Keyboard Shortcuts for Posting with Blogger

Keyboard shortcuts are a feature I find incredibly useful. Most of our favourite applications offers shortcuts to perform tasks, such as the generic CTRL+S to save or CTRL+B to generate bold text in word processing programs (the "Command"/CMD button for Mac users).

Blogger offers us a range of keyboard shortcuts we can use when creating and editing our blog posts to perform some most-used tasks without having to scroll around to find their appropriate buttons.

The following shortcuts have been tested to work in Internet Explorer 6+, although at present not all of these work in Firefox, Chrome and Opera*:

Shortcut	Function	browser compatibility
CTRL+B	Bold Text	Yes
CTRL+I	Italic text	Yes
CTRL+U	Underline text	Yes
CTRL+L	Blockquote (when in Edit HTML mode only)	No
CTRL+Z	Undo last operation	Yes
CTRL+Y	Redo last operation	Yes
CTRL+SHIFT+A	Insert Hyperlink	No
CTRL+SHIFT+P	Preview Post	No
CTRL+D	Save as Draft	No
CTRL+P	Publish Post	Yes
CTRL+S	Autosave	Yes
CTRL+G	Indic Transliteration	No

* Mac users substitute CTRL for CMD 

I've tested the shortcuts above in Firefox 3.63, Internet Explorer 7/8,Flock and Chrome, though have yet been unable to test in Opera (so if anyone is able to do this, please let us know your findings in the comments!).

The Blogger Team are aware that some keyboard shortcuts do not work across all browsers and are working through the issues.

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IdblogNetwork Adsense Indonesia

Blogger friends already know, what it IdBlogNetwork? In his official website, IdBlogNetwork mentioned as follows:

IdblogNetwork is a startup that didirkan by market needs, the founder IdblogNetwork are people who experienced in the world of IT and Digital Advertising, we saw a need for advertisers to do personalized marketing communications approach is through the bloggers.

In short, IdBlogNetwork is adsense. Lots of programs that are here, PPC, PPA, Pay Per Post, Pay Per Tweet. With a sizable fee. This makes the bloggers became interested in registering as a publisher IdBlogNetwork.

The other day in the event # dicipok, Ma'am Mubarika Damayanti deliver, there could be a month from Rp 35jt IdBlogNetwork. Who would not want to if so?

To be able to register as a publisher IBN was a bit unique, that takes 2 (two) or email reco email recommendation. Dont know what this means. But clearly I think to filter blogs that was really good quality and meet the TOS IBN. 

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How to Use Guest Blogging to Make Your Blog a Success

I can remember clearly when I just started my blog, on the second of April 2010. I didn’t know exactly what I was doing then, but I just knew, somehow, that my blog will grow to a stage where it is read by thousands of people every month. After a few months of blogging, I read a lot of articles giving tips on how to market a blog and drive traffic to it, I implemented as many tips as I came across, but none of them was as effective as guest blogging.

I discovered guest blogging around 2 months or so of starting my blog, and even though I expected it to be just like every other blog marketing tactic I’ve implemented, I was surprised to see my first guest post send me 50 visitors the week it went live. For a newbie, that was much, and I made up my mind to be using guest blogging to market my blog ever since.

8 months later, my blog got to a stage where it is getting 10,000 visitors monthly, and a stage where it is bringing me clients making me thousands of dollars monthly. It’s now 1 and a half years of starting my blog, and it is already getting over 30,000 visitors every month – Yes, that’s 30k monthly visitors, for a blog that is less than 2 years!

While that traffic isn’t that impressive to some bloggers, it is more than what most people achieve in 2 years of starting their blog. Mind you, I’m not trying to paint myself as a genius, because all that would have been impossible if not for guest blogging. Instead, I will be showing you how to use guest blogging to make your blog a success.

Determine Your Approach

I didn’t know much when I started blogging, so I didn’t have an approach. In fact, I hardly really knew what it meant to have an approach, but after guest blogging on blogs of all sizes in the last two years I have come to see how important having an approach can be.

If you want to achieve success with your guest posts, you need to have an approach. In other words, you need to know how you plan to use guest blogging to grow your blog, and how you want to go about it. It won’t be advisable to just start guest blogging on other blogs in your field without an end goal in mind.

For example, in my own opinion, there are two major approach you can follow. The first one is the approach of only guest blogging on big blogs in your niche. That way you will have prepared your blog to be able to convert your traffic in the best way possible. Since most big blogs send 100′s of visitors per guest post, if you are able to land 5 guest posts on 5 top blogs in your niche at an average of 400 visitors per guest post, that will be 2,000 visitors in one month. If you’re able to convert just 25% of the traffic you get from your guest posts on those 5 top blogs you will be able to get 400 subscribers every month. If you continue at that pace you will have at least 4,800 subscribers in the next one year, just from your guest posts.

The second approach is that of targeting small blogs. Since most small blogs will hardly send you any traffic, your main approach will be to focus your guest posts on sending high quality traffic to your blog on the long run. How can this be possible? You will be leveraging SEO.

Search engines value links from other blogs, and by effectively guest blogging on smaller blogs you can build quality backlinks to inner pages on your site. While this might not send you great traffic initially, it can lead to thousands of visitors to your blog monthly from the search engines in the next few months.

Prepare Your Blog for the Traffic to Come

While having the right approach is important, having an approach isn’t enough to make your guest blogging a success. You need to realize that people won’t just subscribe to an empty blog, and a poor blog is just like an empty blog.

You should work on creating your blog in such a way that you can effectively convert a large part of the traffic you will be getting to subscribers. This means you should work on having a nice conversion-focused design. You should work on having a consistent content schedule, and you should have a plan to monetize your blog in place.

The major mistake most people make with guest blogging isn’t the mistake of not writing the perfect guest post, it is the mistake of not preparing their blog for the traffic to come.

Make sure your blog is in the right state to capture the traffic from your guest posts, and you will be able to build your own community of raving fans over time.

Read More - How to Use Guest Blogging to Make Your Blog a Success

Easy Post Summaries and Thumbnails for Blogger Blogs - No JavaScript Required!

The ability to display post summaries and automatic thumbnails is one of the most sought-after Blogger customizations. Using such a feature enables us to create a cohesive layout on non-item pages with the entire post and full-sized image on item pages.

Recent changes to Blogger's functionality now enables us to achieve this using only Blogger code - no need for JavaScript, awkward CSS customizations or restrictions on the length or format of our posts.

With only a few small changes to our Blogger template, we can display post summaries and thumbnails using this easy to manage hack.

How to add Blogger post summaries and thumbnails in three simple steps

Here's my step-by-step guide to the easiest solution for post summaries and thumbnails with Blogger:

Step 1 - Back up your template!

It is important to back up your Blogger template before making any edits. This ensures we can easily restore the working template if anything goes wrong.

To back up your Blogger template, go to Design>Edit HTML in your Blogger dashboard and click the Download Full Template link near the top of the page.

You'll be prompted to save an XML file to your computer hard drive - this XML file includes all of the HTML and widget templates required to display your current Blogger design. Be sure to save this in an easy to remember location and make a note of the file name in case you later need to restore your working template.

Step 2 - Add the code to display summaries and thumbnails on non-item pages

The next stage is to add the Blogger code which will display a summary and thumbnail of our posts. Go to Design>Edit HTML and check the Expand widget templates box and search for the following line of code:

<data:post.body />

Replace this line with the following code:

      <b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != "item"'>
          <b:if cond='data:post.snippet'>
          <b:if cond='data:post.thumbnailUrl'>
              <div class='Image thumb'>
                <img expr:src='data:post.thumbnailUrl'/>
              </div>
          </b:if>
            <data:post.snippet/>
    <b:if cond='data:post.jumpLink != data:post.hasJumpLink'>
      <div class='jump-link'>
        <a expr:href='data:post.url + "#more"' expr:title='data:post.title'><data:post.jumpText/></a>
      </div>
    </b:if>
          <b:else/>
            <data:post.body/>
          </b:if>
      <b:else/>
      <data:post.body/>
      </b:if>

Preview the change to your template and you'll see that your posts will appear in a format similar to this:

As seen in the screenshot above, the thumbnail appears above the summary. We can align the thumbnail more cohesively to the left or right of the summary by adding CSS to our template.

At this stage, you can choose to save the edit to your template or add the CSS and preview the final effect before committing the changes to your site.

Step 3 - Add CSS to align the thumbnail image

While still on the Design>Edit HTML section of your dashboard, search for the following line:

</b:skin>

Immediately before this line, paste the following CSS statement:

.thumb img {
  float: left;
  margin: 0 10px 10px 0;
}

This will align the thumbnail to the left of the post summary, and allow some distance between the thumbnail and text like this:

If you would prefer to align your thumbnail image to the right, paste the following code instead:

.thumb img {
  float: right;
  margin: 0 0 10px 10px;
}

Preview your template to see how this makes your posts appear on the home page. When you're happy with the layout, save your template and enjoy your automated thumbnails!

How this customization displays summaries and thumbnails

While simple to add to our Blogger template in order for the function to work, there is a lot of complex conditional code in use to ensure the summaries display as they should.

First, the code checks if the page being viewed is an item page or not. If the page is not an item page, the summary/thumbnail code will come into effect.

The second check discovers if a post snippet is available (i.e: if the post contains some text). If there is a snippet, the code checks if a thumbnail is available and displays the thumbnail if there is, followed by the snippet. Where no thumbnail is available (when the post does not contain an image), only the snippet is displayed.

If there is no snippet available for a particular post, the complete body of text is displayed normally. This ensures that posts with no content or which feature only an image are displayed normally; no thumbnail is displayed, and any images are displayed at full size.

Finally, the code checks if the post contains the <!-- more --> tag. If it does not contain this tag, a "Read more" link will be displayed beneath the snippet, ensuring visitors can easily click through to read the post page. Where a jump-link is present, this is displayed as normal after the snippet.

Phew! It's complicated to explain, but hopefully produces a foolproof set-up in which posts will be properly formatted no matter what the conditions.

What do you think?

I hope this solution will prove useful for anyone who wants to display automatic summaries and thumbnails in their Blogger powered blog without having to rely on JavaScript, CSS or by changing the method used to write blog posts.

Please feel free to leave your opinions or suggest improvements to this hack by leaving your comments below.

Read More - Easy Post Summaries and Thumbnails for Blogger Blogs - No JavaScript Required!