publish a post, then delete it, and then publish a second post with the same year, month and either title or customized-URL-words, then the second post's URL will have some digits put on the end, to stop it being the same as the first one.

Once a post is published, you cannot remove the digits and keep the same words and month/year.  The only way to avoid them is to make sure that your post-URLs are unique. So if you publish a post and notice that it has digits on the end of the URL, one option is to delete that post, and replace it with one which has a different publication date or customized-URL-words(don't forget to copy the post contents before you delete it!)   Or you could just set it back to draft status, and then publish it again with different and this time unique customized-URL-words.

For example, if you publish and find that you get
www.all-about-cats.com/2012-07/vegetarian-cat-food-recipes01.html
you may want to delete the post, and republish the content in a post with a different date like
www.all-about-cats.com/2012-06/vegetarian-cat-food-recipes.html

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365daysmasti

How To Import Posts & Pages from one blog to another

To copy all the Posts from one blog to another, you need to export them from the first blog, and import the file that was created into the second file.

Any Pages (see The Difference between Posts and Pages) in the first blog, need to be moved individually, because pages aren't currently included in the export file.

If you want to totally replace the contents of the destination blog with the contents of the source blog, then you should delete the existing posts from the destination blog before you import the file.  (NB   Delete posts by going to the Posting / Edit Posts screen, and pressing the Delete button that is beside the post.   Don't delete the entire blog, or you will lose access to the URL).

 Follow these steps to copy all posts from one blog to another

1  Log in to Blogger.

2  Go to the export tab from the  Settings / Other tab.

3  Click on Export Blog.



3a  If you are using the new interface, click Download Blog on the confirmation message window:

4  Your computer will download a file.   For Windows users, it will probably be put in the My Documents / Downloads file.  Or you system may use another place, or it may ask you where to put it.   Whatever happens, you will need to know where this file is saved to.

5  Open the blog that you want to move the posts to
(You may need to log out and in again, or perhaps just switch to different browser or tab)

Delete (using Posting / Edit Posts) any Posts that are already there, but which you don't want in the refreshed blog.

6  Go to Settings > Other and click Import Blog.  When the box opens, choose the exported file that you made earlier, and enter the security-text.


7  Choose whether or not to automatically publish all imported posts.  
Only tick the box if you DO want the posts automatically imported.   If you don't tick it, the posts will be loaded, but with have status of Draft, so won't be visible by readers until you publish them.

8  Click Import Blog.

Check that the import worked successfully, by looking at the blog, and also at the list of posts under Edit Posts:  are the right number of posts there, do they have the right labels etc.

 Results


All the posts
from the source blog will be copied to the destination blog.

Many of the post characteristics will be the same as in the original blog.  This includes:
  • title
  • post contents
  • published-date and time
  • label(s)
  • post-author.


Any comments from the source blog will also be copied over - sometimes it takes a few hours for the links for them to be re-establshed properly.

The URL for each post will be based on the URL of the blog you have imported them into and the publication-date that the posts had in the source blog - for example:
www.YourNewBlogName.blogspot.com /2009/05/name-based-on-post-title.html

Any internal links in the blog will still point to the post in the old blog
For example this link points to a popular article in Blogger-HAT.  
If I export-and-imported this post into a new blog, the link would still point to the same place, ie the post in Blogger-HAT - not to the post in the new blog.

Any pictures, videos etc in the old blog will still be in the same place that they were in (Picasa-web-albums, YouTube, Google Videos etc).

If you have imported more than the number of posts that Blogger allows per day (currently 50 I think) then to make any more posts today you will need to complete the captcha-test (ie entering the letters in the funny-shaped word).   This will go away approximately 24 hours after you last enter more that the maximum-posts-per-day.


Importing to the same blog

If you try to import posts into the same blog that you exported them from, Blogger will not import any posts, and give you an error message.

If you do want to do this (eg to create a duplicate set of posts), then do the export, change some small detail of the original posts title or date/time, and then do the import. 
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23 December 2015

365daysmasti

25 websites That Pay You to Write or Blog

If you love to write and have always had a dream to see your work published, but don’t want to start or manage a blog to feature all your writings, why not write for a blog or publication and get paid for it?
In this post, we’ve compiled 50 sites that will pay you for opinions, tutorials, guides, creative writing and in general, great material for readers. The niche areas consist of technology, travel, finance, education and more.
Rates vary; some pay per post/article, others pay based on length (per word). Note that some of these sites require you to write in a query first and they have a string of requirements, style guides, and advice that will help you get published. The links you see here will take you straight to their "Write to Us" pages.
List Verse – (Entertainment) Publishes list-style, top-10 type articles. Anything goes as long as the content is unique and interesting, and over 1500 words.
Site Point – (Web Design) Looking for content on HTML, CSS, Sass, PHP, WordPress as well as other popular or trending technologies.



A List Apart – (Design) The go-to place for developers, designers, information architects, content planners, tech enthusiasts, they are looking for viewpoint or argument-oriented articles.

Smashing Magazine – (Design & Development) Publishes content on various niches including design, coding, UX design, WordPress, etc.

Photoshop Tutorials – (Photoshop) Tips and tutorials for Photoshop beginners and enthusiasts on photo editing, designs, manipulations, enhancements.


The Change Agent – (Education) Features writing by adult students and learners that raises awareness or evokes thought among readers about social justice.


TakeLessons Blog – (Education) This is a site where you can look for teachers nearby to tutor you. Apart from that, it also features articles written by teachers on learning music, academic subjects and languages.

Money Crashers – (Finance) Looking for well-researched articles on investments, frugal living, retirement planning, credit and debt and other finance-related topics


Cracked – (Multi-niche) If you love pop culture, and Internet-styled humor, you probably have read a Cracked post. They also have a workshop to groom new, less-experienced writers.

Income Diary – (Blogging) Welcomes expert articles on creating websites, social media, driving traffic, making money online, and setting up a successful online business.



The Dollar Stretcher – (Finance) Looking for practical and creative ideas to save money, time, space at different stages in life: college years, married life, when with children or in retirement.



The Penny Hoarder – (Finance) Articles cover the topic of earning, saving and investing money as well as unique ideas that are related to finance.



Bird Channel –(Aviary) A website for bird lovers. So, they basically are looking for answers to queries on bird care, how-to articles, photo essays, and other stories.



Today I Found Out – (General Knowledge) From trivia to knowledge that requires research to dig up, this site is always looking for interesting articles to publish.



eCommerce Insiders – (eCommerce) Accepts content on online retail issues such as marketing, loyalty, operations, merchandising and design and industry-related experience.



Scotch-io – (Web Development) Looking for tutorials, lessons, how-to guides for PHP, AngularJS, servers and hosting, etc.



How l Round – (Theatre) A site for the theatre community that accepts and posts essays, blog post and critical reviews.



The Partially Examined Life – (Culture) A philosophy podcast and philosophy blog that accepts book reviews, brief posts related to culture and ideas, and philosophy accompanied by commentary.



The Introspectionist – (Philosophy) Looking for article ideas and pitches that will interest women. Accepts articles, creative non-fiction, essays and informativel content.



A Fine Parent – (Parenting) A site that looks for positive parenting methods and the sort of articles and tips that adopt that approach.



Babble – (Parenting) Babble is a parenting blog by Disney that accepts submissions on various categories including pregnancy, parenting, home, entertainment, beauty, and more.



WhatCulture – (Entertainment) If you like to write about movies (or films), TV, music, gaming, sports and other cool topics, here’s the place to submit.



BabyFit – (Parenting) The site has their own in-house writers but will accept articles on health topics related to pregnancy, parenting, nutrition and fitness.



Android AppStorm – Publishes content on popular Android apps. Its sister blogs accepts quality content on iPhone, iPad, web, Mac OS, and Windows.





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