Sunday, December 23, 2007

Labels below post title above post content: Test

Got a funny request from a blogger who is using an old classic Blogger template to move the labels to above the post content just below the post title. Although since I migrated practically all my blogs over to the New Blogger templates, I have hardly looked at an old classic Blogger template and not exactly what may have changed since Blogger forced all bloggers to migrate over to New Blogger (formerly Blogger Beta) though one still have the choice of keeping or using the old classic Blogger template.

However, after the change, there are some features added to blogs using old classic templates including the ability to add Labels (more commonly known as categories). The difference is that you will not have the New Blogger easy drag and drop LAYOUT and you will not be able to add a Link List in the sidebar. There is a work around at Label List for old classic Blogger templates. However, I would not know if I will be able to find the code to display the labels at the bottom of blogs using old classic Blogger templates or not. I tried looking in Furniture Center which uses Final Sense old classic Blogger template they called "109 business blog 1". I tried looking but failed. Maybe when I have time, I will try a standard old classic Blogger template and see if I can edit the template to put the labels below the post Header.

I tried that with a blog Blogger Help Pages which uses Hackoshere 3 column New Blogger Minima template and found that I could do it. You can get instruction on how to do it at Labels below post title.

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Brochure stands to promote business blog: Test

I have recently been asked to help set up a blog to help recruit insurance agents for a sister-in-law of mine who is an insurance agency manager for a large insurance company. That is not a problem, but the big question is, how to draw traffic to the blog? There are various ways, one of which is using SEO (Search Engine Optimization). But that is a pretty time consuming task if you want to do a good job. However, once done, it is long lasting. What are the other ways? She said she is prepared to invest, which opens the possibilities of advertising. What are the alternatives?

Google AdWords

One easy way, if you are prepared to spend money, is using Google AdWords. But my sister-in-law will like to get only respondents from certain towns or region. I was told by AdWord that for my country, we can only target by country, not by region or town. However, it is possible to us a "trick", that is, using IP addresses. Problem is, I am not too familiar with IP addresses. I suspect that may be quite a task as I use ADSL with dynamic IP address, and I can see my IP address changes drastically from day to day. I will check with Contact Google AdWords Support and see if they can help me.

By the way, if you too are interested in using Google AdWords, you can apply for a Google AdWords account via the "Target your ads. Get Google AdWords" referral link at Advertising Tips and Tricks at the top of the leftmost sidebar.

Using brochures to bring regional traffic to website

brochure standSince using Google AdWords may be problematic, perhaps using brochures with information plus the URL of the website printed on the brochure may help bring the regionally targeted visitors to the website as we can choose only distribute the brochures in targeted regions.

I believe the least labor intensive way is to use brochure stands rather than go leafleting. All one need to do is to stuff the brochures into the brochure stands and place them at strategic places for people passing by to pick up the brochures. If one can spare the time and have sufficient budgets or manpower, one can stand beside the brochure stands plus get helpers to do the same at other locations to help explain what it is all about. Perhaps in our country where we cannot use regional targeting for Google AdWords, this may be the way to get the right visitors to the website.

Perhaps we should test this out and see if it is effective. I think I will discuss with my sister-in-law.

Sunday, December 09, 2007

Favicon for your blog: Test

Here is the photo (in .ico format) of Enviroman, meant for the Favicon for Enviroman Says but don't know if photo in ico format can be uploaded:

Update: ico format cannot be uploaded from your photo. Looks like the site

http://www.genfavicon.com/

I want to test for Favicon for my environmental blog Enviroman Says cannot be used unless, I think, you host your own blog. The site only regenerate an ico format photo from your jpg gif and png formats and down download it into your computer. Attempts to upload it to both a Blogger post as well as Photobucket failed.

According to

http://www.genfavicon.com/

Once you have created your favicon.ico file, you are supposed to upload it to the root directory of your website and put the following code in the header of your HTML page:

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" />

Now for Blogger or the free Wordpress blogging services, you have no access to the server, which means you have no access to the root directory. I have never hosted my own blog before, though I am now attempting to use custom domains for New Blogger (to be hosted for free by Blogger), so I have no practical experience to draw from to give you accurate information.

If anyone has any experience with the above and have some useful information, please contact me at bloggerfordummies at gmail dot com, replacing at with @ and dot with . and get rid of the space, or leave a comment. If the information you give is useful for my blog readers, I will link to your site and this will increase your link popularity and PageRank, very important for SEO (Search Engine Optimization),

Test stop here.