Calling all Newbie Bloggers!

Welcome to 2009 and your spanking new blog you created at Blogger.com. 

Photo by Ben30

What are the next steps you should follow to make blogging an instantaneous and painless experience? How to be a successful blogger using only point and click and some fast keyboarding? Here are some fast tips for the ultra n00b................

 

The first thing when creating a blog is to select a short and sweet URL or blog address. You can change this afterwards also by login at Blogger.com and then go to Settings>>Publishing>>Blog Address. If the address is not available you can get a Custom Domain Dot Com address for only 10$ US and also get rid of the 'blogspot' in the address.

Do not change the blog address if more than two months have elapsed because you will have to start all over again from scratch with respect to the search engines. You will also lose the traffic going to the old address!

 

After creating a blog speed up getting it on the search engines by submitting blog to them and verify ownership using Google Webmaster Tools.

 

Creating posts and inserting pictures in your blog is made easy thanks to Windows Live Writer.

 

For optimum blogging experience download Firefox browser on a PC with a broadband connection. For checking your emails use Thunderbird. To follow and subscribe to latest blog updates use Google Reader. All are free!

 

Never delete the account used to create your blog. DELETING ACCOUNT DOES NOT DELETE YOUR BLOG. 

 

After creating a post open the post page in browser by clicking on the post title. Then from browser menu click File>>Save Page As and save it to a backup folder on your hard drive.  You should also backup your entire blog periodically. Backup your blog template (Login>>Layouts>>Edit Html>>Download Full Template)and widgets in same folder. Periodically record the folder to CD or DVD-ROM to insure against hard disk failure. Invest in a USB drive and synchronize backup folders to it. This will prevent piling up of backup CD/DVD-ROMs.

 

Keep passwords secure with Keep Pass - a free password encryptor and manager.  In your Google or Gmail account settings enter a secondary email account.

 

Open a Paypal account and put in some donation links in your blog.

On the Main Page of the blog show only an expandable summary of the posts followed by a Read More link. This makes the main page load faster.

 

Burn your blog feed at Feedburner.com and copy the new feed url and paste it in Settings>>Site Feed>>Post Feed Redirect box and save. Now you will be able to know your full subscriber count. Put in a prominent Feed Icon at the top of your blog sidebar so viewers can subscribe to blog updates.

 

Lastly add content regularly at least thrice weekly.  Do not make very long posts and add pictures and videos inbetween to break the monotony. Add Labels and social bookmarks to all posts.

 

Enjoy!

Create Thumbnail Albums in Blogger with WLW.

To create thumbnail albums in Blogger posts we create tables and insert images in each table cell.  The process of coding a table in HTML is cumbersome and prone to errors.

In Windows Live Writer (WLW) this can be done with a few mouse clicks......

 

Start WLW. From the top menu click 'Insert'------>'Table'.  Choose how many rows and columns the table should have and it's width. Remember to keep the table width smaller than the post column width or this may break the template. Also you can choose whether to show table borders and/or the padding between cells.  Here I have inserted a two column-three row table.

Next click in each cell and choose 'Insert'----->'Picture'.

All Photos by law_keven

Select the file from your disk and click Open.  You can even select pictures from the web.

To add more pictures right click the last cell and choose 'Insert Row Below' to insert a new row in the table.

 

After inserting the pictures select each picture by clicking on it. In the right sidebar the Image Properties dialogue box opens. Here you can :

1. Resize pictures.
2. Rotate pictures.
3. Adjust picture contrast.
4. Frame pictures.
5. Add drop shadow to pictures.
6. Link each picture to any webpage or source picture.
7. Add watermark to pictures to deter copiers.
8. Add special effects like sepia, emboss, sharpen or blur pictures.
9. Add ALT text to the picture code. (This text appears if picture fails to load)
10. Adjust picture temperature.

 

If you are creating a photoblog you can create such a thumbnail gallery on the Main Page of the blog. Then link each picture to a post containing more pictures of the same kind.

 

For example first create a post containing a gallery of images like the one above.  This will be your animal gallery post.  Change the date of the post to a backdate so that the post does not appear on the Main Page. 

 

Then in your Main Gallery insert a small picture of an animal and link that picture to the post above containing many animal images.

 

Repeat the above two steps to create a whole photoblog containing picture-posts on various subjects all linked to the Main Gallery.

 

Enjoy!

15 Reasons to Use Windows Live Writer for Posting to Blogger.

Windows Live Writer is a client software used to post to blogs on various platforms directly without using a web browser. Here wre the advantages of using it for creating posts on your blog................

1.   It is free.   You can download it here.

2.   Insert tables without coding :

A table	made with	Windows
Live	Writer	.

 

3.    Make image gallery easily by inserting images in tables :

Photo by MousyBoyWithGlasses.	Photo by Pier Biter.

 

4.  Customize hyperlinks to open in new window and add nofollow and title tags to it without coding it in the html for the link :

 

5.   Post to multiple blogs.

6.   Save bandwidth by publishing post once only instead of continuously saving posts as you make them in a web browser Post Editor.

7.  Add Technorati/ Delicious/Flickr/Live Journal/Ice Rocket etc Tags to posts.

8.   Add Labels in Blogger or Categories in Wordpress using the post properties toolbar below the main Writer window.

9.   Insert Maps/Videos/pictures in post

10.  Set the publish date for the post

11.  Publish Post as draft or as a post directly

12.  Ping as soon as post is published. Go to Tools---->Options----->Ping Servers and copy the URLs below and paste them in the box and save :

http://ping.feedburner.google.com/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://www.bloglines.com/ping

13.   It has plugins to enable you to add more functionality.  Be careful of third party plugins.

14.   Makes you more productive.  You can add more posts and also create your posts offline as soon as ideas strike you.

15.  Can be used to publish posts to  private blogs also. If by some reason your posts got deleted you can republish them from the copy in Windows Live Writer.