Thursday, 29 November 2007

Blogging exhaustion!

Blogging exhaustion can happen to any blogger, whether you are relatively new to the scene and working hard to get your blog noticed, or are a blogging pro who's struggling to juggle blogging with work and family life.

If you've suffered from this yourself, you probably know what it's like: tiredness, headaches, a lack of enthusiasm for posting or replying to comments and emails... This often happens when bloggers work too hard and don't give themselves a break, particularly when they are so passionate about their blog that it takes over every spare minute of the day!

I'm writing this post as it seems many others in the blogosphere are feeling the same way. There is no magic pill to overcome this, though I do have some tips which may well help!






In my opinion, blogging should be fun! When we begin blogging, most of us look forward to writing our posts, reading comments others have left for us, checking our RSS readers to see what our favorite bloggers have written about recently, and generally enjoying the experience.

However, at some point in out blogging lives, many of us will experience blogging exhaustion in one form or another: perhaps a sudden spike in readers overwhelms you with comments, emails and projects which need attention? It could be that despite all your efforts, your blog still doesn't seem to attract as many visitors as you'd like? Whatever the reason, the first thing you should do is take a step back, shut down the computer for a while and have a real good think about why you started blogging in the first place!

Take some time off

When you have many commitments aside from your blog, it can seem that there just aren't enough hours in the day. So take some time off from blogging! Spend time with your family or friends, go out for a walk or read a book. It will help, believe me! If you need to spend a few days or more away from your blog, write a quick post to let your readers know. From experience, I can say that readers will understand if you need to take a break, especially if you offer the courtesy of explaining why.

Focus on what you love most about blogging

Write a list of the things you like most about blogging, and try to focus on these. For example, if you love to write, plan a long and thoughtful post on a subject you enjoy. If you enjoy interacting with your readers, you could ask for their opinions, or simply visit your favorite blogs and leave your own comments on the posts you enjoyed reading the most.

Change your writing style

If most of your posts are lone tutorials, for example, try creating some short pithy posts instead. On the other hand, if you tend to write shorter posts, try your hand at a long tutorial or review, do some research and see what inspires you to write. This method works well for both you and your blog: as the old adage says, "A change is better than a rest"!

Find some inspiration

Read other's blogs and see what they are blogging about, try a newspaper or magazine in your subject or simply talk to friends. Every blogger needs some inspiration to write, and it often arrives in the most unexpected forms. Once inspired, you can then blog your own perspective on a particular subject, or simply write a post linking to a page which may be useful to your readers instead!

In conclusion...

We can become exhausted in any aspect of our lives, but many bloggers seem to overlook the pitfalls of blogging exhaustion. I've seen a great many blogs which have been abandoned by their authors, either because the author was too exhausted to continue blogging or because the inspiration to post has simply disappeared.

Taking steps to ensure you don't become exhausted or uninspired can help you maintain your interest in your blog, and in the long run will help you produce a better blog which readers can only be attracted to.

Monday, 26 November 2007

A tabbed navigation widget for your blog (version 1)

To help you streamline the content of your blogs sidebar, I have developed a "tabbed navigation widget" which can include any content you would like to appear in your blog, such as recent posts, recent comments and much more besides.

This is based on Hoctro's original Tab View widget, though this version is much easier to install and allows you to completely customize the widget with your own content. This works by displaying different content within the widget depending on which tab is highlighted, so rather than have a long sidebar full of widgets, you can have them all in one smaller widget so readers will be able to find the information they need more easily.

You can see an example of this widget in action on the Red Web 2.0 demonstration blog. Read on for full instructions and an explanation of how this widget can be customized to suit your needs.






The tabbed navigation widget features tabs and a content window; when clicking on the tabs, different content is visible in the window beneath. My version is a much simplified version of Hoctro's original Tab View widget, and requires that you manually insert the content relative for each tab. This will then allow you to feature any content you wish to appear inside the content window, such as popular posts, an "about this blog" text or a feed of your recent posts/comments.

The basic installation of this widget is quite simple, so you can get this up and running within minutes. However, you must add your own content to this widget, as this version does not support recent posts, recent comments and labels by default. I will explain how to add this content later.

Basic instructions for installing the Tabbed Navigation widget

Here are the basic installation instructions for installing a tabbed navigation widget in your blog. This will get the widget up and running, so you will be able to customize the content afterwards:


  1. First you should make a full backup of your blog template, just in case something goes wrong during the installation and you need to revert back to your original template. To make your template backup, go to Template>Edit HTML in your Blogger dashboard and click on the "Download full template" link near the top of the page.

  2. Next, go to the Edit HTML section of your template and find the closing </head> tag. Just before this tag, paste the following lines of code:

    <link href='http://yui.yahooapis.com/2.3.0/build/tabview/assets/tabview.css' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'/>




    <link href='http://yui.yahooapis.com/2.3.0/build/tabview/assets/border_tabs.css' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'/>



    <script src='http://yui.yahooapis.com/2.3.0/build/yahoo-dom-event/yahoo-dom-event.js' type='text/javascript'/>

    <script src='http://yui.yahooapis.com/2.3.0/build/element/element-beta-min.js' type='text/javascript'/>



    <script src='http://yui.yahooapis.com/2.3.0/build/tabview/tabview-min.js' type='text/javascript'/>





    <style type='text/css'>


    .yui-content {
    padding:1em; /* pad content container */

    }


    .yui-navset .yui-content {

    border:1px solid #ccc;

    }

    .yui-navset .yui-nav .selected a, .yui-navset .yui-nav a:hover {

    background-color:#fff;

    }


    .yui-navset .yui-nav li a {

    background:#e5e5e5 url(http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/examples/tabview/img/round_4px_trans_gray.gif) no-repeat;

    }

    .yui-navset .yui-nav li a em {

    background:transparent url(http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/examples/tabview/img/round_4px_trans_gray.gif) no-repeat top right;

    padding:0.5em;

    }


    /* top oriented */


    .yui-navset-top .yui-nav { margin-bottom:-21px; } /* for overlap, based on content border-width */

    .yui-navset-top .yui-nav li a {

    border-bottom:1px solid #ccc;

    }


    .yui-navset-top .yui-nav .selected a { border-bottom:0; }

    .yui-navset-top .yui-nav .selected a em { padding-bottom:0.6em; } /* adjust height */

    </style>

    This code features the CSS styling and javascript calls required to operate this widget correctly in your template. Once you have added this code, simply save your template.

  3. Next, go to the Page Elements section of your dashboard (Template>Page Elements). Choose to add a new HTML/Javascript widget in your blog sidebar, and in this widget, paste the following section of code:
    <div id="demo" class="yui-navset">

    <ul class="yui-nav">

    <li><a href="#tab1"><em>Tab1</em></a></li>

    <li class="selected"><a href="#tab2"><em>Tab2</em></a></li>

    <li><a href="#tab3"><em>Tab3</em></a></li>

    </ul><br/>

    <div class="yui-content">



    <div id="tab1"><p>Tab One Content</p></div>

    <div id="tab2"><p>Tab Two Content</p></div>

    <div id="tab3"><p>Tab Three Content</p></div>

    </div>

    </div>

    <script>

    (function() {

    var tabView = new YAHOO.widget.TabView('demo');



    YAHOO.log("The example has finished loading; as you interact with it, you'll see log messages appearing here.", "info", "example");

    })();

    </script>

    Save your widget and take a look at your blog. The resulting widget should something like this:



    Now you will be able to customize the widget to suit your needs.

Adding content to the Tabbed Navigation widget

If you take a look at the code for the widget content above, you will notice that I have highlighted the text of the tabs in blue and the content which appears in the box below the tabs in red. This is help you understand how to customize this widget with your own titles and content.

Notice the relationship between the tab titles and their content, so when you click on "tab 1" for example, the related content for this tab will appear in the window below the tabs.

You can change the titles of the tabs and add whatever content you like to the widget, including Javascript code. Here are a few examples of content you could use in the widget, with examples for implementation:

  • An About This Blog text:
    This is the easiest type of content to add. Simply replace the blue title (eg: Tab1) with an appropriate title, like this:
    <li><a href="#tab1"><em>Tab1</em></a></li> becomes <li><a href="#tab1"><em>About this blog</em></a></li>



    Then add your content in place of the "tab content" text, for example:
    <div id="tab1"><p>Tab One Content</p></div>



    becomes



    <div id="tab1"><p>This is a piece of text about your blog. You can write whatever you want here</p></div>

  • Add a feed of your recent posts or comments

    This is a little more complicated as you cannot simply add a feed widget into the existing Tabbed navigation widget. Instead you could use the Blog Headlines widget from the tools section to create an independent blog feed widget which uses only javascript code to display recent posts or comments. In this case you would paste the javascript code in place of the content as demonstrated below:

    <div id="tab1"><p>Tab Two Content</p></div>


    becomes
    <div id="tab1"><p><script language="JavaScript" src="http://tools.bloggerbuster.com/headlines/feed2js.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bloggerbuster.com%2Ffeeds%2Fposts%2Fdefault&num=3" type="text/javascript"></script>

    <noscript>
    <a href="http://tools.bloggerbuster.com/headlines/feed2js.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bloggerbuster.com%2Ffeeds%2Fposts%2Fdefault&num=3&html=y">View RSS feed</a>
    </noscript>
    </p></div>

    If you like, you can even use the code above as long as you change the url to match that of your blog.

  • Add a list of your labels/blogroll/favorite posts:


    You can manually add a list or links to your labels/blogroll/favorite posts by pasting the HTML code into the content section too. Simply paste the HTML code to display these links in the following format:
    <ul><li><a href="http://yourblog.blogspot.com/search/label/yourlabel/">Your Label/Link text</a></li></ul>

    Here is an example of what this code would look like when pasted into the content section for your tabbed navigation widget:
    <div id="tab3"><p>
    <ul>
    <li><a href="http://linkone.com">link one</a></li>
    <li><a href="http://linktwo.com">link two</a></li>
    <li><a href="http://linkthree.com">link three</a></li>
    </ul>
    </p></div>

Limitations of the Tabbed Navigation widget

It is very difficult to automatically display links to the archives or labels of your blog within this Tabbed Navigation widget. This is because the code used to display these items in regular Blogger widgets will only work if the widget type matches the content to be displayed (for example, Archives can only be displayed when the widget type is "archives"). So when using this widget, you would need to create manual links to your archives or labels in order to make them display inside your widget's content section.

However, I have been experimenting with this widget, and have discovered a way of displaying either the archives or labels within the widget. Unfortunately though, this means that the widget becomes more complicated to install, and is not so easily adjusted after the initial installation. If anyone does know of a method for displaying archives and labels which does not rely on the widget type, I would love to hear how this could be achieved!

In the next few days, I will post version two of the Tabbed Navigation widget which by default will feature a tab for the archives of your blog. As I mentioned, this will be a little more complicated to install, and any post-installation customizations would need to be made from within the Edit HTML section of your blog rather than within the layouts section.

I hope you have found this (rather long) tutorial useful and easy to understand. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to leave these below.

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Thursday, 22 November 2007

Happy Thanksgiving!


Wishing you all a very happy Thanksgiving!

A drop down menu for your labels

If you have a long list of labels in your sidebar, you could be losing valuable space to display other information. A different method of displaying your labels is to use a drop-down menu: this takes up very little space at all, and is useful for helping your readers find the information they need. This post explains how a drop-down menu for your blog labels can be achieved in just a few easy steps.






This hack was originally developed by Ramani of Hackosphere, though for this tutorial I have further simplified the process so there are only two steps required:


  1. First you should make a back-up of your existing template by going to Template>Edit HTML in your Blogger dashboard and clicking the "download full template" link which is near the top of the page. It is always good practise to back-up your template before making any modifications at all, just in case you make a mistake and later need to use your old template again.

  2. Next you will need to find the following line of code in your blog's template:
    <b:widget id='Label1' locked='false' title='Labels' type='Label'/>

    To find this line, you do not need to tick the expand widget templates box. This is the un-expanded tag used to display the label widget in your blog template. Highlight all of this line, and replace this with the following section of code:


    Then save your template and take a look at your new drop-down menu!

Once installed, you can then move the label widget to other areas of your blog in the layouts section of your dashboard, just like any other widget.

I hope this tutorial has been useful to you. Please feel free to leave your comments and suggestions below.

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Tuesday, 20 November 2007

Blogger wins best blogging host in the Blogger's Choice Awards

Once again, Blogger has been voted the best free blogging host in the Blogger's Choice Awards for 2007! Wordpress.com came a close second with LiveJournal grabbing third place.

It seemed inevitable to me that Blogger would be voted best in this category, though I was surprised to see such a small margin (898 to 849 votes) between Blogger and Wordpress.com hosting...

The "Best blog about Blogging" was of course dominated by Problogger (no surprises there then!), though second prize was awarded to Blogging Basics 101, a newcomer in this field and a very informative blog indeed! Lorelle on Wordpress came third in this category; she's been blogging about Wordpress forever, so if you're interested in Wordpress you'll probably want to check her out.

You can read the full list of winners over on the Blogger's Choice Awards Winners List which includes a wide range of categories from "Best Animal Blog" through to "Worst Blog of All Time" and everything between. Check it out, there are some real gems to discover!

Voting is already open for the Blogger's Choice Awards of 2008, so why not sign up and vote for your favorite blogs for next year's awards?

Monday, 19 November 2007

Are your ads acting strangely?

Over the past couple of weeks, a few people have emailed me about problems displaying ads in their Blogger blogs, most particularly with regard to AdSense ads. For many Bloggers, there are blank spaces where ads are expected to be displayed, even if there are already fewer than the three ads displayed which we are supposed to be able to show on each page.

Unfortunately I don't have any answers: I don't know why the ads won't display (particularly on the front pages of blogs), and despite my best efforts at fixing this, I cannot offer you a solution to this problem.

Due to recent events concerning Google and other methods of advertising/blog monetization, I do now have several concerns which I would like to share with you, and would like to know about your own opinions and experiences regarding advertisements in your Blogger blogs.






Problems displaying Google AdSense ads

The terms of Google's AdSense states that:

  • Up to three ad units may be displayed on each page.

  • A maximum of two Google AdSense for search boxes may be placed on a page.

  • Up to three link units may also be placed on each page.

  • Up to three referral units may be displayed on a page, in addition to the ad units, search boxes and link units specified above.
(Source: AdSense Program Policies)
However, many Bloggers have noticed that two or fewer ads will actually display on their pages, most especially on the home page of their blogs. On my own home page, I only feature code to display one Google ad (in the sidebar). However, this single ad will not display on the home page, only on my post pages.

From what I've seen in the Blogger help forums and the emails sent by several readers now, it seems that many of us are experiencing this same problem.

Problems displaying codes for TLA

Other Bloggers have experienced difficulties displaying Text-Link-Ads in their blogs, especially when trying to use TLA affiliate banners. I was forwarded this email from a friend who had consulted tech-support at TLA in an attempt to discover the source of the problem:

There are currently some issues with our affiliate code and some sites, such as Blogger or Wordpress sites. We are definitely aware and we are trying to work on a fix for them. I'm sorry for the inconvenience, we will have the affiliate ad codes fixed as soon as possible.

Recently bloggers who use TLA have been penalized for their use of this service. Could this be linked to the problems in displaying such affiliate codes?

A coincidence, or something more..?

Strangely enough, there seem to be few (if any) similar problems displaying AdSense or Text-Link-Ads in Wordpress and other blogging platforms. In recent weeks, Google has "slapped" bloggers who use TLA, Pay-Per-Post and other methods of blog monetization by lowering the PageRank of such sites (for PPP blogs, many have found their PageRank reduced to nil!).

It seems that it was about this time that blank spaces began to appear in my own blog where AdSense ads should appear. From what I've been told by blogging friends, the problems in using TLA codes began around the same time too.

We all know that Blogger is owned by Google. So is Google trying to tell us something? Are we being warned against using too many methods of advertising in our blogs? Perhaps Blogger is trying to protect us from future loss of authority in the PageRank system by reducing the number of paid links which are displayed throughout our pages. As yet, I can only speculate, though I would like to know if many other Blogger bloggers are experiencing similar problems with their blog's ads.

Please feel free to leave your comments, opinions and experiences below. If you have any further information or could provide some clarity about this issue, I would love to hear from you!

Friday, 16 November 2007

PPP blogs suffer the greatest Google slap yet!

Today it seems almost all blogs which use Pay Per Post have been reduced to a PageRank of ZERO!

I could hardly believe Google would stoop so very low as to punish bloggers in this way when I first heard the news this morning. After the recent lowering of PR for blogs which use Text-Link-Ads and the like, it seems to me that Google are punishing anyone and everyone who uses an alternative (and dare I say, better paid) alternative to AdSense monetization in their blogs!

For those of you who do use Pay-Per-Post, please don't worry too much. From what I read in the forums over there, PPP are looking into alternative methods of ranking blogs for paid posts. You can check out this thread for information on this subject.

Thankfully I don't feature any paid posts on this site, so my PR has remained stable. I am so sorry for all of you whose PageRank has been reduced to zero. I don't yet know for certain if the strange Pagerank behavior is a temporary glitch or an all round slap for paid bloggers, but you can be sure that once I know more about this, I will be sure to post the info here for you all.