Create online HTML forms with ease using Wufoo

One drawback of being a blogger is the inability to integrate professionalism into our blogs.To go around this sites started offering functionalities such as widgets and plugins on their servers enabling people to access them as a 3 party functionality(one that is not embedded into the website).A few months ago I told you of kontactr which enabled you to create online contacc forms but what if you want another type of form.Then Wufoo is the site for you.

Wufoo basically takes online forms to the next level enabling you to make various forms with ease such as;
contact forms
survey forms
payment forms(can be integrated with paypal)
registration forms
online orders
tracking and much more

The generated forms are then converted into HTML code which you can embed in any compatible blogging platform.
On top of this members can fully customise their forms on basic characteristics such as colour and font and also upload compatible files to the form such as images.You can visit the site here and give it a try:Wufoo

Get useful and easy to use javascript widgets from Js-kit

One thing about blogger is that it has a horrible comment from even the embedded one so I stumbled upon a site which has a variety of high quality widgets that you can add to any kind of blog

Their most popular widget is the comment widget which adds various functionalities to your blog such as user editted avatars,youtube videos,facebook integration and many more features which are fequently updated
Some of their other widgets include;
star rating widget
polls
minichat
user advisor and many more;
You can visit the site here:http://js-kit.com/

Create your own internet browser toolbar for free!

I was surfing the net today and came across a website that was allowing people to easily make toolbars for their sites.Basically a toolbar enables users to access your website resources directly from their internet browsers.The website is called itoolbar and it is a free website where you can create your own custom toolbar with some of the following custom features;



1.Customized logo and links to your website.
2.Search engine which will search your website directly form the toolbar or search the web using engines such as Google,Yahoo or Ask
3.Can be integrated with the various PHP scripts on your site such as forum scripts(e.g phpBB) allowing members to go directly to new or popular posts and E-commerce scripts(e.g OS commerce,Zen Cart) allowing users to shop on your site from the toolbar.
and many more features.
If you are interested you can check out the homepage here:iToolbar

10 ways to make your blog succeed

These days everybody has a blog, some people even more than one.BUT! What people have not noticed is that with the right strategies your blog can start making money for you. Want to know how to do this? Just read the following steps.




Make your blog professional.
1. First and for-most you have quality articles which in-turn will bring in traffic.
2. Make your blog stand-out, don’t use default blogger templates as this will automatically make readers think that it is a personal blog and not a professional one.
3. Update your blog frequently, it is not a must it be daily but at least twice or thrice a week, this shows how seriously you take blogging.If you have nothing to write don’t force it as it will just dilute the quality articles you have.
4. If you have many widgets arrange them nicely in your sidebar as this will make them look organised.
5. Respond to reader feedback such as comments or questions asked via mail. This will cement the relationship between you and your readers encouraging them to come back often and comment.
6. .If possible get a TLD(top level domain) such as .com or .net as this shows readers you are willing to spend money in order to get your articles read.Now again if you don’t have the resources you will be just fine with the .blogspot or whichever sub-domain you use.

Know your readers.
When I say know them I maen know which countries they are from,the sites that reffered them to yours and such details.Now in order to get this information you are obviously not going to ask each and every reader these details but you can get analytics such as Google Analytics or Histats.This information will help you improve your blog even further as you will have a rough idea of what the reader is looking for.For example if you have many readers from countries that do not speak English it would be wise to add a language translation widget to ensure that you do not lose all those valuable readers.

How to make money
1. Sell ad space on your blog directly(which is harder but more profitable) or via services such as Google Adsense and Adbrite.Directly is where advertisers contact you and you negotiate the price and duration their ad will be up.
2. Get refferals to the GPT(get paid to) sites that you are a member of.
3. Grow a blog and then sell it,which many big time bloggers usually do.
4. Get a sponsor,this is a company or website that will pay you if you put ads and links to their respective websites.

How to schedule a post on blogger.

This is actually very simple and what this does is it enables you to write a post and then set the time and date you want it be published to your blog.Sometimes when I am very busy during the week I just write 5 and then schedule them to be published one on Monday, one on Tuesday and so on.

How do you do this?
1. When in the compose post page, look bellow the page and you will see post options.
2. Click on it and you will see 2 text boxes, one with date and another with time. For example if you want a post to be published on Christmas day 2008 just input the date of Christmas (12/25/08) and that is it.
3. Click publish and the post will then be published on Christmas day.

New feminine blogger platform now available

Yesterday I did an article on blogger VS wordpress so today I am going to do an article on a blogging platform that is unique in that it is specialized for women.The platform is called Onsugar and I am not quite sure when it was released but is seems fairly new and so I am going to highlight some of its features.

-First of all it is free
-It is hosted so all you have to do is sign up and you get your blog with the sub-domain .onsugar.com(I am not sure about the domain though)
-Easy to import from Blogger, wordpress or typepad
-Supports multiple sites per account and also multiple authors
-Top level domain support
-Users can create custom pages such as archives or gallery
-Completely customizable themes
-Has a wide selection of widgets to choose from such as popular posts,recent posts and others.
-Supports drafts and timed publishing like blogger
-Users can add a meta section which is like an admin panel which allows users to login, register and other functions.

If you are interested in it you can check out their homepage or a demo page running onsugar.

Blogger VS Wordpress

A blog which is short for weblog is an easy way of sharing information via the internet in a website like format. Most people think that CMS (content management system) and blogs are the same thing but actually blogs are a type of CMS.Today I am going to outline some of the most popular blogging platforms that are available.

1. Blogger
This is the one I currently use and is one of the most popular and most used because of its simplicity and also that it provides free blog hosting for its users. The company was bought by Google a few years after it was started and so it is now owned by Google which gives people the impression that blogger blogs get priority in the Google search engine which is apparently not true. You can sign up for a blogger blog from their homepage here: Blogger

Features:
-Uses XML and HTML (classic) templates of which there is a wide selection of.
-Pages are written in HTML.
-Does not support plug-ins but people can add functionality such as adsense and feeds to their blog using the Google gadgets which come in form of widgets.
-Provides free content, video and image hosting on their servers. They don’t support uploading of files other than these though.
-Users have the option of taking a .blogspot sub-domain or using their own top level domains such as .com, .net and such.
-Does not come in script form and so you cannot install it on your web server.

2. Wordpress
Is the most popular stand-alone blogging platform. By stand-alone I mean that you install the script on your web host and you are good to go. In many forums I always read bloggers complaining about blogger and then having all their problems solved by moving to wordpress.I had a wordpress blog for a short time and I have to say that the quality is much better but I just wasn’t happy with it. You can download the script from the wordpress homepage.

Features:
-Pages are written in PHP which explains the better quality of content.
-Uses PHP templates that are also easily available online.
-Supports plug-ins which makes it very easy to customise
-Has the ability to create custom pages different from post pages, a feature that blogger does not have.
-You can also do many things such as password protect posts and comments, prevent comment spam by blocking IP addresses, and many other additional features(they are very many I cannot list them all)
-Easy to upgrade.


CONCLUSION
-Wordpress is better than blogger if you have the money to buy reliable web hosting and also maybe a good TLD (top level domain), trust me if it wasn’t for the horrible free web hosting I was using at the time I would be writing this article in wordpress right now.
-Blogger has to improve their services, they don’t offer trackbacks, pings, they only way to prevent comment spamming is the word verification. That is why bloggers are always moving to other platforms.

If you are not happy with blogger or wordpress here are some other platforms you can try:
Posterous-Blogging highly simplified where all you have to do is email them the content and attach anything from pictures to videos and then they make it into a nice post. No sweat!

Textpattern-Basically the same as wordpress and is a stand-alone platform

MoveableType-Famous for being the first blogging platform to implement trackbacks but it doesn’t seem to be famous anymore

Serendipity-A very flexible platform that comes with very many features and allows users to choose between various mark-ups such as HTML, Textile, Wiki and even BBcode.

Lifetype-A less common blogging platform which has very nice looking posts which is worth looking at.

Flatpress-Very simple platform like blogger with limited features.

Wheatblog-Pretty much the same as flatpress

Loudblog-A platform that is specialised for podcasters

Onsugar-A new blogging platform that is specialised for women due to its feminine look.

If you are still not happy with these you can do a google web search here for more blogging platforms

New easy to use blogging platform called Posterous

This is a new blogging platform where no set-up or signup is required and all you have to do is send an email to post@posterous.com and then they will reply with your post url which will look something like http://yourname.posterous.com.

In other words you blog by email where you write a post in an email and attach whatever you like such as music,videos or files and send it to them and then it will be made into a blog post for you.Nice and simple,you can try it out here:Posterous
Here is a posterous page of one of the founders so you can see how it generally looks:Garry's posterous

Backlink checker with page rank and 'nofollow' tag details.

Backlinks are links to your blog or website from another website.Their advantage is that they increase the popularity of your blog and also help in search engine rankings hence increasing traffic to your blog,but some websites put a no follow tag on certain areas of their blog such as comments section or sidebar section.If a search engine spider finds a no follow tag it will not follow that link and therefore according to the search engines that link does not matter.

Now when finding out your backlinks it is always good to know the details of the sites that are linking to you so while I was browsing I came across this site called backlink watch that analyses all the sites that link to you and gives you their details such as the total number of backlinks,page rank,if they have added the nofollow tag to where your link is and the anchor text that your link has.With this you can know all the sites that are beneficial to your website.

How to add expandable post summaries to blogger

Expandable post summaries are where a summary of the post is given or a teaser paragraph and then a link to the full post is given such as 'read more...' or 'continue reading...'
I am going to show you how to add this to your blog

The first step is the usual one of backing up your blogger template and then check the expand widget templates box.
1.Now search for the </head> tag and paste the following code BEFORE it

<style>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
span.fullpost {display:inline;}
<b:else/>
span.fullpost {display:none;}
</b:if>
</style>

2.Once that is done search for the code <data:post.body/> and then paste the following codes AFTER it

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != "item"'>
<span>
<a expr:href='data:post.url' style='color:#0000FF; text-align:right; font-weight:bold; text-decoration:none;'>Read more...</a>
</span>
</b:if>

You can customize the read more link to any text you want by changing the part of the code in blue and you can change the colour of the link by changing the hex value in green

3.Save the template and then go to the settings tab and under the formatting sub tab
go to post template and add the following code

Type your summary here.
<span class="fullpost">
Type rest of the post here
</span>

Now the purpose of this code is to differentiate the summary and the rest of the post.Replace your summary with the text in blue and then the rest of your post with the text in green.I hope you have understood how it works.If you get any problems just ask me and I will help you out.

UPDATE:For those of you using classic templates(templates written in HTML)use this code instead of the first code
<style>
<MainOrArchivePage>
span.fullpost {display:none;}
</MainOrArchivePage>

<ItemPage>
span.fullpost {display:inline;}
</ItemPage>
</style>

AND then search for <$BlogItemBody$> and add the following code after it.

<MainOrArchivePage><br />
<a href="<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>">Read more!</a>
</MainOrArchivePage>

How to add a floating 'top of the page icon'

This is a very useful trick which adds a floating top of the page icon to your blog and the good thing is it is very easy to add and customize.If you look at the bottom right of the page you will see a grey icon with a white arrow that does not move even if you scroll up or down.

This trick was though up by Blogger Buster and there is no need for me to write it again as she wrote it perfectly and explained it well so here is the link to that article;
How to add a top of page icon link

How to write code in blogger posts

For those of you who have tried to write widget codes in blogger posts and noticed that the widget loads in the post will find this useful.Okay first of all you cannot write HTML or CSS code the way they are because they will be implemented as code and the browser will act accordingly so you have to change certain characters in the code like this.

The following characters in blue should be written like the ones red so that the code is interpreted as text and not code

" - &quot;
& - &amp;
< - &lt;
>- &gt;

Now if you have 30 lines of code you do not have the time to replace each of the characters so there is an easier way to do it using a converter.It can encode and decode these characters for you.Like the one at this website:centricle,it is very easy to use and fast.

All tutorials now bug free.

This is just a notification that I have rewritten all my blogger tutorials that involved HTML and CSS and they are now showing the correct code.If any code gives you trouble please contact me and I will help you out.Here are some of the tutorials I have written.
How to add search form to blogger
How to add related articles after blog posts.
How to add social bookmark buttons after every post.

How to add related articles after your blog posts.

You may have seen on some blogs that after a post there are links to other posts related to it according to category.I am going to show you how to add this to your own blog.

-First go the edit HTML page and then check the expand widget templates option.(You should have saved your template before doing this)
-Next search for this section of code <data:post.body></p>
-Once you find it put the following code after it

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
<div class='similiar'>
<!-- *****************http://blogger.com*****Jan,2007****************** -->
<!-- *****************Related Articles by Labels - Take Two****************** -->

<!--

1. Now, users don't need to change anything to use this widget. just copy and paste, and done!
2. The current article will also be listed, now it's no more.
-->

<div class='widget-content'>
<h3>Related Posts by Categories</h3>
<div id='data2007'/><br/><br/>
<div id='Jigsawman'>
Widget by <u><a href='http://kenyanguru.blogspot.com'>Jigsawman</a></u>
</div>
<script type='text/javascript'>

var homeUrl3 = &quot;<data:blog.homepageUrl/>&quot;;
var maxNumberOfPostsPerLabel = 4;
var maxNumberOfLabels = 10;

maxNumberOfPostsPerLabel = 100;
maxNumberOfLabels = 3;


function listEntries10(json) {
var ul = document.createElement(&#39;ul&#39;);
var maxPosts = (json.feed.entry.length &lt;= maxNumberOfPostsPerLabel) ?
json.feed.entry.length : maxNumberOfPostsPerLabel;
for (var i = 0; i &lt; maxPosts; i++) {
var entry = json.feed.entry[i];
var alturl;

for (var k = 0; k &lt; entry.link.length; k++) {
if (entry.link[k].rel == &#39;alternate&#39;) {
alturl = entry.link[k].href;
break;
}
}
var li = document.createElement(&#39;li&#39;);
var a = document.createElement(&#39;a&#39;);
a.href = alturl;

if(a.href!=location.href) {
var txt = document.createTextNode(entry.title.$t);
a.appendChild(txt);
li.appendChild(a);
ul.appendChild(li);
}
}
for (var l = 0; l &lt; json.feed.link.length; l++) {
if (json.feed.link[l].rel == &#39;alternate&#39;) {
var raw = json.feed.link[l].href;
var label = raw.substr(homeUrl3.length+13);
var k;
for (k=0; k&lt;20; k++) label = label.replace(&quot;%20&quot;, &quot; &quot;);
var txt = document.createTextNode(label);
var h = document.createElement(&#39;b&#39;);
h.appendChild(txt);
var div1 = document.createElement(&#39;div&#39;);
div1.appendChild(h);
div1.appendChild(ul);
document.getElementById(&#39;data2007&#39;).appendChild(div1);
}
}
}
function search10(query, label) {

var script = document.createElement(&#39;script&#39;);
script.setAttribute(&#39;src&#39;, query + &#39;feeds/posts/default/-/&#39;
+ label +
&#39;?alt=json-in-script&amp;callback=listEntries10&#39;);
script.setAttribute(&#39;type&#39;, &#39;text/javascript&#39;);
document.documentElement.firstChild.appendChild(script);
}

var labelArray = new Array();
var numLabel = 0;

<b:loop values='data:posts' var='post'>
<b:loop values='data:post.labels' var='label'>
textLabel = &quot;<data:label.name/>&quot;;

var test = 0;
for (var i = 0; i &lt; labelArray.length; i++)
if (labelArray[i] == textLabel) test = 1;
if (test == 0) {
labelArray.push(textLabel);
var maxLabels = (labelArray.length &lt;= maxNumberOfLabels) ?
labelArray.length : maxNumberOfLabels;
if (numLabel &lt; maxLabels) {
search10(homeUrl3, textLabel);
numLabel++;
}
}
</b:loop>
</b:loop>
</script>
</div>

</div>
</b:if>

Then save your template and you should see that the changes immediately take effect in your posts.If you have any problems feel free to ask me.

40+ Cool RSS feed icons by me

I have recently been working on feed icons in photoshop and I am very happy with the outcome so I decided to share the pics with you guys.Here is a screenshot of them.


You can download them form here:Cool RSS Icons
You can redistribute them if you like as long as you give me credit and at least provide a link back to this blog.All images are in PNG format.
Enjoy

Bounce rate and 6 ways to maintain it.

Bounce rate is the rate at which users access a page on your site and immediately click away to another website.Bounce rate is a good way to evaluate how attractive or 'sticky' your website is.Here are some of the factors that cause a high bounce rate.

1.Submission to social sites usually causes a surge of new traffic that are only interested in the article on the page.
2.A webpage that is not sticky
3.Sites like entrecard where users only come to the page to drop and then immediately leave.

To find out your bounce rate you have to have a statistic analyser,I recommend Google Analytics as it is free and has very detailed information.
A bounce rate of 50% or below is good enough as you that means half of your readers actually click around your website or blog.

Here are some tips to reduce your bounce rate:
1.Have a recent posts or popular posts widget where readers can see them easily.By doing this you increase the chances of readers getting interested in one of your other posts if it has a catchy title.I will write an article oh how to add a popular posts widget later this week.
2.By the way this should be the first point but anyway always pick catchy titles for your posts such as 'the top ten ways to...' or 'how to...'
3.Add a related articles widget below your posts so that when users are done reading your posts they can read other posts that are related to it.If you want to know how to add one read this post
4.Always have an about me page,some people like making their own pages instead of using the default blogger profile page.People like getting to know the person behind the blog.
5.Make sure your blog design is good and everything looks organised,this will make the blog more attractive.
6.Get interactive with your readers with things like polls,forums,comments and competitions.This makes users curious about what is going on and they are tempted to investigate further.

DropJack:Will this be the next Digg

I was browsing through social sites and I noticed one that reminded me very much of Digg.The site is DropJack and it is a social site where users submit,rank and share articles.The ranking system is referred to as jacks and users can jack articles like the way users Digg articles.

In fact the similarity between this site and Digg is shocking.Even the jack it buttons look like the Digg button,the only difference is that in Dropjack you can social bookmark articles to other social sites after a story has been submitted.Meaning that the article if bookmarked in Dropjack will be bookmarked with the Dropjack URL and not the articles permalink.The site has also added a screenshot feature where it displays a picture of the website that the article came from but the screenshots are so small you cannot even see what is on them.
The site is not that popular also and articles with as few as 3 jacks are on the homepage.Maybe this might be an opportunity for bloggers to get their blogs known as it is easy to get on the homepage.
I really do not see the importance of this site because it is just like Digg so nothing will really attract readers to it.
You can check it out here:Dropjack social bookmarking site

What irritates blog readers?

My readers are the most important asset to my blogging experience and so knowing what they like and don't like is a major priority.So how am I going to find out this information,easy I am going to need you readers to do one thing for me.interested?

What I want to do is first of improve my blog and second I what to make a list of the most irritating things that bloggers do that affect their readers which I will post later so that we can share this information

All you need to do is just write a comment here on what irritates you and next week I will compile the information and put it into a post
Please do not spam,you can give as much relevant information as you like
Thanks
Jigsawman

When is the best day and time to post on your blog?

This is the million dollar question on every blogger's mind.This is what troubles me the most as the problem I experience on my site is sudden traffic surges followed by very low traffic.The traffic surges often occur when I update my site or when one of my pages is social bookmarked.So I took to the net collecting data that might help me with this problem


1.When is the best time

-First of all you have to determine where most of your readers are located,to do this I would recommend using free website statistic providers such as histats(which I used to collect my data) or the famous Google analytics
-For me I noticed that most of my traffic was coming from Kenya,USA,United kingdom,India and Canada so correctly timing my posts would be a problem
-So I looked at my traffic graphs and noticed that most users accessed my site at around 1300 GMT which is lunchtime and majority of the people are free at this time.So most of the time I try to publish my posts at this time,although sometimes I get lazy.

2.When is the best day

-This was much more easier to find out as the statistics in the image above show.This is basically behaviour linked as on Monday people are very busy doing things that they postponed during the weekend,Tuesday the stress eases up and people rush to the web to read their favourite articles which they have eagerly been waiting for.On Saturday people usually use this day for social activities such as hanging out or visiting family so Internet access is limited.But this does not mean that you should not update your blog daily or frequently just post your more interesting articles when the traffic is high

I hope you found this information useful

Burn your feeds to twitter using twitterfeed

I recently joined twitter and I noticed that it was quite a bother to always log-in so that I can update my posts to twitter so I went to google and started searching for websites that could do this for me.That is when I stumbled upon a website that feeds your posts to twitter using your feed url.

All you have to do is just login in with your open ID and then enter your feed url and then it will tweet a short description of your post to twitter
It allows for multiple feeds to be burned to your twitter account so you can add as many feeds as you want.
It also allows you to add a prefix before the posts you tweet,pretty cool.....
You can try it out at twitterfeed