Add a clock to your blog

Adding a clock in your blog…
One of my friends asked me the other day if it was possible to add a clock in your blog. And... that gave me an idea to blog it up. Most of my posts are with respect to blogger since that’s what I use for blogging. If you want any information on Wordpress, just let me know and I will look it up, test it and then blog it!
Just follow these simple instructions to insert a clock as you see in my blog (Orange clock in the top right corner)
Go to ClockLink . ClockLink offers you a wide range of clocks to choose from. Pick your choice and you will be given a piece of HTML code for your blog. Copy (CTRL+C) this code into a notepad.
Log into your blogger account and navigate to your blog’s “Layout” and then to “Templates” section. Go to “Page elements” section, click on “Add a page element” and choose HTML/JavaScript element.
Paste (CTRL+V) the code from ClockLink into the “content” section of the HTML/JavaScript pop up page. Save the changes and you are done!
You can now view the blog by clicking “View blog” and your clock should appear where you added the page element.

Adding smileys and emoticons to your blog post

Add emoticons and smileys to your blog posts. Here's how...
Adding smileys and emoticons to blog posts is easy. It makes your blogs look more meaningful and communicative besides that extra pinch of “expression” that tags along. Listed below are three means by which you can do this:

Method 1:
Click cybergifs to download emoticons for free. Right click on the emoticon that you want to use in your blog and the “Save Target As” as a jpeg image in your hard disk. You can download as many as you want and save them all in a folder for use.
When you are composing your blog, you can click the “Add Image” icon in your composer menu. This leads you to a pop up page where you can browse to the emoticon icon that you saved earlier, upload the image and click “Done”. You need to specify the image location if your want a specific pattern (right/left/center aligned) for your image to appear in your blog post. If you don’t choose any pattern, then you will have to manually drag the image (after you click “Done”).

Method 2:
Another way to add smileys or emoticons as images in your blogs (as in method1) is to download smiley central software from http://www.freesmileys.org/free-smiley-faces-download.php
The download from smiley central is free and this offers a wide variety of smileys, screensavers, cursors, fun-cards and emoticons to choose from (super smileys, talking smileys, custom smileys etc).
Once the download is complete, you will see a smiley icon in your menu bar.
When you are next composing your blog, you first place the cursor where you want the smiley to be placed, click on the smiley icon in the menu bar, browse through the smileys that show up and pick your choice. Click on your smiley to insert it. Simple!!

Method 3:
Another interesting article that I came across was posted by Deepa.
I have provided the link to her blog where you will have to copy paste a piece of code in the “Edit HTML” section of your blog layout.
(To navigate to “Edit HTML”, log into your blogger account go to Dashboard, go to the “Layout” section of the selected blog and click on “Edit HTML” button. It is very important that you take a backup of your old HTML code before you make any changes.)
Add Yahoo emoticons to your blog

Alternatives:
Links and scripts from other bloggers…

To add smileys in your blogs incase you are using wordpress, this link might come in handy:
Wordpress smileys

To add smileys using HTML code as in method 3 above, you can also use the script designed by Sumeet. Click http://sumeet.info/hacks/emoticons.html

http://emoticons4u.com/ is another emoticons gallery.

You can also try the link below

http://freeblogspottemplates.blogspot.com/2006/03/blogger-emoticons.html
And closely follow the instructions mentioned.

The instructions are very detailed and should work on both old and new blogger (beta blogger).

For bloggers using FireFox, this might be useful. http://wolverinex02.googlepages.com/emoticonsforblogger

That’s all for now….
Keep smiling!

Changing your blog skin

Not happy with your blog skin??
Blogger and Wordpress lets you choose from a variety of skins templates – templates with one column, 2 column and 3 columns. 3 columns are very useful when you have to maximize your content besides earning from your blog i.e. when you have more contents to put in your blog.
If you are still not happy with the skins and would like to have something different, then you can download the skin you want from the sites listed below. Though there are many different sites to let you download free templates for blogs absolutely free, I personally recommend the following sites for your review:

Where to download from?
http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/29-beautiful-blogger-templates/
This provides 29 really neat and cool design templates for you to download.
(See emire template below for an example)

http://designs.bloggerbuster.com/search/label/three%20column
Some Web 2.0 enabled templates, 2-3 column templates, classic templates and a variety of different templates for you to choose from.
(See gourmet template below for an example)

http://www.finalsense.com/services/blog_templates/
A very good collection of template themes for both new and old blogger with fixed background, classic templates, 2-3 column templates for download, arranged neatly in different categories.
(Check butterfly template for an example)

http://www.pyzam.com/bloggertemplates/
A wonderful set of designer templates and 2-3 column templates for blogger.
(Check vintage flower template for an example)

http://www.idwebtemplate.com/category/template-categories/
Some neat templates that are also adsense optimized.
(Check Woman-auto-insurance template for an example)

How to use these templates in your blog?

1. For Wordpress:
Download the theme archive and extract the files. You need to preserve the directory structure in the archive when extracting these files. Using an FTP client to access your host web server, create a directory to contain your theme in the wp-content/themes directory provided by WordPress. For example, a theme named "ABCtheme" should be in wp-content/themes/ABCtheme.
Upload the theme files to the new directory on your host server.
To select the active theme for your site: Log in to the WordPress Administration Panel.Select the "Presentation" sub panel.From the "Select" column in the table, click on "Select" for the theme you wish to activate.To view the new theme in action, click "View Site" at the top of the Panel's screen.Your theme should immediately become active.

2. For Blogger
The sites display the HTML code of the selected theme for you. CTRL+A to copy all the contents of the code and CTRL+V to paste it to a notepad.
Now log into your blogger account, go to Dashboard, go to the “Layout” section of the selected blog and click on “Edit HTML” button. It is very important that you take a backup of your old HTML code (your previous blog layout) and copy it to another notepad. After taking a backup of your old code, delete the existing HTML code and paste the new code from the first notepad (you new template design layout).
Click on “Preview” to view how the new template looks like. If you are happy with it, go ahead and “Save template”.
Point to remember here is that old blogger templates might not be compatible with the new blogger layout and hence on “Preview” you might get an error that your file could not be parsed since it is not well formed.
Don’t worry about your page elements on copying the new HTML code. First, you already have the backup and secondly, blogger preserves page elements in the new blogger theme.

Note: All of the above links also contain template designs that are adsense optimized!

Getting started with blogging

I have been asked by a few friends of mine..about blogging.. So, today I would be discussing on how to get started with blogging. Hope this turns out to be helpful for the ones who are serious about blogging.

What is a blog?
Blog, which is the shortened version of a weblog, is like a personal diary, wherein you can express your thoughts. Many would like to use it to publish contents for general public consumption and this inturn might inspire many to earn from their blogs...

Well..why not??

How to get started with your blog?

This is indeed a very tricky question, since the first thing you need to figure out is - what do you want to talk about. What do you want to publish for your viewers to read? Well...It could be anything ..any topic under the sun that you are comfortable with and that you love talking about.

Find your niche!
Once you are done with that, decide on the specifications that you would like to work on. Make your topic clear and specific and most importantly categorize them. This would help you decide the name of your blog. For example, if you are an animal lover and want to make a blog for animals, then you can "google" on pets and see what are the different search items that come up. You can "google" to find out the related search in forums, since forums are platforms where a topic of interest would be discussed.
You can then select the ones that people usually hunt for. Next, read some related articles on the net on the topics that you have identified. After you have enough articles, you can organize them and then proceed on planning your layout and where you want your topics to be placed. The best way to sort things out with blogs, is, to figure out how other blogs are arranged - this would give you a rough idea. Check how they have arranged their items, how have they used their ideas etc
Third, choose a template layout from the blog provider tools and customize your blog the way you want it to look like, which would also reflect you blog topic.
If you have many pages, then make sure navigability is easier. Now you can organize your topics into labels and categories and start posting your articles. Fourth, have a blog up wherein you post original content worth reading. Research on the net since this would add some spice to your recipe and make it an up-to-date article. Don't have too may pictures as this make your blogs slower to upload. How to create blogs? Creating a weblog is easy and convenient...

Find a few links below to get started and create your first blog, free of cost:
Blogger : http://www.blogger.com/
Wordpress : http://wordpress.com/
Blogsboom : http://www.blogsboom.com/
Weblog : http://www.weblog.com/

I am listing just a few here, since the more links you get, the more confused and diverted you would get. I personally prefer blogger, though wordpress is simply superb. Just register and follow the simple steps to create your blogs, customize them using the tools provided and get started. If your are using blogger, then you can make your blog fetch some bucks for you. You can start off with these tips and tricks for now. I will be back with more information again in my next post.Till then....happy blogging!