Mar 31, 2007

New Features for Layouts Templates

Blogger has added two new options to use when adding page elements. The Newsreel option lets you automatically add current headlines from Google News to your blog. The Video Bar option lets you display clips from YouTube and Google Video for your readers to watch without leaving the page. Both of these can be accesses form the add page element menu and make it very simple to add these items.

new blogger options, newsreel and video bar

Posted by Chuck Peters at 3:40 PM 0 comments

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Mar 19, 2007

More SEO Tools

Search Status is a free Firefox add-on that displays the Google page rank and Alexa rating of every site you visit. These items run continuouly in your status bar at the bottom of your browser and can be disabled if needed. The additional features can be accessed from a icon menu as seen below.





These additional tools are great for comparing data of other similar sites to yours. Such as what keywords and meta tags they are using to gain the Google Page Rank they have achieved.

The show backward links and indexed pages tool is another great feature for getting a list of who is linking to your site and what pages are indexed by each of the major search engines. Click Here for more information and a download link

Posted by Chuck Peters at 10:35 PM 0 comments

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Mar 16, 2007

Use Blogger and AGLOCO to make extra money

I recently joined AGLOCO as I'm allways looking for new ways to earn additional revenue from my blogging efforts. I am now promoting it to you because I like the idea and I want you to share in what I think will be an exciting new Internet concept.

AGLOCO’s story is simple:

Do you realize how valuable you are? Advertisers, search providers and online retailers are paying billions to reach you while you surf. How much of that money are you making? NONE!

AGLOCO thinks you deserve a piece of the action.

AGLOCO collects money from those companies on behalf of its members. (For example, Google currently pays AOL 10 cents for every Google search by an AOL user. And Google still has enough profit to pay $1.6 billion dollars for YouTube, an 18-month old site full of content that YouTube’s users did not get paid for!

AGLOCO will work to get its Members their share of this and more.

AGLOCO is building a new form of online community that they call an Economic Network. They are not only paying Members their fair share, but they’re building a community that will generate the kind of fortune that YouTube made. But instead of that wealth making only a few people rich, the entire community will get its share.

What's the catch? No catch - no spyware, no pop-ups and no spam - membership and software are free and AGLOCO is 100% member owned. Privacy is a core value and AGLOCO never sells or rents member information.

So do both of us a favor: Sign up for AGLOCO right now! If you use this link to sign up, I automatically get credit for referring you and helping to build AGLOCO. http://www.agloco.com/r/BBCN7937

Thanks for helping us both!

Posted by Chuck Peters at 9:05 PM 0 comments

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Mar 9, 2007

Blogger Help Pages, The Big Picture

I've tried to compile a site map for Bloggers help pages. While this list may not be total, it covers most of the main content. Go ahead and browse, select a subject, your bound to learn something new about Blogger. I know I did.

Posted by Chuck Peters at 4:04 PM 0 comments

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Mar 2, 2007

Rounders, Adsense and New Blogger

Google says placing Adsense above the fold so that ads are prominently displayed produces the best results. I've found that the link unit 728x15 ad like you see in Blogatech's header above is the most profitable on this site. In this post I will show you how to place a 728x90 Leaderboard or 728x15 link unit ad in New Blogger's Rounders template between the header and main post area like shown below:



!!Before making any revisions to your template be sure you have a back-up copy!!

You will need to create a CSS element that formats the placement and color attributes for your ad. I call this #Goog. and it will need to be added into the style sheet section of your template. If your not familiar with this part of the New Blogger layouts type template, it is towards the top and comprises a large portion of the code. It begins with this opening tag:
<b:skin><![CDATA[/*
and ends with
]]>
You can add the following CSS anywhere in this section as long as it's after a closing bracket }.

Use this CSS for a 728x90 Leaderboard Ad:
#goog {
height: 90px;
margin-bottom: 4px;
margin-top: 15px;
padding-top: 3px;
background: #FFFFFF;
}

Use this CSS for a 728x15 Link Unit Ad:
#goog {
height: 20px;
margin-bottom: 4px;
margin-top: 15px;
padding-top: 3px;
background: #FFFFFF;
}

The background color code above is white but can be replaced with a color code that matches your Google ad. See this page for color codes.

Once you have inserted the above CSS, you will need to create the Goog division inside the HTML portion of the template. Locate the portion of code in your template shown in black below and add the lines shown in red:

<div id='header-wrapper'>
<b:section class='header' id='header' maxwidgets='1'>
<b:widget id='Header1' locked='true' title='testing (Header)' type='Header'/>
</b:section>
</div>
<div id="goog">
Your Parsed Google Adsense Code Goes Here
</div>
<div id='main-wrap1'><div id='main-wrap2'>
<b:section class='main' id='main' showaddelement='no'>
<b:widget id='Blog1' locked='true' title='Blog Posts' type='Blog'/>
</b:section>
</div<</div>

Assuming that you have already created your leaderboard ad, you would normally place the script that Adsense has given you between the two code lines in red above but with New Blogger you will have to take one more step. Since the new layouts template is constructed with XML which doesn't like Google's script, you will have to run it through Adsense parsing software such as found at the bottom of this page.
This program is just a quick way of removing all the special HTML characters.

You then take the newly generated Adsense script and paste it in the Goog division you created, which is between the two lines in red above. Review your changes and if everything is as you want, save your template and your done.


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