Warning For Free Wordpress Theme Searchers

Siobhan has a very good and informative article pointing to the dangers of downloading free Wordpress themes from unreliable sources. I thought of tweeting her warning at first but considering the very few followers I had, decided to publish here.

When Google Fails to Search

It all started when I decided to write a new blog. As I had done it many times before, setup, widgets and plug-ins of my choice and a suitable template swiftly took their places. Additional code was minimal for Blogger now does many things natively.

Niche Ideas for Blogs

"How can I choose a niche for my blog?" I come across this question frequently in forums. Though I can not recommend anyone to write about topics they have no interest in or have less than average information about, if you feel compelled to do so, here is a not so original methodology which will hopefully ease the selection process.

A few SEO and Speed Tweaks

After having done some tests, I changed the placement of a few widgets with improving reader experience and search engine optimization in mind. The popular posts widgets are now on the main page. This, I believe, will enhance readability and overall navigation. Google trends or the fancy widget as I call it, is on the home page, too. I do not know why, but I like it. Other than that, it serves no meaningful purpose. As both are basically feeds, the individual post pages should now load considerably faster.

Filtering Your Own Visits in Analytics

If you are using Google Analytics for statistics in your own site, you will most likely want to exclude your own visits from showing up by a filter. Google has provided two ways to achieve it:

• By filtering out your IP 
• By placing a cookie 

Unable to Move a Widget

Suppose you created a widget and it appeared nicely on top of your side bar in Blogger. Then you attempted to move it to a particular place in your layout by dragging and dropping the widget. So far, so good. After the move, you pressed the save button, and... Blogger gave you a cryptic error code. Another try, no go: same error.

Set Up Landing Pages

One trick you can borrow from affiliate marketers is setting up a landing page for your blog. Confused? Don't be. I very well know blogs do not have landing pages but the idea is good nevertheless.

Sending Pingback with Blogger

In addition to the trackback add-on of Greasemonkey + Firefox combination, one other interesting tool I spotted is Scott Yang's Trackback 'em All script. Despite the fact that it is more complex than the former, it has an advantage of sending pingbacks, a more modern version of trackback.

Ranking High in Search Engines

The topic of ranking high in search engines is widely discussed in the web. Just a quick search will yield a plethora of results. They have one common flaw, maybe not a flaw but a bias, though: they usually assume English is the only language. To some extent, they are right, English is the language of the world wide web.

Sending Trackback with Blogger

Sending a trackback or pingback with Blogger is a highly requested feature. Stephen Weber had once wrote a Greasemonkey script to enable trackback in both old and new versions of Blogger with the added benefit of Delicious tagging and pinging packed. It used to work sometime, and probably because of recent modifications to Blogger code, it simply stopped working after a while.

Add a Short URL for Your Visitors

Adding a short URL for your visitors can increase your exposure in social networking sites like Twitter. Having a short domain name has obvious advantages, not to mention it is easy to remember. If you have a long domain name, as is the case with all blogspot (Blogger) blogs, have a link handy in your posts. I will be adding a Tiny URL link for all of my posts gradually.

Short URL for this post

Consult Your Muse

When you're desperate and can't find anything to write. Sounds familiar? Many a blogger have faced it, you will, too. When that daring moment comes, let Internet's vast resources be your muse for inspiration. Consult her.

The idea is simple really. If you're the lazy kind, you can simply visit Addict-o-matic and type your magic words. It will do the rest for you. If you are persistant and hardworking however, you can set up a page like that and cook your own stuff. Either way, there will be enough inspiration to write about. If your muse still does not knock on your door and is nowhere to be found, take a pill and go to sleep. You need it, really.

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Best Practices for Fast Blogs

If you asked me what turns most of your visitors off apart from pop-ups, unnecessary music on the page, excessive use of ads etc., I would definitely say slow sites. Attention spans of today's readers are very short. Although you may not have the technical know-how to apply them all or simply not have the means due to free hosting or similar reasons, it is imperative that you should have a passing knowledge of what makes web pages fast.

Changing Templates in Blogger

Sooner or later you will want to change the template of your blog. The Reasons are several:

• You will get bored with the current one.
• You will come across a shiny, adorable template.
• A more convenient template for the theme of your blog will come up.

Life has taught me a few lessons and one of them pertinent to blogging is not to plug and pray with the template of a production blog. So, it is good to have a place to scratch and try things before implementing them in the blogs you are running. Take my advice, you will not regret it.

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