Numbering your Comments in the Blogger Blog

I am trying to keep my blogs in the simple informational style. That means, I am looking for interesting information on the Web and I am sharing with you. In most cases, it is a one-directional process, and I do not get a lot of comments. However, if you blog in more communicational and controversial manner, amount of comments you receive could be huge. If that is the case, the comments numbering might be an excellent idea.

Possible Advantages:

* It is a nice way of differencing/identifying each comment (it’s a great feature for giveaway posts!).
* It allows you to get the permalink of each comment, and this may work for future references (e.g.: “You should read this comment [URL goes here], I found it very interesting.”)
* Indispensible for design purposes.

Possible disadvantages and limitations:

* If your comments are paginated, the counter will reset in each comment page. In Blogger, comments are paginated if they surpass the 200.

* The process requires code modification in several places, so that is not recommended for the beginner bloggers.

Results:

Steps involved in implementing this trick

1. Login to your Blogger Dashboard

2. Go to Template >Edit HTML

3. Choose to expand your Widget templates.

4. Find this line of Code

<dl id='comments-block'>

and replace it with

<dl id='comments-block'>

<script type='text/javascript'>var CommentsCounter=0;</script>

5. Now find this line of code

<dt expr:class='&quot;comment-author &quot; + data:comment.authorClass' expr:id='data:comment.anchorName'>

and replace it with

<dt expr:class='&quot;comment-author &quot; + data:comment.authorClass' expr:id='data:comment.anchorName' style='clear: both;'>

6. Now find this line of code

<data:commentPostedByMsg/>

and replace it with

<data:commentPostedByMsg/>

<span class='numberingcomments' style='float: right; font-size: 20px;'>

<a rel='nofollow' expr:href='data:comment.url' title='Comment Link' style='text-decoration:none'>

<script type='text/javascript'>

CommentsCounter=CommentsCounter+1;

document.write(CommentsCounter);

</script>

</a>

</span>

So you should have it working in just 3 replacement steps. If everything went well, you should now have a numbered commenting system on your blog.

Sources and Additional Information:

http://www.bloggerplugins.org/2009/08/numbering-your-blogger-comments.html

http://quiterandom.com/tutorials/translation-numbering-comments/

Using Favicon for your Blog or Website (Part 3)

Using Favicons on Blogger Blog

Favicons activation for the blogger using Blogger platform is easy as well. However, the old method of getting a custom Favicon to display in a Blogger blog no longer works, as of October 2008. If you had your Favicons before that, and they suddenly disappeared, you will just have to reinsert the code in a different area of your Blogger template. If you never had them before, the following instructions will work for you.

The process will take two simple steps, taking that you already found or created your Favicon (review earlier publication).

Step 1: Upload your Favicon file to the Host


Any free images hosting will work for you, if it answers two major questions: reliability and support for ICO format. The easiest way for the Blogger users is taking advantage of the Google Page Creator. You just need to copy the ICO file to a host server so you can link to it.

Go to Google Page Creator and login using your Google account details (use the same details you use for Blogger login). The first time you login to Page Creator you will be given the option of creating a site based on your Gmail address. You might not worry about the look of your new website, as for now you are using it just for your Favicon icons secure storage. When icon has been uploaded, record its web address, as you will need it at the step 2.

Step 2: Add the Favicon HTML to your Blogger site


Go into the Blogger Layout Editor and choose the "Edit HTML" option. As always, before doing any modifications to your template, make sure to save a backup copy to a secure location at your hard drive.

Insert the following code between the]]></b:skin>and </head> tags in your Blogger template:

<link href=’http://YOUR_GMAIL_ADDRESS.googlepages.com/YOUR_ICO_FILENAME.ico’ rel=’shortcut icon’ type=’image/x-icon’/>

Don’t forget to change the URL so it points to the .ico file on your Google Page Creator site (code elements highlighted in red font). Now save your template and view your blog. If your new Favicon doesn’t show up straight away you may need to clear your browser cache.

Note, that the Favicons might not be visible on some browsers. For example, browser I use most often, Maxthon (IE-driver based), did not show them right away. While other browsers, I tried, showed them instantly: Firefox, Chrome, and Flock. Yes, if you use Internet Explorer, the Favicon will not appear unless you have bookmarked your blog and refreshed your browser.

Additional Information:
http://www.thebeginnersbloggingguide.com/2008/05/how-to-add-favicon-to-your-blogger-blog.html
http://www.bloggerbuster.com/2008/04/favicons-made-easy.html
http://www.bloggertipsandtricks.com/2008/10/fix-for-missing-favicon.html

Blogger Help Video Tutorials on YouTube

If you are a Blogger user, as I am, you probably once a while visit Blogger’s Help Center to find some new tips and answers to your technical questions. Blogger specialists decided to go “with the flow” and help those users who prefer visual presentation to the written description. Google Blogger has setup a YouTube channel specifically to show users step by step how to use Blogger features. The channel lacks a big variety of the offered video tutorials. At the moment, there are just 9 clips available. Blogger experts claim that more videos will be added in the coming months so hopefully the inventory of tutorials will increase rapidly.

For your convenience, I am bringing to your attention several of the proposed clips:

Creating Blog on Blogger Platform

___________________________________________________________________

Creating Mobile Blog on Blogger Platform
___________________________________________________________________

Adding new Google Gadget to Blogger Blog
___________________________________________________________________

Creating Podcast on Blogger Blog Platform

Submitting Blogger Sitemap to Google Webmaster

Submitting your Blogger.com or Blogspot.com blog site to Google Webmaster will enable Google to find, index, and rank your site. For those who are new to this, you may go to the official Google Webmaster Tools site to create a new Webmaster profile.

Upon logging in using your Gmail account, key in your blog site URL, and click OK. You will then be asked to verify your site. This is to ascertain that you are indeed the owner of the site.

There are two ways to verify your site. You can either add a Meta Tag or Upload an HTML file. If you are using the Meta Tag method, Google will generate a Meta Tag code. Copy the META tag that is generated for you, and paste it in your site’s home page in the first section of the page, before the first section. What you do is to go to your Blogger dashboard. Under Template ->Edit HTML, somewhere near the top of the script, add the Meta Tag as follows:-

<head> <META TAG> <b:include data=’blog’ name=’all-head-content’/>

Replace the META TAG with the code generated by Google Webmaster. Once done, Save the Template. When you return to Google Webmaster site, you can click the button that says “Verify”.

Note: The second method of uploading an HTML file is NOT applicable to Bloggers using Blogger.com or Blogspot.com because this requires you to upload a file to the root directory of your Blog, which is not possible. There is therefore only one method for you to verify your site, and that is by inserting the Meta Tag as explained above.

After you have had your site verified, click on the Sitemaps tab as shown below. By adding a Sitemap, you will be providing Google with more details and information about your Blog. With this, Google will crawl your site, report information on any errors in the Sitemaps tab, and index your Blog site at a faster rate.



Click the link that says “Add a Sitemap”. This will take you to another screen where you should choose the type “Add General Web Sitemap”. The Sitemap URL for any normal website is usually the index page that is stored in the highest-level directory of that site. In the case of Blogger.com or Blogspot.com, the only way to add a Sitemap is to use either of the following 2 Sitemaps:-

http://YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com/rss.xml

OR

http://YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Remember to replace YOURBLOGNAME with that of your Blog’s. For Blogger blogs, do not add "www." to YOURBLOGNAME. Once you have added your Sitemaps, you will receive a confirmation telling you that reports are being generated but “may take several hours to update”. Congratulations! You have successfully added your Sitemaps. When you login to your Google Webmaster days later, you should be able to see the indexed pages and statistics of Google webcrawl of your Blog.

Leave the meta tag in the template if you want to view the statistics of your site. If Google can’t find the meta tag, it will show an error message in your webmaster toolbox and you may have to verify your site again.

Source: http://tips-for-new-bloggers.blogspot.com/2007/02/submit-blogger-sitemap-to-google.html

Mobile blogging agent GBlogger

With recent growth of the model communication devices, mobile blogging inevitably gains more popularity. With free mobile blogging utility Mobile GBlogger you can make post on the go to your Blogger account from anywhere in the world using your Windows Mobile 5/6 mobile device. All you need is a means of connecting your Windows Mobile PDA or Smartphone to the Internet.


Mobile GBlogger Basic is the completely free version of the GBlogger service. It is also the easiest to get going with. Simply download and install the client for your Windows Mobile device and you’re ready to go. With Mobile GBlogger Basic you get the following features:

* Publish or save as Draft full blog posts for all of your blogs.
* Insert preset HTML tags and objects such as hyperlinks, text formatting, YouTube Video objects, and others

With the free GBlogger service a small, one line advertisement for Mobile GBlogger is inserted at the end of the post. If you want to remove the ad, you can choose using the Mobile Gblogger Pro software version, cost $15 / year.

You can find more information and download the software from the developers’ website: http://www.pocketwatchsoftware.com/gblogger

Mobile Gblogger carries rating 3 of 5 on the RateItAll Rating List of 32 Free Utilities for Bloggers.

Display Recent Posts on your Blogger Blog

Recently, I have found an opportunity to display certain amount of the recent post of the blog on sidebar of the Blogger hosted blog. If your reader came to the particular article, he might just miss the opportunities to review your other content. So, the developed widget will help you capturing attention of your reader to your other posts.

"Display 10 recent posts" (10 posts represent just default setting, but you can alter the number as you like) widget is a free and can be easily embedded on your Blogger blog. You do not need to know scripting to do so. Just follow the simple steps given below.

Step 1: Go to Add and Arrange Page Elements page.
Step 2: Click Add a Page Element.
Step 3: Choose HTML/JavaScript
Step 4: Copy the following code to the ’HTML/JavaScript’ element.
Step 5 (optional): The red highlight code (var postshow=10) is the number of posts you want to display (Default is 10).
Step 6: Change the default address (http://yourblogaddress.blogspot.com/) to your blog address.
Step 7: Save your changes and review your blog.

Code to be copied from the developer website: http://kanlab.blogspot.com/2007/09/display-10-recent-posts-on-your-blog.html