Your Blog's Nav Bar

Some bloggers love the look and feel of a true blog. They love the comments, the posts, and even the nav bar. The nav bar, or Navigation bar is jut that. It navigates you through blogger.

The nav bar takes visitors to your blog back to the home-base. It is like walking down the sidewalk and going door to door to visit the different houses.

The Blogger Navbar appears by default at the top of every Blogger-powered blog.

Navbar features include:

[B]: takes you back to www.blogger.com.

Search Blog: searches the blog you're viewing. Results will appear directly on the page.

Flag Blog: lets you mark the current blog as objectionable (which is unfortunate but, happens)

NextBlog: takes you to a random, recently-updated Blogger blog.

[email address]: If you are logged in to your account, you'll see your own address here. Other viewers will see their own email addresses, or none at all if they aren't logged in.

Dashboard: If you are logged in, you'll have a link to your own dashboard.

Sign In/Out: This displays the appropriate option, depending on whether you're logged in or not.

The Navbar appears on all freely-hosted Blog*Spot blogs. According to blogger the navbar can be disabled for users publishing via FTP.

You can change the color of your nav bar in the layouts tab. It is available in several colors . If you are using a classic template, you'll see a menu from which you can select a color. For blogs using Layouts, just click the "edit" link on the Navbar page element.

Notes:

Unless you publish your blog via FTP, the Navbar cannot be disabled, according to blogger.

They've made every effort to make sure the Navbar doesn't interfere with custom template designs. However, some display problems may occur. Here are a few things to try if you are running into trouble:

However, there are many blogger wanting a blog that resembles a website more than a blog. These are the people who would rather get rid of it than just change it's color. Here's how.

As usual, go to the edit html link from your layouts. BACK UP your code.
Look for the following code.You can do this easily be pressing control +F (in most browsers) and doning a search and find.
</b:skin>
Right before that area insert the following;
{ #navbar-iframe <br />visibility:hidden; <br />display:none }
Preview your blog to make sure it worked and then save it.

The downside of removing this element is that you may get fewer visitors. A normal blog will get many visitors because they landed there thanks to the navbar.

10 Ways to Take Your Blog Up a Notch

Have you noticed that there are two kinds of blogs?
There are the average blogs- written by people who are mainly concerned with keeping an online journal. And then there are the blogs with the bells and whistles. They resemble websites at times. If you are ready to take your 'average' blog up a notch, here are ten steps to get you started.

Ten great ways to take your blog up a notch. There are many more ways that I'll cover in future postings. But, here are ten good ideas for you. Many of them have links to more posts that I have done on the topic.

1. Do a Google search for FREE blogger templates. There are those you can pay for and there are those that you don't have to pay for. Find the template that best matches your theme. Before installing it, be sure to back-up what you already have. You can do this by going into your layouts tab and hitting the "html" link. At the top of the page there is a link to download your current blog. Also, if you have any active widgets or feeds, individually back those up as often a new template will discard these and you'll have to re do them.

2. Figure out what you will do for a header. There are sites where you can build one if you do not have the software to do so. I Googled "free header" and got over 5,000,000 results. The header is the first thing visitors see and it tells them what level you are blogging from.

3. Promote your feeds. At minimum, go to blogger in draft, layout, new page element, click on feed.

4. Post daily. When people subscribe to your feeds, they will be kept interested with your daily posts.

5. After you post, visit at least 5 other blogs (click "next blog" on the menu bar) and leave comments complementing the blogger. It's a nice way to make friends if anything. Be patient though, chances are 5 out of 10 will be in languages other than your own.

6. Start a newsletter. This is easy to do. Check out this post

7. Get a domain name. You can do so easily through GoDaddy. They'll take you through the process of pointing it to your blog.




8. Sign-up for Adsense. You might as well make a few cents.

9. Join a community. It's the latest thing in blogging- or one of the latest.

10. Check out the Blogger in Draft Gadgets. You can post a feed of your blog roll, links lists, feeds, polls and so much more!

Printing your posts

So you want to make it easy for people to print your post?
The easiest way to do this is to go to your layout tab and add an html gadget.

Copy and paste this code into your gadget.
You have now made a link to your printer.
<br /><a href="javascript:window.print()">Print Page</a>

Want to make things print friendly so not everything gets printed?
You'll need to go back to your html link in the layout tab.
Of course, you'll need to back up your template before you start in with the code.

Ok, so after you've backed it up,
copy and paste the following code into your head tag.

<br /> <style type="text/css" media="print"><br /> #noprint {display: none;} <br /> // Hide unwanted elements<br /> body {background:fff; color:000;} <br /> // Black text on White background<br /> a {text-decoration: underline; color:00f;} <br /> //Underline Hyperlinks in blue<br />}<br /></style>

Anything that you do not want to print, needs to go inside of span tags. The tags look like this with the .. representing what's not getting printed. Images can go inside the tag as well.
<br /><span class="noprint">..</span><br />

HaloScan

HaloScan is a wonderful tool that is free to use.
They offer a comment service and is very easy to use.

Comments Features

• Easy, two-step installation on any weblog or webpage
• Supports all major blogging platforms
• Comment moderation
• Ban offensive commenters by single IP or an IP range
• Fully customizable comment window
• Hundreds of user-submitted templates to pick from
• Worldwide time-zone and language support
• RSS-XML feed/syndication
• Manage comments and trackbacks
• Comments dashboard
• Comment backup / export feature
• In-line / embedded comment support
• Recent comments widget
• Gravatar support
• Email notification of new comments
• Comment spam filters
• Email support
• Solid performance
• On-site backups

Ratings Features

Let your visitors rate your blog entries, merchandise items, services, pictures, or any other objects on your site. The service is based on a 5-star rating.

Benefits for visitors

• Express opinions quickly and easily
• Intuitive, graphical view of community opinion
• Ability to change one's personal rating at any time
• Seeing how other people rate the components of your site

Benefits for web publishers

• Collect valuable data about your audience's tastes and preferences
• Enables dynamic discovery based on community opinion
• Robust operation and full data backup
• Customizable presentation
• Service statistics
• Cross-browser compatibility

Polls Features

The polls service is instantly configurable to any number of arbitrary poll questions. The blog owner can easily specify the duration of the poll and if the results are displayed before or after a visitor votes.

Benefits for visitors

• Expressing opinions quickly and easily
• No registrations to fill, no logins to forget
• Instant visual poll results

Benefits for web publishers

• Robust operation and full backup of your data
• On-the-fly modification of existing polls

http://www.haloscan.com

site submission

Free site submission can be a good thing. They will submit your website url to search engines. Usually all you have to do in return is post a link to them. They often offer upgrade serves for a fee.

You can always submit free to Google,
Yahoo
AOL

Here are a few more;
(Be sure to read the fine print prior to submitting)

• FastSubmit
• Submit Express
• AddMe
• Freesubmissionweb
• ineedhits
• Submitshop
• Searchengineoptimising
• AddPro
• Pageranklist
• Freewebsubmission
• Amfibi
• Jerkasmarknad
• LocalSubmit

Remove the label count number

So you've added the labels gadget in Blogger in Draft but those numbers next to the labels are bugging you. What do you do?

I have to tell you, I find those annoying myself.
This is an easy fix though.

• Go to your HTML link in your layouts page.

• This time you want to expand the widgets so click on it and make the magic check mark appear.

Once again we are going to do a search.

• CMD + F in most browsers and search for

data:label.count

• Highlight it and delete it.

• Hit preview to make sure it worked.

• Then Save.

Feed your recent comments!

You'll see on the top left of my page the is a spot with my most recent comments
This is a really easy feed for you to do for your blog site

First bring up a new tab in your browser window and display you blogsite.
You'll need to find your feed button or subscription link ( Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)) .
It is located on the bottom of the common blogger template Or, if you have an orange button, you can use that.

Right click and copy the link location.

Now, go to your layout tab and add a gadget .
You'll be adding a feed. It should look something like this;
http://thechocoholicsdiary.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
This would be a feed for your posts .
It is not a bad idea to run one of these to let visitors know what's new and entice them to stick around and read.

However, if you change the posts to comments making it look something like this
http://thechocoholicsdiary.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default
(you've added what's red- not in red though).

Why Post Date?

Post dating blog posts is a very nice option that you can use if you will be away from your computer for a period of time and won't be able to post. It's also nice if you want to announce something, like a sale or new item in your store, at midnight on a specific date.

The best reason for many bloggers to post date is to have an 'artificial' start page to your blog. When you landed on Kubrick's Pick you were greeting by a post containing an image with stars. This post is about our blog reviews about blogs that we like. Well, guess what, that post will be posted in 2010. Nice.....eliminates another reason to go for a real website.

Scheduled post publishing, If you set a post’s date into the future, Blogger will wait to publish until that time comes.

According to Blogger;
Scheduling a post is easy to do: on the post editor page, click the “Post Options” toggle to show the “Post date and time” fields. Then, type a post date and time that’s in the future. When you click the “Publish” button, your post will become “scheduled.” When the date and time of the post arrive, it will be automatically published to your blog.


“Scheduled” posts appear in your Edit Posts list alongside your drafts and published posts. To un-schedule a post, simply save it as a draft any time before it gets published.

If you want to give a post a date in the future but have it appear on your blog now, you’ll need to add in an extra step. First, publish your post with the current date and time. This will make it appear on your blog. Then, edit the post to change the date into the future and publish it again.

Blog Explosion

Wow. There are a lot of Blog promotion websites out there. Blog Explosion is a directory which offers a free counter and ping service. To sign up for blog explosion is free.

Other serviced include-
BlogExplosion allows you to stream your audio podcasts to people around the world.
You can search their directory and listen in to audio podcasts with a customized flash-based BlogExplosion player that requires no plug-ins or additional software.

Hate your nav bar?

The Nav Bar is the strip on the top of you blog that blogger puts in. It contains a search box, a link to the next blog and a few other items. Blogger would prefer that you don't mess with this. Afterall, they are giving you free web space, you might as well leave their logo on there- right?
If you must 'disable' or be rid of this what you'll need to do is go to the html link in your layout tag.

Do a search to to locate the navbar code. For most browsers, cmd + F will bring up a search box. Type in navbar. It should be in the style section at the top.

Your result may look like this
.navbar {...

}
Type the copy and paste the following code over the .navbar{....}:
#b-navbar {
height:0px;
visibility:hidden;
display:none
}
The key is to make sure that this code ends up in the style section.
Always, always, always, back up your html before you mess around with it. Also, it helps to hit preview before you actually save any changes. You can always erase the changes without affecting your blog.
Save your changes and view your blog. The navbar should be gone.

Once again, the elegant simplicity of CSS saves the day. Technically, this combination of style declarations doesn't really turn off the navbar; it just hides it from view.

StumbleUpon

You've probably seen it while you have been snooping around the internet.

StumbleUpon is one of those new ideas that enhance the world of Blogging.

According to StumbleUpon, they help you "discover and share great websites. As you click Stumble!, we deliver high-quality pages matched to your personal preferences. These pages have been explicitly recommended by your friends or one of 5,153,108 other websurfers with interests similar to you. Rating these sites you like () automatically shares them with like-minded people – and helps you discover great sites your friends recommend."

How Does it Work?

StumbleUpon uses / ratings to form collaborative opinions on website quality. When you stumble, you will only see pages which friends and like-minded stumblers () have recommended. This helps you discover great content you probably wouldn't find using a search engine.

Searching vs. Stumbling:

Using search engines to locate relevant content typically means hunting through pages of results. Rather than searching for quality web sites, StumbleUpon members are taken directly to web sites matching their personal interests and preferences.

People-Driven Technology:

Using a combination of human opinions and machine learning to immediately deliver relevant content, StumbleUpon presents only web sites which have been suggested by other like-minded Stumblers. Each time the 'Stumble' button is clicked, the user is presented with a high quality web site based on the collective opinions of other like-minded web surfers.

Easy to Use, Community-based surfing:

The StumbleUpon Toolbar is integrated with the user's browser to allow for one-click access to quality web sites. A simple 2-level rating system gives users the opportunity to pass on or give their opinion on any webpage with a single click. These ratings also connect people sharing unique combinations of interests. Stumblers share their favorite web sites and interact with other users to further improve their web surfing experience.

A Personalized Browsing Tool:

StumbleUpon offers nearly 500 topics which users may choose to indicate their interests and preferences so each Stumble produces only the most relevant content. StumbleUpon delivers increasingly relevant content as the Toolbar learns what the user has liked in the past and continues to present quality web sites in the future.

Combats Information Overload:

Information on the Internet changes rapidly. StumbleUpon is a dynamic approach to keep on top of this ever-evolving pool of knowledge. StumbleUpon filters through the vast amount of information on the web to direct Stumblers to high quality web sites which are relevant to their personal interests. An obscure but interesting site can be immediately shared with other like-minded users. Old or low-quality sites can be removed if their ratings become too low. The participation of community members helps maintain a database of the most up-to-date and highest quality sites possible.

And always remember the "Golden Rule" of Stumbling! — the more you do it, the better it gets!

Mobile Blogging

Blogger wants you to know that you can now post from anywhere (as long as you have a cell phone)

It's called Blogger Mobile.

How does Blogger Mobile work?

It's quite easy. You send a message (which can be a photo, some text, or both) to go@blogger.com.

They publish the post. It's that simple.

Here's how to start a mobile blog:
1. Send an MMS to go@blogger.com to create your mobile blog. The text and/or photo in your MMS will be uploaded to that blog right away. We'll message you back with the address, (so you can visit your new blog on the web) and a token (so you can claim your blog and access it from your account).

2. OPTIONAL - If you feel like changing anything on your new mobile blog or if you already have a Blogger account and want the posts to go to your existing blog, you can log in to go.blogger.com and enter the token they sent to your phone.

What types of messages can you send to Blogger Mobile from your phone?

MMS or Email

This doesn't include email sent from a mobile device that actually passes through a webmail gateway.

Blogger won’t charge you for any of its services.

Requirements

Text messaging-enabled mobile device with a text messaging plan. This service is free from Google but charges from your carrier for usage may apply.

For more information send the keyword HELP to BLOGGR (256447), you can also text STOP to BLOGGR to cancel text messages.

Which mobile providers does Blogger Mobile support?

United States

• airbridge.net
• blackberry.net
• blswe.com
• cingularme.com
• danger.com
• dngr.net
• gocbw.com
• lightsurf.net
• mmode.com
• mms.att.net
• mms.helio.com
• mms.myhelio.com
• mms.net
• mycingular.com
• mycingular.net
• myvzw.com
• nextel.com
• sprint.com
• sprintpcs.com
• tmail.com
• tmodns.net
• tmomail.net
• txt.att.net
• verizon.net
• vtext.com
• vzwpix.com

Webmail

• gmail.com
• hotmail.com
• yahoo.com

When you send text or photos from your mobile device to go@blogger.com they're automatically posted to your new blog.

Digg

You've probably seen it on other blogs or somewhere else. Digg is one of the great things out there worth checking into for your blog.

The folks at Digg say that Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by their users.

Everything on Digg — from news to videos to images to Podcasts — is submitted by their community . Once something is submitted, other people see it and Digg what they like best. If your submission rocks and receives enough Diggs, it is promoted to the front page for the millions of our visitors to see.

As a user, you participate in determining all site content by discovering, selecting, sharing, and discussing the news, videos, and podcasts that appeal to you.

Submit your favorites. Find an article, video, or podcast online and submit it to Digg.com. Your submission will immediately appear in “Upcoming Stories,” where other members can find it and, if they like it, Digg it.

Become popular. Once a submission has earned a critical mass of Diggs, it becomes “popular” and jumps to the homepage in its category. If it becomes one of the most popular, it qualifies as a “Top 10”. If a submission doesn't receive enough Diggs within a certain time period, it eventually falls out of the “Upcoming” section.

Digg is relatively easy to join. I had a few problems with their word verification as it can be hard to read. I hate those things anyway but, they can serve a purpose.

FeedBlitz

Feedblitz is a wonderful service for Bloggers.They will take your blog entries and send them out via e-mail to your subcription holders. a



The free standard service (nightly updates, no user-based branding or custom graphics) is FREE for publishers and subscribers.

* All mail comes from FeedBlitz@mail.feedblitz.com
* All email will be easily recognizable because subject lines always start with [FeedBlitz]
* The FeedBlitz server tries to resend mail for up to 23 hours before giving up.

The "Pro" premium service lets you customize the look of your emails and the subscriber sign up landing page. It costs USD $4.95 per feed per month. Publishers with multiple feeds can sign up for the flat-fee "Pro Plus" service which lets you customize as many feeds as you like for USD $24.95 per month.

RSS aggregation requires a feed-aware browser or a custom aggregator (either on your desktop or a web service). Many people don't want the hassle or complexity. Email subscriptions work perfectly for them.

Visit and Leave Comments

Take advantage of the nav bar to surf the other blogs out there. Blogger loads them randomly for you. Be prepared for many language differenced. 

When you look at other blogs, you get ideas for your blog. There are some really well done blogs to look at. 

While you visit, it is important to leave comments. Not only will you make new friends :), but you will have a potential visitor your blog. 

Leave a quality comment like "Nice job, enjoyed your blog" or "nice photos". Blogger will automatically put a link to you when your name is posted on your comment.

Social Bookmarking: Chicklet

Chicklet is a term that is used to describe a small icon or small picture that is usually besides a posting on a blog, an article, or a web page. 

An example of one would be the orange one that you see about everywhere to indicate an RSS feed.  A chicklet tells people   that information can be obtained by clicking on the chicklet. 

Social book marking sites use chicklets. They allow you to save sites on their websites like you would on your browser's favorites list. 

Social bookmaking web service  allow you to store share and do searches for social bookmarks that you might be interested in. 

Technorati is a blog site that you can join. They group like blogs together. Chicklets are pretty simple  to use.

 Here are some sites to check in to.

Digg

Delicious  

Stumbleupon 

Yahoo MyWeb 

Reddit: 

Newsvine 

Lookmarks 

Blinklist 

The Flag Button

Have you ever noticed that in the bar on the top of your blogger blog, there is a bar with useful stuff? Blogger has added a search box, a link to your dashboard, and a link that says "flag blog".

 

According to Blogger;

What is the "Flag" button?

 

• The Flag button allows the blogging community as a whole to identify content considered objectionable.
• Click the Flag button only if you believe a blog requires human review.

The Flag button is not censorship and it cannot be manipulated by angry mobs.  

This feature is called "Flag As Objectionable"  and it allows the blogging community to easily note questionable content, which in turn helps blogger take action when needed. Blogger says " we're relying on you, the users, to be our eyes on the web, and to let us know of potential issues that are important to you." Has it ever been a problem? I have never heard of a problem, but, there are all kinds of people.

 

Why Blogger Created "Flag As Objectionable"

"It is our strong belief that blogs help make the Web an important medium of self-expression; Blogger has given a voice to millions of people. Our users gossip, joke, rant, publish, share, and on occasion might post potentially objectionable stuff. We generally do not review the content posted through our service but our responsibility extends beyond Blogger users to casual readers of Blog*Spot.

The "Flag?" button is a means by which readers of Blog*Spot can help inform us about potentially questionable content, so we can prevent others from encountering such material by setting particular blogs as "unlisted." This means the blog won't be promoted on Blogger.com but will still be available on the web — we prefer to keep in mind that one person's vulgarity is another's poetry. Or something like that.

For more serious cases, such as spam blogs or sites engaging in illegal activity, we will continue to enforce our existing policies (removing content and deleting accounts when necessary).

Here's How It Works

When a person visiting a blog clicks the "Flag?" button in the Blogger Navbar, it means they believe the content of the blog may be potentially offensive or illegal. We track the number of times a blog has been flagged as objectionable and use this information to determine what action is needed. This feature allows the blogging community as a whole to identify content they deem objectionable. Have you read The Wisdom of Crowds? It's sort of like that.

Special Case for Hate Speech

When the community has voted and hate speech is identified on Blog*Spot, Google may exercise its right to place a Content Warning page in front of the blog and set it to "unlisted."

Note: users may click the "Unflag" button if they change their mind.

Word Verification

I cannot tell you how much I hate having to go through word verification. It can be a pain especially when the words or letters are hard to read.

Google has embraced the whole word verification thing and with good reason. Users, like myself, find it a pain and it slows them down. Why is this good? Keeps away the bad guys.

According to Blogger;

 

The "word verification" option can be found on the Settings | Comments tab for your blog, and it looks like this:

If you choose "yes" for this setting, then people leaving comments on your blog will be required to complete a word verification step, similar to the one presented when you create a blog:

What this does is to prevent automated systems from adding comments to your blog, since it takes a human being to read the word and pass this step. If you've ever received a comment that looked like an advertisement or a random link to an unrelated site, then you've encountered comment spam. A lot of this is done automatically by software which can't pass the word verification, so enabling this option is a good way to prevent many such unwanted comments.

The Pro's and Cons of Comment Moderation

The easier it is to leave comments, the more you'll get. That's a fact. Unfortunately, there are some who have taken advantage of this by programming 'robots' to leave spam-like comments which are actually embedded with links to others sites- usually sites of question.

Blogger has made it easier to limit the junk comments. You, the blogger, have the choice to let anyone leave any kind of comment at a minimum, strictly restrict the ability of commenting , allow a range of abilities between the two or just not allow any commenting.

The thing about commenting is that if you are interested in traffic, you want as much commenting as possible.

How do I moderate comments on my blog? According to Blogger:

 

• Enable comment moderation by selecting 'Yes' on the Settings | Comments tab.
• Enter an email address if you want to approve or reject comments via email (optional).

 

You can find the comment moderation setting on the Settings | Commentstab, along with all of the other comment settings. It's just a simple yes/no option, and looks like this:

Choosing "yes" drops down an email form. This lets you moderate comments via email without affecting your regular comment notification setting. It is optional, since you can always moderate comments through the Blogger interface.

So set the option to "yes," enter a notification address if desired, save the settings, and wait for your next comment. All incoming comments will now go to a special "Moderate Comments" page, which you can find under the Posting tab:

On this page, you will see a list of all the comments that have been created but have not yet been approved or rejected. (This list excludes any comments made by admin members of the blog.) By default, they will be sorted by the time they were created, but you can also group them by their respective posts, by clicking the "Post Name" sort option at the top.

Each line in the list displays the beginning of the comment, the author's name, and the time it was created. Clicking the triangle to the left will expand the row to show the full text of the comment, along with "Publish" and "Reject" links, which you can use to approve or disapprove the comment. You can also select multiple comments and publish or reject them all at once, by using the check boxes on the left hand side and the buttons at the top or bottom of the list.

This entire process can also be done via email. If you entered an email address for moderation, you will get a message for each comment which will contain "Publish" and "Reject" links, as well as a link to the main moderation page for the blog. For example:

 

 

Technorati

Technorati is an Internet search engine for searching blogs and social media.
According to the company, they are currently" tracking 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media."

When bloggers link to and comment on other blogs, Technorati tracks these links. Technorati indexes thousands of updates every hour.

According to Technorati data, there are over 175,000 new blogs (that’s just blogs) every day. Bloggers update their blogs regularly to the tune of over 1.6 million posts per day, or over 18 updates a second.

Technorati gives blogs an authority rating, based on how many other blogs currently link to it. About two-thirds of the information that is currently discovered by Technorati users is through tags. The rest comes from keyword searches. A December survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 28 percent of Internet users have tagged content online such as photos, news stories or blog posts.