Blogging and webhosting

Blogger.com and Wordpress.com provides great free services for those bloggers who uses these blogging platforms for their blogs and are satisfied with what they can offer especially seeing that they are free. However, there will be bloggers who may want to do certain things that these hosted platforms cannot offer and have to resort to blogging software like Wordpress.org, Joomla or Drupal which requires you to host your own blog

And that is when they have to look into paid web hosting of which there are a multitudes of them. How do you choose with so varied a choice. The answer is to read web hosting reviews before you make your decision.

Now if you use the free web hosting of www.blogger.com or www.wordpress.com, the burden of security is lifted from your shoulder. But once you elect to host your own blog, you will need to also familiarize yourself with security so as to immunize yourself with hacking.

Another aspect is cPanel or control panels. What is a cPanel you may ask. cPanel is a Linux based web hosting control panel that provides a graphical interface and automation tools designed to simplify the process of hosting a web site.

Blogs, digital imaging and cameras

Whether it is providence or not I do not know, but not long after I shot off a request to Canon support requesting they point me to a showroom with staff knowledgeable about cameras and able to assist in the choice of a camera for snapping photos for an online directory, I received an email alerting me to this online camera buying guide.

Blogs are digital creatures with everything in it defined by zeros (0) and ones (1) and I am ancient enough to remember having to hunt high and low for a way to convert hard copy photo to digital. Now we are facing the happy reverse of almost every camera photos on offer to photo studios only giving the digital choice which is fine for digital blogs.

Perhaps before making the decision of buying a digital camera, it is good practice to consult some digital camera buying guide for a better informed decision. And if I am going to be using the camera only to upload photos to your blog, I think I would avoid those large bulky digital SLR cameras not only because of the cost, but mainly because they are extremely difficult to carry around and because they stand out tend to attract robbers eying easy prey.

QR Code Address Plaques for your blog

How would you like an address plaque for your blog, perhaps like the one below with the URL of this book:



However, note that if a visitor wants to go to the website addressed by that URL www.blogger-book.com, he would have to type it out. Too much hassle for the average visitor who would probably be too lazy to type the URL. But what if you can have a hard (print) copy hyperlink?

Now with this QR (Quick Response) Code which is pretty much like a hard copy hyperlink getting popular, one can actually have address plaques which are clickable hyperlinks like the one below with a QR Code printed on it:



If you have an Internet enabled mobile device with a camera, try first downloading and installing a QR Code Reader Apps like this popular Kaywa Reader, take a photo of the above QR Code address sign and bingo, you will be taken to this blog. Neat eh?

Adsense Privacy Policies Generator for publishers

If you are a Google AdSense publisher, you should know that for any of your blog or website which display AdSense ads, you are required to have an AdSense Privacy Policy. Here is the relevant part from Google AdSense Program Policies. If you just want to comply to their requirement and learn how to generate the policy, just go over to How to easily generate AdSense Privacy Policy):

Google Advertising Cookies:

AdSense publishers must have and abide by a privacy policy that discloses that third parties may be placing and reading cookies on your users' browsers, or using web beacons to collect information as a result of ad serving on your website.

Google uses the DoubleClick DART cookie on publisher websites displaying AdSense for content ads. Subject to any applicable laws, rules and regulations, you will have the sole and exclusive right to use all data derived from your use of the DoubleClick DART cookie for any purpose related to your business, provided that Google may use and disclose this data subject to the terms of Google's advertising privacy policies and any applicable laws, rules and regulations.

If your current advertising services contract with Google or DoubleClick already has a specific provision defining data ownership, that provision instead of this policy will govern with regard to the data collected under that contract.

What is the DoubleClick DART cookie?

The DoubleClick DART cookie is used by Google in the ads served on the websites of its partners, such as websites displaying AdSense ads or participating in Google certified ad networks. When users visit a partner's website and either view or click on an ad, a cookie may be dropped on that end user's browser. The data gathered from these cookies will be used to help better serve and manage ads on the publisher's site(s) and across the web.

What should I put in my privacy policy?

Your privacy policy should include the following information:

Third party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user's prior visits to your website.
Google's use of the DART cookie enables it and its partners to serve ads to your users based on their visit to your sites and/or other sites on the Internet.
Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the advertising opt-out page. (Alternatively, you can direct users to opt out of a third-party vendor's use of cookies by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out page.)
If you have not opted out of third-party ad serving, the cookies of other third-party vendors or ad networks may also be used to serve ads on your site, and should be disclosed in your privacy policy as well in the following manner.

Notify your site visitors of the third-party vendors and ad networks serving ads on your site.
Provide links to the appropriate vendor and ad network websites.
Inform your users that they may visit those websites to opt out of cookies (if the vendor or ad network offers this capability). Users can opt out of some, but not all, of these cookies in one location at the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out website at www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp.
Because publisher sites and laws across countries vary, we're unable to suggest specific privacy policy language. However, you may wish to review resources such as the Network Advertising Initiative for guidance on drafting a privacy policy.

How to easily generate AdSense Privacy Policy

It is tough to individually draft out an AdSense Friendly Privacy Policy to satisfy AdSense requirements especially if you have lots of blogs. For that purpose, I use privacy policies generators. There are many Privacy Policies Generator on the Internet. The one I use is this Privacy Policy Generator for Google Adsense Publishers by SERP Rank. Just fill in the blanks and click [Create my privacy policy] and it is generated for you.

However, the generated policy will contain your email address. I normally replaces that with a contact form. You can create your contact form by referring to How to create contact form to avoid email harvestors

When publishing the privacy policy, instead of publishing it as a normal post which goes into the archive and feed and may thus irritate your feed subscribers, publish it as a static page instead. How to create static pages for privacy policies etc.

To see how a privacy policy may look like, you may refer to Privacy Policies for Blogger Book

Privacy Policy for www.blogger-book.com/

If you require any more information or have any questions about our privacy policy, please feel free to contact us by email at my contact form

At www.blogger-book.com/, the privacy of our visitors is of extreme importance to us. This privacy policy document outlines the types of personal information is received and collected by www.blogger-book.com/ and how it is used.

Log Files
Like many other Web sites, www.blogger-book.com/ makes use of log files. The information inside the log files includes internet protocol ( IP ) addresses, type of browser, Internet Service Provider ( ISP ), date/time stamp, referring/exit pages, and number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track user’s movement around the site, and gather demographic information. IP addresses, and other such information are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable.

Cookies and Web Beacons
www.blogger-book.com/ does use cookies to store information about visitors preferences, record user-specific information on which pages the user access or visit, customize Web page content based on visitors browser type or other information that the visitor sends via their browser.

DoubleClick DART Cookie
.:: Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on www.blogger-book.com/.
.:: Google's use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to users based on their visit to www.blogger-book.com/ and other sites on the Internet.
.:: Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy at the following URL - http://www.google.com/privacy_ads.html

Some of our advertising partners may use cookies and web beacons on our site. Our advertising partners include ....
Google Adsense
Commission Junction
Clickbank
Amazon
Kontera

These third-party ad servers or ad networks use technology to the advertisements and links that appear on www.blogger-book.com/ send directly to your browsers. They automatically receive your IP address when this occurs. Other technologies ( such as cookies, JavaScript, or Web Beacons ) may also be used by the third-party ad networks to measure the effectiveness of their advertisements and / or to personalize the advertising content that you see.

www.blogger-book.com/ has no access to or control over these cookies that are used by third-party advertisers.

You should consult the respective privacy policies of these third-party ad servers for more detailed information on their practices as well as for instructions about how to opt-out of certain practices. www.blogger-book.com/'s privacy policy does not apply to, and we cannot control the activities of, such other advertisers or web sites.

If you wish to disable cookies, you may do so through your individual browser options. More detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers can be found at the browsers' respective websites.

2 new gadgets - Pages and Google Custom Search

The previous post on gadgets available via Blogger.com's LAYOUT "Add a gadget" tab showed 19 different gadgets. Now there are 21 altogether and here is a screen shot of the 2 new ones:

One of the new one is Pages which adds a list of tabs linking to static pages. I have written about them at Creating static pages for contact, FAQ, etc, via Blogger in Draft (Static pages no longer in Blogger in Draft but been integrated into the standard Blogger)

The other is the Google Custom Search which incidentally I already have added to this blog (right at the top of the main column) way before it became available via LAYOUT. This is because I am an AdSense publisher and can generate the script for the custom search via my AdSense ads setup.

Mailboxes for condominium and home

My house is under renovation and I am currently blogging from my temporary adobe, a condominium. What you see below are the mailboxes for the block which we are currently residing in:

and it reminds me that the 30 year old mailbox in our house which is under renovation is probably due to be changed to a smarter nicer looking one like the one below:



which is a classic looking column mail box which will fit into the stone pillar "guarding" the entrance to our home.

Unfortunately I do not have the photo of my sloopy old mail box in the stone pillar at the moment so unable to upload it here for you to compare, but anyway I think it is enough of talk of mail boxes as I think it is time to get back to some serious blogging.

The next post following this will be an update on the increase in gadgets available via the "Add a gadget" tab in Blogger's LAYOUT>

Young bloggers and online tuition

There are young bloggers who are still in schools and colleges. Now blogging and the Internet can be a very addictive activity which can steal much of their productive time and I sure hope none of them will go down the route I went when neglected exercise and my health when I became a blogging and Internet addict.

Young bloggers need to pay attention to their school and college work and some may want to consider further getting some form of homework help. The current generation are much more fortunate than us who have gone through that phase very much earlier when the Internet nor the computer haven't even been invented yet. Now with the ubiquitous Internet, tuition online is at the tip of their fingers which they can get without getting out from their home.

I believe that I probably wouldn't be too off the mark if I guess that the areas that most students need help with is probably math and algebra as these can involve very abstract ideas which takes time to absorb and comprehend.

Blogging, exercise and healthy hobby

It has been a good 5 years since I started blogging and I must say blogging and the Internet has brought me tremendous benefits and much joy to the extend that I had neglected the need to exercise and my health. That is, until I got a scare. The doctor said my blood pressure was 150/90 and wanted to put me on medicine. I told the doctor, if I start those hypertension medicine, I will have to take them for life. I wanted to try exercise and diet. I am pleased to report that at my last visit to that doctor, he told me I am not only OK but he would not even consider my case as pre-hypertension.

Well folks, do take note, do take care of your health, and do exercise and not be extreme and blog till ill health visiy you. You should read about my "conversation" with grandson regarding exercise and a wise commentator said, "Go buy the Shorts grand dad."

Well, I not only bought plenty of shorts, I also bought sport shoes and wondering if I should consider trial running shoes. I have also started exercising with exercise machines at the gym.

However, to be really healthy physically and mentally, one should also consider having more hobbies such as hiking, camping, etc. I have a couple of sleeping bags and used to have a tent for camping and enjoy the outdoor fun

Desktop, laptop tablet computer for blogging

A computer with access to the Internet is a minimum requirement for blogging unless you are moblogging (blogging using mobile phone). Undecided about whether to get a desktop computer or a laptop computer? Here is a Laptop versus Desktop computer comparison.

While reading this article Laptop Computer Buying Guide, I learned about tablet computers just like the one in the photo below:

Photo of tablet computer is property of Keian K

.

Here is another photo of a hybrid tablet computer which has the screen connected to the rest of the laptop by a pivot. You can swing the screen around, close the lid with the screen pointing outward and you have changed the laptop to a tablet computer:



Now if your blogging involves a lot of graphics, getting a tablet computer (a laptop or slate-shaped mobile computer, equipped with a touchscreen or graphics tablet/screen hybrid to operate the computer with a stylus or digital pen, or a fingertip, instead of a keyboard or mouse} is a very good idea.

Google Analytics user interface - video tutorial

Google Analytics is a visitor counter which gives you a huge amount of statistics and it may be a good idea to start using Google Analytics in addition to Statcounter.

To derive maximum benefits from Google Analytics, you should first familiarize yourself with its user interface, and you can easily do that by watching this video tutorial:



Transcript: This video provides a brief overview of how to use the Google Analytics interface. If you are new to Google Analytics, or you like to pick up a few tips on how to use some of the different features, this video is a good place to start.

When you first sign into your Google Analytics account, you'll see this screen which shows a list of your profiles. If you just started to use Google Analytics, you probably have just one profile. Click VIEW REPORTS to get started.

Let's look at the Dashboard, which is the first report you'll see. The Dashboard is where you put all the summary information about your site that you want to see at a glance. To add a report to the Dashboard, just go to the report that you want to add, and then click Add to Dashboard. And here, going back to the Dashboard, if I scroll to the bottom, is the traffic sources overview that I just added.

On the Dashboard itself, you can position the report summaries however you like, and delete the ones you don't need. One nice feature about the Dashboard is that it lets you jump directly to the specific report you've saved. So here, I jump directly from my Dashboard to a full report on California.

So now it may be a good time to your most important reports and put them on your Dashboard.

Finding Reports

In the left hand navigation, you will see each of the reports are organized into groups. Anything about visitors, whether they are located geographically, what their language preferences are, how frequently they come to your site, and which kind of computers and browsers they used, is found in the visitors section.

The traffic sources section show how people got to your site. This is where to look if you want to see which keywords people used, which ad they clicked on.

Content is all about the pages in your site. Which ones were the most popular, which ones served as entry pages to your site, and which ones were the pages from which people exited from your site.

If you have defined your conversion goals, the goals reports shows your conversions and conversion rates. The goals are website pages which visitors reach once they have made a purchase or completed another desired action such as a registration, or a download.

Defining goals and monitoring conversions is an important way to measure how well the site contributes to you business objectives.

The eCommerce section contains your merchandising, transaction and revenue activity reports.

You don't have to use the left navigations to get to your reports. The reports themselves contain links and suggestions to help you discover new information.

Setting the Date Range

The active date range is alway displayed on the upper right of your report. Click the your own date range and then type in your dates, or use the calendar or the timeline to select the date range. Click APPLY.

You can compare 2 date ranges against each other. Under comparison, select DATE RANGE. And here is a tip. Instead of for example just September and August, I am going to line up the dates so that I can compare weekdays with weekdays, and weekends with weekends. Since the first of September is a Friday, I am going to shift my 30-day comparison period, so that it start on Friday July 28^th instead of August 1^st. Next, I am going to active the COMPARE DATES option here.

Now when I look at the graph, I can make meaningful day-by-day comparisons, comparing Fridays to Fridays, Saturdays to Saturdays, and so forth.

Over-time Comparisons

On reports that contain graphs, you can select the matrix that you want to graph over time. In this report, we are graphing visits. So let's change it to AVERAGE PAGES PER VISIT. Or you can compare two matrix against each other. For example, here we are comparing average pages per visit versus the goal one conversion rate. There is the average visits in blue and the goal one conversionn rate in yellow.

Unless you are comparing 2 day ranges, you have the option of comparing matrix against the site average. Here we are looking at the average pages per visit for AdWord visitors, that is the blue line, versus the average pages per visit for the average visitor, that's the thin gray line.

Scorecards and Tables

Most reports have a score card, and then a table below the score card. The score card summarizes all the data that's included in the table. So here, for example, we are looking at the average traffic from 3 keywords. There were 57 visits from people who came in on these keywords, and on the average, each visitors are 18 pages and spend about a minute and a half on the site. Most of these visits were from new visitors, people who never been to the site before, and over 19% of them left after seeing only one page.

Looking down the table, you can see the same data broken down into each keyword. To look at your conversion and conversion rates, you click the goal conversion tab. To look at your eCommerce activities, you click the eCommerce tab.

The clicks tab is unique to the average report, and it shows you Adword specific matrix that we will look at in details in another video. You can always get an explanation for any one of these matrixs on the scorecard by clicking the question mark bubble.

You can segment the table in different ways using the segment pulldown. So if you want to see this average traffic broken by city, you just select CITY from the pull-down.

You can use the buttons at the upper right of the score cards to visualize your data as a pie chart, a bar graph, a comparison to the site matrixs. Or as an aggregate summary.

Emailing and exporting existing reports

Finally, you can facilitate information sharing and collaborative decision making by emailing the reports.

To email a report, click the email button that appears at the top of every report. You can send the report immediately, or set up a regularly scheduled email. Or you can add the report to an email that you already scheduled.

So now it might be a good time to try creating a few scheduled from your of your most important reports.

Exporting data in other formats is another tool in sharing and collaborating. To export a report, you just click the EXPORT BUTTON at the top of the report and select the format you want.

And here is a tip. If you want to create a high resolution print-ready presentation, export your report to PDF. The PDF reports are vector based, so they scale to large size and still looks great.

Copyright free content for blogs

Free articles for your blog

A few days ago I received an email alerting me of the existence of Article Alley which provides, while not exactly copyright free articles, free articles that you can republish in your blog. This was exactly what I want as I need a demo blog for a multi-columns template, namely Good Computer Software.

Although Article Alley did not specifically stated the conditions under which their articles can be republished, generally such content provider do require active links to their website as well as to the author.

Now Article Alley has conveniently provided a republish button which when clicked upon lead to a page where you can copy-paste the article as HTML or plain TEXT. Now assuming that Article Alley do require clickable links, if you use their plain text, you will probably have to type in the relevant HTML to make those required links active.

If you chose to use the HTML version, here are a few points you should take careful note of. Their HTML was created for normal websites and thus will contain codes that are not necessary for blogs. Let me elaborate. The HTML version for <
begins with

<html>
<head>
<title>Search Engine Optimization - The Key To Achieve Online Success</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Search Engine Optimization - The Key To Achieve Online Success</h1>
<div class="info">.......

Those first few lines in green are superfluous and should be left out. Start copy-paste from the line
<h1>.....

The ending lines of the codes for republishing are:

<div class="source">Article Source: <a href="http://www.articlealley.com/article_964906_81.html">http://www.articlealley.com/article_964906_81.html</a></div>
<div class="author">
<div class="authorBio"></div>
</author>
</body>
</html>

The last 2 lines in blue are also superfluous and should be left out.

Now there is one glaring mistake. The closing tag (in red) </author> is a mistake and should be replaced with </div>

I have republished from Article Alley: How to control cookies in Internet Explorer 6 at a demostration blog Good Computer Software: How to control cookies in Internet Explorer 6. Note the huge blank space between paragraphs. This is because Article Alley have included line break tags <br /> which caused the large blank spaces. What I did was to delete the line break tags and separated the paragraphs by clicking the return key to create a single line break.

To demonstrate, I have republished another article from Article Alley: Why is keeping the computer's registry clean is so important at Good Computer Software: Why is keeping the computer's registry clean is so important. Note that there are no large breaks between paragraphs. The paragraphs are all separated by a single line break.

Search Engine Optimization, PageRank and backlinks

If you value traffic to your blog, you would pay attention to getting backlinks (inbound links) from other blogs or websites to your blog for SEO (search engine optimization) and Google PageRank. One of the ways to get many backlinks is to submit articles to article directories like Article Alley.

Create or edit Blogger Profile

One of the feature of a blog is the blogger profile which is usually displayed in the sidebar if you choose to display the profile. When you first created your Blogger account, you would have chosen a display name and this will be reflected in the profile which will have minimal information.

If you want to edit your profile, first sign into your Blogger account to get to the Dashboard. At the top left, you will see a link EDIT PROFILE (see screen shot below):



Click on EDIT PROFILE and you will be taken to the profile editor where you can edit whatever you want to be displayed in your profile.

If you want your profile to be displayed in any blog, click on the LAYOUT tab and select the PROFILE gadget.

Video tutorial: Creating a Blog List with Blogger

Transcript of Video Tutorial: Creating a Blog List with Blogger

Creating a blog list with Blogger. You might be asking yourself, what is a blog list? At its most basic, a blog list, also known as a blog roll, is a list of links to your favorite blogs in your sidebar. In addition, a blog list can also show you the date of each blog last update, or even the title and snippets of its most recent post.

It's really easy to add a blog list. First, log into your Blogger account and click the LAYOUT link. If you don't see a LAYOUT, you probably is using a old Blogger classic template, in which case you will see a TEMPLATE link. If this is the case, you'll have to upgrade to LAYOUT in order to use the blog list feature. You can do so by clicking CUSTOMIZE DESIGN from within your TEMPLATE tab. You will then be prompted to upgrade your template.

From your DASHBOARD, click the LAYOUT link. Then click ADD A PAGE ELEMENT (now called ADD A GADGET). Next, select BLOG LIST. You can then name your blog list and decide how you would like to sort and whether or not you would like a snippet of each blog lastest post to appear. You can always come back to change your settings later. Finally, click ADD A BLOG TO YOUR LIST to begin building your blog list. If you use Google Reader, an option will appear to import your subscription to your blog directly. Otherwise, enter the URL of the blog you like to link to. Keep in mind that you aren't limited to just blogs. You can add a link to any webpage to your blog list. However, please note that snippets will only appear for webpages with a valid RSS feed. If snippets aren't appearing, try adding the URL of the RSS feed directly. That's it, enjoy your blog list.

Video tutorial: Adjusting your Blogger privacy settings

Transcript of Video Tutorial: Adjusting your Blogger privacy settings

Hi, my name is Eric Case, and I am Blogger Product Manager. Blogger.com is a service that let people share articles, photos, videos, journal entries with each other on the web. And so we have a couple of settings that we are going to show you
will let .....
that you can see what you are writing about. To adjust the privacy settings for your blog, click the SETTINGS tab in Blogger. You will be taken to the first tab that is called BASIC. If you add your blog to our listing and set to YES, it may be linked from blogger.com when you update it, which can send visitors to your blog. If this is set to NO, it wouldn't be linked from Blogger, but it will still be viewable on the public web. If you don't want certain blogs in your Profile to be viewable from Blogger, click EDIT DISPLAYED BLOGS and uncheck the boxes next to the blogs you don't want others to see.

Now we have another settings that let you control how search engines like Google interact with your blog. The default settings for letting search engines crawl and index your blog is YES, but if you select NO, then automatically search engines should respect that preference, and your blog shouldn't appear in any search results.

Now even if you select your SETTINGS to not let your blog be linked from blogger.com or let search engines crawl it, people can still visit your blog by going to your blog URL. To control access to your blog URL, go to SETTINGS, then click the PERMISSIONS tab. Once you're there, you can choose whether ANYBODY, or ONLY PEOPLE I CHOOSE or ONLY BLOG AUTHORS can view your blog via its blog URL.

If you want to let your friends post to your blog as well as it, click ADD AUTHORS and add the email addresses whom you would like to rant permission to co-author your blog. Thanks for watching.

Video tutorial: Adding a Google Gadget to your blog

Transcript of video tutorial: Adding a Google Gadget to your blog

Do you know that there are tens of thousands of cool applications, tools and games you can add to your blog? They are called gadgets, and you can add them directly to your blog by browsing the gadget directory. To add a gadget, click the LAYOUT link from your Dashboard.

If you don't see a LAYOUT link, you are probably still using the old Blogger classic template in which case you will see a TEMPLATE link. If this is the case, you will have to upgrade to LAYOUT in order to add Gadgets. You can do so by clicking CUSTOMIZE DESIGN from within your template tab. You will then be prompted to upgrade your template.

From your LAYOUT tab, click ADD A GADGET to view the gadget directory. You are probably already familiar with the basic gadgets you can add to your blog. You can also access thousands of third party gadgets by browsing the different categories on the left sidebar (or use the search box to search for gadget).



You can add anything from specialized local content to tools to make your blog more useful. You can even add ways to interact with your readers and games that your readers can play. Once you find a gadget you like, just click the plus sign to add to your blog. Next, decide how you would like to customize your gadget and click SAVE.

You can now click and drag your gadget to change the position on your blog. You can even add your own creation to the gadget directory. If you have already created your gadget, click ADD YOUR OWN in the left sidebar of the gadget directory. You will then be prompted to enter the URL of your gadget. If you haven't created your gadget yet, but would will like to, there is plenty of documentation and help available online at code.google.com/apis/gadgets/

Contact Me

Video Tutorial Purchasing and setting up custom domain through Blogger

Transcript of video tutorial: Purchasing and setting up a Custom Domain through Blogger

Have you ever wanted your own custom domain for your blog? Now it is easy to purchase and setup your own custom domain directly through Blogger. There is no need to buy online storage space. You can still continue to use Blogger free hosting. To set up a custom domain for your blog, first log into your Blogger account and visit your SETTINGS and PUBLISHING tabs. Click SWITCH TO CUSTOM DOMAIN. If you already own your own domain, click SWITCH TO ADVANCED SETTINGS for instructions on pointing it to your blogspot blog. Otherwise, enter your desired domain into the field provided to see if it is available and to begin the purchase process. Domains cost 10 dollars each and will be registered for 1 year. Keep in mind that your existing blogspot address will still direct readers to your blog. Once you found an available domain, click CONTINUE. Next, you will need to fill out your domain registration. Be sure to chose whether or not you like your registration information to be listed in the WHOIS directory. By default, your information will be unlisted. Accept the Terms of Service (TOS) and choose whether or not you want your domain registration to be automatically re-registered each year. Next, you input your billing information to Google Checkout. Once you finished, click AGREE AND CONTINUE. Next, review your purchase and place your order. Now your custom domain is set up. Click VIEW BLOG to see your blog at this new domain. Although your blog may appear immediately, please note that it may take up to 3 days for blog to transition to your new domain. Have fun with your custom domain.

Video tutorial: How to use Mobile Blogging

Transcript of Video Tutorial: How to use Mobile Blogging

Have you ever wanted to post to your blog, but you weren't nearby a computer? Well, with Blogger For Mobile, you can now post to your blog with the cell phone from anywhere in the world. It is very simple. All you need is any type of cell phone with text or media messaging capability. Any smart phone or regular phone will do. In this video, we will show how you can post to your blog using an iPhone. There are 2 ways you can post to your blog from any cell phone.

First way is write a post with a text message from your phone. If you live in the US, you can send your text message to B L O G G E R or in numerical terms, that is 256-447. Next, write your post. Please note that every 150 characters count as a separate text message and standard text message rates will apply. Once you finished writing your post, click SEND. After you send your post, you will receive a response from Blogger within a few minutes with your new MOBILE BLOG URL and the claim token.

The second way to post to your from your phone is to take a picture from your phone and send a picture message as a MMS or email to go@blogger.com, and your iPhone will send it as an email. Select EMAIL PHOTO, type in go@blogger.com into the TO field and subject if you like, or just a click SEND. A few minutes after you send your message, you will receive a response from Blogger with a claim token and your Mobile Blog URL.

Once you receive your claim token, go to go.blogger.com. You can then enter your CLAIM TOKEN in the text box. Also, enter the required captcha and click CONTINUE. If you are already logged in your Blogger account, click CONTINUE AS THIS USER. Otherwise, you can sign into your Blogger account and continue. You will then have the option to associate your mobile post with one of your existing blogs. If you rather create a brand new blog, then scroll down and click CONTINUE. You will then be able to change the title and URL of your new Mobile Blog. Enter a title and the desired URL into the text boxes and click CONTINUE. Next, select your favorite template for your Mobile Blog. That's it, you have created a Mobile Blog. Now everytime you send a mobile post from your cell phone, it will automatically post to your Mobile Blog. Go have fun mobile blogging.

Video tutorial: create podcast Blogger

Transcript of video tutorial: Creating a podcast with Blogger

Did you know that you can turn your Blogger blog into a podcast? A podcast is a way to broadcast a series of audio files over the Internet, and it can be used for a variety of purposes, such as syndicating your own weekly Internet talk show or for making your own online mix tapes. The best part of a podcast is that people subscribed to your blog will be notified of new episodes automatically and can even load unto their portable MP3 player. To get started, you will need a place online to store your recordings. Blogger does not offer hosting services for audio files at this time. However, there are plenty of provider of online storage space that offer both paid and free hosting services.

http://box.net
http://bluehost.com
http://movedigital.com
http://dreamhost.com

Once you have uploaded your files to your webhost of choice, you will need to enable enclosure links. From your Dashboard, click SETTINGS. Next, click the FORMATTING tab. Set the SHOW LINK FIELDS options to YES. When composing a post, you'll see an option to ADD ENCLOSURE LINK. Click this link and enter the URL of your hosted audio files, and your blog will instantly become a podcast. Consider each post of your blog to be a new episode your podcast. Let us try hearing your podcast by using some popular RSS readers or pod gadgets. To add your podcast to Google Reader, just enter your blog URL in the ADD SUBSCRIPTION box. Your podcast should appear when your audio control panel for each entry if you have enclosed your links correctly. In ITEMS, pull the the ADVANCED menu and select SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST. Enter your blog's feed URL. Keep in mind that your blog's feed URL is your blogspot address followed by /feed/post/default. Your podcast should appear when your blog's title as the name of the podcast. Each episode title will correspond to the title of your post and the description will contain the text of your post. If you have further questions, please visit the Blogger Help Center at http://help.blogger.com or leave a comment.