Adding polls to your blog is a great way to get visitors to interact with your site. dPolls.com is totally free! Every service that the site offers is free of charge. Vote to a poll, create a poll, link a poll to your site - it's all free!
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There might be times that you want to display HTML code within a post. The problem is when you type the code in it display as the end result of the code and not the code.
So to get HTML to display as code you have to replace the opening tag symbols:
Technorati Tags: how to get html to display in a blogger post
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Inkscape is FREE open source vector based graphic program with features comparible to Abobe's Illustrator or Corel Draw. It is available for Linux, Windows & OSX. Images are created in .svg format with features such as transparency, gradients, node editing, pattern fills, PNG export, and more.
This is a great program for producing graphics for your blog. Anything from header banners to favicons. With scalable abilities you can set the page scale to pixels so that you are creating your graphic to the exact size you need.
You can import your photo's in a bitmap format and add text and vector images giving you a capabilities of programs costing hundreds of dollars. Visit their home page to download this free program.
Technorati Tags: inkscape, corel draw, illustrator, free graphic program
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Title: Logo and Header
Link: http://blogatech.blogspot.com/2006/05/logo-header.html
Title: Simple Custom Header
Link: http://blogatech.blogspot.com/2006/07/simple-custom-header.html
Title: Custom Header Option
Link: http://blogatech.blogspot.com/2006/06/custom-header-option.html
Title: Use Terragen to Create a Header
Link: http://blogatech.blogspot.com/2006/06/terragen-for-custom-header.html
Technorati Tags: bloagatech, custom blogger headers
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Check Page Rank of any web site pages instantly:
In order to check page rank of a single web site, web page or a domain name, please enter the web site, web page URL or domain name in the form below and click "Check PR" button:
| Check Page Rank of any web site pages instantly: |
This free page rank checking tool is powered by Page Rank Checker service |
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Here is a great way to get more traffic to your site.
Promote your website For FREE With Tell-Friends.com. Enable your visitors to refer your website to their friends by sending them an email via a button on your website.
It takes only seconds to install. No programming skills needed. No scripts to install. Simply create a free account, customize your form, select a button and copy and paste a few lines of code to your website.
You can even add your own logo, customize the text of the emails and receive email notifications when your website was referred by a visitor. We have a large selection of stylish buttons to choose from and provide you with stats as well.
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Question:
I have just started my first blog and really need some help with the template!!
I really don't know anything about the css, but what I want to do is to change the default banner of the Minima Template, to a graphic that I've designed in photoshop.
How do I do this????
I know this is really basic, but I need the help!
The header is just a box on the page. It's style attributes are defined by CSS such as:
Minima CSS=
#header {
width:660px;
margin:0 auto 10px;
border:1px solid #ccc;
}
This CSS sets the width, margins and places a one pixel border around the header. One way of adding your image would be to make it the background of the header by adding this CSS:
background: url(http://the address of your image.jpg)
no-repeat;
So now you would have;
#header {
width:660px;
margin:0 auto 10px;
border:1px solid #ccc;
background: url(http://the address of your image.jpg)
no-repeat;
}
The following HTML code directs the location on the page where the header is displayed and what items are contained inside the header:
<div id="header">
<h1 id="blog-title">
<ItemPage><a href="<$BlogURL$>">
<$BlogTitle$>
<ItemPage> </h1> <p id="description"><$BlogDescription$>
</div>
Any Item placed between the opening division tag and the closing division tag will display inside the header. For example the Blog Title and Discription are inside the header in a standard minima template. By changing the above code to the code below you are removing the Title and Description and replacing it with a image:
<div id="header">
<img src="http://image address.gif" width="size" height="size" alt="description of image goes here">
</div>
The information in between quotations will have to be replaced with items specfic to your image, such as it's address, size and a short description of the image.
Not knowing what size your image is I can't tell you exactly but you might have to add a height to your header CSS if the image is cut off. Just add what ever the pixel height of your image is. For example if the image is 100 pixels height add the following which takes into account the margins:
height: 110px;
Hope this helps!
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With Googles acquisition of You Tube it makes one wonder if there is a logo change in the future. I've drafted a couple of possibilities, let me know what you think.
You can experiment with your own options with Custom Google
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Here is a cool little CSS trick I stumbled across thanks to Len Kutchma and the Theatrum Mundi Blog. By hovering -here- This is a tooltip created purely with CSS and does not involve the use of any javascript.
Because it is css-based it's appearance is highly customizable. you can see the tooltip in action.
You can find the code and instructions for creating tooltips -here-
I experimented with the code and was also able to get the code to pop an image, check this example out.
Would you like to meet the Holywood Poker girls? Just hold your mouse
-here- 
to see these lovely ladies.(keeping hovering to see all the girls)
Cool eh? To pop a image just replace the text of the original code in Len's example with <img src="http://your image address.gif"/> and your image will pop on hover.
Technorati Tags: tooltips, blogatech
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Google has created a JavaScript API that lets you embed Google Maps in your blog or web site. Google Maps is a free draggable map for the whole world and displays a street map with directions to any business in the U.S., Canada, the UK and Ireland (city centres only). It is currently in beta testing.
A typical application would be for a food critic's blog where one could describe his dining experiences and the map would provide a location and directions for every restuarant the blogger critiqued. I have put up a sample blog with a few entries based on restaurants located in Wilmington, NC. Here is the Link This blog also incorporates the Google core search where if you click on certain designated items, google search results appear within your blog entry. Click the Movie reviews link in the sample blog to see what I mean. If you would like a copy of the template I used, you can download it here.
Google has in developement several other API's such as the Video Search and Video Bar. You can read all about how to add these cool features to your blog by visiting the developers blog here.His blog was also earmarked as a Blog Of Note on Googles Blogger Buzz.
Technorati Tags: add google map search to your blog
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What is Monster Blog Sack?
Monster Blog Sack is a unique blog directory and community. The Monster Blog Sack toolbar (Currently FireFox 1.5+ only.) allows you to randomly surf blogs according to your categories of interest. You can sack, tag, share, add to favorites, and search for blogs.
Sacking a blog shares your opinion on it's quality, and lets other community members who share your interests surf your favorite blogs. Have fun reading, learning, writing, and teaching!
Technorati Tags: monster blog sack, blogatech
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A Blogger template is nothing more than HTML code that arranges and formats the text and images in your blog or any other website. I have taken Douglas Bowman's Minima Template, a standard for Blogger and broken it down into the various blocks of code that control each individual area and color coded them to a visual reference of the browsers display of the code. This can be helpful in finding areas of code that a user might want to change when customizing their blog. This disection of the template is not intended to be a complete course in HTML, but it along with a understanding of some basic html and css can provide you with a lot of control over how your blog displays.
Click here for a larger view along with all notes.
Technorati Tags: blogger template anatomy, blogatech
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It seems that Blogger has a bug when it comes to inserting images into a post. I thought it was just me but another reader has brought the subject up. If you are in the middle of constructing a post and want to insert a image right here, it should be as simple as placing your cursor at this point and clicking the "add image" icon in the tool bar and automatically have the image code placed in the correct place, but the software seems to place the image at the top of the post every time.
I don't remember Blogger doing this in the past but that's what seems to be happening now. My fix is to go ahead and insert the image, It will be placed at the top of the page. I then go to the edit HTML tab and copy the code that was automatically generated. It will be at the top of the post. I copy this code and paste it within the post where I want the picture to display and then delete the code at the top of the page so the image does not display twice.
I also just went to Blogger Beta and tried to insert a image in the middle of a post and had the same problem. If anyone else out there has had the same problem and found a fix please let us know.
frak, I hope this answers your question. I host this blog to try and help, so I don't mind answering questions when I have the time. I will do some more research on this subject and will post if I find a solution.
Technorati Tags: problems inserting images in a blogger post, blogatech
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Blogger has introduced a new beta version of its popular blog editing software. The new version is only being offered to a select few but you can create a new account if you want to take the beta version for a spin.
The beta version offers easier ways of customizing your blog with the ability to add elements such as link lists and external javascript into you template from a drag and drop menu. You can also make instant changes to your fonts color and style settings with a WYSIWYG editor.
Another new feature lets you create a private blog where you can limit your viewing audience by a list of e-mail addresses or you can have multiple authors creating posts for your blog. Blogger has also added some fresh new templates, additional feed options and a new dashboard for easier blog management with instant publishing.
My initial impression of the software is that it will give new bloggers a easier way to customize their blog while still allowing greater customizing to those users wanting access to the raw HTML code. I hope to be posting some new blogger beta hacks soon so keep checking back.
Technorati Tags: blogger beta
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Ok It's official, I'm a total slacker. So slack that I'm changing the title of "Blog of the Week" to "Great Blogs". This way I'm eliminating any self imposed deadlines and the guilt associated with missing them over and over.
This spark of change comes from my stumbling upon a great blog that had me laughing out loud, you really should check it out. Organized Chaos is authored by Nana Roslan and with the help of puss, mei and mamafai they have created a unique layout with great content.
Technorati Tags: organized chaos, blogatech
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Here is a great tip that you can use to make your blog different. All the major elements of your Blogger template can be set to display background images. These elements are the Header, Post, Sidebar and Footer containers. You can even put a image as the background of your body which is the gray area below.
As an example, I want you to look at another blog I designed that make use of background images. Below is The-T-Shirt Blogspot which started life as a Blogger Minima template. You can click on the image below to see the actually site.(use your back button to return here)
Here is a list of the background images I used in the different elements. Take a look and you will see how this works.
Header Image
Sidebar Image
Post Image
All of these images were created using Corel Draw and were sized to fit in the container they are the background of. For example the graduated fade from gray to white that was used for the sidebar needed to be 160px wide. The height was not a factor as it floats with the length of information that you put in the sidebar such as all the dropdown menus I have added there.
Adding the images to your template is fairly simple. Once you have found that element in your templates style sheet just add the code in red to set the background. Of course you will have to use the actual address of your image.(the example is setting the sidebar background image)
#sidebar {
width:160px;
float:right;
background:#fff;
background: url(http://yourimage.jpg) no-repeat;
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Get-A-Link is a site I put up to help you increase your search engine rating by getting links to your site. You don't have to give out your e-mail address just leave your site info in the comments section. Your link to the site helps all that have joined and has a snowball effect in getting visitors to your site. Do yourself and all of us a favor and link up today! http://getalink.blogspot.com/
Technorati Tags: get a link, blogatech
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The Reflection in my Irish Eyes is this weeks pick for blog of the week. A personal journal that is the essence of traditional blogging. The young lady that authors this site shares her life experiences and adventures for all to enjoy.
I have to admit that beautiful Irish eyes and flaming red locks leave me quite helpless and could of had an influence in my choice. Still, I found her journal to be quite interesting and will be checking in occasionally to see what's new. I hope you all will as well.
Technorati Tags: the reflection in my irish eyes, blogatech
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A Tag Cloud is a weighted list or index of keywords that your blog uses. The keywords or tags are categorized by importance by the size of the font. Larger tags having been used more frequently within your posts. When a visitors clicks on one of these tags they are shown a list of posts that this keyword has been used in. (Try the example in the sidebar)
Tag clouds give your visitors a quick visual representation of what's going on in your blog and aid in navigation by providing additional search options. You have probably seen clouds on popular sites like Flickr and Technorati.
I've added a small tag cloud to blogatech's side bar thanks to Zoom Cloud. Their site will let you produce a tag cloud based on any RSS or Atom feed. They are completely customizable and free.
sign up is very fast and the menus will walk you through the set up process. All you need is your site feed. If your using Blogger you automatically have a Atom feed and the feed address can be found under the Settings tab of your Dashboard. If your not using Blogger you can get a RSS feed at Feed Burner.
Blogging T-Shirts
Check out Cafepress and their blogging apparel
Click Here
Technorati Tags: tag clouds, zoom cloud, blogatech
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This weeks blog is Bubbles in my Head. Billed as a literature and writing resource, it's a great site for anyone looking for tips on creative writing and poetry. The blogspot hosted site has a simple but very creative template. The sites author, Zoe says " Bubbles in my head is my blog attempt to revitalize the love of the written word in mass culture." It's an interesting blog, check it out.
Technorati Tags: bubbles in my head, poetry, creative writing
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In my last post on improving traffic I talked about Aardvark and their Topsites software. I have since discovered that not only is the software free but i-Topsites will host your Topsites directory for free. They do display some Google ads on the site but you are given access to the HTML so you can customize your directory list to suit your tastes. I set up a Blogatech Visitors Topsite and the process is pretty simple. Please stop by and sign up.
There is also a demo topsites list so you can see all the features in action. Here is a list of features that i-Topsites offers:
"Topsites usually fit this category:
Copied and pasted from our Terms of Service:
The following types of files may not be uploaded under any circumstances:
the promotion of products or services through direct advertisements for the purpose of commercial profit, without first attaining the permission of ImageShack®. This includes, but is not limited to, email spam and banner advertisements."
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Increasing traffic to your site is hard work. First off you have to provide good content. This should be your foremost goal, and you do this by posting, posting and posting. Fresh interesting content will bring your readers back for more.
Once a visitor arrives at your site, make it easy for them to come back. Provide them with a RSS feed they can subscribe to with Feedburner. Display the feed on your site in a prominent location. Give them the option to receive updates to your site via e-mail with Feedblitz . Offer button subscriptions to news aggregators like you see in Blogatech's sidebar as well. Remind your visitors to bookmark your site, I don't know how many times I've lost a site I was interested in because I didn't bookmark it. Also, if your using click exchanges to promote your site, and you should be, give those visitors your full URL address.(ie http://blogatech.blogspot.com) Click exchanges run in a separate frame and your address doesn't display in the address bar. If someone want to bookmark your site and all they see is Joe Blow's Blog with no address, it can be a pain to track your site down and mark it.
Optimizing your site to increase your search engine ranking is priority number two. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a complicated science that is ever changing. Primarily it involves creating keywords that are closely associated with all aspects of your content, such as titles, alt tags for your images, word density and more. Spend some time and research the topic. Create good meta tags, description and keywords. Make gradual changes and track your results with Site Meter or Stat Tracker. SEO takes time but will pay off greatly if you put forth the effort. (read more on SEO)
Your next priorty should be getting linked. Links to your website are like flyers in store windows or ads placed in a magazine. They are the internet's form of advertising and for the most part are free. Obviously, If people don't know your site exists your not going to get hits. The more links you can get the better. Links are also a big part of SEO and getting high page level search engine results. Take advantage of any link opportunity that you run across, it's like handing out a business card. If you look around you can find site like http://getalink.blogspot.com or http://bestestblogofalltime.blogspot.com which exist solely to help promote your site with a link.
Blog directories are another way to get linked. Register with as many as you can find. (see list of directories in sidebar) Another type of directory I've seen lately are the ones that rank your site based on how many hits or votes it receives and displays your banner if your in the top percentile. blogelites.com and topblogs.blogadvance.com are a couple of examples. Your going to see a lot of these type of sites popping up as the software needed to host one of these sites is provided free from Aardvark Top Sites
Spend time posting at forums and leaving comments on blogs. Most forums will let you add a link to your site in your signature if your helping them add quality content and not just spamming . The same goes for commenting on blogs. If you like a blog or a particular post, leave a encouraging comment, or even create a post about the subject and track back. You should be tagging your posts for Technorati also. (read more about Technorati)
Incorporate all these methods in your site promotion strategy and employ patience. I think you will be surprised at how they have a snowball effect and how fast your traffic will increase.
Technorati Tags: improving traffic, feedburner, feedblitz, get-a-link, aardvark top sites, technorati, blogatech
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It's one of the first things new bloggers want to do, create a header that is unique. There are plenty of ways to re-design the top of your blog. Here is the easiest if you are using Blogger's Minima template
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Late again but here it is. http://photowebs.blogspot.com Cool pictures what else can I say. Besides I here a cold beer and a burger calling me. Happy 4th to all.
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I added PDF this page and Fax this page buttons to the right side bar. These utilities let you do exactly what they say, Create a PDF file of this site or fax the content of this page to a FAX machine.
At first I wondered why would anyone want to do one of this items, then a application presented itself. I had added Kanoodle ads to Blogatech and they weren't showing up. I contacted Kanoodle and advised them of the problem and their response was "We see them just fine". So I created a PDF file of the site which showed huge gapping holes in the side bar where the ads should display and sent it to them.
I didn't get my problem solved but I was able to determine that Kanoodle and its Brightads program are total bullshit. You would think they would at least respond to my e-mail. I know they visited the site, as their ISP shows on my stat tracking record. Apparently their problem solving flow chart starts with "Blame the problem on the customer" and ends with " Ignore the problem and it will go away". Phew, feels good to get that off my chest.
I haven't used the FAX this page utility but I'm sure I will run across a situation where someone's ISP has gone done and I can use it to fax a web site to them. Maybe I can proxy surf for someone during a hurricane.
Anyway, you can add these features to your blog or you can visit the sites and utilize the service to FAX or PDF any URL you want.
http://pdfthispage.com
http://faxthispage.com
Technorati Tags: blog tools, fax this page, pdf this page, blogger, blogatech
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Here is another idea for you guys wanting something other that the stock blogger header. Go to fodey.com and create your Wizard Animation. Then resize the gif image, upload it to a host service and apply it as your header background. 
You could adjust the size of the wizard image by copying the image to your hard drive and then use PIXresizer to change it's dimentions. For a typical Blogger header I would try a size of 720 x 200 for starters. Then you would upload the new gif image to a hosting service such as image shack. They would give you the new URL that you would place into your template. Here is the portion of the template where I set Blogatech's header background image. The area in red is where you would add the new URL of the Wizard Animation that you obtained from image shack.
#header {
width:100%;
margin:0 auto 0 auto;
padding-top:0px;
height: 200px;
background: url(http://address of the image) no-repeat;
border-bottom:0px dashed #ccc;
}
Technorati Tags: blogger, custom header, fodey.com, image shack. pixresizer
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You can create more than one link to a image with a process called "image mapping" The user will be directed to a different site or page depending on what portion of the image they click on.
For example, in the image below if you click in the white square with the Google name you will be taken to Google's site. Same with the square containing the yahoo name. The two black dead zone squares are not linked and as you hover your mouse over them you will see that the cursor's icon changes from a hand in a linked area, to an arrow in unlinked areas.
<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://image address.jpg" usemap="#test" border="0" />You can see by the areas highlighted in red that the linked areas are defined by X and Y coordinates starting from the top left corner of the image. These cordinates are measured in pixels. There are additional geometric shapes that can be used with the map command as well, here are some example areas and their corresponding coordinates"
</div><map name="test">
<area shape="Rect" coords="0,0,89,89" href="http://www.google.com">
<area shape="Rect" coords="90,90,179,179" href="http://www.yahoo.com">
</map>
area shape="rect" coords="0,0,0,0"The cirlcle is defined with the X and Y of its center followed by its radius in pixels. The poly is defined by the X and Y of three or more points.
area shape="poly" coords="0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0"
area shape="circle" coords="0,0,0"
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I've been slack on updating the blog of the week section. In an effort to keep the week numbers in order there are two winners posted today.
Week of 06-19 is awarded to a newbie to the blogisphere, Write Stuff Writing Service. The wordpress based site is published by freelance writer Dorothea Helms and it is rich in style. I really enjoyed the writing tips, great stuff for a hack like me. I expect fantastic things from this blog and hope you will visit and bookmark the site.
Week of 06-26 is awarded to The battle Rock Spot. Published by the Battlerocker who bills himself as a 2nd rate law student. I highly doubt the 2nd rate part.. The site is Blogger powered and sports a great template designed by Weblog Design Studios. Again I hope you all will follow the link and check it out.
Technorati Tags: write stuff writing studios, the battle rock spot, blogatech
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Terragen is billed as " photorealistic scenery rendering software, capable of near-photorealistic results for professional landscape visualization, special effects, art and recreation."
In other words it lets you create killer landscape pictures like you see in the movies. Its fairly easy to use, a ton of fun and its FREE! I created the scene above after spending about 30 minutes reading Carol Brooksbanks Tutorial. Its by no means of the quality of those seen in the Terragen user galleries, but not wanting to infringe on any copyrights this is the only example I can offer for now.
Although the software is intimidating at first due to the massive amount of controls offered. It is not difficult to get impressive results quickly, just from the short time I spent with the software I can see how devoting some effort to learning Terragen's interface could lead to the creation of some outstanding images.
Terragen appears to have a large following of digital landscape artists, resulting in quite a few plug-ins and additional resources being available to extend it's capabilities. Checkout how to create a beach scene by Dorothea Beer(Click Here)
As far as blogging, you could easily use Terragen to create a custom header. Just compose the landscape image in Terragen, size it to fit your header, some where around 720px wide by whatever, 200 to 300 pixels high, save your image. Then open it in MS Paint and add your text title and your good to go. (see this post for more info on creating a custom header.)
Technorati Tags: terragen, custom header, blogatech
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The blogisphere is fast becoming a powerful tool for shaping the future of the world. With your blog, you not only have the ability to express your personal opinion but you can point your readership towards sites and projects that carry important messages.
Dropping knowledge is one such site.
"dropping knowledge is a global initiative to turn apathy into activity. By hosting an open conversation on the most pressing issues of our times, we will foster a worldwide exchange of viewpoints, ideas and people-powered solutions. On September 9, 2006, 112 scientists, social entrepreneurs, philosophers, writers, artists and activists from around the world will come together in Berlin, Germany, as guests of dropping knowledge.
Seated around a vast round-table in historic Bebelplatz square, these inspiring individuals, renowned for their lasting creative, social or humanistic contribution will engage with 100 questions from the global public.
These questions, selected by dropping knowledge's founders, trustees and ambassadors from the growing pool generated by our 'ask yourself' campaign, will reflect the topics of greatest concern to the global public, highlight under-reported issues and engage key themes (climate change, for example) endorsed by dropping knowledge in 2006.
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If your a musician or just a music fan you got to check out this site.
Musicians:
They offer free MP3 hosting as well as:
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One way to add a touch of spice to your blog is with a Favicon or a Favatar as we're going to call it. These are small icon's that are displayed in the browsers address bar next to the URL. In the past you only saw Favatars on larger corporate sites that paid web developers big money to create their online identities, but now a days even us lowly bloggers can add originality to our sites with a custom icon.
The first step in creating your Favatar is the graphic design, which can be challenging because the final image is displayed so small. If you try to include to much detail or use a photo for this image your going to end up with a Favablob, as that's what it will look like, a blob that no one will be able to tell what the hell it is. So, rule number one is keep it simple. Save the detail for your larger works of art.
Try to incorporate your sites color scheme into the design. You can use any graphics program you want, even MS Paint, the graphics program packaged with windows will work for this task as simplicity is the order of the day.
For Blogatech's Favatar, I started with the logo you see above and just used the letter "B" in the font style of that logo. As you can see, I kept to the color scheme of Blogatech as well.. The similarity to the Blogger logo is intentional as working with Blogger is the theme of Blogatech.
Once I had created the graphic in Corel Draw I exported the image as a jpeg file. The next step was to get the image to a workable size which I did with the help of PIXresizer. You want your final image to be as close to a square as possible and no bigger than 96x96 pixels in size. I actually reduced it to 50x50 pixels which is very easy in PIXresizer (Read more about PIXresizer).
With our newly created graphic we headed to myfavatar.com to sign-up and upload our image. You will have to give them the usual info and verify your e-mail address in order to use their service. Once I uploaded the image and gave my blog URL and description I was given the HTML code I needed to add to my template. Here is the code they provided:
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://favatar.myfavatar.com/blogatech.ico" type="image/x-icon" />
<link rel="icon" href="http://favatar.myfavatar.com/blogatech.png" type="image/png" />
With the whole process being so easy I decided to personalize my poker blog with this favatar. Again I was trying to keep it simple and incorporates the site colors, Check it out: Poker Chaos Blog
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It's that time again, Blog of the week. I've found a peach of a web log for this issue. The Best Sentence of the Day is another blog penned by a pro. Jane, you remember her don't you. Second grade, Mrs Collins class. Dick's little sister, or was she his girl friend? Hmmm.... don't know. Its been a long road littered with brain cells.
Jane's blog gets the B.O.W award for its outstanding originality and creativity. All you hardcore bloggers will love this one. Simple and smart and text laden No side bar content other that the archives and previous posts. I know, how could Strat like this one, no pictures. Well you know the old saying a picture is worth a thousand words. I must say, dear Jane has the ability to paint that picture and only uses a small portion of her allotment of words. A true Web Log Diary. Be sure to check out the comments section where she expands on The Best Sentence of the Day.
Technorati Tags: the best sentence of the day, dick and jane
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The Controversy of Search Engine Optimization Topic – Everyone is an expert. Yet everyone has their own way of optimizing sites for Search Engines. There must be thousands of articles floating around the net that touch on the subject of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The purpose of this article is simply to show in practice what does Search Engine Optimization mean.
Ah that The Geek Talk! What is the Search Engine Optimization?In plain English Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to the process of manipulation of one website to attract more visitors by increasing ones site ranking on major search engines.
To better illustrate search engine optimization I’d like to resort to a practical exercise and you can try this yourself as well:
Exercise Description:
You are a proud owner of a brand-spanking new website www.fontsmadeeasy.com. Your goal is to drive as much traffic to that site as possible. Most obvious way is to get your site listed with the search engines and get as much free traffic as you can from that source. What do you do?Step 1:
Submit your site to 3 major search engines.Step 2:
Google.com (http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl)
Yahoo.com (http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request)
MSN.com (http://search.msn.co.in/docs/submit.aspx)
Note: A lot of time will go by in some cases it may take several weeks for these search engines to actually list your site. But for the sake of this exercise lets assume that It happens instantly.
With the use of Traffic Reporting software analyze the traffic you are receiving from these search engines. Note: If you don’t already have one you need to start tracking the traffic of your site. There are many different services and software you can use to track your sites traffic.
So here is a picture from the traffic reporting software:
This gives you the start. A baseline rather. It tells you under which keywords you are found on the search engines. Now you are ready to go to step 3Step 3:
Figure out your site ranking for these specific keywords:
You can visit www.rankchecker.net to get the results shown on this step.
Comparative Analysis in Step four we compare the results from step 2 to the results in step 3.
So here is what we end up with:
Make a decision. As you can see now High rank does not always translate to high traffic. As it turns out not only do you need to worry about the rank but also you must consider which keywords are frequently used in your industry. In the case with fontsmadeeasy.com as it turns out you would need to concentrate on optimizing your site content for the keyword “dingbat fonts” why do you ask? Well its rather simple this keyword has a rank of 78 on Google yet it produces 8 visits. While “accent sf fonts” has a rank one and only produces 11 visits.So what we just did is in fact Search Engine Optimization. It is important to note that this exercise is one of many different ways to Optimize your Search Engine Ranking and in now way implicated that this is the only way to do SEO.
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For this weeks blog award Blogatech has chosen Little Nuances, a blog authored by professional writer Lee Warren, who's writing style makes his posts fun and enjoyable to read no matter what subject he has chosen.
Little Nuances uses a two column template design by Michael Heilemann whos has given this Blogger hosted blog a simplistic style that is uncluttered and compliments its greatest attribute which is the quality of the writing. Take a minute or two and check the site out, its merely a click away.
Technorati Tags: blog of the week, little nuances, lee warren,
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Image hosting allows you to store photographs and graphic images online. Anything from pictures of your family and friends to that cool header graphic you made for your blog. Whenever you want to post a picture on a internet forum, message board, e-bay auction or your blog the image will have to have a URL This is the address of where the image is stored and you get this address by uploading the image to a hosting service.
Uploading images is relatively simple. You go to the hosting service site. Find the browse button which will bring up a dialog window in which you select where the image is located on your computer, select the file name of your image, click the upload button and its done. The site then gives you the new address where your image is stored on the internet.
This is a list of the most popular free image hosting services with a description of their features:
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It's been a little over a week and the writers and staff of blogatech ( me, myself and I), have managed to create a sizeable amount of content for these pages. Hopefully we have answered some readers Blogger questions or inspired them to make a design change to their own blog.
We have spent some time on promotions as well, with URL submissions to all the major and some not so major search engines. We knocked on the door of a few blog directories and even got accepted to Googles Adsense program. You can look forward to articles on all of these processes soon.
With all that said and the truth be known, our traffic numbers really sucked! The Worlds Largest Ball of Twine had more visitors than we did. It's not easy getting people to a new site and I have seen from the past that you have to just keep at it. Build it and they will come. So this is for all the new blog builders out there. Don't expect to make the headlines of your local newspaper the first week of your blogging career. (The next best thing)
Technorati Tags: blog traffic
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During my surfing sessions I have see many weblogs created in Blogger that still have the "Edit Me" links shown. Many times on a blog that the author has obviously devoted a great deal of time on by way of regularly updated posts. Yet Cyberphobia has kept them from entering the dreaded HTML code and adding some links. This has inspired me to devote time to explaining the basics of creating links.
What is a link? A link is either text, or a image that when clicked on will take you to a page on the internet. This is called the pages URL (Uniform Resource Locator), which is the address that specifies the location of where a pages source code is stored on the Internet. All URL's begin with: http:// (e.g. Blogatechs URL or address is http://blogatech.blogspot.com)
So the first step in creating a link in Blogger is determining what the address of the page you want to link to.
In this screenshot of Xtra's web page The red arrow is pointing to the browsers address bar. This is where you can find the address of whatever page you are presently viewing. In this case it is http://xtramsn.co.nz/home/
We are going to create a link to this site and place it in our blog. Once we are at Xtras site we go to the address bar, click and drag our mouse across the address to highlight it. Then we right click and select copy. The address is now stored on our clipboard and we can paste it anywhere we want. The clipboard cannot be viewed but whatever we have copied will remain there until we copy something else.
Now we go to Blogger, log in to the dashboard for our blog and select the Template tab. This is where the HTML code for our blog is stored and where we want to create our link at. Scroll down through the code until you see something like this in the sidebar section:
<h2 class="sidebar-title">Links</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://news.google.com/">Google News</a></li>
<li><a href="http://EDITME">Edit-Me</a></li>
<li><a href="http://EDITME">Edit-Me</a></li>
</ul>
The above code show a list of three links. The first is of Google and the next two are waiting for you to enter the address and description of your links. The area in blue is where you want to paste the Xtra address we copied and the area in red is the description you want to be displayed for this link. Which i'm going to call Xtra Site.
Here is the code after these changes have been made:
<h2 class="sidebar-title">Links</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://news.google.com/">Google News</a></li>
<li><a href="http://xtramsn.co.nz/home/">Xtra Site</a></li>
<li><a href="http://EDITME">Edit-Me</a></li>
</ul>
The link we just created would look and behave like this:
Xtra Site
You could edit the third link by entering any other address by following the sam procedures we used for the Xtra Site link. Also if you wish to add even more links, all you have to do is add additional line of code to be edited such as this:
<h2 class="sidebar-title">Links</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://news.google.com/">Google News</a></li>
<li><a href="http://xtramsn.co.nz/home/">Xtra Site</a></li>
<li><a href="http://EDITME">Edit-Me</a></li>
<li><a href="http://EDITME">Edit-Me</a></li>
<li><a href="http://EDITME">Edit-Me</a></li>
<li><a href="http://EDITME">Edit-Me</a></li>
</ul>
In the next post in this series we will learn how to create a link using a image or photograph.
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This being the first appointment of Blogatech's blog of the week award, I felt it fitting to bestow this soon to be coveted award to none other than the Official Google Blog. As the owner and manager of Blogger and Blogspot, Blogatech would not exist without this companies contribution to the blogging community. I also figured it wouldn't hurt Blogatechs search engine rating if I kissed a little ass. No wonder Google thinks this is a spam blog with nine and soon to be ten variations of the word blog in the first paragraph. I'll never get my word verification turned off at this rate. Back to the subject.
Congratulation Google! Another first to add to your list of achievements.
It is my desire to use Blog of the Week as a reward to up and coming blogs that I think deserve credit. So if your a well established blog, with lots of traffic, I'd like to point out that you were considered for this inaugural award but to point out the obvious, you lost. Even tho I have no intentions of ever naming another well know blog to this position of importance. I could be influenced to alter this policy if you were to link to Blogatech and direct a massive amount of traffic to this site.
Technorati Tags: google blog, blog of the week, blogatech
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You can create all different types of forms in blogger.
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The key to a successful blog is offering up good content. That can be a challenging task when your blog is new. It would be nice to have a staff of writers at your disposal to fill your blog with interesting reading, but most of us have to depend on ourselves to do this. There is however help available in this area. There are plenty of sources of what I call "free content"
You may have noticed the article of the day in Blogatech's sidebar. This is an example of free content available from The Free Dictionary. They will provide you with javascript code, you place this in your template and it generates a container of information that is updated daily. There are several topic you can choose from:
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In order for your images to display correctly they have to be sized to fit in the area you want them located. Computer Image dimensions are expressed in pixels. For example, the images that you see in Blogatech's right sidebar have to be 150 pixels in width or less. This sidebar width restriction will depend on what Blogger template you have chosen. On a typical 2 column template the sidebar is a little larger, somewhere around 200 to 250 pixels wide. If you try to place a image that is wider than your sidebar container, the sidebar will drop to the bottom of the page.. It might display correctly in Firefox but when viewed in Explorer it will have dropped. ( see browser compatibility) The height of a sidebar image is not a factor you will need to worry about. Images that you place within a Blogger post are automatically resized when you select small, medium or large from Bloggers "add image" menu. Images placed out side your post in the sidebar or other area of you template will have to be sized manually.
PIXresizer is a handy piece of utility software that I developed for image resizing. It allows proportional resizing of all the major image types(JPG, JPEG, GIF, PNG or BMP). Feel free you use this utility to re-size all your blog images, remember to bookmark the site for future use.
Technorati Tags: PIXresizer, image resizing, blogging, blogger
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This script when pasted into your Blogger template's s sidebar will create a link that automatically opens explorers "Favorites" dialog box and enters your URL and site name for your visitor to bookmark. In Firefox, Netscape and Opera browers it will display "Bookmark Us! (Ctrl+D). Although its easy enough for a visitor to click on the favorites tab and do this himself. The link will serve as a reminder for them to bookmark your page which will increase your sites repeat traffic.
You will have to change the blogatech address and name which are the text shown in red to that of your site.(be sure to leave the quotation marks as they are.)
<script>
// (C) 2000 www.CodeLifter.com
// http://www.codelifter.com
// Free for all users, but leave in this header
// message to show in non-IE browsers
var txt = "Bookmark Us!"
// url you wish to have bookmarked
var url = "http://blogatech.blogspot.com";
// caption to appear with bookmark
var who = "Blogatech"
// do not edit below this line
// ===========================
var ver = navigator.appName
var num = parseInt(navigator.appVersion)
if ((ver == "Microsoft Internet Explorer")&&(num >= 4)) {
document.write('<A HREF="javascript:window.external.AddFavorite(url,who);" ');
document.write('onMouseOver=" window.status=')
document.write("txt; return true ")
document.write('"onMouseOut=" window.status=')
document.write("' '; return true ")
document.write('">'+ txt + '</a>')
}else{
txt += " (Ctrl+D)"
document.write(txt)
}
</script>
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Technorati tags are catagories or subjects that you can add your post to. They are then indexed on Technorati's search engine along with other bloggers posts that are about the same or similar subject as yours. Why would you want to add tags to your posts? Simple, to generate additional traffic to your site. Here is Technorati's explaination of what a tag is:
What's a tag?
Think of a tag as a simple category name. People can categorize their posts, photos, and links with any tag that makes sense.
Where does the stuff on Technorati Tag pages come from?
The photos come from Flickr and Buzznet, two online photo sharing communities. If you'd like your photos to appear on our tag pages, join Flickr or join Buzznet and post your photos there. Just tag them and set them to be public and they'll appear on Technorati Tag pages.
The links come from web-based bookmark service Furl. If you would like to contribute links to Technorati Tag pages, you can join Furl and post some links. Again, be sure to tag them for them to appear here.
The rest of the Technorati Tag page is made up of blog posts, which come from you! Anyone with a blog can contribute to Technorati Tag pages. There are two ways to contribute:
If your blog software supports categories and RSS/Atom feeds (like Movable Type, WordPress, TypePad, Blogware, Radio), just use the included category system and make sure you are publishing RSS/Atom feeds and your categories will be read as tags.
If your blog software doesn't support categories or you're not sure, you can still participate. To associate a post with a Technorati Tag all you have to do is tag your post by including a special link in the body of your post. For example:
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/"rel="tag">[tagname]</a>
The [tagname] can be anything, but it should be descriptive. Please only use tags that are relevant to the post. You do not need to include the brackets, just the descriptive keyword for your post. Just make sure to include rel="tag".
You do not have to link to Technorati. You can link to any web page that ends in a tag - even your own site! For example, these tag links would also be included:
<ahref="http://apple.com/ipod" rel="tag"><iPod/a>
<ahref="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity" rel="tag"><Gravity</a>
Once you have posted the tagged post, there are two ways to have your post included on a Technorati Tag page:
If your blog software is configured to ping Technorati, congratulations! You're done!
If your blog software does not support automatic pinging, or if you haven't set it up yet, or if you're not sure, you can manually ping us here. You might also want to configure your blog software to ping us automatically so you don't have to do that every time.
Your post should appear on the page in a few minutes (up to an hour during periods of intense activity). Thank you for helping to build the real-time web."
Your source for info on Blogger, template mods, tips, tricks and blog tools. Blogatech walks your thru. the steps needed to create a unique and income producing blog. Want to know how something you saw on another blog was done, find out at Blogatech.
.technoratitag {
font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif;
font-size: 0.9em;
border-top:1px solid #777;
line-height: 1.5em;
color: #777;
}
.technoratitag_list {
border-top:1px solid #777;
}
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