BE A SUCCESSFUL BLOGGER

You may notice the numbers behind labels like this:

work(4)
love(7)
sleep(1)

Suppose, if you want to use your labels as a link list, you can very well do it, by giving different labels for all the posts.

Give the heading of the posts as the labels. Now, you would like to remove the numbers behind them. Here is a simple way to do it.

Go to Dashboard --- Layout --- Edit Html and click the box to expand widgets.

Now look for this code using find option.

(<data:label.count/>)

Just delete it and save your template. Finished.

I have used labels as links in my blogs. Click here to see the examples: Plumed Poems, வாழ்த்துப் பாடல்கள். (opens in new window)

-Sumazla.

By default, last post comes first. Suppose if we want a particular posts to come on the main page, all we have to do is small change in the date. In the 'Create New Post Page', there is 'Post Options' link which you see, in the picture below in left side.
Click it to expand, where you can see post date and time. Now make change in the date, so that it is slightly advanced than the date of your last post. Now your desired post is shown in the main page.

Also, if you dont want to allow readers comment for a particular post, you can change it as you wish, in the left side of it.

-Sumazla.

The logic is the last post will come on the main page. We can decide the number of posts to appear on the main page. The default value is 7. But if 7 posts appear on the main page, it takes some time for the page to load. To over come this, we can change this.

Go to Dashboard. Click Layout. In that, click 'Edit' under BLOG POSTS. IN that, first option is 'Number of posts on the main page'. Give the value you want. If you want one post, then give one. Save your settings.

Suppose you are writing in your blog regularly, and readers comment on old post. You may not notice it, unless you open that post. If you get a notification of comments through email, you will not miss any of them. you can do it easily.

Go to SETTING tab. Select the fourth sub tab, comments. Scroll down to see the last option : Comment Notification Email. Enter your email address in which you want to receive the comments. you can enter upto 10 emails. Save setting. Now, you can read the comments, through emails without opening the blog.

-Sumazla.

In the blogs, you can see a link as Followers. That means, if dont want to miss any posting of a particular blog, you can add yourself as a Follower. It is very simple and easy.

Click the link, 'Follow' and sign in using your gmail userid and password. Thats all finished. Close it.

Now open www.blogger.com and sign in using your same gmail user id and password. You enter 'Dashboard'. In the second half of the page, you can 'Reading List' where, the posts of the blogs you follow are listed. It gets updated itself and you can see the blog posts of all the blogs you follow in that. So you can easily know which blog is updated with out ever opening that blog.

-Sumazla

When you start a blog, you give a name for it as http://sumazla.blogspot.com. Later you may want to change your name. There is an easy way to do it.

Log on to www.blogger.com. Go to SETTINGS tab. In that, you can see number of sub tabs. Out of it, second tab is 'PUBLISHING'. Select that.

Now you can see the name of your blog in a small box. Click on the box and change the name. Click the 'check availability' link below to check, if it already exist. Enter the word verification and click 'SAVE SETTINGS' button.

Thats all. Now your blog's name is changed. You change it any number of time.

-Sumazla

Label is a useful widget for blog. Suppose, your blog is about flowers, and you want to post three topics on roses and three topics on lotus and four topics on lilies. Then you use labels.

When you are posting, you see "Labels for this post:" in the bottom of your window. Add what ever you want in that. Here in our example, type lotus, roses or lilies accordingly and publish post. Now you have posted totally 10 posts where three about roses, three about lotus and four about lilies.

Now go to layout and click "ADD A GADGET". In the window that opens, select LABELS and click SAVE. Now save your layout and view the blog.

You see like this in the side bar:
lilies(4)
lotus(3)
roses(3)

When you click this link, you get all the related posts.

When you enter your label names, you see a link, "Show all". when you click this, you get a list of all the labels you have already entered. Suppose if you want to give two or more labels for a single post, you can separate them using commas.

-Sumazla.

You may have seen the navigation bar in the blog. If you want to design your blog like a professional website, you may want to remove or hide your navigation bar. Here are the simple steps to do it.

First open the 'LAYOUT.' In that, third tab is 'EDIT HTML'. Click to open that. Now, you can see html codings of your blog template.

Search for the word, 'Page structure' in the codings. Somewhere under that just copy and paste the code I give below.

/* CSS to hid navigation bar */
#navbar
{
height:0px;
visibility:hidden;
display:none
}

Save the settings. Finished. Just see your blog. The navigation bar is gone.

CHANGING TEMPLATES

Now lets see how to change your template. Changing template is very easy. You have a set of templates in your blogger itself. Or you can download free templates available in the net and upload it.

Go to dashboard, and the select layout under the blog for which you want to change the template. Under layout, you see 5 tabs. In that 4th tab is PICK NEW TEMPLATE. Click that.

You get a new collection of templates than what you have seen when creating a blog. Select your desired template and click SAVE TEMPLATE button.

Now you got your new template.

Suppose if you want templates with flowers and other pictures, free templates are available on the net. Search for them and download them and save them. Then go to LAYOUT and click on the third tab, EDIT HTML. Then there is a BROWSE button and UPLOAD button. You can upload from your computer directly.

You should not change your templates often. Because, when you upload a template, then the old widgets like, 'FOLLOWERS, BLOG ARCHIEVE' may get deleted.

CHANGING FONTS AND COLOURS

Go to layout. Second tab under it is FONTS AND COLOUR. Click it. TEXT COLOUR, POST TITLE COLOUR, HEADER COLOUR, SIDEBAR FONTS, TITLE FONTS etc, etc are displayed in a scroll box. You should select what you want and change it into the desired font and colour. You can also change the background colour of your blog.

Once you change, the preview will appear below. You can scroll to see the changes taking effect. Now if you are satisfied with all the changes you have done, click SAVE CHANGES button. If you dont want the changes to take effect, click CLEAR EDITS button.

Thats all. Now I think you understood how to change templates and fonts and colours of your blog.

Now, go to dashboard of your blogger. Under the name of your blog, you a see a link as layout. This is very important. This lay out does all the magic in designing your blog. Now click layout.
A page opens like this.

Now you can see 5 sub tabs under lay out. They are 'page elements', 'fonts and colours', 'edit html', 'pick new template' and 'monetize'. First lets see about page elements in this chapter.

What are page elements? In my blog you can see a heading, and the posting under it, and a side bar, which contains the topics of the posts and some links. These are called as page elements. These page elements or the picture what you see above are nothing but the blueprint of your blog.

Here in this, you see, 'Add and arrange page elements', 'preview', 'clear edits', and 'save' button. Under that you see a blue colour strip called as Navbar or Navigation bar. Now there is an edit link in the bar. Just click on it. A new popup window opens, where you can change the colour of your navigation bar, to suit the template.

Below that you see the strip as header. It shows the title you gave for your blog as 'flowers'. There is an edit link in that also. Click on it to edit the title.

Now a pop up window opens like this. You can change the blog's title in the first column. And you can tell something more about your bl0g in the tab, 'Blog Description' which comes under your blog title in small fonts.

You can also add images from your computer or from the web. This is the method how I bring flowers or some pictures in my title. Again you have to decide where to place your pictures, whether behind the title or instead of the title. And if you want your picture to the size of your title, choose to tick the option, 'Shrink to fit'. If not, leave it blank. Once you finished, click on the save button.

Now you see a big square as blog posts and an edit link at the bottom of it. Click the link, to get a popup window. Here, you can choose how many posts you want to appear in a page?( I always choose one), whether you want your name, date and time you want to appear? Customize them as you wish and save it.

Again, you see something in the side bar as 'Add a Gadget'. Click on it. You get a big list. Choose whatever you want in your blog and click on the + mark in that. A pop up window opens, for each widget, where you can customize them as you wish.

If you want to insert a picture, a poll, or rich text, labels or java script, you can use them. First it will appear confusing. But I will teach you then and there, the use of some important widgets.

Now when you open a blog, you have some widgets by default, like 'Followers', Blog Archive' and 'About me'. This you can see in the page elements page. If you dont want them, just click on the edit link below that widget and there is an option as 'Remove' in the popup window that opens. Click on it and save. Thats all. Like this, you can add a widget and remove them whenever you like.

Lets see other options in the next chapter.
-Sumazla

In fact to start your first post, do not start from the 'START BLOGGING' option as in the last chapter, last picture. Instead, just close that window.

Again go to http://www.blogger.com/ and sign in. You will get a view as you see in the picture below.

First what you see in the left side is your profile. you can view it, edit it as you like. You can also add your favourite photo in your profile.

Now you see as 'Manage Blogs'. Under that you see the title of your blog, which you gave as flowers. Under that you see 5 tabs. If you want to post in your blog, click 'NEW POST' button and start posting. If you want to edit the post which you have already posted, click the 'Edit Posts' link. And the other two links, 'settings' and 'layout' we will see later. If you want to view your blog, click the link ' View Blog'. when yo click on the small squares near the 'View Blog' link, the blog opens in a new window.

When you click, 'NEW POST' you get a page as above. There are three tabs here, POSTING, SETTIGS, LAYOUT, and the other one 'VIEW BLOG'. In those three tabs, there are some sub tabs. Under 'POSTING' tab, you can see three tabs as 'Create', 'Edit Posts', 'Comment Moderation'. It opens default in 'Create' tab enabling you to create post. You have to click on the 'Edit Posts' tab to edit your posts. 'Comment Moderation' is a link to a tab in 'Settings'. So we can leave it now.

Now to create a post, in the column for titles, give a title for your posts. What we give are all editable later. You can choose your desired font, choose size, colour, and hyperlink your texts to some sites and align of your choice. You can insert, pictures or videos into your posts. There is a small icon near the tick mark, in the picture you see above. And in the right side you can see two tabs as : 'Edit Html', and 'Compose'. This is very important. I will tell about it later. Any way when you click Edit Html tab, you can see the Html view of your posting.

Near that, you can see a link as preview. Click upon that to see the preview of your post before posting. When you are viewing, it turns into 'Hide Preview', on clicking which, the preview disappears.

In the bottom you can see, Post options, which on clicking, expands, to show you whether to allow or not readers Comments. You can choose as you wish. Now you get the Post date and time. You can leave it as it is. How ever if you want to post on a pre-date, you can change it.

Now you see something as 'Labels for this post'. You need not enter anything in that. You can leave it blank. I will tell about labels, later.

If you want to publish your post for the readers' view, click on the red colour 'PUBLISH POST' button. If you want just to save your post and publish later, click on the blue button ' SAVE NOW'. How ever the post is auto saved every few minutes.

And if you want to return to the list of all the posting you have made so far in this particular blog, click on the 'Return to list of posts' link under the buttons.

Now out of three tabs, we have seen about the tab ' Posting'. Let us see about 'Page Elements', in the next chapter.

-Sumazla

First of all, what is a blog? A blog is just like a website, but it is provided free of cost. You can write anything on your blog, you can put your family pictures, and upload favourite videos and do much more, using it. Once you understand how to do these things, blogging is a real fun. Many people do blogging as their hobby.

No html, no technical jargons, no computer language is needed to start and run a blog. It is done in just few clicks. Follow this blog and you could develop one very easily.

All blogs, which blogger.com gives has a suffix as ' .blogspot.com'. That is, if you name your blog as sumazla, then the url of the blog goes as, http://sumazla.blogspot.com/

In this blog, I am going to teach you in easy English, how to create a new blog, some advanced blogging techniques and how to earn through blogs. Once you created a new blog, there are some techniques, though which you can make your blog look like a professional website. And by displaying ads on your blogs, you can also earn through them, mostly as 'pay per click'.

Now, first of all, you should have a gmail account. If you dont have one, go to http://www.gmail.com/ and create one. Even if you have an account already, it is my advice, to create a new account exclusively for blogging.

Now go to http://www.blogger.com/. You will get a page like the picture below. Type your gmail user id and password here. You are typing gmail user id for blogger, because, gmail and blogger belong to the same family.

Click sign, and you will be taken to a page, as you see below:

In this page, you have to enter your display name, that is you have to enter either your name or your nick name. You can easily change it later. Tick in the small square to accept the terms and click red colour 'continue' button. A new page opens now.
Here, in this page you have to give a suitable title for your blog. Suppose you are going to write about Flowers in your blog, then give the title as, 'Flowers'. You can change it later. Next comes the blog address. This is your website address, which you and other people going to type in the explorer, to view your blog. You cannot change this later. So make it easier for people to remember. This is just like creating your email id. You have to check for the availability of the particular address you give. Suppose if you want to give the address as sumazla, type sumazla into the space; then it automatically takes the blogspot suffix and your url will be http://sumazla.blogspot.com/ . Now click continue button. You get a page like this.
You will be asked to choose a template. Templates means design of your blog, how it looks like. You can choose your desired template, but can easily change it later. The posts, contents of your blog will not be spoiled when you change your template at a later time. Instead it is transported to the new template. Now as you selected the template, click continue button. Congrats! You have successfully, created your blog. But still, your blog is empty. You must put some quality content into it. It is called blogging or posting. Now you can, either click, the START BLOGGING, red colour button to start to post immediately, or just log off to post at your leisure.

I will teach you how to start posting in my next chapter. This blog will be updated twice a week.

-Sumazla.