by Bonnie Calhoun

Hi guys and gals! It's been a while since I had something new to teach you! But I just helped a gentleman with this last night so I thought I'd pass on the info.

What we're going to learn today is how to customize a table to work in Blogger, and all the cool things you can do with it.

This particular table that I'm going to show you how to make has three columns (that go across) and five rows (that go down) on the page.

That is what it will look like, and this is the code that you copy to create it!


<style type="text/css">.nobrtable br { display: none }</style>
<div class="nobrtable">
<table style="text-align: left; width: 460px;" border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Day</td>
<td>Food</td>
<td>Child</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Monday</td>
<td>Hot Dogs</td>
<td>Mike</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Tuesday</td>
<td>Chicken</td>
<td>Mary</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Wednesday</td>
<td>Hamburger</td>
<td>Paul</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>


Now! What you can do to add customization:

If you want more columns(across) across the table, add more table data units, like this. Note: You must add the same amount to each row!

<tr>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td> .....notice extra td unit!
</tr>


If you want more rows (going down the page. Add more table rows (tr).

<tr>....this is the beginning of a tr unit
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>.....this is the end of a tr unit


If you want the table to be wider or narrower, change the pixel number in the width unit:
width: 460px

If you don't want a border, turn the border number to zero:
border="0"
Note: the higher the border number, the thicker the border.

And the cellspacing numbers tell you how many pixels between the cells of the table, while the cellpadding tells you how many pixels between the sides of the cell and the writing that you put in it!
cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">

Have at it, and have fun!!

by Bonnie Calhoun

Hi folks! Another tip has been pulled to the forefront of my memory by an inquiring blogger...the necessity of using target="_blank".

LOL...don't look at me like that...I'm not talking dirty :-) Using target="_blank" in an outgoing link on your blog or website causes a new browser window to open when the link is clicked. It is desirable for two reasons.

First, the visitor is still on your website when they close that window after perusing, and they don't have to navigate back to your page.

And second, it helps to decrease your "bounce" rate.

LOL...I knew I'd get your eyes to roll up in your head at least once in this post :-)

Bounce Rate is defined as how many times a visitor "bounces" away from your site and comes back. If you are involved in increasing your SEO (Search Engine Optimization), the bounce rate on an entry page can help to determine how effective it is at grabbing people's attention.

Now before you running screaming from the room yelling, "SEO, SEO!" I must add caviar...LOL...I mean...a caveat. Bounce rate is only an SEO factor is you have a site for commerce. If your site is about ordinary stuff like blogging, news or just plain information you really don't have to worry.

The neat and conclusive reason for adding target="_blank" is to keep people on your page!

Write your links like this:

<a href="URL of SITE" target="_blank">

by Bonnie Calhoun

Man, oh man! I'm just full of posts lately! *snort-giggle* I've been helping a lot of friends get their blogs redesigned.

Well here is a problem I've noticed on several of my friends blogs. When they re-install their templates, they can no longer get their header images to show. Well I've come up with a work-around....LOL...and yes...you have to go play with your HTML!

I'll turn ya'll into template gurus yet!

This problem is especially prevalent on the Scribe template. When you switch templates the Header gadget should stay, but in the Scribe it doesn't...so go figure!

Here's how we're gonna fix it. We're going to delete the present Header element from the template and add a new one. LOL...I think the old one has a bad case of the ick! But first we have to allow the Header section to allow another gadget (You will notice that there is no "Add a Gadget" section on the Scribe Header.

Here's where we go play with HTML. Start at your Dashboard....go to the Layout tab...then click the Edit HTML link. We are going to scroll down to the highlighted section of code in the below image. If you can't read what it says, click on the image and it will open in a larger window.



What you are going to do is change the line where it says...showaddelement "no"...to "yes" This will allow the "add a Gadget to show up in the header section of your template. And you are going to remove the <b section that has your bad Header, so that that section looks like this when you are done.



Now you will click "Save Template". It will tell you that you are deleting a Widget, like in the below image. That's okay...click yes!



Now go to your Page Elements page...see the "Add a Gadget" in the Header section. Click it! Scroll all the way to the bottom of the list and pick Page Header.

When it opens, click for the image to show "instead of the title and description" Then either find your image on the internet at your storage site, or use the top link and upload it from your computer. Then click save! Viola! You have your header back!

by Bonnie Calhoun

Hi guys and gals! Yes it's me again...twice in one week! Well I'm helping some friends spiff up their blogs, and I've had to re-remember stuff I've done in the past. Okay...today we're going to add color to that pesky browser scroll bar.

Now before you use this code, I must make you aware that it will not work in Firefox...LOL...they don't like people messing with their colors, so you can only get this to work in Internet Explorer.

The last caveat that I add to it is that, if you're anal retentive like I am about making my web pages validate this one is going to throw you for a loop because according to W3C...it ain't valid! So you will get an error code for it, but it won't break your page or anything...LOL...unless you have like 5000 other errors!

Okay...here's what you use:


<!--[if IE]>
<style type="text/css">
html {
scrollbar-arrow-color:#6E0502;
scrollbar-track-color:#940400;
scrollbar-face-color:#6BE02;
scrollbar-highlight-color:#909400;
scrollbar-3dlight-color:#333333;
scrollbar-darkshadow-color:#473624;
scrollbar-shadow-color:#BFB186;
}
</style>
<![endif]-->



And you scroll down til you get to the end of the <head> section, and you put it right BEFORE the </head>

Viola! You've got a color coordinated browser scrollbar!

by Bonnie Calhoun

Hi all! It's been a while since I had something new to tell you, mainly because I've been busy with other projects.

One of my friends ask me to help her create a scroll bar for her rather long link list. So I thought I'd share the result with you.

It's rather easy to accomplish. As with everything I tell you, make sure you have saved a copy of your template in NotePad before you go farting around with it. And when you add code to your HTML, please....use the "Preview" button to see if that is what you want. If it is not, hit the "Discard Edits" button and you will be back where you started from.

Only hit SAVE...when you are sure you have the proper results!

Okay...now for the easy part...go to your LAYOUT tab. Click Edit HTML. Scroll down in the code until you see:


/* Sidebar Content
----------------------------------------------- */
/* Sidebar Content */


Right below that add:


#LinkList1 {
height:150px;
overflow:auto;
}















The number '150' in the height tells you how tall the box will be before it show the scrollbar, (illustrated to the left) you can change that number at will!

If you only have one link list in your sidebar, this will work as written. But if you add more than one scroll bar you will have to scroll down in your HTML is see what the list is called to create a scrollbar for it. Typically the default names will be LinkList1, LinkList2...and so on. Change the name in the piece of code that you add according to that name that the widget gives it.

And add the piece of code for each list that you want to have a scrollbar!

One other NOTE...your sidebar section in your HTML might not be names exactly the same as mine...it might just say:


*/Sidebar/*
or

/* Typography :: Sidebar
----------------------------------------------- */


Whatever it says, it's just a section name, and I want you to put it in the right section...LOL...only because I'm a neat-freak, and anal-retentive about how the code is organized! *snort-giggle* You could actually put it in any section...but you might forget where you put it...So keep it neat!

Happy blogging! Till next time!

by Bonnie Calhoun

This is the third in the series of Adsense posts. The other two are HERE, and HERE.

Today I'm going to teach you how to wrap Adsense code into a blog post. The first example isn't exactly rocket science so even the most novice of bloggers will be able to accomplish this with ease.

First the glaring question: Why would I want to give myself the heart palpitations that come with messing with the stupid HTML in my template to put in an equally stupid ad?

LOL...the answer to that: Ads placed within blog posts have been tested and proved to give the maximum in CTR (click thru rate). LOL...this means that you make a lot more money than with other locations on your page.

Let's first look at the use of the Adsense Widget.

From your Dashboard, click Layout. It will open on the Page Elements page. Click the Edit link in the Post Box. There is a clickable link in that open Configure box that you can click to put Ads between any number of posts. Read this Blogger Article about Placing Ads between posts.

From here on, it's going to get a little tougher, so the first thing I would recommend is Backing Up Your Template if you already don't have a copy of it saved in a NotePad file on your own computer. When you open the Layout tab, and click Edit HTML it will give you the Backup link...Please USE IT!!!


Okay...you're all backed up...now on to putting Adsense in your posts. Check the Expand Widget Templates box above the Edit window. Search for the following lines:

<data:post.body/>
or
<p><data:post.body/></p>

You will need to Parse Your Adsense Code like I taught you to do in THIS POST. This is how the post section code will look after you add the Parsed Adsense Code and the line to direct the ad to sit left, or right. In this code I have it set for left. To move it to the other side of the post, change the float position to right.

<div class="post-body entry-content">
<div style="float: left;">
<script type="text/javascript"><!--
google_ad_client = "pub-XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX";
google_ad_width = 468;
google_ad_height = 60;
google_ad_format = "468x60_as";
google_ad_type = "text_image";
google_ad_channel = "";
//-->
</script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script>
</div>
<p><data:post.body/></p>

Click the SAVE TEMPLATE button, and you're done!

by Bonnie Calhoun

Hello blogging friends! I haven't been ignoring you *snort-giggle* I just didn't have anything worthy of a post to report. I'm happy to say that I've found something new that could be of service to to, especially to those with team blogs!

Recently it has been asked frequently how the members of a team blog could get their image and/or signature on their posts! Well until Blogger comes up with a post editor solution, each team member can accomplish it with just a minor adjustment.

Each team member will need to open a "New Post" box. Into that box you are going to enter your name...as a signature. You can see how I accomplished that in the image below. And you are also going to upload an image of yourself. I made the size on this one, 50px X 60px, but that size is up to the individual.

Click on the image to open it larger, and in it's own window so you can read what it says!



Now...to get the text to wrap around the image start typing the post right after the closing image mark. The example in the picture is of this specific post, so you can see how it comes out.

After each team member has done this in his/her own post, they could save a copy of the signature and image in a file on their own computer to reuse on subsequent posts, or they could save a draft copy of their tagline and label the post with their own name so that they know which one to open...or they could just open up their last post, and copy and paste that part into their next post!

Happy blogging!

Hi all! I haven't been ignoring you, I'm just really busy writing...That's right *snort*, I'm a writer (among other things). But that's not why I'm posting today. I usually don't post about how to do something unless I've actually tried it myself, and understand how it works.

So today I'm going to show you how to reset the Blog post element. Okay, I know you're asking why in the world would you want to do that? Well there could be a couple of reasons. Like if you comment link at the bottom of the post disappears, or the posts won't show...or anything major malfunction of any other part of that particular widget.

Now...going back to the comment thing for a minute. If your comment link is not showing on your blog posts, check out these three things first to make sure that all of your settings are correct:

Post Options in post editor...the box at the bottom of the rectangle post box that you write in....click on 'Post Options' and make sure comments are allowed.

Settings - Comment tab...on the Settings tab, go to comments and make sure they are set to "Show".

Template - Page Elements - Blog post...and lastly go to your Layout(Template), go to Page Elements, then click on the edit box in the Blog Post element...hint:(it will be the biggest on the page). When the Configure box opens up, make sure comments are checked.

Okay, after all that your @#%$# comment link is still not showing...LOL...chill! We can fix it.

LOL...we're going to play in your template HTML...wheeee!

Go to Template...Edit HTML...scroll down in the code until you find this piece of code (the black highlighted section):
Okay, select it like I did and cut that puppy out of there. Save the piece in your mouse because you're gonna put it back in a few minutes. And remember where it was, so that you can put it back in the exact same place...LOL! If you're anal retentive like me...copy a whole section of the template...like say five lines before and after the section you're going to cut out and save it on a Notepad page ore WORD page...just so you can see the exact spot to put it back!

Okay...I digress...cut that highlighted section out of the template and click save...it will be fine...go ahead...click!

Now...this page pops up:" Warning Will Robinson, Warning...LOL...just kidding, I'm a Lost In Space addict! Anyhow...the page says...Egads, you're about to delete a widget!...LOL...never fear...click that Confirm and Save...with pride!

Okay now that you've deleted the bad bugger, you're going to reset the widget by scrolling down the template to the spot where you deleted the piece of code that is still in your mouse...Remember up above I told you to remember where you took it out of...another thing that you could do to remember the spot, before you take the piece out hit your Enter key a few times before and after the section, LOL...it will leave a big hole in the template, that will be easy to find!

Okay...mouse pointer in the empty spot...right click...paste....put that baby back and hit Save.

TaDa!!!! You're all better now, the Blog widget has been reset!

Okay guys and gals...Blogger has finally made it possible for you to really screw up your Googly life...LOL...just kidding!

They have finally made it possible to move blogs...at will..between accounts. Now I'm not going to create more accounts to give you a show and tell but my Blog*Star buddy Chuck has a post with a lot of pictures!!

The steps are relatively easy!

First...with Google, set up the second account where you want to transfer the blog.

1.) From your Dashboard, go to Settings, then to the far right tab called Permissions.

2.) As the original administrator of the blog, invite the second account to be a blog member using the email address of the new account.

3.) Log into the second mail account and accept the invitation.

4.) As the original Administrator, make sure both accounts are "Administrators"...just click on the button that says guest and it will change to Administrator.

5.) Click "Remove" for the account that you want to delete. The account that is left is now the administrator. (Just for ha,ha's I'd leave the first account as a backdoor to get into the blog in case you ever need it, just ignore it 'til then.)

6.) Log in with the new account and the blog will be on your Dashboard with full administrative access. Voila!

Hi folks! It's been a while since I posted, but I'm trying to only post relevant things here, that people need instruction with.

This is a new trick I recently learned. Imagine me...learning a new trick...I guess you really can teach old dogs...uh, er...never mind. Anyhow...I used to use a complicated program to do screenshots, and someone taught me an awesome easy way to do it. Now I'm sure you could use any photo manipulation program but the easiest way for people using Windows is to use Microsoft Paint.

Here's what you do. On the top right-hand corner of your keyboard is a key that says PrtSc...that means Print Screen. Hit that, then open up Paint, click the edit button, when the menu opens click Paste. The picture below is me copying this blog as a screenshot:

Then hit Save As...when the box open, give it a name, and below that box use the dropdown menu to save it as a jpg (picture). Now that you've got this shot, you may want to crop the picture. On Paint, see that tools menu running down the left side of the page...see at the top of the menu, the white box with the dotted rectangle in it...that's the crop box.

Click there...your pointer will turn into a cross-hair. Put the cross-hair where you want to start the cut, hold the left mouse button and drag the cross-hair till you get all that you want of the picture, then let go. (Notice in the picture below, the dotted line.)

Put the pointer in the box and right click on copy. Open a new Paint workspace (Go to File, click..on the dropdown menu choose New) and hit edit, and then paste...and the rest of the save procedure from above, and you wind up with the small piece below...Viola!

Okay so I've been really busy...I haven't been neglecting posting...just posting here. If you notice my cool icon at the top of the left column, I've been designated as a Blog*Star by the Google/Blogger help boards.

LOL...This means I officially have no life. That I spend most of my time on the Blogger Help boards dispensing advice to wayward Bloggers that are lost in the maze of Google and Blogger.

But it's fun! It's a lot of fun to teach someone to do something that they didn't know how to do before. I remember being on that end of the stick. Knowledge is power, and the more you understand Blogger, the greater the fun...so ask away!!

The purpose of this post is to give you a way to backup your entire blog onto your computer. The singular easiest way is when you make a post make a copy on your computer...Okay, okay, so I'm no fun at all. That's a plain old text post that doesn't look the least bit cute or laid out like your blog page does!

Sooooo....then you will need another browser...The Mozilla Firefox one! It's always a good idea to have more than one browser installed on your computer anyhow. Internet Explorer get persnickety sometimes and a backup is a good thing.

Anyhow, on Firefox one of the cool downloads is ScrapBook. You can get it HERE

With Scrapbook you can screen capture your whole blog. There are numerous ways of capturing...in fact....a whole page load of capture features HERE. My favorite way is to choose a month from my Archives. That way it puts a whole month on one page. Then you can save a Web page by right-click > [Capture Page].
Also you can save a Web page by drag-and-drop favicon in the location bar or browser tab into ScrapBook Sidebar.

The great thing is that ScrapBook is able to save a Web page more exactly than the Firefox standard [Save Page As] (Ctrl+S) feature. The page saved is an exact copy of what you see on the page!

You can organize collected Web pages in ScrapBook Sidebar as a tree similar to Bookmarks Tree, sorting items by drag-and-drop, creating folder and putting items into it, and so on.

ScrapBook Notes is a text/HTML edit feature resembling Opera's Notes, which enables you to add plain text items to ScrapBook and edit them in sidebar or browser tab. Major particular specifications are:

* The first line becomes the title of the note
* You can insert tab with tab key.
* You can insert timestamp with F5 key.
* Saving automatically when you close a note or open another note
* When opening a note in a browser tab, you can preview it as HTML.
* You can customize the template for the preview (note_template.html).
* You can search for notes by the Full Text Search.

So go and grab Firefox if you don't already have it...and then grab this very functional and cool add-on!

I've taught you to Parse the HTML of the AdSense code. Now I'm going to give example of placement.

This first tutorial of placement is to put the code in the post below the Post Title and above the post body. This will show the Adsense code in the first post on your blog page, but when when a specific post is opened up on its own page, the code will always show up in that post.

You will notice the placement in the image to the left. I took a picture just in case I had chosen to change my Adsense placement by the time you were reading this post.

You will notice that for this application I chose the small banner, 468 X 60 so that it would take up most of the width of the posting area.

To accomplish this place go Dashboard>>>Layout>>>Edit HTML...click on "Expand widget templates". It is in the right corner at the top of the Edit box.

Scroll down in the template code until you find this line:

<div class='post-header-line-1'/>

Below that line insert your parsed HTML for the Adsense code that I taught you how to make in the last post, and hit SAVE!

Always remember to keep a copy of your template safely stored on your own computer in a NotePad file....just in case!

In the next tutorial I will teach you how to wrap the AdSense code in a post!

I am going to teach you to add AdSense code to your posts. Since it can be an overwhelming process, I'm going to break it down into several posts.

This post will teach you how to make the code compatible. To use AdSense code inside a post it is necessary to "escape" the AdSense code. The reason: If you put the code into your template just as it is written when you display the source code for the page, the Google data is invisible...that does not make Google happy and it is a TOS violation of AdSense...and they will pull your account for that!

Adsense does not allow you to alter their code other than "minor" edits. what we are going to do is considered a "minor" edit.

I contacted AdSense with the following question:

Subject: Wrapping Adsense code in blog post
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 09:12:15 -0700


I would like to put the adsense ads inside of a blog post. To make it look EXACTLY like you give it to me (when viewed as a Page source code) it is necessary for a minor alteration. For Blogger to parse the Adsense Code in XML template, the Javascript has to be escaped, using html entities...It looks EXACTLY like you gave it out when viewed by Page source, so is this permissable?

Adsense answered my email with this:

Hi Bonnie,


We do permit minor edits to the AdSense code to place inside the blog posts. Please keep in mind publisher may not alter any portion of the code or manually change the layout of the ads. For instance, publishers may not alter the ad height variable to mask the Ads by Google moniker.


Thanks for your cooperation.


Sincerely,


Sean
The Google AdSense Team

So here is how we are going to parse the HTML to make it compatible and when viewed by using the Page Source code, it will look exactly as given to you by Adsense.

This is an example of a piece of Adsense code as given out by Adsense:

<script type="text/javascript"><!--
google_ad_client = "pub-XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX";
google_ad_width = 468;
google_ad_height = 60;
google_ad_format = "468x60_as";
google_ad_type = "text_image";
google_ad_channel = "";
//-->
</script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script>

You are going to change the (<) to (&lt;) and the (>) to (&gt;) and the quote marks ( " ) to (&quot;) They will all be HTML entities. The code will then look like this:

&lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot;&gt;&lt;!--
google_ad_client = "pub-XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX";
google_ad_width = 468;
google_ad_height = 60;
google_ad_format = "468x60_as&quot;;
google_ad_type = "text_image";
google_ad_channel = "";
//--&gt;
&lt;/script&gt;
&lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot;
src=&quot;http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js&quot;&gt;
&lt;/script&gt;

The next post will show you how to place this in your template!

In the real estate industry, there are three things that are the most important about a property...location, location, and...location!

1.) So the very first thing that I want you to pay attention to when working to increase your AdSense performance is location! We'll start with the HEAT MAP to the left. The dark spots are the page locations where readers spend the most time looking. Utilize as many of these spots as possible.

2.) Place your ads above the FOLD...in newspaper language, this is the face location, or what you see on the page when it opens. Depending on your screen size it could be a little more or a little less than what you see here. But rule of thumb is that ads below the FOLD are seldom seen or clicked!

3.) As indicated in the HEAT MAP, the left side of the page is a premiere location. Readers are accustomed to seeing the navigational menu on this side of the page, so move your menu to the right side, like I did, and use the left for your ads!

Now the next section of performance enhancement has to do with the Ads themselves.

1.) Use lots of Ads! Google gives you ad allowances per page, utilize all that you can. But you must keep track of what you are using and what methods work best. You can keep track of this by...

2.) Utilizing the CUSTOM CHANNELS. AdSense gives you the ability to put a name tag on each ad that you make. This will help you to find out which ads work best, according to the fonts, colors, size and placement on the page.

A.) Match the FONTS to those on your page, especially if you are wrapping the AdSense in a blog post!
B.) Match the COLORS of your Ads to the colors of your website. Visitors will look at them more, especially BLUE LINKS. Blue links have a higher CTR than other color links because people are just used to clicking on blue links!
C.) Use Large Ads where possible. The Large Rectangle (336x280) is the best performing ad unit.
D.) And get rid of any borders, so your readers eye can wander around the page unimpeded.

I already did a TOUR on creating a Google Doc or Spreadsheet.

So you can go to your Google Doc & Spreadsheet, log in with your Gmail account. You get the WELCOME screen. you can then click on New Document or New Spreadsheet, create your sheet and save it.

So we'll dispense with that tutorial. Let's say that we already have a and you want to embed it in a post that you're making.

To publish a Document, click on Publish (upper right-hand corner). A new window opens, select Publish to blog. Input your blog provider, then your username and password, click Okay!

For a spreadsheet, click Publish now, then click "more publishing options". A window opens with more publishing formats, pick "HTML to be embedded in webpage". Specify the range of cells...the whole spreadsheet, one page, specific cells, etc. Click "generate URL". Copy that code into an Edit Post box and publish!

What is a Sitemap?
A sitemap is a display for the layout of your website. It is an aid to the search engines and to your visitors. Year ago they only consisted of a list of links, but now a sitemap is a descriptive roadmap of your site.

It is fleshed out with keyword details for each section and subsection to help your visitors enhance their touring experience. And the biggest benefit is that it gives the search engines more fodder!

To create a good sitemap.

Be sure that it is linked from your HOME page. this forces the search engine to find it right away, and then follow it all the way through your site. If you link it from other pages, and the spider finds a dead link, it will quit the search!

Small sites can place every page on their list, while larger sites should not because an never-ending list of links causes the search engine to think of you as a link farm. A good sitemap should have no more than 25 to 40 links. It also is easier on your visitors!

The title of each link should contain a keyword and link to the original page. Also write 10 to 25 words to tell what the page is about. This part contributes to your depth of content with the search engine.

If you have 15 pages on your site, then every page should be linked to every other page in the sitemap, and PLEASE make sure that all of your links work! When a person or a search engine find a broken link they both lose interest...FAST!

And just like you can't leave your website to fend for itself...don't neglect your sitemap. Keep it updated and current...Your visitors and the search engines will love you!

A good sitemap:
...gives a quick overview of your site
...gives a concise path for the search engines to follow
...gives a text link for every page of the site
...gives easy to follow paths for visitors
...gives a short description of each page
...uses important keyword phrases

Why is a SiteMap important?
Because it improves the value of your site by getting it indexed. This is your most important SEO (Search Engine Optimization) goal! A sitemap provides a one-stop shopping experience for the spiders, and it can also be invaluable to lost visitors!


If you wish to delve further, check out SEO Chat for great info on the subject.

A good place to start is with Google SiteMaps

UPDATE:If your blog folders have vanished, or are not there, set your Language Preference in Picasa Settings to 'English (US)' to keep the blogger folder visible. If you have it set it to English UK, that's why the blog folder vanished.

Sign in with your present Google account.
Picasa Web Album Sign In

When you sign in, the first page that comes up is your Albums. Any of the albums that have a little Blogger symbol in the lower hand corner, are your Blogger Albums. If you have access to more that one blog, and have uploaded at least one picture to that blog, there will be an Album cover…you can change this cover later to an actual cover.

Under the album is the name of the blog, beside that in parenthesis is the number of pictures in that album…Click on the name and it will open the Album.

Any photos that you post to Blogger are included in your Picasa Web Albums storage quota. The number of Blogger photos you can upload is determined by your web albums storage level.

Any photos you upload using Blogger’s post editor will automatically appear in Picasa Web Albums under “My Photos”. The title of the Blogger web album will match the title of your blog. Please be advised that album titles cannot be modified in Picasa Web Albums.

The album cover will be designated with a small Blogger icon in the corner. Blogger web albums are unlisted when they initially appear (you can make them public later) and aren't searchable on the Picasa Web Albums site.Once a photo is posted to Blogger from Picasa Web Albums, future comments or captions made on either site will not be synched with each other. We recommend that you add captions and comments in Picasa Web Albums before posting a photo to Blogger.

If you delete a Blogger web album, those photos will also be deleted from your blog. If you delete a specific photo from your Blogger web album in Picasa Web Albums, your blog will not be deleted, though that photo will not appear.

Please note that you cannot upload photos directly to a Blogger web album using the Picasa Web Albums site at this time, and only empty Blogger albums can be deleted at this time.

You can always purchase extra storage by clicking "Settings" at the top right of your Web Albums page. At the bottom of your Settings page, click the link in the "Storage" section and follow the instructions displayed to purchase additional storage.

There are two ways to see how much storage you’re using in Picasa Web Albums:

1. Go to your Picasa Web Albums public gallery (the URL of your Public Gallery is http://picasaweb.google.com/username). Your storage information will appear in green beneath your albums. Please note that the username on your Public Gallery is the username that you use to sign into Picasa Web Albums.

2. Click "Settings" at the top of your Web Albums homepage to go the “Settings” menu. In the "Storage" section, click "Need more space? Upgrade your storage!" In the window that appears, your current usage amount will display in green.

What is PageRank? Well to start with, it is a trademark of Google, *snort* who else?

A PageRank results from a "ballot" among all the other pages on the World Wide Web about how important a page is. A hyperlink to a page counts as a vote of support.

The PageRank of a page is defined recursively and depends on the number and PageRank metric of all pages that link to it ("incoming links"). A page that is linked to by many pages with high PageRank receives a high rank itself. If there are no links to a web page there is no support for that page.

If you'd really like to read the algorithm particulars, go HERE

The maximum amount of PageRank in a site increases as the number of pages in the site increases

The only way to increase the maximum is to add more inbound links and/or increase the number of pages in the site.

While I recommend creating and adding new pages to increase a site's total PageRank so that it can be channeled to specific pages, there are certain types of pages that should not be added. These are pages that are all identical or very nearly identical and are known as cookie-cutters. Google considers them to be spam and they can trigger an alarm that causes the pages, and possibly the entire site, to be penalized. Pages full of good content are a must.

Outbound links are a drain on a site's total PageRank. They leak PageRank. To counter the drain, try to ensure that the links are reciprocated. Because of the PageRank of the pages at each end of an external link, and the number of links out from those pages, reciprocal links can gain or lose PageRank. You need to take care when choosing where to exchange links.

To a spider, www.domain.com/, domain.com/, www.domain.com/index.html and domain.com/index.html are different urls and, therefore, different pages. Surfers arrive at the site's home page whichever of the urls are used, but spiders see them as individual urls, and it makes a difference when working out the PageRank. It is better to standardize the url you use for the site's home page. Otherwise each url can end up with a different PageRank, whereas all of it should have gone to just one url.

And after all of that info has crossed your eyes, you can check your site's PageRank HERE. And you can even grab Google's handy code to put the PageRank live on your site!

I don't understand the lure of wanting music on your blog. That's probably because I'm on dial-up and sites that use music take forever to load, and I get three second snippets of music every fifteen seconds until the whole thing has loaded.

And music always takes up a lot of bandwidth, which can make the connection timeout on you...but with all that said, if you still want music...

If you would like to make digital voice clips, go here to Gabcast.

To upload music from like an iPod or MP3 player:

First you need to host your music somewhere. I'm a Google nut, so the first place I'd say would be Google Pages. You have to make a GMail account to use the pages and if you don't already have one...BEWARE! Because creating a GMail account will override your email account that has Blogger.

If you don't want a GMail account, create a Google Group *snort*...you can be a group of one, but it will give you a whopping 100MB of file space where you could upload all of your music, for free!

So you've opened a group, uploaded your music file. Now copy down the URL for the file.

Then go Dashboard >>> Layout >>> When the Page element page opens, click on "Add a Page Element. Choose a HTML/JavaScript element.

Copy this code into the Page element:


<embed src="URL of your audio or video file" loop="false" width="400" height="300" autostart="false" type="video/x-ms-asf"></embed >

The parts of this code are:

The URL of your music at the freehost of your choice.

Loop can be set to false, so the piece doesn't continually repeat. Set it to true if you want a particular sound like waves to keep repeating.

The height and width which you can change to fit your particular sidebar.

Autostart set at false lets your visitor start the music themselves...they will love you for this!

And the last part, type...tells you what kind of file it is. For example:

An MP3 file would be: type="audio/x-ms-mp3"
A AVI file would be: type="audio/x-ms-avi"
A MPEG file would be: type="video/x-ms-mpg" (or what ever they call it)

You can also put a Player on your blog, by going to Google Gadgets. They have 12 players from MP3's to YouTube and Podcasts.

UPDATE: You can have your MP3 Links:
<a href="my_file.mp">Link</a>

Automatically turn into a little simple player by adding this code into your HTML:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://googlepage.googlepages.com/player.js"></script>

by Bonnie Calhoun

We've already discussed how to sign up for the search engines, including Google. See the post about Search Engines or click on the Label that I made for it.

Today I'm going to go through what it takes to make sure that your site is being crawled correctly by the spiders...LOL...That sounds cool, doesn't it?

One of the first things you need to be aware of is Google Blog Search Ping Service. You can ping your blog here to get Google to crawl it.

Then after you ping your blog, go and check for it to register on Google Blog Search. Now if it doesn't show up right away, don't worry!

Go sign yourself up with Google Alerts. When you sign up for this put the URL (address of your blog) in the top box, where it says search terms. The when your blog updates, you can tell how long it takes the spiders to crawl your blog, because Google will send you an email, every time you update!

Next thing...and I've addressed this in the Search Engine post is your site map. You can set this up with Google WebMaster Central. Now I can't say enough good stuff about these tools on this site. You can set up your site map, you can find out if your site is being indexed by Google, a Help Center, and multiple other tools!

I gave you instructions before on how to setup your site map, but make sure that when your done you get the little (1) on the column that says site map. After you've set up your site map, check the crawl rate.

Click on the tool for setting up a site map. This will be the page where you get the little (1) under the site map column. Click on the title of your blog and it takes you to the Diagnostics page that tells you all about your crawl rate, the errors, and tools.

Your crawl rate should be set to normal because it will tell you that at the slower rate: "A slower crawl will reduce Googlebot's traffic on your server, but we may not be able to crawl your site as often."