YC Blog Tips

Sunday, February 20, 2011

How to receive feeds of a particular label/category

Suppose you visit a blog which offers downloads of English and Hindi movies and you want feeds of only Hindi movies, then what is that you do?

Solution is very simple. Just subscribe to Hindi movies category only.

To do this :

Suppose the blog address is http://ycmovies.blogspot.com,

then default feed subscription link is

http://ycmovies.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

But if you want to subscribe to a label/category : "Trailors" then link is

http://ycmovies.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Trailors/?alt=rss

In case label/category has spaces i.e if the label is "Hindi Movies", then use "%20" instead of "Space". Then the link is

http://ycmovies.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Hindi%20Movies/?alt=rss

Friday, February 26, 2010

How to add your blog to Yahoo! search...

This post is similar to my previous post on "How to add your blog to Google search..."

You need to add your blog to Yahoo! Site Explorer so that your site gets indexed and finds a place in Yahoo! Search whenever you update or make any posts in your blog/site.

Step 1 : Add My Site

After logging into Yahoo! Site Explorer, you will find an option to "Add My Site". Add your blog/site address there.

Step 2 : Authentication

After you paste your blog/site address and click "Add My Site", you will be prompted to authenticate your site. You will be asked a question "How would you like to authenticate your site?" and you have two options. Select the option "By adding a META tag to my home page.". Copy the META tag that may look like this..

Modify the above META tag by adding / as shown below...

Dont close this page because you need to come back and click "Ready to Authenticate".

Step 3 : Paste META Tag in your template

Go to Blogger -> Dashboard -> Layout -> Edit HTML...

Paste the META tag which you have copied, just below the HEAD tag. For example search for the following code...

Then after pasting the META tag which you have copied earlier, your code must look like this...

Save your template.

Step 4 : Ready to Authenticate

Now click "Ready to Authenticate" in Yahoo! Site Explorer.

Thats all.. You have now added your site to Yahoo! Site Explorer.. Happy Blogging...

Thursday, February 25, 2010

How to add your blog to search results of major search engines...

This is indeed very very simple !

Google, Yahoo! Search and Bing are the three major players in this field. So submitting your blog to these three engines is more than enough.

Just follow the following links which are self explanatory about how to submit your blog to these three majors.

1. Submitting to Bing

2. Submitting to Google

3. Submitting to Yahoo! Search

Happy Blogging...!

Sunday, February 21, 2010

How to add your blog to Google search...

Many of us wonder why our site doesnt appear in Google search even if we provide the entire blog address. The answer is very simple. Google needs to be informed that you have created a blog. To do this follow the following steps.

Step 1 :

Add your site to Google Webmasters

To do this, go to Webmasters home and then you will find an option to add site. There you have to fill in your site address.

Step 2 :

Now you will be prompted to "Verify Ownership". Let the verification method be "Meta tag". Copy the meta tag given. Now you have to paste this in your blog template. To do this go to Blogger -> Dashboard -> Layout -> Edit HTML and paste this tag just below <head> tag and save template.

Step 3 :

Now go back to Webmasters and click verify.

Step 4 :

This is the final step. In Webmaster Home you will find your newly added site.Click it to open dashboard. Then go to Site Configuration -> Submit Sitemap or else you will find a link to submit sitemap at right-bottom side of the screen.

Click "Submit a Sitemap".

It will display your site address along with a text box. There just type "atom.xml" or "rss.xml" and submit.

Thats it. You have done your job. Your site starts appearing in Google search in a few days.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

How to display ads within the blog posts

Displaying Ads inside the post body is very useful and fruitful.

Step 1 :

Convert your code into a format that can be embedded into the template.

For doing this refer to this Tutorial and comeback for step 2.

Step 2 :

Go to Dashboard -> Layout -> Edit HTML and select Expand Widget Templates checkbox.

Now search for the following code.

If you want to display your ads above the post then paste your converted ad code above <data:post.body/> .

If you want to display your ads below the post then paste your converted ad code below <data:post.body/> .

For example the following code displays an ad (Adsense Link List 468 x 60) just below the post title and above the post body.

I will let you know the best ad sizes, colors and placements in my further posts.

You are free to use this tip as per your requirements. Happy Blogging...

How To Show HTML Tags in Your Blogger Post

Most of us face this peculiar problem when we try to show some code to demonstrate something in our blog post. Most of us complain that after pasting the code in the blogger post it gets replaced with some junk or it gets lost. Solution to this is very simple.

Just replace

< with <

and

> with >

To do this copy the code ( which you want to display in your post ) into wordpad. Then replace all <'s and >'s

You can also use this Code Converter

How to Correct " 1 Comments " To " 1 Comment " in Blogger

I have observed a small grammatical mistake in Blogger Comments Section.

Instead of displaying '1 Comment', it show '1 Comments'.

In case of 0,2 and above '0 Comments' or '2 Comments' or so is ok.

Correcting this is very simple.

First go to Dashboard -> Layout -> Edit HTML.

Then select "Expand Widget Templates"

Then search for the followning code :

<b:if cond='data:post.numComments == 1'>
1 <data:commentLabel/>:
<b:else/>
<data:post.numComments/> <data:commentLabelPlural/>:
</b:if>

There just replace <data:commentLabel/> with Comment

Thats it ! Now your Blogger Comment Heading H4 is grammatically correct.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Customizing Header to match your blog design...

This is pretty easy. I will explain what I have done to customize the header of this blog, so that you can apply the same to your blog...

Step 1 :

Went to Dashboard -> Layout -> Edit HTML

At the top searched for variable definitions and then for pagetitlecolor.

Searched for the value="#666666" under pagetitlecolor. (This is in case of minima template) Replaced it with value="#ffffff".

Blog Title Color in Header is now changed to White.

Step 2 :

Changed background color to #204063 instead of #fff in #header-wrapper { ... }

Step 3 :

Third and final step is to make necessary changes in .Header h1 { ... } as required.

In this blog's case I added the following code to .Header h1 { ... }

padding-top: 17px;
padding-right: 0;
padding-bottom: 17px;
padding-left: 84px;
background: #204063 url(http://www.blogblog.com/thisaway_blue/icon_header_left.gif) no-repeat 20px 20px;

Just save and enjoy the new cool look...

Customizing Outer Wrapper Colour...

This is extension to the previous post on "How add background to blog body".

Firstly I made a small modification in #outer-wrapper { ... }

I replaced

margin:0 auto;

with

margin-top:10px;
margin-bottom: 10px;
margin-right: auto;
margin-left: auto;

and then added the following code

background: #4386ce url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsmk5YOATHtbyU2nAUYlfif8hxBwh-xCrv0uW4eijxofjxwIIuBAfR5Bh3_wJP9MZGG_ILahYP2ogYDCMfiVEusFITNgZ6ScVejfsxdRMF7LxVosEPSEHPYkgaBexa5jGpMBtYCacKXz4/s1600/bg_outer.gif) repeat-x left top;

Further you can change the border color to outer-wrapper background color to match your design.

Just save the template and enjoy the new look...

Add background image to blog body...

Adding a background image to your blog is very simple.

All that you need to have is the URL of a good background image. It is better to see the background as a whole rather than the image seperately. If you dont understand what i'm saying just see this background image. Can you believe that this is the image used as the background of this blog ? !

Coming to adding background image to blog body...

Replace

body {
background:$bgcolor ;

with

body {
background:$bgcolor url(paste your image URL here);
background-repeat: repeat;

Before saving this make sure that you add the following code between { and } braces of #header, #outer-wrapper, #main-wrapper, #sidebar-wrapper and #footer.

background:#fff;

This sets the background colour of Header,Outer,Main,Sidebar and Footer wrappers to white. Note that #fff is for white. Similarly you can change the colours of these wrappers individually as per your choice.

Just save your template and enjoy the new look with the new background...