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November 25, 2011

Adding A Chat Box / Shout Box To Blogger

11/25/2011 Don Caprio No comments

Adding a chat box or shout box to your blog is just another way to make your blog more social. It makes you connect with your visitors even more and makes your blog engaging. A simple chatbox might make your blog visitor stay longer than normal. A chatbox / shoutbox can also serve as a guestbook where visitors can leave comments and suggestions easily without the need to create a separate page for that. If you have an entertainment blog, then you definitely must have this. Adding a chatbox to blogger is quite easy and you don't need to know much HTML, just a little copy and paste procedure and you're done with it.

There are lots of sites around where you can create a chatbox / shoutbox widget from your blog but I found three that are actually the best of all.

1. ShoutMix

This widget is quite one of the very best because it's got some features that's simply unique. You can log in to the chat system with facebook and twitter as long as you authenticate the ShoutMix app. You can also customize the look and feel of the shoutbox to match your blog's template. You need to first create an account and verify your email after which you're asked to create a shoutbox. Below is a preview of what the shoutbox looks like:

After creating the shoutbox and customizing it, click on the Embed link on the left to copy out the code which will be added to your blog. This will be explained later in the post.

2. Cbox

Cbox is one of the oldest chatbox around and I also recommend it because of its simplicity. It's easy to create and you can choose from any of the ready made themes and it's possible customize the chatbox to match your blog's template too. Cbox allows your visitors to comment using their name and website address or email as they do not offer facebook integration like ShoutMix. Below is a preview of the chatbox i created there:

After customizing the look and feel of your chat box, go to Publish to copy out the code which will be added to your blog.

3. FreeShoutBox

FreeShoutBox also gives you offers the service of giving your blog or website a chatbox / shoutbox all for free. You also need to create an acount in order to create a customized shoutbox and you can choose from any of the ready made themes or use your own custom CSS layout. Below is a preview of the shoutbox I created:

How To Add The ChatBox Code To Blogger

It's a matter of preference, you can use any of the sites listed above but I prefer the first one as it offers more features than the rest. You can use any of them though, it's a matter of choice. I believe you've copied out the code, right? Now let's add that chatbox to your blog!

1. Login to your blogger account and click on Design

2. Depending on where you want the shout ox or chatbox to appear, click on Add a Widget. ( The sidebar is the best position if you ask me :) )

3. Select HTML / JavaScript

4. Paste the shoutbox code and save.

Now, preview your template and watch the chatbox appear on your blog!

New Social Media Buttons For Blogger

11/21/2011 Don Caprio No comments

Social networking is an important part of getting traffic that just can't be ignored and making it easier for your visitors to find you on their favorite social networks isn't such a bad idea. Apart from using nice share buttons, bookmarking your site on different social networks also serves as a way to alert your visitors each time you post an update. The icons here are of different sets and you can place them anywhere on your blog, linking them to your facebook, twitter and google plus profile or fan pages. The sets also contain RSS and email icons. You can link the email icon to your contact page or feedburner email subscription link. I only used the most popular social media icons which include facebook, twitter and google plus. I hope you like them, they are all ready to use and all you need to do is paste the code to your blog and watch the icons show up.

How To Add These Social Media Icons To Blogger

1. Log in to your Blogger account and go to Design

2. Depending on where you want the icons to appear, click on Add a Gadget. I prefer the icons at the header or at the top of the right side bar.

3. Select HTML/JavaScript.

4. Paste the code and save.

Note that you must edit the links in red color or your blog would be linking to my own social network profiles. Share the post if you find it helpful.

Using Custom Links In Facebook Status Updates And Wall Posts

11/18/2011 Don Caprio 3 comments

The first time I saw a status update with a link underneath a custom text, I thought facebook was already supporting HTML in statusupdates and wall posts. I tried writing some stuff in basic HTML but was rendered as plain text and realized it's all some sort of trick after all. Of course we all know you can tag people and mention pages in your status update or comment by typing @ before writing the name but it all gets even better if you can mask/hide that fan page or profile name with some sort of custom text. You can even write a whole status update or comment linking directly to your profile or facebook fan page. I bet you want to learn how, right?

Before you can do this, you have to first know your profile ID or that of the person or page you're tagging.

How To Get The Profile ID Of A Facebook User Or Fan Page

For users who do not already have a facebook username, you can get the profile ID by just going to the profile, checking your address bar and copying out the last set numbers in the URL. For example, the ID for this profile is shown in red:

www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1234567890000

For users or pages with facebook usernames or vanity url such as http://www.facebook.com.com/username, enter http://graph.facebook.com/username in your browser.

Be sure to replace username with your own valid username, for example, http://graph.facebook.com/doncaprio . The page that displays should show you your profile ID.

For more on finding facebook profile ID, read this post.

Linking Your Updates To Facebook Profiles Or Fan Page With Custom Text

The trick is just a simple piece of code and you can create a really funny update with it. It's as simple as the code written below:

@@[0:[165091976865893:0: YOUR TEXT HERE ]]

Profile ID - 165091976865893
Display Text - YOUR TEXT HERE

That's all you're gonna be needing. Be sure to replace profile ID and custom text with what you want to be displayed in place of the profile or fan page.

My last status update on facebook was written as this:

@@[0:[1167126869:0: Don ]] is now friends with @@[0:[185282101484120:0: Tupac Shakur ]], @@[0:[106458656056797:0: Ice Cube ]] and @@[0:[175576745802091:0: 9,564,856 other people ]].

@@[0:[175576745802091:0: Report Don to Facebook ]]

It appeared exactly as shown below:

It's a really funny update and you can copy that into your status update, just be sure to edit the profile IDs and text that will be shown instead of the link. Remember, you can always get the profile ID of any profile by checking this post. You should, however, note that this trick doesn't work for external links.

Sharing this post on facebook takes less than 5 seconds. It's gonna help us :).

How To Find A Facebook User Or Page ID

11/18/2011 Don Caprio No comments

These days, you're sometimes asked to provide your facebook user ID when filling some forms online and some of us don't even have a clue what this is. You might even need the profile ID of a page for certain reasons and this can be a real challenge especially if the profile in question already has a username. Since most facebook profiles now have vanity URLs, you can't get the profile ID just looking at the address bar, all you're gonna see is the username. So how do you get such profile ID for profiles with custom address?

Users Or Pages Without A Username

For pages or users who do not already have a facebook username, you can get the profile ID by just going to the profile, checking your address bar and copying out the last set numbers in the URL. For example, the ID for this profile is shown in red:

www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1234567890000

Facebook Users Or Pages With Custom URL or Username

For profiles with vanity URL replacing the one with profile ID, there are so many ways to find the ID and there are even some facebook applications created just for this. There is, however, one method that's the easiest of all.

To find the user ID of a named user, you must query the Open Graph. Every object within the Open Graph has a unique URL that can be inspected and will return information about that object. Users and pages are no exception.

For my facebook profile which is http://www.facebook.com/doncaprio

All you're going to need is my facebook username which is doncaprio

Launch this in your browser http://graph.facebook.com/doncaprio

You should see something that looks like this:

{
"id": "1167126869",
"name": "Don Caprio",
"first_name": "Don",
"last_name": "Caprio",
"link": "http://www.facebook.com/doncaprio",
"username": "doncaprio",
"gender": "male",
"locale": "en_US"
}

The user ID is specified in the id property. Simply copy this value (without the quotation marks). The same goes any user profile of facebook fan page. You only need to add the username after http://graph.facebook.com/ to get the ID.

Google Adsense Approval Trick Through Third Party Sites?

11/17/2011 Don Caprio 586 comments

Quite a lot of new bloggers still find it difficult getting their google adsense account approved due to one reason or the other. Lots of people get desperate typing search queries in google such as google adsense approval trick, 24hrs google adsense approval and so on. Lots of people even paid some individuals in a bid to buy an already approved google adsense account. It's undisputed that google adsense remains the easiest way to monetize a blog and for this reason, there's so much clamor just to get an approval from google. In recent times, google adsense team even tightens up the approval thingy by making it a two-stage process.

Just of recent, thousands of publishers were banned from the adsense program and lots of hopes were dashed. Some of my friends in bloggers lab on facebook were affected by the massive ban. Relating closely with some of them made me realize most of the banned accounts were approved through third party sites. You can apply through some third party sites and get your google adsense account approved but I never wrote about any of these sites once. I'm quite aware of them but i never considered them a good option because it all looks shady. Some of these sites include:

1. Fixya
2. Hubpages
3. Docstoc
4. Indyarocks

They are all independent publishing platforms where you can get your google adsense account approved in 24 hours, or even less, and I'm not implying that all accounts approved through third party sites always get banned eventually, I'm only saying it's not such a good idea getting your adsense approved via third party sites. The adsense team always review sites from time to time and any discrepancy might make your already approved account get suspended.

To get your blog approved by google directly, you can follow these guidelines:

1. Give your blog some time to grow, I suggest three months and be sure you have a decent traffic. A couple of hundred pageviews daily gives you a better chance

2. If you're on blogspot, you have a better chance of getting approved with a custom domain but that doesn't mean you won't get approved with a blogspot sub domain either.

3. You should have up to 20-30 original posts/pages. Copying contents from other blogs won't get you anywhere.

4. Your design also matters. Be sure your blog's is designed in a way to make it look attractive. A blog with poorly arranged widgets scattered everywhere doesn't stand much chance.

5. I suggest you shouldn't have ads from other advertising companies like bidvertiser or chikita running on your blog when google comes to certify your blog. It's only a suggested precaution though.

6. Be sure your blog complies with google's terms of service. Your blog posts must not be based on topics not allowed by google such as, hacking, pornography, drugs, ammunition, warez, cracks, keygens and so on.

With the tips above taken into practice, I'm sure your adsense account will be approved and in case they reject your application, you can always try again. I know those who applied up to five times before getting approved. Good luck!

Nofollow & Dofollow Backlinks: A Guide To Blog Commenting

11/16/2011 Don Caprio 9 comments

Link building is an important part of search engine optimization and some bloggers do this at all costs, even to the point of spamming on other blogs. Having quality, one-way backlinks pointing to your site does a lot in increasing your google page rank, thereby increasing the chance of your blog appearing in google search results. What most people fail to know is that only the quality of the backlinks matter, not necessarily the quantity. It's quite possible to have just a hundred backlinks and rank higher than sites with thousands of backlinks.

Now, don't get it twisted, a high google pagerank doesn't always equal to your traffic but it's still good to have it anyway. It's one of the algorithms google checks when sorting out search results. It's always been said that original contents matters a great deal and you must take this even more serious than link building but that is not the main topic here. There's a more comprehensive post I recently wrote on how to increase your google page rank and alexa traffic rank, you should try reading through it.

There are several ways to get quality backlinks pointing to your blog and one of the most effective is commenting on blogs relating to your niche. I've seen quite a lot of bloggers commenting here even to the point of spamming but most do not realize that google will never index or follow those links because there are ways to make blog commenting work to your advantage.

DoFollow And NoFollow Backlinks

What are dofollow and nofollow links? Did you know you can comment on 100 blogs without google recognizing any of those precious backlinks you worked hard to get? In a bid to reduce spamming for the sake of SEO, google devised the nofolow and dofollow tags. A link with nofollow tag added has no SEO benefit for the destination site and a link with dofollow or none of the tags will be indexed and counted as a backlink for the destination site

By default, all comments posted on blogs hosted on blogspot are nofollow links. Google doesn't index links on most blogger blogs, you probably would have noticed that in google webmaster tools and wondered why.

How To Differentiate Between Nofollow And Dofollow Links

Before you go about commenting on just any blog, you should know whether the blog you're commenting on has any SEO value for you. There's a firefox extension that highlight links in a page according to nofollow / dofollow status.

There's an easier way to do this though, just highlight an existing comment using firefox, right click and select view selection source. Below is an example of a nofollow link as shown in page source:

<a class="comments-autor-name" href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/05279327145715289304" rel="nofollow">Don Caprio</a>
<a class="says">says:</a>

I'm not saying you should only comment on blogs with dofollow links, commenting on a few blogs with nofollow tag creates what looks like a natural profile in google's view.