Project Blog Tip

Start Off:
This is how you can add a graphic to your header. Sign into Dashboard. For the blog you want to modify, click LAYOUT, then click EDIT HTML.


Change maxwidgets='1' to maxwidgets='4'(or any other number greater than 1, or even leave a number out, then there is no maximum) and change showaddelement='no' to showaddelement='yes'. (you may also leave out the figure in maxwidgets='' in which case the number of widgets you can add to the header is unlimited). So the section should now be

Click SAVE TEMPLATE. Then click PAGE ELEMENT tab to go back to LAYOUT. You will see an extra "Add a Page Element" above the Header.

Adding unclickable graphic in the Header of Blogger beta blog

Click "Add a Page Element" and a pop-up will appear. Select "Picture" and click "Add to blog". In the next page, there will be 4 fields and some radio buttons for you to click. The fields are "Title", "Caption" and two fields for image. It is best to leave the title blank. If (rarely) you want a caption below the image, then fill in that field with your caption, otherwise leave it blank. If you have your photo stored on your computer, click "Browse" (the radio button for "Browse" is already ticked by default), then select the photo from your computer.

You may also tick the radio button to load an image already hosted on the web if you know the URL, but if the image is not hosted by you, there may be copyright and bandwidth issues involved. If you select this option, just fill in the field for the image URL and click "Save changes". For this, the safest option is to tick "Shrink to fit" as you have no control over the size of the photo.

The navbar is compulsory for bloggers using blogspot.com for their blogs, and it can also be useful. It has a search box which will allow visitors to search the content of your blog. You can also change the color of the navbar to blend with the colors of your blog by going to the LAYOUT and right at the top, you will see a section for navbar. Click EDIT and chose the color for the navbar.

However, many people have expressed the desire to remove the navbar as there is "Next Blog" in the navbar which when click will lead to an unpredictable blog which may contain sexually explicit content, etc and about which people like educators who set up blogs for their students are very unhappy about.

If you really want to hide the navbar, this is how to go about it. Whenever you make changes to the template, it is always wise to backup the template first.

Sign into Dashboard, click LAYOUT for the relevant blog and then click the EDIT HTML sub-tab. This will open the template editor window. Look for this tag: <head/>. Paste this script immediately above.

<style type='text/css'>
#navbar-iframe {
display: none;
}
</style>

so that what you see will be

<style type='text/css'>
#navbar-iframe {
display: none;
}
</style>
</head>

Go go Plain Calendars, chose the calendar you like (note that at the top of the page, there are other categories of calendars, so if you don't like the example calendar I chose, you can always go for a different one). Here below is an example calender that I got from the site. If you are experienced in text editing you can change it to fit your blog header, etc. However, I won't cover that here, due to wanting to keep the sanity of my less tech savvy readers.

Free Blog Content

With the New Blogger, this is really very easy. Just get into the Dashboard of the blog, click, "Template" tab, then the "fonts and Colors" sub-tab and you will get this page (see screenshot):



First, choose what your want to change in the left side of the page, then preferably select a color from the blocks of color to the left. You should preferably select colors that matches your blog or colors from your blog Be careful if you are choosing color for the font, not to choose a color that matches the background, or choosing a color for the background not to choose a color that matches the font. That will make the text invisible, making your blog unreadable. Worst, it can get your blog black listed by the search engine as that is considered black hat SEO (Search Engine Optimization). If those colors mentioned doesn't satisfy you, that are other color further to the right. You can also input the exact HTML for the color you want. For this task, getting the very useful Colorpic will be very helpful.

If you are trying to get the HTML Code code for the link on your site, it is best to make a screenshot (press "Printscreen" key, then paste it into the Paint Program available in Windows in the Accessories, or use my favourite - the free Irfanview). You have to use an image of your page because most links change in color the moment you place your mouse over it, but with a screenshot, that doesn't happen.

The CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) of every template is written different and if something is missing, all you need to do is to add the relevant missing part in.

For example, in the standard Blogger Scribe template, this is the section in the CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) for the sidebar:

#sidebar {
width:150px;
float:left;
padding:8px 0;
margin:0;
word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */
}

There is nothing mentioned about background. So what I did was to add a single line

background: #FFFFFF;

(#FFFFFF is the hexadecimal color code for white) to that section, so that it became:

#sidebar {
width:150px;
float:left;
padding:8px 0;
margin:0;
word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */
background: #FFFFFF;
}


BTW, instead of using hexadecimal color codes like #FFFFFF, you can also use most names of colors like red, blue, white, etc.

You can generate the script for free from A free countdown clock for your Website. You choose the type of clock you want ("countdown to a date in the future" or "Time elapsed since date in the past"). You can set the year, month and day you want to countdown to. The default for hour, minute and second is set to 0,0,0, but you can set them to any figure you want. You choose the countdown mode (see Countdown clock help page. The is also a choice of 17 languages for the countdown clock. Choose the background color (HTML color code), text color and whether you want a border or not. For choosing a background color to match the colors of your site the following will be useful:
ColorPic and
Color Blender.

You are then ready to generate the script to paste into your post, or generate a link to the clock if you don't want the countdown clock on your site. You can also add it to the sidebar by pasting into a HTML/Javascript Page Element (click Add a Page Element in the LAYOUT). You may have to do some adjustment to the dimensions of the countdown clock in this case. Later, I will probably do a demonstration and write more about it.

Note: AdSense users please read update at the bottom of the post.

You spend all night setting up your very own blog, but in short time you realize nobody is coming to read it. Furthermore now that you have a blog what do you do next?

That's where BlogExplosion comes in. Imagine joining a blogging community where people can find and read your blog, get your blog reviewed or even chat with other bloggers all around the world!

Whether you like to talk about politics, business, your wedding, family or simply enjoy sharing your life experiences on your blog with other people BlogExplosion is a great way to expand the number of people that read your blog!

You can get more traffic to your blog via BlogExplosion in different ways. For every two blogs you visit via BlogExplosion, another will visit your blog. So the more you surf, the more visitors will visit your site. Remember to add a Visitor Counter (click "BACK" button to get back to this page) to your blog so that you can see the visitors coming in.

There is also a referral system for BlogExplosion whereby you will be given a link or a banner and people who join via that link, a portion of their traffic will be added to yours. This referal system is 4 levels deep, so a portion of the traffic generated by others who join through the person you referred to BlogExplosion will also be added to yours too. Also, you can add a MyBlogDirectory to your site, and when others want to be listed in your (and other's) directory (and BlogExplosion's directory) joined via MyBlogDirectory will also be added to your referrals .

To read more about MyBlogDirectory, and how MyBlogDirectory can increase traffic to your blog, see "How to make a blog directory for your blog".

Update: I have an AdSense account, and I have been hearing reports of people getting their account suspended without being given the reasons for the suspension. So, being careful, I contacted AdSense Help about using a traffic exchange like BlogExplosion. Their reply was not specific, just that we have to be careful and that the responsibility lies with us. I have since stopped using BlogExplosion for sites which have AdSense ads. There are others who are of opinion that it is OK to use BlogExplosion. You decide for yourself or you may want to seek clarification from AdSense Help Center yourself or from other AdSense users at the Google AdSense Help group.