Thepipbuzz

If you sometimes delete posts from your blog, then it's a good idea to provide some help to people who who arrive at your blog via links to those posts. (Even if you don't have any links to those posts, it's likely that a search-engine somewhere will have some - and other people may have bookmarked or shared them, too.) There are two options for doing this: Post-specific redirects Use these if you want to re-direct visitors who come to a particular previous post: Go into Settings > Search Preferences , click Edit beside Custom Redirects . Click  New Redirect , to create instructions for what to do if a visitor tries to navigate to a specific post. Put the address of the post that you want to make a re-direct for into the From field. Put the address of the post that you want to visitors to be taken to into the To field. For both addresses, the part you need to enter is the URL of the post from the first backslash on.   Do not put in your blog-address Do include the date...

Feedburner's chicklets are used to add the standard "orange radar" button to your blog.  This lets readers to subscribe the RSS feed of your choice.   The information is targeted to Blogger users, but most of it applies to anyone who uses Feedburner. What is a Chicklet, and why you need one: Previously I've explained how to remove the (ugly and confusing) "Subscribe to Posts (atom)" link from your blog , and why RSS / Subscribe to Posts is important to your blog and how to create a Feedburner feed for it . But an RSS feed is useless unless people subscribe to it.  So as well as making the feed, you also need to put something in your blog that lets your readers sign up for it . A standard option for this is the orange square with "radar" markings on it, which many people call a " chicklet " (since it lets your viewer - the chicken? - have access to the feed you are providing). Feedburner also has options for: Using a custom icon from pop...

This article explains why it's a good idea to keep a backup copy of settings for your gadget, in particular for HTML/Javascript gadgets that have complicated, hard-to-regenerate, code. Blogger's backup tools let you take copies of: your post-contents and (separately)  your template.  Some 3rd party backup tools (eg HTTRack) let you make backup copies of how your blog looks - including the consequences of displaying your gadgets. But as far as i know, there is no way that you can back up the settings (ie parameters or configuration) that are stored inside the widgets on your blog. This can be a problem if you accidentally remove a gadget, or if you have an HTML gadget and get the code wrong in it: Blogger is quite unforgiving sometimes, and the HTML/Javascript gadget editor simply removes any code that it doesn't understand. In some cases, this isn't not a big problem  eg if you show a picture as a gadget , then it's generally easy enough to work out characteris...

This post from the Weekly Blogging Tips series is about a cost-effective way to make pictures for blog postings. The best blogging advice is that every post should have at least one picture:  is a stunning professional-looking shot which perfectly illustrates the point you are making perfectly. This is a great idea if you're a professional photographer and have all time in the world, or if you can afford to purchase images which are custom made for your blog. But most of us just aren't in that league. Sometimes, you can use a search tool to find a re-usable photograph that you can put into your posts. (Remember to download your own copy and put it into a Google picture host, to make sure that it's accepted as the thumbnail picture for the post.) But another option is to use a diagram - like this . The picture above is a diagram that I used in a blog-post to emphasise that budgeting for an event is on-going through the planning phase, not a one-time job   I spent ...

Some visitors arrive at your blog from a search engine. Others will have subscribed to an RSS feed, or followed a link from some other blog or website. A few might even go directly to your home page because someone told them about it. But no matter how they got there, If you want people to read more than one post then you need to make it easy for them to find other posts. [tweet this quote] Kindness vs Confusion Some people say "don't confuse your visitors, only give them one way to look at your blog". But I disagree. Some people are naturally  searchers : if they want something they google it.  Others are navigator s: they start from a place they know, and follow the directions to get pretty much anywhere else.  You need to cater for both types of people - and to remember that there are lots of options in between.  And remember that not everyone understands Blogger jargon like "older posts" or "archive". In general, I think you should Give...