Tech Tips » Blogging

FeedBurner is offering PRO features for Free

chandu — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 12:38:55 +0000

Good news to all Feedburner users. After the recent acquisition by Google FeedBurner is offering the some of the PRO features for free from today onwards. TotalStats and MyBrand, both previously for-pay services, are now being
offered at no charge.

Just login to your account and just enable these features. Happy blogging:)

[Via: Mashable]

Technorati Tags: Feedburner, Totalstats, MyBrand, Free

How To Add Related Posts To Your Feed

chandu — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 04:14:55 +0000

Whilst fixing my Wordpress installation, I lost a tweak I did, which I�ve just put back in, which added links from my favourite plugin, Related Posts, to my RSS feed. If you�re not using the Related Posts plugin yet, then hang your head in shame, as it�s one of the best plugin for driving more page views.

[Read the full Article here...]

How To Add Related Posts To Your Feed

Originally from Connected Internet by Everton

How to move a WordPress blog to a new host – DLS Recipe

chandu — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 06:31:20 +0000

Ingredients:

1 Cup SQLyog (community edition) for exporting/importing (substitute: phpMyAdmin)
1 tsp. favorite FTP client (FileZilla, CuteFTP, WSFTP, CoffeeCup, iFTP)
1 whole fresh WordPress install, unzipped and ready to upload (get it here)
1 new host (Dreamhost is a good host)
30 mins to complete
a dash of know-how (provided below)

WordPress (WP) is a piece of cake to install, but what if you need to move a WP install to another host, and you don’t want to deal with your posts being all wonky and your links weird? You can try using the import function of WP, but I found it to be very hard to work 100% and give you exactly what you had before. Below is a way to get your exact blog back, almost exactly what you had at your old host. The only requirement is that your new hosting environment be somewhat similar (similar version of PHP and MySQL).

[More in this Article...]

How to move a WordPress blog to a new host – DLS Recipe

Originally from Download Squad by Ryan Carter

Sharing photos with Photoblog

chandu — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 15:53:36 +0000

Photoblog is a nice little tool to create a photo blog of daily life. It is a free web app for sharing and organizing personal photos. The Photoblog service is still in beta, but it is extremely easy to use and simple to get around. The interface is clean and easy to navigate though setting up entries.
[More in below Article...]

Sharing photos with Photoblog

Originally from Download Squad by Chris Gilmer

How to Track your Recent Outbound Links with Technorati

chandu — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 15:52:10 +0000

This tip is for those people who did not know that Technorati let�s them track their site�s recent outbound links.
Enter this in your Browser�s Address bar- http://www.technorati.com/blogs/www.yoursite.com
Change www.yoursite.com to your domain
Now on the left side you can find your blog�s Recent Outbound Links.
That�s it
Also displayed along with it are your blog�s Top Tags, [...]

How to Track your Recent Outbound Links with Technorati

Originally from JohnTP's Home by John T P

Installing WordPress Locally Under Windows XP

chandu — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 04:00:35 +0000

In the past few weeks, I’ve tested a few blogging platforms for the upcoming launch of Geeksaresexy.net, and right now, I hesitate between 2 alternatives: WordPress and Textpattern. I’ll be fooling around with both in coming weeks to familiarize myself with them. I have now been running Wordpress for a week or so, and I must say that I am quite impressed by its ease of installation. Running a local version of your blog is very useful because it lets you fool around with themes and plugins to your heart’s desire without having to risk breaking your live blog.

Here’s a little guide that will help you install and run Wordpress locally on your XP box in less then 10 minutes:

1- Get XAMPP lite for Windows. Choose the exe version, and install it at the root of your C drive.

2- Browse to C:\xampplite and double click setup_xampp.bat

[More in below Article...]

Installing WordPress Locally Under Windows XP

Originally from [Geeks are Sexy] technology news by Kiltak

How To: Add a Favorite Icon, favicon, to your Typepad blog

chandu — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 02:51:10 +0000

A favicon, short for favorite icon, is a personalize icon that is displayed with the website name/favorite listing. Most professional web sites customize the favicon with their corporate logo. Here is what my News favorite folder looks like — you can see the personalized corporate logo for each favorite entry.

You can personalize your typepad blog with your very own favicon as well – as I have now done with my applepie blog.

How To: Add a Favorite Icon, favicon, to your Typepad blog

Originally from Applepie by Cris

PodZinger: search podcast content from Mozilla search bar

chandu — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 04:58:20 +0000

PodZinger is a search engine that lets you search for words and phrases within podcasts and videocasts. Yes, within the actual audio. And now there’s a plug-in available that adds PodZinger to the Mozilla search toolbar.
[More in below Article ...]

PodZinger: search podcast content from Mozilla search bar

Originally from Download Squad by Amber Rhea

Talkr: Convert text blogs to podcasts

chandu — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 14:59:04 +0000

Sometimes you just might want to sit back, relax and listen to your favorite blog reports instead of stare at your computer screen reading. For those times, Talkr might just be the web app for you. It lets you listen to your favorite text blog source. Talkr will not only convert them to audio, but they will create a podcast of the source, making it easier to listen wherever you are.
[Read more on downloadsquad...]

Talkr: Convert text blogs to podcasts

Originally from Download Squad by Chris Gilmer

Editting HTML On Blogger Beta

chandu — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 08:52:43 +0000

Today Blogger Buzz update one more feature on Blogger beat that we can now edit HTML code in template, probably that’s a second breaking news since their announcement on Blogger in Beta. But be cautious before you open the template. You should learn first what is new in it.

Editting HTML On Blogger Beta

Originally from Zero Topic by zerotopic

Writely for Bloggers

chandu — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 16:03:43 +0000

Writely now supports posting to several blogging formats including Blogger, MovableType, LiveJournal, SquareSpace, Wordpress, BlogWare, BlogHarbour and MetaWeblog. There’s also support for privacy options, tags, online publishing and collaboration tools for team blogs, RSS feeds, plus a whole slew of…
[Read more in below article...]

Writely for Bloggers

Originally from Technophilia by noemail@noemail.org (Abdul Jaleel)

Watch Blog Comments with Commentful

chandu — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 08:43:47 +0000

Commentful is a useful tool for watching blog post comments, and getting instant notifications when comments are posted, similiar to co.mments and CoComment.

Through Commentful, you can set up specific URLs to monitor for comments. [More on downloadsquad....]

Watch Blog Comments with Commentful

Originally from Download Squad by Chris Gilmer

10 Webservices that helps a blogger Succeed

chandu — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 14:33:53 +0000

We all have blogs. A blog that shows up your interests and shares it with the web world. But do you feel that your blog is not getting much attention in the weblog world ? Here are 10 web services…

10 Webservices that helps a blogger Succeed

Originally from Technophilia by Abdul Jaleel

RSS Alerts to your Instant Messenger with Feed Crier

chandu — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 03:19:47 +0000

Interesting new service has launched called Feed Crier. It is an IM bot that delivers real-time RSS feed updates to your desktop over popular instant messaging protocols. For end users, no account creation is necessary –
just send a message to the bot containing a feed URL and start getting feed alerts. Basic services are free, with premium services costing just a few dollars a month. Currently, Feed Crier is in beta using the AOL Instant Messenger protocol. Support for other IM protocols including Yahoo, MSN, and Jabber (Google talk uses Jabber) is under development.
I can’t see using it for most sites that I read. However, for say job listings or maybe Craig’s List where being the first to know is really important it might be worth signing up.
Signing up is easy. Just send an instant message to the screenname “feedcrier” and say subscribe your-feed-url.
Site authors might be interested in code they can add to their site to offer their feed via IM. Visit Adding Feed Crier to your Site for instructions and some html code. You’ll end up with a button like this:

Get instant messenger update alerts with Feed Crier FREE.

Tags: rss, feed, im, instant messanger, feed crier

RSS Alerts to your Instant Messenger with Feed Crier

Originally from TechLifeBlogged by noemail@noemail.org (Scott Kingery)

Blogger comment feed tips

chandu — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 17:18:39 +0000

New comment feed per post is good especially for the visitors come to the site, by subscribing it they are notified when someone reply to their comments. That’s a big blow for the service like coComment! To subscribe, you’ve got to go individual post entry, at the end of the page you’ll see the link as Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom).

But I’m expecting overall comment feed, like Haloscan do, so that I know instantly even comments are from old post from archive which are not so obvious to be noticed. Alternatively Blogger sent e-mail notification. But you have to enable it, to do this go to Dashboard >> Settings >> Comments, and scroll down the page till you see the Comment Notification Address box at the bottom, then type in your address.

Blogger comment feed tips

Originally from Zero Topic by zerotopic

Google Blogger.com rolls out Blogger Beta

chandu — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 02:42:59 +0000

Google Blogger.com today unveils new beta version with substantial of upgrade. As we know, Google Blogger is the fastest, easiest way to quickly throw up a free blog and be able work with the template code. The new beta version entitled as Blogger beta.

The major new blogging features that Blogger beta includes:

Categorizing posts with labels
Blog Readers – specify who can read your blog
Appearance changing – templates, and managing changes without HTML.
more feeds support
Dynamic pages
Cleaner Dashboard
Migration to Google Accounts

You can review more details about the features on Google Operating System

Currently, The Blogger beta is limited number of people that will be switched over to the beta version. Blogger user will noticed that a message on their dashboard when they can enable the change

If you want to test the new Blogger by creating a new blog you can do that at beta.blogger.com. Here�s a test blog created with the new platform and a tour that shows the new features.

My Note

The blogger system has been long time doesn�t updates their features. This new feauteres perhaps can heat up competition with other blogging system

Tags: Blogging, Blogger, Blogspot, google, Blog, tech,

Google Blogger.com rolls out Blogger Beta

Originally from AdGlobe Blog – Explore IT, Tech and Monetize way information on Internet by noemail@noemail.org (km)

Windows Live Writer: WYSIWYG editor for blogs

chandu — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 16:44:10 +0000

Microsoft has announced a Beta version of Windows Live Writer, a free desktop application that makes it easier to compose blog posts. Writer is a WYSIWYG (What You See is what you get) Editor.

Writer knows the styles of your blog such as headings, fonts, colors, background images, paragraph spacing, margins and block quotes and enables you to edit your post using these styles. Writer also includes other views including HTML source-code editing and web preview mode. Writer can also insert, customize and upload photos to your blog. It can also insert a Windows Live Local map directly into a post.

Is supports the following blogging platforms:

- Windows Live Spaces
- Blogger
- LiveJournal
- TypePad
- Wordpress
- All blogs that support RSD (Really Simple Discoverability)
- Metaweblog API
- Moveable Type API

freeware microsoft windows live writer wysiwyg editor

Windows Live Writer: WYSIWYG editor for blogs

Originally from Tech[dot]Blog by Abdul Aziz

Download Microsoft Windows Live Writer – Blog Publishing Tools

chandu — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 16:40:03 +0000

Microsoft�s Windows Live Writer is launched yesterday, it is totally free desktop client�s software and downloable application. Windows Live Writer able to run on windows PC and allows write your blog posts.

The blogging system that integrate with Microsoft Windows Lives support are Windows Live Spaces, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress and others.

The main features of Windows Live Writer are WYSIWYG authoring and Photo publishing. The rich text editor is no quite impressive because contains the usual elements and doesn�t produce clean code.

Photo Publishing features allows bloggers easy insertion of photos and things like Live.com Maps, and tagging. The images editing features that you can use are resize the picture, add a nice shadow, adjust brightness and even use some simple effects.

Windows Live Writer is available to download here [4.74 MB, Windows] and it�s still beta version.

Tags: WindowsLiveWriter, Blogging, LiveWriter, Software,

Download Microsoft Windows Live Writer – Blog Publishing Tools

Originally from AdGlobe Blog – Explore IT, Tech and Monetize way information on Internet by noemail@noemail.org (km)

chandu — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 09:15:10 +0000

Darren has a very useful post that gives us 14 tips on how to increase a Blog�s Page Views. Here I have listed them with my own comments.
First of all why would you want to increase your blog�s pageviews? Some reasons Darren gives are
Stickiness – the more pages a reader views the increased chance [...]

14 tips on how to increase your Blog�s Page Views

Originally from JohnTP's Home by John T P

Customized Landing Page for your blog

chandu — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 09:08:12 +0000

A landing page is the page people arrive on your site from a search engine. When visitors reach your blog from search engines they probably skim your content to see if it is what they are looking for. If not, they are likely to leave your site and perhaps never come back again. So why [...]

Customized Landing Page for your blog

Originally from JohnTP's Home by John T P

How to make your TypePad blog searchable

chandu — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 02:13:49 +0000

go to Google Free Site Search and create an account
in the customize section, enter the domain of your website (in my case, blogging.typepad.com)
click Update to get the code that google generates for you
Now you�ll need to make a few modifications to that code so that it displays properly in your TypePad blog:
- Change the line of code that reads:
- to instead read
- AND change the line that reads:
  - %(domain)s
    %(domain)s
- to instead read:
  - yourdomainnamegoeshere
  - (obviously, replace �yourdomainnamegoeshere� with your actual domain or site name)
create a typelist called search and paste the modified Google code
for the search box right into the notes section of the only item in the
list.
Make sure the notes are set to display as text,
add the typelist to the sidebar of your blog in the regular
interface wherever you want it to appear (In the design section, first
go to content and check the typelist, then go to order and position the
searchbox where you want it to go.

People can now easily search all of your posts for the info they�re
looking for, rather than having to hunt through your archives.

How to make your TypePad blog searchable

Originally from Technophilia by Abdul Jaleel

How to create a Podcast using Smartphone

chandu — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 02:13:42 +0000

Ingredients:

a smartphone with email and Web access
a free account on Audlink.com
a blog that supports enclosure tags and RSS feeds
Optional: Blogging software for your smartphone, like mo:blog

Getting Started: Create an Audlink Account

The very first thing you need to do is set up a free account on the website Audlink.com.
Audlink is a tool that allows you to call a telephone number and leave
a voicemail message that’s automatically converted into an MP3 file and
placed on the Audlink website. It also has the ability to post your MP3
in a directory on your blog; this will work for bloggers using Movable
Type, Blogger/Blogspot, LiveJournal, JournalSpace and Nucleus. When you
set up your account, you’ll have to come up with a numeric voicemail
password; this will be used to when you call the Audlink phone number
to record your voicemail. You’ll also need an admin password, which you
can use to access your Audlink account online and change your settings
if needed.
Once your Audlink account is set up, create a new contact in your phone for the number 1-(214) 752-7621.You should also make a note of your Audlink account number and your
passwords, since you’ll need these on hand whenever you use your phone
to create a podcast.

Making the Podcast

Essentially, creating the podcast follows three basic steps:

Record it
Find it
Blog it

Step One: Record It

Once you have your Audlink account set up, you’ll need to pick up your smartphone and call the Audlink voicemail number: 1 (214) 752-7621.
Please remember this is not a toll-free number, so long distance
charges will apply. After dialing the number, you’ll be prompted to key
in your account number and your numerical password. Then, you’ll be
able to record your voicemail. You can record a message up to five
minutes in length. Since there isn’t an easy way to edit your voicemail
on your smartphone once you’ve recorded it (well, at least not yet),
you may want to practice what you’re going to say. If you screw it up,
you can always call back and make another recording.

When you’re done with your voicemail, hang up. Audlink will then
take a minute or so to process the voicemail into an MP3, which means
it’s now time for

Step Two: Find It

Now that you’ve recorded your message, you’ll need to find it.
Unfortunately, Audlink generates a long file name for your recording
based on a timestamp (for example, http://www.audlink.com/mailbox/1111/0501151149.mp3),
so there’s no convenient way you’ll know ahead of time exactly what the
URL will be. So you’ll have to do one of two things to find it.

The easiest thing to do is to go to your in-box on the Audlink
website. All Audlink in-boxes follow a similar pattern, like this:

http://www.audlink.com/mailbox/XYZ/

The XYZ would actually be whatever your account number is. For example, my Audlink account is #1111, so my in-box URL is this:

http://www.audlink.com/mailbox/1111/

If you’ve set your Audlink account to FTP your voicemails to a
directory on your blog’s website, then you’ll want to go to that
directory instead.

Whether you go to your Audlink in-box or you use a directory on
your blog, you’ll have to go to that URL to find the voicemail. If this
is your first voicemail, it’ll be easy to find it; just look for a file
name like this:

0501151149.mp3

If you have more than one voicemail in your in-box, you’ll have to
figure out which one is your new recording. Since the name of each file
is basically a time-stamp, you just need to figure out which one looks
like the right date and time. For example, if you break down the file
name 0501151149.mp3 you’ll see it means this time-stamp:

Year: 05 (2005)
Month: 01 (January)
Date: 15
Hour: 11
Minute: 49

Hence, 0501151149.mp3.

Once you’ve figured out what the proper file name is, make a note of
it. It’s not a bad idea to write it down, but otherwise you can use
your phone’s copy-and-paste feature to copy the file name and then go to

Step Three: Blog It

There are various ways to blog from your smart phone. For example,
some blog tools have the ability to send an email to a particular
address and automatically post the text of your email as a blog entry.
Or, you can use your Web browser to go to the URL you use for posting
new blog entries. Additionally, there’s mobile phone software you can
download into your phone for posting blog entries. For example, I
sometimes use Mo:Blog,
a shareware application available for the Palm operating system. It’s
like a simple notepad that will post the note to your blog.There are softwares like Pocket Blogger for Pocket PC,Typepad Mobile etc . available for mobile blogging.

Whichever way you choose to do it, the key thing is that you’ll want
to use the phone for posting a blog entry to link to your podcast. When
you fill out the blog entry, create a link to your voicemail MP3 file.
If you’re using Audlink, you’ll want to link to the file inside your
voicemail in-box, which will look something like this:

http://www.audlink.com/mailbox/1111/0501151149.mp3

If you’ve set up Audlink to post to your blog, the URL would look something like this:

http://www.andycarvin.com/audio/0501151149.mp3

Whichever way you do it, the key thing is to create a hyperlink that
points to the voicemail URL. Then, when you post your blog entry, the
blog will link to the voicemail on your blog homepage and in its
accompanying RSS feed. And that’s it. Instant mobile podcasting in three (relatively) easy steps. Happy MoPodcasting!

How to create a Podcast using Smartphone

Originally from Technophilia by Abdul Jaleel

Web-based RSS Feed Readers

chandu — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 14:36:58 +0000

Perhaps I’ve been out of the loop, but why are web 2.0 RSS readers emerging now? For nearly a year, I’ve used Bloxor, a PHP/MySQL-based feed reader, to gather feed content from my favorite sites. (There is a service, but I opted to install the app on my server.) Bloxor is quite nice, don’t get me wrong. But it’s not perfect either. And yet I haven’t seen anything come around that just sweeps me off my feet with that perfect blend of design and function.

I spent two hours with Google Reader whenever it arrived. No thanks. (Does anyone use this? I almost forget it even exists. No one I know uses it—that I know of… )

Bloglines? Far from useful.

Countless other web-based RSS readers have been released to the world only to fall short of really making it happen.

I do have high hopes though.

Steve Smith has Canary Reader cooking. And I really think if it’s going to be successful, there are only a few people who can guide it there. Steve Smith is one of the few.

I also just stumbled on Feeds 2.0 out of Greece. (Thanks to a nice TechTips article for the link.)

At the onset, either one of these apps could be the next greatest web application and could solve the deficit of web-based RSS reader. I certainly hope we get somewhere soon.

If you’ve run across a great reader (web-based or desktop client) that you’d like to share with the group, lay it down here.

Technorati Tags: rss, reader, web

Addendum: I was recently added to the TechTips roster of contributors. Glad to be on board! Thanks, Chandu. (And thanks Technorati for the referral. )

Web-based RSS Feed Readers

Originally from David Russell by itunes@davidrussell.org (David Russell)

How to use RSS Feeds

chandu — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 03:29:25 +0000

This topic might not look interesting at first glance but I promise it will be worth reading it. More than 900 readers subscribed to the feeds of ghacks.net using feedburner alone while many more are using different services to read my feeds. But what are feeds ? They are a short abstract of every article that gets posted here. This means whenever I write an article it will automatically appear in those peoples feed reader software. Many browsers for instance are able to read feeds or can be upgraded to read them.

How to use RSS Feeds

Originally from gHacks tech news by Martin

Guide To Optimizing WordPress Servers

chandu — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 11:22:30 +0000

After moving hosts for some reason my WP-Cache2 plugin stopped caching pages and I couldn’t work out why, so I’ve spent the last couple of hours looking for alternatives as I wanted to make sure I don’t get into trouble again with my new host, even though I have a VPS now rather than a [...]

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Guide To Optimizing WordPress Servers

Originally from Connected Internet by Everton Blair

Blogger Comment and TrackBack Trick

chandu — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 09:54:10 +0000

I have redesigned my blog again. I used to use templates from Gecko & Fly. They are free for individual use and I like their design. Because I know nothing about html coding and web design, and especially because I find it always boring to learn from reading books and online tutorials, I used their templates and learn from it at the same time. I’ve noticed the two web sites this and this also are providing good and free stuffs. Though this time I took the one from blogger itself and modified it a bit.

Another major change is that I switched back the comment box from Haloscan to Blogger. Although Haloscan is giving me a good service and I enjoy having an excellent time with her, I cannot completely run away from my old love. Some strong points about Blogger comment are that enabling Google back link so that I know who is linking my post, with Haloscan somehow I’m not seeing that back link in my post footer. And Blogger comment is compatible with coComment that make easy for my fellow bloggers to keep track of their comments on my posts*. Moreover most of the posts about how to hack and the tips and tricks of comment are based on blogger comment. And I want to try some.

But I’ve still liked to keep Haloscan’s TrackBack system. So I googled to find how to do it and came up with one decent post explaining the process. In fact I just want to be confirmed whether it is possible to do so. Then I browse back to Haloscan auto-install for blogger page again and went through the steps untill I find their code for Blogger template, that is at step 4. Instead of procedding the following steps, I copied them to replace with Blogger comment code as mention in above article. After saving the template and republishing it, I checked the result. It works!

* update: I’ve jsut noticed Haloscan is also compatible with coComment. What the hell! Technology today is changing in minutes!

Filed under: blogging, tips, blogtools.
Technorati Tags: blogger template, blogger hack, haloscan trackback

Blogger Comment and TrackBack Trick

Originally from Zero Topic by zerotopic