Ultimate source for blogging tips

“jQuery” javascript library is amazing

Posted by: itcoll on: October 18, 2008

I have just started learning the basics of web designing – came across html , css and xml and am now concentrating on javascript .

i came across this particular library - “jQuery” which is very cool and makes you wonder what is not possible with scripting .I liked the “slidedown” and “slidetoggle” features , and the “animate” function is also quite interesting .The slidedown function can be used for forming the DROP DOWN MENUS in your navigation which has impressed the web surfers .

so those of you who are concentrating on web designs , you better learn this library . you would definitely love it .And for those noobs , who have just started scripting , you may learn a bit about html and css , then start on these libraries .

SOME OF THE FEATURES IN  JQUERY :

SLIDEDOWN

SLIDEUP

SLIDETOGGLE

SHOW

HIDE

ANIMATE

I am not going into the toughest job of explaining these functions to you – just google the functions i have given you , and you may learn it in a jiffy. Give me your comments after you get impressed by this library .

widgetbox provides 80000+ widgets for your blog

Posted by: itcoll on: October 17, 2008

WIDGETBOX is a top site for providing widgets like slideshows , social networking widgets,games ,finance etc ,. Just include the script and the code they provide you , in the template .

One of my favourites is the super mario game and it already has undergone lakhs of installations by bloggers .

Visit the website to get a complete list on all the widgets it provides .

Create your signature to post them in your blog

Posted by: itcoll on: October 17, 2008

MYLIVESIGNATURE allows you to design your signature to be used in your blogs and websites .There are options to select the font , size , colour ,slope of the signature [ how much inclined it is ] etc ,. Later you may get the html code for the image and place it in all your posts .

Here is my signature ::



Cool , isnt it ?

Hereafter , i would be using this cool signature in my posts :) 

Feedcompare is quite interesting

Posted by: itcoll on: October 17, 2008

feed compare

I have always wanted to know how my competitors are performing .I usually see their daily stats or their alexa ranking .But more than that its the feed subscriptions that tells us whether a blog/site is popular among the society or not .

So here is a website to our rescue .Its ::

FEEDCOMPARE

This site lets us compare the feeds of different domains .You just have to provide the feed url and it will show you the comparisons in a cool graphical manner .

wowzio provides you beautiful widgets

Posted by: itcoll on: October 16, 2008

I have always wanted to place the slideshow that appears in hulu – that was made with the help of flash and i am a total noob at it .So there was no way i could learn flash and then implement it .Just then i came to know about this website :
WOWZIO

It provides you different widgets – one of which is the slideshow widget – almost similar to that of hulu -and yeah ofcourse its not in flash and makes use of javascript .
But including the slideshow is definitely a worth – particularly to photobloggers as it is sure to increase the page views by atleast a few hundreds .

The slideshow pictures are all anchored automatically without any work from you .So that means when a visitor clicks on the photo , it is taken to that particular post .Do check it out and give me your comments .

optimize your site for google image search

Posted by: itcoll on: August 18, 2008

Every celebrity blogger should concentrate more on “ALT” tags than his posts in order to gain sufficient amount of organic search traffic . I totally agree that the topics have to be unique and the posts have to be done frequently in order for bots to visit ; BUT YET OPTIMIZING YOUR BLOG / SITE FOR IMAGE SEARCH COULD BRING YOU 1000’S OF UNIQUE VISITORS  EVERYDAY .

i have seen several bloggers being very active in posting but yet not getting enough amount of traffic which they really deserve . Most of the traffic goes to some crap sites that have more seo and less posts and content .

Is this applicable only to celebrity blogs ?

no . not at all . this is applicable to all categories of blogs . But yet since celebrity blogs dont contain that much words compared to other blogs , the images need to be well optimized .

But other blogs could concentrate more on their keywords and  internal link building  as i dont think they would need so many images as is needed in celbrity blogs . but if you are ready to spend time ,then you could do the image optimization too .

As far as the optimization is concerned , the most important thing , as i earlier stated , is giving the ALT tags to your images . these are the ones that the bots use to index your images .

And remember that image indexing is much different from normal indexing because google indexes images once every  months or so unlike the regular indexes . so the next time you make post containing images , dont feel lazy to give the alternate tags !

What is going on between Wikipedia and Google ?

Posted by: itcoll on: August 18, 2008

google

Wikipedia

 

It seems google and wikipedia have decided to end each other’s dominance in the web . Last week wikipedia founder stated that his search engine will definitely be a perfect rival to google’s power over the WEB SEARCH . He also said that his search engine would be based mostly on the human-made entries .

And as everyone know , google launched “ KNOL” a site similar to wikipedia – where we can publish our articles and its also possible to add our adsense ads and earn money – not sure whether its worth but got to check it out .

HERE IS WHAT THE KNOL PRODUCT MANAGER SAYS  ,

"The big difference is authorship is highlighted," Cedric  Dupont, Knol product manager, said in an interview with CNET News. "In the long term we hope that encyclopedias, such as Wikipedia, would use knols as references… If Knol is successful, it will help Wikipedia."

Wales , the founder of wikipedia also said that ,

“Google is very good at many types of search, but in many instances it produces nothing but spam and useless crap. Try searching for the term ‘Tampa hotels’, for example, and you will not get any useful results ” .

so if  wales thinks that its  so easy to dominate google in web search ,  i could never ever imagine that . atleast not so in ten to fifteen years . But yeah , lets wait and see .

Have you tried “ Windows Live writer “ ?

Posted by: itcoll on: August 18, 2008

 

windows live writer review

 

Although i love blogging , managing so many blogs [ i have about 5-6 blogs ]  becomes much difficult . Giving the “alt” tags for each and every image in a post is a tire-some job [ it becomes much difficult for my celebrity blog ] .

Just when i was stressed out , i saw this blog editor . Due to  its amazing interface and powerful features ,i would say  its the best blog editor  available in the web .

with live writer ,

1. you may have all your “blog accounts” [ blogger , wordpress …..]  added to the writer ; hence there is no need for you to sign in again and again .

2 . easily form tables and give fonts to your posts ,

3. tagging your posts and “alt” to images made much simpler

4. its also possible to apply neat borders  to all your images with writer ,

5. perform “effects “ on your images like applying more colour,temperatures,applying watermarks , sharpen, emboss …. and lots more !

This is definitely needed for every blogger and especially  for those tired of maintaining numerous blogs .

blogger Vs wordpress

Posted by: itcoll on: August 16, 2008

well iam not here to tell you whether blogger or wordpress is the best in assisting you in maintaining a blog !but rather i would like to tell which is best in the perspective of a  SEO  LOVER .

yes i know – it my have sound a little crazier when i stated that iam an SEO lover .But thats the fact – after being an amateur blogger , i slowly came through all the topics on SEO and have got a little bit of seo knowledge .

SO WHICH IS BEST FOR GETTING TRAFFIC ?

this is what i would like to tell you now . although there is much more features in blogger than wordpress , i would like to strongly tell you that WORDPRESS IS THE BEST FOR ANY BLOGGER WHO WANTS TO HAVE QUALITY TRAFFIC – BE IT FOR COMMERCIAL PURPOSES OR OTHERS.

Why is WORDPRESS best ?

Well , i have experienced this personally ; i had so many blogs[mostly celebrity ]  of good pageranks in blogger [ and fully optimized with seo techniques ] but yet hardly got  any traffic ; i was using social bookmarking sites and social networking sites like a mad-man to promote my blogs . it was a  stressful job .

when i mean traffic its the ORGANIC SEARCH – that is what every blogger and seo pro wants to have .

so i wanted to try WORDPRESS and started a similar kind of a celebrity blog ; days passed by and i kept on adding content – after about a month my stats were about 1000 pageviews a day in wordpress blog while  it was just  500 pageviews for my blogger blog [and that took my precious time in using social sites for promotion ] . AND I DID NOT USE A SINGLE SOCIAL SITE FOR PROMOTING IT ! THATS THE IMPORTANT THING .

HERE IS MY SUMMARY :

BLOGGER :

so much hardwork – but less results

WORDPRESS :

little work – but 200% more results .

Well iam still not sure why this happens in wordpress ; i asked this question in several forums and here is what  they told me :

” NO . YOU ARE WRONG .BLOGGER IS THE BEST BECAUSE GOOGLE TENDS TO LOVE ITS OWN BLOGGING SERVICE MORE THAN WORDPRESS AND INTURN BRINGS MORE TRAFFIC . “

you agree with this , guys ?

i will never agree !!!

why do people blog ?

Posted by: itcoll on: August 16, 2008


10 years before , there was a stage where most of the people rarely got chances to express their feelings / views about social things , politics,sports  or personal incidents .

but things have changed now ; everyone wants to blog now – i am not sure why people have got crazy about blogging .

but from my knowledge , here are the reasons why people blog ::

WHY DO WE BLOG ?

1. several people feel proud in  maintaining a blog ; it gives them a feeling that they are one of them involved in the development of web .

2 . the best way to express ourself is a blog  ; it is impossible for everyone in the web in buying a space in a popular file hosting service and maintain a website – nor will anyone do that ever just for posting  topics about how the day went , what they ate ,what they did this week …….

3. SEO – here comes the main thing – one thing google will be hating soon is a blog .this is because of the loop hole in the PAGERANK algorithm of google. i have seen several blogs created specially for maintaining back-links .but yeah , google has high chances of finding them and de-indexing them permanently .

several people have now turned towards blogging for increasing their pagerank of their websites and for driving traffic .

and psst …. let me tell you a secret – iam doing this for one of my celebrity blogs – and please dont tell this to larry .

4 . stress buster —- ah , i think people also blog for throwing out their stress out of their souls – iam not sure if everyone would agree this .because i have read several stories of bloggers getting stressed especially due to blogging etc ,. but i dont think so .the next time you get stressed because your little kitten passes urine on to your iphone [ just kidding ] , kick-start your mind and start writing a post about your ’stupid kitten’ .

ARE THERE ANY OTHER REASONS FOR BLOGGING ?

if so please let me know :) .