10 Rare Blogger Tips And Tricks For Blogspot Bloggers

Problogger.net is having a blog project and I thought I'll write this post and share with you 10 rare blogspot tips and tricks I've picked up from other bloggers or learned from my experience with blogspot.

Before we move on to the tips I must say that compared to other free blog services, blogspot is better, simple, powerful and gives you a lot of freedom and flexibility. But when you go on using it you notice it is very crude and lacks many features. I think these 10 tips will greatly help you over come those short comings in blogspot and give your blogspot blog a more professional look. So here are the 10 blog tips for your blogspot blog. Please use the comments to let me know if you want to know more about any of these tips and also to add your own tips and tricks for blogspot bloggers.


1. How to track All recent comments

For most blogspot users tracking and responding to recent comments is a major problem. But there is a easy way to track your most recent comments left anywhere in your blog, be it in your latest post or in a old post somewhere in the archives. Blogspot provides a aggregated comment feed where you can see your blog's 25 most recent comments.

The comment feed URL for your blog is:
YourBlogName.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/full

E.g. Comment feed for Planet Apex blog is:
http://planetapex.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/full


2. Add a Menu Bar

A menu bar helps visitors navigate a blog easily and also gives it a professional outlook. Beautiful Beta explains how to add a menu bar for a blogspot blog in this post.

3. Remove the nav bar

The navigation or nav bar at the top of blogspot blogs is a eyesore and makes the blog look unprofessional. It can also cause a lot of trouble because of visitors clicking the "notify objectionable content" button, which will make your blog to be suspended for day's or even weeks until cleared by Blogspot administrators. You can get rid of the nav bar by making the simple modification explained in this post.

4. Change blog post title tags

You can be losing a lot of potential search traffic because of the default way Blogspot displays blog post heading in search engines. To overcome this you must change your blog post title tag from the default: "Blog name" + "Post title" to appear as "Post title" first and then the "Blog name" in search engine. This post explains how to do it.

Update: The old hack code for optimizing the Blogspot title tags in the above link no longer works. You can find a new hack in this post at Blogger widgets.

5. Install a blog traffic counter

Blogpost not having a inbuilt traffic counter is a major short coming. So make sure you install at least a basic traffic counter in your blogspot blog. I have installed both SiteMeter and Google Analytics to track and analyze visitors to this blog. For more information on choosing traffic counters see this post.

6. Best way to stop spam comments

Spam comments is a major problem in blogspot. I find the best way to fight spam in blogspot is to enable "word verification" for comments. Ever since did it I haven't got a single spam comment. To do it, go to your blog Dashboard's "Settings" tab section and enable "word verification" for comments.

7. Minimise or Remove Site wide Links & Blogrolls

Google can be a huge traffic driver to your blog and the PageRank Google assigns to your blog has a huge impact on the amount of traffic you get from Google. As Google PageRank is calculated from the number of incoming and outgoing links to your blog, sitewide links and huge blogroll in your sidebar reduce your PageRank. So it's better if you have a separate blog post for Related Links and Blogroll and link to those posts from the menu bar or side bar.

8 Insert AdSense inside Blog Posts

If you are thinking of making money from ads in blogspot blogs this will be invaluable. AdSense ads are reported to perform best when they are placed inside blog post, specially between the post title and content. 'Voice of Colombo' explains how to insert a AdSense ad Panel inside every Blogspot post here.

9 Add social bookmark links after every post

Social Bookmarking sites like Digg, Stumble Upon etc. can be a huge traffic generator to your blog. So why not induce readers to bookmark and market your blog post by placing a link to these sites after every post. This post explains how to add social bookmarking links after every blogspot post.

10. Beware of free blogspot templates

There are hundreds of free blogspot templates available in the internet. But be very selective when you choose a template for blogspot blogs. I've read about many complains from bloggers who have implemented third party templates having blog display problems and not getting indexed properly in search engines etc. due to bad code designs. Even India's ace blogspot blogger, Digital Inspiration is having problems with search engines due to his template. So I think it's wise to go for one of the default templates provided by blogspot. Thanks to the new facilities provided by the new blogger you can always make simple changes like put in a banner image etc. and make your blog standout in the crowd.

3 Amazing Garbage Islands

Believe it or not, in Japan's Tokyo Bay, there are being made large garbage islands with airports and skyscrapers on them! AND in the Pacific Ocean there is a floating garbage island that's twice the size of Texas!






Garbage Islands with Airport

These photos show the construction of the giant artificial island using garbage in Tokyo for an airport.









There are more pictures of this island at Archibase Architecture News.

Update: I have made a mistake. This island is not in Tokyo Bay but in a bay called Ise in Tokoname City in central Japan. This airport is called Chūbu Centrair International Airport and according to Wikipedia's article on this island it is Japan's 8 busiest airport.

This island airport is Japan's third off-shore airport, after Nagasaki Airport and Kansai International Airport, and second airport on a man-made island. Also according to wikipedia there are currently 5 offshore airports in Japan!

Floating Garbage Island Twice The Size of Texas!


(image credit: mindfully.org)

I came across many articles in various sites about this garbage island that's twice the size of Texas that's floating somewhere between San Francisco and Hawaii! However it is not an island in the solid sense. Here is an excerpt about this "island" from a blogger who had got it the Popular Science Blog.

"A heap of trash that's twice the size of Texas is floating somewhere between San Francisco and Hawaii. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, as it's called, is 80 percent plastic, and weighs in at 3.5 million tons. Trapped in a circular course by winds and currents, it's been around since the 1950s, and has been growing tenfold every decade. It's not a dumping ground in the sense that people are flying or boating by and throwing their refuse into the heap. Instead, it's picking up trash that originates onshore, and has since made its way out into the Pacific."

But who knows, if we keep on polluting we may actually one day make it.

The Beautfiul Garbage Island



This is an island in Maldives (a tiny island nation south west of Sri Lanka). According to a comment in Flickr where I found this photo, this island was a reef before but after reclaiming it with garbage and waste it has now become a big island used for industrial purposes. The smoke you see is the burning of all the waste brought from the capital Male island.

Side note: I was very amused to see a visitor had come to the ultra luxury Dubai palm islands post by searching in Yahoo for "garbage islands in Dubaay." I'm very thankful to whoever it was because a little bit of searching for that term shocked me with these interesting stuff about garbage islands. Who would have thought there is so much amazing things out there for even garbage islands! :-)

. 25 Unbelievably Beautiful Sceneries and Pictures

I really enjoy pictures of beautiful sceneries and landscapes. They are so lovely and heart fulfilling, that you get a feeling of joy and satisfaction when you look at them. So I was very happy when I received this superb email with the following collection of pictures of some unbelievably beautiful sceneries. (I think that email forward must be one of the most beautiful emails in the world too!)

Here are those beautiful sceneries pictures someone had put together in a email. It contains 25 very beautiful natural and man-made sceneries from around the world. These pictures are certainly some of the best scenery pictures I've seen. They make me want to get out for a trip to the real place. I wish I can visit these places one day!

Enjoy!

Unbelievable Beauty




Tundra


Autumn in Germany


The beauty of Antarctica


Scenery of Europe


German's New Swan Castle


View of Holland


Beauty of Tibet


Disney Castle


Golden Maple Leaf


Edge of Glacier


Lavender Farm and Tree


Lavender Farm


The Night Scene of Eiffel Tower


Blue Sea


Rainbow


Mirror Lake

1,2,3,4,5,6

Lavender at the Foot of the Mountain


The Moon and Star on Earth


Comet (Make a wish)


The Purple Romance


The Beauty of the Desert


Breithorn Peak ( Switzerland )


Frisco Mountain above Rainy Lake


Deep Autumn


You only pass this way Once...

I've never see so much beauty contained in one e-mail before.

Pass this on to put a smile on someone's face...

Meet New World's Richest Man: Mexican Businessman Carlos Slim

After more than ten years much hated, yet lovable Bill Gates is no more the richest man on earth. Now you must get yourself acquainted with the tough man in this picture, Mexican businessman Carlos Slim. The business world is going to be buzzing about him in the coming months.

His fortune is estimated to be $67.8 billion American dollars - equivalent to 8% of Mexico's gross domestic product. (Or 3 times the GDP of a 20 million people country like Sri Lanka.) Carlo Slim has $8.6 billion more than Bill Gates who is now the world's second richest man with $59.2bn. Slim has built his fortune from his mobile phone empire, America Movil group, which saw a huge share price increase in recent months.

The international media only reported this a few days ago. But it seems Mexicans have known this for many months. According to a Guardian news report, the Mexican online financial publication, Sentido Común claimed Carlos Slim to be the world's richest man back in April.

"When I put Slim ahead three months ago Forbes bumped him up to second place (in world rankings) a few days later," Mr Garcia, the editor of that Mexican newslet has told Reuters. "Let's see if the same happens again."

I think it's safe to say, many, especially in the US didn't like Bill Gates. His monopoly over computer Operating Systems earned him their wrath. But it will be amusing to see how they digest the fact of a Mexican from the "rough south" edging past "their" man. You can feel the American regret in the Engadget article which has the heading "Carlos Slim edges out Bill "Fatty Fat Fat" Gates as world's richest person." In it Paul Miller writes;

"It was probably inevitable, with Bill Gates handing out his cash right and left, and Microsoft's stock in pretty much a holding pattern for most of the 2000's, but it's still sad to see our man Bill get knocked off the top spot on the "world's richest" list."

He goes on to say;

"...and whatever he [Carlos Slim] lacks in geek cred he more than makes up on the streets with that entirely gangster name of his."

That's not a good remark. But I tend to agree with him. Carlo Slim has that stern master look. Very much like the rough, no-nonsense father like figure you see in cowboy movies commanding a horde of Sombrero wearing Mexican cowboys. He's also renown for cigar chomping. How unlike baby faced Bill Gates!

In a way the rich club seems to be heading back to the early 20th century when top hat wearing tough figures like John Rockfeller dominated that club.