Sign-in to Blogger using Non-Google Email Address

Recently there have been a lot of confusion for logging in among Blogger users who previously signed-up on it with a non-google email address i.e with a Yahoo or other service.


The confusion arises for one reason: Uniting all Google services under one Google account, so the login page for all your Google services like Gmail, Blogger, Webmaster Tools etc. looks the same.

Previously all the Google services had different login page if you remember, just a year or two ago but now which can be a called a good move by Google leads to a lot of confusion, at least for many Blogger users.

How to Login?

Your Google account doesn't have to be necessarily a @gmail.com address, Blogger is a Google product and falls under one Google account, but you can still use the email address you used to sign-up for Blogger with.

Just go to Blogger.com (in logged-out state) and log into it with your @yahoo, @hotmail or any other email address you sign-up with. 

Google Code Project Hosting Is Going Away

Google Code, a project hosting service that Google started in 2006 has finally came to its end. Google Code is now closed for open projects and all the projects will become read-only in August 2015 and finally the website would be shut down early next year as they stated in their email.

Google took this hard but important decision as there are even better project hosting services available like GitHub, SourceForge etc. And it doesn't even feel like Google worked on it to make it better, it is just simply functioning and can host projects and no extra features that other services provide and probably that's the reason they've decided to shut it down next year.

There are more than a million projects being hosted on the website by hundreds of thousands of users, now that it is going to die all the projects must be transferred to another Project hosting service. Many projects on Google Code hasn't been touched in years, and that's the case with most of the projects, as people opt-in to better alternatives and never looked back.

How Does That Affect Me

If you are a developer then you know what to do next, so I would just skip this for you.

And if you are not, then you probably might own a website, a blog or a web app. There is a chance with Blogger platform that you have had added a plugin for example a "Related Post Widget" and its source code is being hosted on Google Code, and that's where you are linking to get the source code.

There wouldn't be any difference until next year when they shut it down completely and no data will be available.

What Must I Do As A Blog Owner

If you are a kind of blogger blog owner who loves adding a lot of third-party widgets and features from "vague" sources then you probably have got a reason to worry. 

All you have to do is make a list of third-party widgets and functions you have stuffed in your blog and contact the original authors of the widget and ask them if the users are safe or not, and are they hosting and hotlinking to Google Code for the source codes. Hotlinking is the term for direct linking to files on a destination, here Google Code, which is going to be shut down next year.

What if I Fail

Oh no! Don't worry though, there wouldn't be any "zombie apocalypse", if your site's functionality relied on Google Code then only those specific things will stop working, only in rare cases it might break the whole website, only in RARE cases.

Farewell, Google Code 

So Google Code, good bye. 

Is Feedburner Down ?

Shockingly Feedburner is acting strange. Readers are gone from the Feedburner account.

Yup, it's not only for my blog or yours, any website or blog or Feedburner subscription isn't working now. It was very strange when I saw my readers count go 0 but sadly it's a truth and not only mines but any one using Feedburner have lost their readers from Feedburner. Big or Small, any type of website has now feeds showing 0 subscribers, that's really sad.

But Why ?

The question is obvious and can rise in any one minds but I don't have any clear answer for it. I searched for the exact reason and in many results I saw News of Feedburner shutting down. It will be very hard to say goodbye to one service that has always been a way to reach a larger audience directly through emails to send feeds.

Google is shutting it down soon but the Feedburner website is yet available for login and etc. All you don't see is the readers. I don't see any reason Google should shut down Feedburner.

Yesterday, Goolgle/Blogger removed the Old Blogger Interface permanently and today it's turn for Feedburner. I really can't accept the truth that Feedburner will be down in the fire. Google has announced that Feedburner will be shut down by 20th October

Google+ tab option in Blogger interface

Since the launch of Google+, almost every part of Google had change and Blogger is also one of them. Recently blogger have made some changes and attached Google+ as tab in Blogger dashboard.

Google+ have made things easier for Bloggers, it's became easier to connect your G+ to your blogger and display authorship information in searches. You may be familiar with the feature of Blogger to switch to a Google+ profile instead of a Blogger profile and that was one of the most discussed change. The reason many people didn't liked it was they weren't able to post with their nickname they used in their blogger profile instead they had to post with their Google+ name, most people prefer nickname from real name in blogger.

What's inside the option

I am bit disappointed this time, there's no new features. If you haven't switched to Google+ profile for blogger then you will see invitation to Upgrade to Google+ and if you are already using Google+ for your blogger then you will see the details of your Google+ and couple of settings regarding your G+ profile for Blogger.

Just a reminder from Blogger that you can connect your Google+ to Blogger. And i think you must try it, because you have the option to revert back Blogger profile under 90 days. Give it a try and experience a brand new feeling of Google+Blogger

With this change i think we will get to see more new features on Blogger in future.

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How fast page speed can improve your search ranks

As you know how serious Google is about content and it's genuineness but Google also takes page load speed of any website as an important factor in ranking pages.

There can be very long explanations on how to improve page load speed and it's importance but i will keep this post as short as possible for users to read this easily.

I am aware of page load speed from the starting but didn't took it too serious but when started Stramaxon, it was important for me to apply tips on my blog first before advising others and that has improved my blog's loading time much better. It's is said that the first 3 second is enough for a visitor to decide whether it's worth visiting this page or not.



The art of keeping your blog less heavy but yet giving your users the ability to perform overall actions which is important for increasing your readership is what i have used in my blog. Before you proceed to improve your site speed check your page load ranking in this Page load Test. Results are in # out of 100, for my blog's homepage its 91 out of 100 and for post pages it was 87 due to loading of Syntax Highlighter's Java Scripts.    

How to improve page load

Maintaining your contents and displaying them in good way is the key to fast page load. Content is important along with it's presentation but don't use such heavy code blocks to make your blog an eye candy, keeping it simple is the best agenda.


You get the overall suggestion page load speed test page itself but these some basic tips might help you to get to the right way.

• Use image sprites for smaller images instead of serving it separately, that will lower down the request from server
• Don't use a big picture for your background image,instead use a 128*128 picture with repeat property to make it full size background. 
• Use external stylesheet for CSS styles, that will render the page first and then it's style.  
• Don't use or keep unnecessary plugins for gadgets which is in no use, because gadgets and plugins load their own files
• Use social media gadgets as less as possible
• Keep JavaScripts below the CSS stylesheets or code blocks
• Avoid the use of @import property of CSS to load fonts or other stylsheets

These are some common tips that you must follow to optimize user experience of your visitors and most importantly get good ranks in Google search results.So, take your page loading time as an important aspect and give it some values, it can decide your traffic.   

Your opinions 

We can't just keep from hearing from you guys, we are sure that you have some extra tips on improving page load speed and share your expertise. Also tell us how this post helped you and what changes we need to make in this post to make it more friendly to the audience. 

Is your blogger blog owned by Google ?

I am a Blogger user from start and have been using Blogger for more than 2 years. Blogging is easy with Blogger but there's a fiction that don't have any base.
There are numbers of misleading and invalid facts about Blogger and it's usability. The most common myth is that your blogger blog is owned by Google not you and it can be deleted at any time. I have noticed that most of them who think believe this is the truth are WordPress users. Same with some services which don't accept blogger blogs at all because of these fictions. When someone predicate that my blog is not owned by me, I just reply back to them if their blog is really their's (they don't own the server).

I am not pointing that all WordPress users presume this myth but want to tell every person that's it's nothing than a deception. The only base on which people are shouting that blogger blogs aren't owned by it's said owner is that files of your blogger blogs are stored on a super fast, secure and free of cost server.

Blogger don't give it's user the access to databases or server that are important for server side scripting such as PHP or MySql etc. And I don't think that it's not a minus point of blogger but a plus point, as we don't have direct access to it's server databases, the chances of getting our blog suddenly down is way too less than with other open source CMS such as WordPress where a one line mistake of code in your databases can cause your website to be down and that's what most WordPress users have to experience.

But if we compare the hosting of Google free super fast, secure CDN with your paid hosting then you decide which is better ? I don't think that any server is worth to be compared with Google's CDN. And who knows when your paid hosting server gives you a heart attack by erasing your files anonymously.

Or if the topic is that content is not owned by you then don't you have the option to backup your contents ? Blogger users have easy option to backup their content files and with that they can move their blog anywhere they want, so you should stop believing these myths.
Open source CMS like Wordpress are never secure, if you take an example of how Amit Agarwal's Blog was deleted by hackers. It was easy for hackers to delete Amit's databases from his server because of easy access to databases files on server and MySQL injection was easier because of not too secure server and this is one of the reason why government sites are easily hacked by hackers. Other reasons can be that they were not on Google server.

As for deletion of blog from Blogger then it's obvious if you violate the terms&condition of any service then you are supposed to get kicked out from it. Especially when it comes to a big name like Google, Blogger.

Are you proud that Google can't delete your contents but can delete a blog contents on Blogger ? Then you are living in a world of darkness, Google is where you are supposed to get visitors from to your blog or website and if Google wants they can shove you out as well by banning your website and stop indexing it.

If you are a blogger user then never feel alone I am also a blogger user :) and never believe these myths. And I think other who used to think that blogger blogs are actually owned by Google are now realizing what's truth.

To become a pro-blogger you should be same with every CMS. As your reader's don't want to know what CMS you use, what they want is content. Focus on content.


Mohammad Mustafa Ahmedzai's post on MyBloggerTricks have inspired me to write this article.     

How to implement Analytics when using Dynamic Views on Blogger ?

Google Analytics, the best service for your site's stats. It's used by millions and most Blogger users use Analytics, but the question comes "how do you add analytics code when you are using Dynamic Views".

Google Analytics provide JavaScript code which you have to put in your <head> tag to start tracking the stats for your site.
But what if you are using Dynamic Views template and then how would your track your stats with Google Analytics ? That's just annoying when you don't find any way, because in DV templates user aren't allowed to edit HTML, so that's nearly impossible to implement the JavaScript into your template.

But yet there's an way to implement Analytics on your Blogger having Dynamic Views, the option is in Blogger' Settings, hidden some where. Let's take a look at what we will do to achieve it. 


Follow Step by Step 

1. After adding your site to Analytics , you will get the tracking Id on the Screen.
   
   
   
   
2. Now you have the Tracking id, here my Tracking id is UA-23690704-6
3. Once you have copied your tracking id, head back to Blogger Dashboard
4. Go the Settings > Other > Scroll down and you will see 'Google Analytics' section, under it there will be an Input area.
5. You just need to paste the Tracking ID into it and Save.
   
   
   

That's it. You are finished with verifying your Analytics profile.

Remember, that it will take some time to show up your stats on Analytics, it's normal, no matter how you verify your site.

How to get into Old Blogger Interface even the option is not available ?

Blogger have announced to discontinue the old Interface in Blogger, but in some countries the interface already has been removed or the option to revert back to old Interface is no longer available. In this tutorial i will show you how to get into the old Blogger GUI even the option isn't available.

Important: This tweak doesn't work any longer. The Old Interface has been completely removed from the Blogger servers, so you can't restore it any way. Please read this about for more info. 

Blogger is going to spoil it's own fun in coming months but in some countries it already did it. It's been a quiet long time after the launch of the New Blogger GUI (Graphical user Interface), but the Old Interface was also available on a click on a button. The option is available for Blogger users, but i have seen several cases where the user don't have the option to revert back to the old Blogger GUI.

Does that mean, Old Blogger interface is slowing being removed, this change has been experienced by some Bloggers only but many Bloggers need to revert back to old Blogger GUI because you know the BX-error codes that the new Interface issues us.

The New Interface is yet buggy and need many things need to be fixed but the Blogger support team don't seem to be interested or worried about these BX-error codes, these are mysterious codes which is a nightmare to every blogger. But if you don't get the option to remove it, then imagine how annoying it would be.

Users are issued BX-error codes at anytime and there's no specific activity for it to appear, whatever you do from editing post to changing your settings, people are being issued these Bx-errors in every section.


The only solution - The only solution that we have to avoid these Bx-error is to revert back to the old Template. But because some users are not even getting the option to revert back which was in the 'Gear' icon on top right corner of the Blogger Dashboard.

How to get into the Old Interface ?

Coming to the point of the post, how to get back into the old Blogger Interface. Actually normal users will find it difficult but that was an easy task. It's all about tweaking the URL that will take you back to the Old Interface, URL was one of the different between new and old Interface and that's how they are differentiated . 

Follow these steps to get in the Old Interface. 

1. We will take an URL that's will help you go back to old GUI, so this is the URL

http://www.blogger.com/posts.g?blogID=7684209674460696977

So this the URL, but wait don't try to load this URL now.

2. Now you need to get your blogID to replace the number highlighted in Yellow

http://www.blogger.com/posts.g?blogID=7684209674460696977

So to find your Blogger address you can take help of the New Interface, go to your Blogger Dashboard | Click on Any tab, let's click on 'Template' tab. Have a look at your address bar and you will see a number followed by 'blogID=' you just need that number.

3. Replace my blogID with your blogId

http://www.blogger.com/posts.g?blogID=7684209674460696977

Here, i replace the blogID with my test blog's blogID and then the URL is this. 

http://www.blogger.com/posts.g?blogID=8150410838963189456

Once you replace the BlogID with your own BlogID, you can load the URL and it will take you to the Old Blogger Interface.


I am sure that it will work if you aren't getting the option to revert back to the old blogger Interface, you can see that it worked with this guy who were not be given the option for old blogger Interface.  https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/blogger/ioWe_4ADcHI/discussion 

'Shabby Blogs' is detected as a Malware site

Shabby Blogs, a well known website for Bloggers to design their blogs with backgrounds,buttons,tutorials and many more things has been blacklisted on Google.

Shabby Blogs http://shabbyblogs.com/ , has been suddenly blacklisted on Google for spreading malware. 'Shabby Blogs' has been a good source of designs for many blogger's.


But something happened strange, all Blogs and Websites using 'Shabby Blogs' elements started displaying warning message that if you proceed to the site your computer might catch virus.

I came to know about it in Blogger Help Forum in this thread, as i never used ShabbyBlogs add-on i don't exactly know how it's used. The ShabbyBlogs website is also displaying an warning message, so people can avoid visiting the site.

I am not sure what happened to ShabbyBlogs, had it been hacked ? Is it some internal errors from Google spam systems ? God knows.

But if you are using ShabbyBlogs add-ons on your blog remove it completely or Google will start display warning messages for your blog too.

I will update if i get more information on what's happening to ShabbyBlogs.

Displaying wrong Authorship in Google search results ?

One of the best feature 'Authorship markup' is obviously great for authors of blogs and websites, it takes some time to update in Google Search results but feels good when it do, it gives more accessibility for users to see the author of the blog. But the fun is ruined because of some errors that Google is facing.Let's talk
After the launch of Google+ thousands of people started verifying their authorship for their Blog to get a good display in the search results, it's very useful for SEO, at least people like to view sites that have authorship verified because it looks professional then. 

When i added the tags to verify my authorship, it took some days to properly show in the Google search results. It's feels very good to have some credits on the search results.

But a major issue has arisen, the first time i saw it was in Blogger Help Forum in this thread where a woman faced this issue and to get some help she posted the question on the forum. It feels awkward when someone else is credited for your work, wouldn't it ? The problem was not as easy to understand as i thought, the issue was very new to me and i didn't even knew what to do. But there are some points which you may remember and understand.

1. There were no authorship markup tag to the incorrectly display author information Google account 
2. When checked in Webmaster Rich Snippet tools it didn't showed any verified markup
3. There was no link to the blog (which was displaying wrong author info.) in the 'About' section of the Google+ account that was appearing in the Google search of that blog. 

All these three points tells us that it's an error that is done by the Google system, because none of the people who owns the Blog, who is being appearing on a blog that they don't author.

I was not sure how to help with that question and was new to the problem, first of all i checked the blog's source code and i didn't find tag that cause any other Google account to show on the authorship information on the search results. Now i was confused myself, but thought about it for a minute and came up with solution that will work correctly.

The idea was to redirect your Google profile to make it appear on under your blog's search results. When someone's else profile is showing under your blog authorship info then why not your's will display when you add your markup tags ? 

You just need to know how to add Authorship markup to your Blogger Blog, i have also written it on the thread in a reply or just check this tutorial. 

Now check your your blog in Rich Snippet Testing tool if you did everything correct (adding authorship tag) then a demo preview will be display, but your blog will not show Authorship markup, as it takes some days for it to successfully appear in the search results. It took about 10 days or more for me.

Here how it looks when you implemented the authorship markup validation tags to your blogs HTML. Just remember to add a good looking photo of yours of 260px*260px it's ideal size picture to be displayed on Google search results.

But what if it's not even showing correctly in the Rich Snippet tools or you are facing other problems that don't seem to be fixed ? Then refer to these forums 

• Blogger Help Forum
• Webmaster Central Help forum

If you are sure that your problem is what we posted about and still no success, then please post these details in the Comments

• Full Name
• Blog Address
• Search term where you see wrong authorship info.
• Google+ account (if you have one)

That's it, we will try our best investigate your issue and help you.
 


         

Create loading bar design like Gmails loading bar

The famous and eye pleasing design of Google has took over and the designs of Google is getting better and better, recently Google made changes to it's Gmails homepage and the loading page and the most amazing design was of the loading bar, the blue loading bar with moving image in it makes it look more professional, now let's see how to make it. 

Remember that i am only going to show how to make such design with CSS, the rest of the JavaScript coding should be done by you or someone else, i am just showing how to design it.

There's two parts to make this design, the first is a </div> element and the other is CSS style which is required to make the design. The CSS codes can be customized but only play with it of you have knowledge about it. 

First of all create a div element, class attribute's value should be same on both HTML div element and CSS styles. 

<div class='loading-bar'></div>

So this is the HTML for the loading bar, if you are sure how to use it dynamically to sync with a loading event then you might just add the CSS by classing it. Your HTML may differ as on your needs but CSS should match the class name.     


Now the most important part of the tutorial to make it really work, you are allowed to modify the CSS if you are sure about what you are doing or might just leave it. But to create a bar like exactly you want, you have to make changes, so i will tell what changes can you make in the CSS.

.myname
{
color: white;
border: 1px solid gainsboro;
border: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1);
text-transform:uppercase;
padding:10px;
width:600px;
text-align:center;
text-shadow:1px 1px white;
font-size:18px;
cursor:pointer;
-webkit-transition:all 0.8s;
-ms-transition:all 0.8s;
-moz-transition:all 0.8s;
-o-transition:all 0.8s;
transition:all 0.8s;
height: 100%;
background-color: #6188F5;
background-repeat: repeat-x;
background-position: 8px 0px;
background-size: 40px 20px;
background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(315deg,transparent,transparent 33%,rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.12) 33%,rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.12) 66%,transparent 66%,transparent);
background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(315deg,transparent,transparent 33%,rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.12) 33%,rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.12) 66%,transparent 66%,transparent);
background-image: -o-linear-gradient(315deg,transparent,transparent 33%,rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.12) 33%,rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.12) 66%,transparent 66%,transparent);
background-image: linear-gradient(315deg,transparent,transparent 33%,rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.12) 33%,rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.12) 66%,transparent 66%,transparent);
-webkit-animation: pb 0.8s linear 0 infinite;
-ms-animation: pb 0.8s linear 0 infinite;
-o-animation: pb 0.8s linear 0 infinite;
-moz-animation: pb 0.8s linear 0 infinite;
}

@-webkit-keyframes pb { 0% { background-position:8px 0px; } 100% { background-position:120px 0; } }
@-ms-keyframes pb { 0% { background-position:10px 0px; } 100% { background-position:-100px 0; } }
@-moz-keyframes pb { 0% { background-position:10px 0px; } 100% { background-position:-100px 0; } }
@-o-keyframes pb { 0% { background-position:10px 0px; } 100% { background-position:-100px 0; } }

This is the CSS that will be needed to design the Bar like this from a basic div element, but it's important to change background-position property if you are going to change the width and height of the element. 

So for your ease we have updated this on JSFiddle , just find it on the Demo Link, play with the CSS code there and if you find something better then please comment. 

DemoPlay with it

Check who +1 your blog post on Google+

This article will show you two ways to see who +1 your content on Google+, it always puts you in curiosity that who shared your contents, on Twitter we can easily see who tweeted the link but there's no easy way for a normal person to understand it their shelves so i have to write this post. 

There are two easy ways to know who have +1 your blog posts on Google+, one of my recent post got very popular and was shared,tweeted and +1 by people, so i was willing to know who +1 my blog post, and then i found these two methods which are easy for anyone to understand.

1. First i found a very simple trick but useful, using the search engine of Google+, it's a classic option to know who shared your blog post or links. 

You may just enter your blog posts title, not full title is needed, just put small part of your blog post title, i am here searching for my blog posts titled 'Beware of ww4(dot)savegco.antivir(dot)com' , so i just entered 'Savegco Antivir' in Google+ search box and it pops all the folks who +1 my blog post publicly.  Now you can switch between Recent and Best of to see more posts.

2. This method is simple too, not too much steps we have to follow, we can find people who did +1 to our post in our Blogger only. To do it, go to Blogger Dashboard > Click on Posts List and you will be able to see all the post there




You click here then the post list will appear, now there will +(Number of Shares) next to your Posts in the Post list, so to view who shared our Post on Google+ click on it and it will display the peoples who +1 your blog posts through the +1 button.

Now you know how to track down who +1 your blog post easily to know your online popularity. We suggest you to follow our blog for more post that helps blogger user to do more with blogger.  

Show different cursor for links of Gadgets in Dynamic views

Blogger's Dynamic views template have plenty of problems, this is one of them, the links of Gadget doesn't show the right cursor for the link and that's why it looks not so professional. We have found a solution to it, it's very easy but good idea. 

There are several other problems in the new Blogger's Dynamic views template, one i have already mentioned in one of my older post. So to solve every problem with Dynamic views template i will post new posts about them and how to solve it. So you will see a series of posts about Dynamic views template.

All we have to do is add some CSS in the add CSS section of our blog customizations. See how poor it looks when it shows a text edit cursor when hovered to a link, instead it should show a pointer which is ideal for links. 

So we need some basic CSS rule to achieve it, read the step-by-step instruction. 

1. Copy this small CSS rule to your clipboard, select the code and Ctrl+C to copy
   .gadget-title { cursor:pointer; }
2. Now go to your Blogger Dashboard and select Template from the list of menus
   
   
   
   
3. In the template tab, click on Customize and you will be taken to the Template Editor
4. Click on Advanced > Add CSS and in the right input area paste the above CSS code and apply it to blog
   
   
    
5. Now refresh your blog and check if it's working or not, if it don't seem to work even if you did every step carefully, then try clearing your browser's caches and then restart your browser and check your blog. It might work.

For a more fancy look you can customize the CSS and add a cursor that you like, you can find list of cursor that's available by default in here in this link

Best of luck with blogging, hope this was helpful to you, to solve more Blogger problems easily you can subscribe to my blog by Google friend connect or Feedburner. 

Blogger finaly shows Quick Edits on Country Specific Domains too !

Quick edit icons were not showing due to country specific redirection Google started for blogger blog, but it got fixed by Google today.

 Blogger users were facing difficulties to edit gadgets on their page directly, because they were not able to see the Quick edit buttons, which were gone because of Blogger's country specific domain redirection, which Google has started for comfort to ban a blogger blog in a particular country.

For few months we were not able to access the Quick edit buttons when we were not in our .com version of the blog, some blogger's knew that adding /ncr at end of blog address may help them to access the .com version of their blog and then they can access quick edit buttons, but for most bloggers it was an unknown solution, that's why we were getting questions in Blogger Help forum regularly and so i had to make a post regarded to this problem, you can still see the blog post here

Now that blog post is useless, as Blogger started to show quick edits for country specific domains too, but it really took so many days for Blogger engg. to fix this problem, but they did it. Google is the best and they care about their users more than any other service.

Access Edit HTML in Dynamic Views Template

This short tutorial will show you how to access Edit HTML in dynamic views template

Editing HTML in Dynamic Views template in Blogger is not possible without this hack, the Edit HTML button is always disabled if you are using the Dynamic views template. 


So let's start with the hack, first open your Blogger Dashboard >> Template >> now have a look at your address bar, it will look like this (the blog id is different)


http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8259823568185811984#template


Replace blogger.g part with html , now it should look like this


http://www.blogger.com/html?blogID=8259823568185811984#template


You will be taken to the HTML edit of your blogger template which is Dynamic views, now you can add or remove HTML elements from your Dynamic views to fit your needs. 


I found this trick on Yogaratnam N. aka Yoboy's blog 'Southern Speaker', thanks to him for this trick. 


Related Post : Good looking search bar for Blogs

Quickedit don't show anymore! Why ?

We will talk about why Blogger don't show Quickedit (the pencil icon) on blogs to edit gadgets on site when logged in.
On January 30th Google started country specific URL redirection, which turns http://stramaxon.blogspot.com/ to http://stramaxon.blogspot.au/ If it's accessed from Australia, it's only for blogs that don't have it's own domain name but an .blogspot.com sub-domain .

The quickedit is not shown because of this, you will only be able to see quickedit pencil icon in .com domains, but because your blog redirects you to .au or .in you won't be able to see quickedit icon.

What if i want quickedit back ?

1. NCR-No Country Redirection : You can easily get back the quickedit buttons on your blog by just putting ncr at end of the blog address, suppose my blog address is http://stramaxon.blogspot.com put ncr at end of the address and it will look like this http://stramaxon.blogspot.com/ncr  

2. Hide-my-ip : You can get quickedit icon back by using hide-my-ip software, that will hide your identity that you are in India or Australia etc. and thus it will redirect your blog to you .com and if you are logged in into your blog you will see pencil icon next to your gadgets on page

3. Hide my Ass : Hide my ass also provides same features as hide-my-ip, but with hide my ass you can see a site on the go without installing any softwares.

Will it effect my Page Rank and Search ranks ?

The redirection of .com to country specific URL redirection will not have any effect to your page rank or search ranks, Google will always see your blog address as .com , it only changes if you access the blog from countries where Google redirects URL to country specific URLs.

You will see changes in Alexa rankings if you search your blog as www.myblog.blogspot.au or .in , but it doesn't matter as i said Google will always see your blog address as it used to be.

One final way is to settle in USA.

Add new handwriting fonts in your blog or website

Have you visited to a site having so much fancy fonts, but your website has simple web safe fonts. Don't worry you can also have fonts like that in your blog or website. 

To do this you need little knowledge of HTML and CSS, one more thing you need is a Google Account.


Go to Google Web Fonts , on the homepage you will see hundreds of box of words with different fonts, these fonts are a demo to show how the font is. You will see categories of fonts like Sans Serif, Handwritting etc, choose any of the categories or maybe all categories.


Now the fonts will be showed in right pane,there will be 100s of fonts free for you, you can choose any font you like, there no limit, choose any number of fonts, all fonts are free and open source. Scroll up and down and if you like any fonts, see bottom right corner of that box, there will be an "Add to Collection", just click that and it will be added in your personal gallery.

Once you are finished adding all your favorite fonts in collection, then see how to use it. Google first requires you to link a Stylesheet File, in which all your collection's styles are defined, Google will itself give you the code.

In bottom pane on right top corner you will see Use button, click on it, on that page all the fonts will you showed which you added in your collection, if you want select, or deselect by check marking the fox followed by the font name.

After sorting out which fonts you want, scroll down there will be a codebox, where the link has been given. Copy that code, now go to your Blogger Dashboard >> Template >> Edit HTML , using your browser's search feature (CTRL+F {default}) , find "</head>" (without quotes)  and paste the code you copied above the </head>, it should then look like this.

 
 

Great, now save the template (if you getting error saving template then see below section), now with help of CSS we will integrate these fonts into our blogs element, paragraphs, headers, titles etc. To integrate these files we need little knowledge of CSS, you will get the font family code on the same page where you got the link code just scroll down the page. For example, if i want to style a text with an font, then first I have to define it's class or id, to apply CSS style on it. In font-family attribute we will put the name of the fonts we selected, we will get the font-family name on Google Web fonts page.

.styletext1
{
font-family: 'Bonbon' , cursive;
}

This piece of code will apply 'Bonbon' font on an element classed "styletext1". Below is the
example of above CSS style on an element classed "styletext1"
 

"This is an example of applying font styles with CSS"

 The above text is classed with "styletext1", and when we applied the above CSS code, it turned into the font-family we specified in CSS lines. The HTML code was this.

<span class="styletext1">"This is an example of applying font styles with CSS"</span>

Learn the HTML and CSS code closely. Now try this on your blog or website and then show us in comments.
Notes:

1. Backup your template before trying this,it will be easy for you to get the old template, if you did any mistakes
2. The HTML link code Google gave, will not work in XML templates (default templates for blogger)
3. To make the link code work in XML template then please see our help section below.
4. If, you don't understand what I am saying, then please check the video.
5. Adding too much fonts will slow down your website or blog.

Help with issues

The only issue we found in this is the HTML code Google gives on Google web fonts page, which looks like this.

The problem often occurs with XML templates, by default blogger use XML templates for blogs, the main thing is that Google haven't already added the close tag, in HTML files, it will be accepted without any problem but in Blogger, you can to add a "/" before ">" in the code. After which the code will look like this.

<link href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Bonbon|Herr+Von+Muellerhoff' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'/>

Now Blogger template will happily accept it and you will be able to use as many fonts you wish to use. 

YouTube Tutorial video

Remove the Navbar from blogger blogs

Navbar is an inbuilt widget for all blogs with .blogspot.com ending, Navbar is bar on top of the page having useful thing as search box, but also a feature that most of us don't like it, there's always a link called "Next Blog" which makes our blog look dull as it take our visitors to other's blog for no reason and that the thing we don't want in our blog. Don't worry, although nothing is impossible with HTML and CSS.  

Myselft I was practicing CSS and HTML5 so that's why there were no psot on StramaXon for long time, but i am back, now with touch of HTML5 and CSS3 my blog will look and work good.

Let's come on the topic, so we were on 'how to remove the navbar' .  Little Copy-Paste knowledge, that's all you need. You will understand what to do even if you don't have even 25% knowledge of HTML and CSS.

1. First, let me tell you something about CSS (if you don't know), with CSS we can design any element on HTML pages, whereas HTML are for writing text on a page, CSS is for design those text and other elements. You can give the element a class in HTML attributes for example this is a link's HTML preview :  StramaXon  this is an HTML line, but here comes the CSS, let's see how CSS will understand and design it, with 'class' there is also an alternative 'id' . In the tutorial you will see the uses of these things.    
2. I advice you to use Google Chrome or Safari always  because it's an webkit and almost all the CSS property works in it. First we have to find out what's the 'id' or 'class' of Navbar, by default it is id="navbar" , so we will remove the navbar by using this code. Copy and paste this code by going to Blogger Dashboard >> Template >> Edit HTML (remember to backup your template) Now hit CTRL+F and find  </style>  and paste the code just above it.
   
   #navbar {
   width: 0px;
   height: 0px;
   display:none;
   }
   
   
3. Once you copied and pasted the code before it should look like this.
   
4. Now save the template and check your homepage, the Navbar will disappear.

Something's wrong with Google's new 404 Error Page

Google, a huge name today, the source of all information, currently ranked #1 on Alexa, all because of it's accuracy. All workers and employees in Google must be experienced well in their field and that makes Google an internet giant.
This post is only written to send this information to Google, please share the link of this post to your blog, Google+, Twitter, or Facebook. Sharing Button Below.

From some months Google made many changes to it's look and system ,there were also some changes that were tried but not applied, although that doesn't matter. Then came the Google+ , there were beliefs that Google+ is going to be a flop, because of it's new features that can automatically link your blog or website to your Google+ profile, as it's a Google product, it's more reliable with Google.

The Error 404 page, you may be familiar with that, whenever you typed some address that's not on Google servers e.g http://google.com/stramaxon , then 'stramaxon' would be the keyword for search query, that would help user to find that page they are looking for faster.


But when the trend of change came, along with many other changes of Google home page to Google's every products like blogger,YouTube and so many other product's look changed, there was also changes made to the Google's Error 404 page, now if you enter this address in your address bar http://google.com/stramaxon , it redirects you to a generic 404 Error page, which don't have search bar, related results or any specific reasons for 'why 404 error', the page is beautiful, looks cool with that robot's cartoon.


Here's comes the main thing! above I said that Google employees are very much experience and thus they got job in Google, they believe in accuracy, but what happened when they were designing the New 404 Error page, You already have seen on the above picture what i mean to say. This is a typing mistake, which can be seen very easily after we are done with typing, like he was trying to give it a name like 'Error 404 (Not Found)!!!' but by mistake he didn't pressed the shift key for one more '!' and thus it's now 'Error 404 (Not Found)!!1' , whatever it's not a major mistake, 1 line of edit in HTML file can solve this problem.


This post is only written to send this information to Google, please share the link of this post to your blog, Google+, Twitter, or Facebook. Sharing Button Below.

Working with Google Webmaster Tools

Webmaster is a Google's product, which is free and used by many website owners to manage their site on the web, and also to increase traffic. Learn more about Google Webmaster in this post.

What's Google Webmaster

Google webmaster is a a powerful tool with which millions of web site owners manage their  

site and improve the ways your site is seen on search engines like e.g Google, Yahoo etc. 

There are numerous tools available from Google, but Webmaster is one of the most powerful tool, because it's gives the owner of the website, the power to enhance their website their shelves, it's also give you accurate information like, how many times your website get's an impression with what search terms, these information are mandatory for the owner of the site to know more about how their site is being viewed by others, the owners can then try to put those keywords more in their later posts, which will again help to list the website on Google search page when that keyword is entered and searched. It shows how much time your website link has been clicked on  searching a particular keyword, and how many impression it got, shows on how many pages that particular keyword is on. These information are very useful if you want to improve your Google Page rank.

Register on Google Webmaster

After reading the above text you are now very excited to join webmaster tools, registering on it can be easily done, all you need is an valid email id. Go to http://google.com/webmaster when you are on the page, there will be a button on top saying 'Sign in to Webmaster Tool' click on it.If you have a Google account, you can login there with your Google account. If you don't have a Google account you will be redirected to the Google login page, because Webmaster is a tool from Google, it requires a Google account to register, but you can also register there with other email providers like yahoo, hotmail etc. to create a Google account. There will be a link saying 'Sign up for a new Google account'

provide all required information you are done. 

Registered? Add a site now

To add a site in your Google Webmaster dashboard, you need to be logged in and need to have access to the server where you are hosting the website you want to Add. But if you don't have any paid hosted services, and running your blog on Blogspot or WordPress .etc , there's also way to add site to Webmaster. 

So let's see how to ADD A SITE when you have a paid domain and hosting service.

Log in to your Webmaster Tools, by going on Google Webmaster and click on 'Sign into Webmaster Tools' button on top of the page.

On the dashboard there will be a button 'ADD A SITE' on top right corner, click on it and a popup will appear.

Enter the URL of your website e.g  mywebsite.com, into the text area in the popup box and continue.

Here come's the main thing, download the file, you can find the download link on the page where instruction are given. 

Now go to your cPanel of your server, and upload the file you downloaded.

Go to the Webmaster page you opened, and click on the verify button.

For those who run their blog on blogger.

Log in to your Webmaster Tools, by going on Google Webmaster and click on 'Sign into Webmaster Tools' button on top of the page.

On the dashboard there will be a button 'ADD A SITE' on top right corner, click on it and a popup will appear.

Enter the URL of your website e.g  mywebsite.com, into the text area in the popup box and continue.

Click on Alternate methods, and check the "Add meta tag to your site's home page", I prefer this because this is the easiest one.

Below a code will appear i.e   , copy the code that you got there.

After copying the code, go to Blogger Dashboard -> Template -> Edit HTML 

Hit CTRL+F and find , and paste the code you copied just below 

Save template, now go on the webmaster page, and click on verify, it will accept the site once they found the meta tag in HTML of the webpage.
This verification method makes easy to website owner to verify their site, even if they are not too savvy in those types of thing.
Tip :- Even if you have a paid hosted service, don't bother to download and upload the HTML file to the server, instead use the Meta Tag verification.
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