Whenever you need to post an image on your blog, you will need to upload a photo to blogger directly. That however does not give you much freedom to work with the image and even renaming the image is not quite possible. It is therefore recommended to have a Image Hosting account for use with your blog. The good news is that there are many free image hosting providers that give you good features at absolutely no cost. My personal favourite is Photobucket, but below is a list of other free image hosting providers that you can use to post images on your blog. Many of them are now allowing free video hosting as well. Some of them will not require you to register with them too.
http://photobucket.com ( Images + Videos )
http://www.imagecabin.com/ ( Images + Videos +MP3 & more.. )
http://tinypic.com/ ( Images + Videos )
http://imageshack.us/ ( Images + Videos )
http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/ ( Images )
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/ ( Images )
http://www.theimagehosting.com/ ( Images )
http://www.imagevenue.com/ ( Images )
http://www.piclynk.com/ ( Images )
http://www.filehigh.com/ ( Images + Videos + Cursors )
http://www.theimageplace.net/ ( Images )
http://www.imgplace.com/ ( Images )
http://xs.to/ ( Images )
http://www.myonlineimages.com/ ( Images + Videos + ZIP & more.. )
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Image Hosting (ImageShack, Photobucket and more..)
FavIcon for Bloggers
What is Favicon?
Favicon is an acronym for "Favorite Icon". Nearly all professional sites use it nowdays. As it shows up right next to the address line of the adressbar and favorites list in Internet Explorer and probably on other browsers too. If you have your pages hosted either on paid hosting or free hosting, hosting the favicon is not a problem, however if you are using a blog service, you are out of luck as all blog providers would reject the *.ico extension. This is where you need a free service provider such as http://www.myfavatar.com/
Use this smart tool to get a favicon from an image stored on your disk. you can get an animated favicon using this free favicon tool. Just follow this link and get your favicon in seconds http://zerodollarchallenge.blogspot.com/2006/05/favicon-generator-form.html
Favicon is an acronym for "Favorite Icon". Nearly all professional sites use it nowdays. As it shows up right next to the address line of the adressbar and favorites list in Internet Explorer and probably on other browsers too. If you have your pages hosted either on paid hosting or free hosting, hosting the favicon is not a problem, however if you are using a blog service, you are out of luck as all blog providers would reject the *.ico extension. This is where you need a free service provider such as http://www.myfavatar.com/
Use this smart tool to get a favicon from an image stored on your disk. you can get an animated favicon using this free favicon tool. Just follow this link and get your favicon in seconds http://zerodollarchallenge.blogspot.com/2006/05/favicon-generator-form.html
Blogger Hits Counter
How do I find out who has been to my blog? How can I track my visitors? How can I see where my site visitors are coming from?
These are the most frequently asked questions by bloggers. The solution is to install a "Hit Counter" on your blog!
[Google Analytics Screenshots]
Once you install a Hit Counter on your blog, you can get lot of useful information about your blog. like Popular Pages, Referring Pages, Keywords, Geographical location of visitors, Browser Statistics etc.
Although there are several free "Hit Counters" from which you can choose from, there are three services which are the most popular with bloggers. StatCounter, Google Analytics and Sitemeter.
[Statcounter Screenshots]
[Sitemeter Screenshots]
Here are other hit counters(free services) with our recommended
ratings:
We blog for YOU! So, If you would like to help us by a donation, which
will encourage us too bring more articles like this. No amount is too
small for donations.
PageRank Link Directory
The PageRank Directory contains links to directories that accept submission of individual sites or blogs. Please feel free to browse through. I estimate that this page will become a PR2+ page over time.
Web Directory - Add URL to Search-Group.com
Eastlink Directory
Web Directory - Add URL to Search-Group.com
Eastlink Directory
ShareThis BookMarking Widget
Another free service from http://www.sharethis.com offers a bookmarking widget for your blog(s). This bookmarking widget allows the visitor of your blog to bookmark your blog in any of the popular social bookmarking sites, much like the widget from http://www.addthis.com ( read the post here for details ). you can also customize the widget to match the "look and feel" of your page.
Installing Google Analytics in Blogger
To track your site/blog using analytics you need to have an account with Google Analytics, If you already have a Google Account you can use that username/password here or you can always sign up for a free google account. In either case you need to go to http://www.google.com/analytics [ Opens in a New Page ]
After you login with your username/password, you will be in your dashboard area.
Scroll down to the bottom of the page and find the link to "Add Website Profile".
On the next screen select the option to "Add a profile for a new domain".
Click continue and on the page that follows, type the URL of your blog.
The final screen will generate two tracking codes for your blog. make sure you are on "New Tracking Code(ga.js)" tab
This is the code that you need to copy/paste on your blog. We are now going to install google analyics tracking code to your blogger blog.
Go to http://www.blogger.com [ Opens in a New Page ] and login with your id/password.
Once you are logged in go to your dashboard, where you have to click the "Design"
You will now add a gadget by clicking the "Add a Gadget" link
From the popup that appears, you can add many gadgets to your blog, this time we need to scroll down to the HTML/JavaScript option and click the "+" sign beside it to add it to your blog
This will open a final popup where you paste your code(your google analytics code) under the "content" textarea. I prefer not to give it a title because the code is invisible, so leave the title field blank and click the button to "save changes"
Friday, February 1, 2008
Getting paid for blogging?
Are you getting paid for blogging? or getting penalized by google for posting paid reviews?
It is now official that google is taking action against sites/blogs with paid posts/reviews.
Bloggers and Site Owners who were members of "Paid for Blogging" sites such as PayPerPost.com, Smorty.com, SponsoredReviews etc. must have noticed that their google PageRank has been reduced to 0.
Google's official statement in its webmaster guidelines says:
"Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results."
The guidelines add that not all paid links violate their guidelines, since "Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results"
It recommends that the links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as Adding a rel="nofollow" attribute to the <a> tag "(The most preferred method in blogs) or Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file.
If a blog/site has lost its PageRank and wants to get it back then it has to comply with the google webmaster guidelines by using the above mentioned recommended practices. Once that's done, you can follow Matt Cutt's advice and read the Official Google Webmaster blog which suggests :
"The site owner can address the violations of the webmaster guidelines and submit a reconsideration request in Google’s Webmaster Central console. Before doing a reconsideration request, please make sure that all sold links either do not pass PageRank or are removed"
It is now official that google is taking action against sites/blogs with paid posts/reviews.
Bloggers and Site Owners who were members of "Paid for Blogging" sites such as PayPerPost.com, Smorty.com, SponsoredReviews etc. must have noticed that their google PageRank has been reduced to 0.
Google's official statement in its webmaster guidelines says:
"Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results."
The guidelines add that not all paid links violate their guidelines, since "Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results"
It recommends that the links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as Adding a rel="nofollow" attribute to the <a> tag "(The most preferred method in blogs) or Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file.
If a blog/site has lost its PageRank and wants to get it back then it has to comply with the google webmaster guidelines by using the above mentioned recommended practices. Once that's done, you can follow Matt Cutt's advice and read the Official Google Webmaster blog which suggests :
"The site owner can address the violations of the webmaster guidelines and submit a reconsideration request in Google’s Webmaster Central console. Before doing a reconsideration request, please make sure that all sold links either do not pass PageRank or are removed"
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