I thought I would share with you what I have learned about Blogger’s Blogspot blogging platform over the last 8 months or so. I jumped into the new Blogger almost immediately after its beta launch and then I wanted to customize it – You know, make it my own.
So I went out looking for how to do it. And here is that wisdom I uncovered. Consider it a gift from me to you. Poor old Blogger gets a bad wrap, namely because people do not know how to manipulate it. I hope this article helps you guys out and if you have any others please let me know in the comments…
1. Removing The Blogger Bar
I hated the blogger bar across the top of my Web site because it didn’t really go with my template and I already had a Google search bar integrated. So I went on a mission to remove it and de-bloggerify my blog. I searched far and wide and for some reason kept hitting a dead end. It turns out that the code used to change the old blogger templates no longer works! So after tracking down the CSS changes here is how I did it:
All you need to do is add the following CSS to your template under edit HTML. You need to put in anywhere in your template between the <style> tags.
- #navbar-iframe { height:0px; visibility:hidden; display:none; }
2. Add a randomiser to show different quotes, graphics or html.
I used to be really jealous of Feedburner’s awesome quotes that change on refresh. I went out looking for my own way to do something similar. It was a long and grueling task but I found it (Well actually my buddy Mike Commodore found it). Check out how I use a free Randomizer ASP application to get my own random geeky quotes and ads to display. I have the quotes on display in my subheader here and the Wicked Tee’s Ad is also on a separate randomizer. To download the RandomQ program hit their website here. For detailed instructions on how we got it to work using iFrame’s check out these step by step instructions.
3. Recent comments
Use this script to achieve a WordPress-esque Recent Comments module for your side bar! Start some riots among your readers! Let them know what others have to say. This site provides a widget creator that I used to make my recent comments module. I found that after adding this, it actually encouraged people to comment more frequently. I don’t know if they like seeing their name up in lights or if they read what others wrote and want to kick in their two cents… But either way it has increased commenting by about 70%!
4. That’s a lot of comments!!
Replace your commenting system with Intense Debate for more control over comments with a social flare. It is really easy to do, check out this information from their web site:
Interested in the comments your friends make? What if there was a way to follow your friends and be notified when, where, and also what they comment? Intense Debate provides this functionality through RSS feeds for each user. Subscribers will be notified in their RSS readers with a direct link to view the context surrounding the comment as well. Give it a try!
Also, don’t waste anymore time checking back in on a blog to see if anyone responded to your comment. Now you can get email notifications of replies to your comments, letting you know when the conversation continues while you’re gone.
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Blogger Tips