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.

How About a Face-lift?

New year, new hopes and a new look! This is my first trial of a single column template which are traditionally used by photo-bloggers. This time, however, I did not follow the easy route of downloading an XML file and using it.

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.

Time Takes its Toll

It's been a while since I posted due to a sickness that literally pinned me down in my bed. Coming back is not so easy. Log of Archiver was a mess: I tried so many things, tweaked my way around to such a degree that I was unable to remove a widget; everything had to be done by editing the HTML. It was an indicator to a new template with zero widgets floating around. I have just done that (a few previous posts may not work, though, but I'll look into it).

Recommended Content Widget

I am beginning to like the Google Friend Connect team. Their latest feature, the recommendations gadget allows members to recommend the content they like, anything from a whole page to a single photo, by simply clicking a button.

Friend Connect Bar and Poll Widget

I have added a Friend Connect bar (bottom of the page) and a poll widget today. I thought about a lot where to place the poll. I have way too many widgets on the sidebar, which is narrow for all intents and purposes anyway, so end of posts seemed like a good position.

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.

Obsessed with CommentLuv

Today, the idea of enabling CommentLuv natively in Blogger has haunted me again. For the impatient, the quickest and painless way of doing it is via JS-Kit commenting system but we do not want that because:

Related Posts Widget for Blogger

Related posts widget is one of the indispensable tools that every blogspot user must have. It increases reader engagement, provides on-site links visitors may be interested, and overall, despite the extra JavaScript cost it brings, is a valuable weapon in every blogger's arsenal.

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.

Google Hot Trends Widget

Today I have added Marcel Maatkamp's Google Hot Trends widget. It is only visible in post pages just under the calendar archive. It is the least obstructive one I was able to find.

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.

Blogger Calendar Archive Widget

My experiment to use the sidebar effectively continues. Although it is a bit heavy on the size (a few extra scripts), I have added Phydeaux3's calendar widget to the sidebar. What makes it different from his is the use of two separate archives, one for index and one for post pages.

A Few Template Tweaks

I have made some minor adjustments to the current template (whiteness). Although it contained a handful images, I was not pleased with the overall loading time of the pages. The culprit, believe it or not, was the blog list icons. Just to load a bunch of 16 by 16 pixel Blogger icons, several HTTP calls that took forever were being made. Removing the icons solved the problem.

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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What is This Space About?

I have several blogs on Blogger. This place serves as a test bed for the templates I (will) use, try new things with them, usually modifications and additions. I will also post problems I encounter and the solutions to them, if any.

It is a free format, otherwise topicless -read general- weblog. From politics (often rough) to swinging (sweet), it is a blog in the true (original) sense of the meaning.

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