How to remove / hide the blogger Navbar

Personally the blogger navbar doesn't bother me (well, not till now!) and so it stays there. But for the ones who are bugged to see this navbar and want to remove it here's how -

Login to your blogger account and from the dashboard go to Layout--> Edit HTML. Go through the code to find section of code starting like 'Navbar1' or 'Navbar-iframe' or something similar (depending on your template) and modify the content between the braces replacing the previous codes with the following. (Make sure you backup your full template first before modifying anything in case anything goes wrong)

height:0px;

visibility:hidden;

display:none;

Now save the HTML and view your blog. The navbar should be gone.

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Add Rating star/ rate post widget to your blog

Always wondering after making a new blog post what the readers think about it? Well now there's a way to know it instantly. Add the rating star widget to your blog and get immediate feedback from readers about your post. Its available free of charge and can also be used with TypePad, WordPress (hosted) or Drupal platforms besides Blogger.








So now readers can rate your post easily.

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How to add a Privacy Policy to a blogger blog (Adsense requirement)

The updated Google Adsense Terms and Conditions makes it mandatory for your site or blog to have a Privacy Policy. Though I am not using Adsense on my blog yet (and so I still don't have a privacy policy), I am posting this guide for the bloggers who display adsense on their blog but don't have a clue on how to add a privacy policy to a blogger blog.

First you need your privacy policy to be ready. You can do a google search to find from a variety of templates or you can use one specifically for adsense . Choose a template and make changes to it as per your specific requirements. Once you have your own privacy policy ready its now time to post it.

As blogger don't have a static page feature, we need a little trick. We are going to backdate the privacy policy post to a very old date. Create a new post with a title like 'Privacy Policy' , so that its easy to recognize its purpose. Copy paste the content of the privacy policy you have just prepared. Click on the 'Post Options' (on the bottom left side) to see the date time option. set the date to a very old date so that your privacy policy doesn't show up as just another new post in your blog and click publish.




There, your privacy policy is ready. Now one last thing to do is to post a link to your privacy policy from your blogs index page. One you've published your 'privacy policy' post, view it on a browser and copy the permalink for the post. Now add this link as a sidebar widget from the Layout--> Add a page element. You can either create a list with other useful links and put your privacy policy link there or you can just create a single link to your privacy policy with href tag.

Thats it! Your blogger blog privacy policy is ready. Any issues please feel free to ask!

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How to Backup your Blogger Blog

You may want to take a backup of your blog for many reasons. May be you are moving to a new platform (Blogger to Wordpress for example), may be you keep accidentally deleting your posts or may be you just want to be safe, in case. But Blogger does not have any tool which provide bloggers to backup their blog. But here's a feature built right into Blogger which can be used as a way to backup your blog posts. Well this doesn't involve any third party tool and its not a full fledged back up solution. However it is effortless on your part and is effective as you will have a back up of all of your posts. It involves the BlogSend feature of blogger.

To enable this feature, login to your Blogger account, and from your dashboard click on Settings --> Email. You will see two fields here the 'BlogSend Address' and the 'Mail-to-Blogger Address'. The 'Mail-to-Blogger' Address is the email you set up to create a new post just by emailing to that address. For now our concern is the 'BlogSend Address'. Enter your email address here and save the Settings. Once you have set up 'BlogSend with your email id, every new post that you make would be emailed to you. Don't set up more than one email id as the posts would be sent only to one email address. This way you would have a backup of every post of your blog right in your inbox. Create a separate folder for those emails and save them in that folder for easier access when you need them.

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'Related Posts' feature in Blogger

Are you on blogger and have always wished that blogger had the 'Related Posts' feature just like wordpress. Well if you did heres a widget at your service. I have just installed this widget and am already liking it. Scroll down this post to see the widget at work. This widget finds related posts only as per the labels of the posts and not as per the content. But still its impressive enough for bloogger. Originally this was created by Hoctro and then modified by Jack to simplify the installation.

Its very simple to install (I have tried the modified version) but still make sure you have a backup of your blog template in case anything goes wrong.

Original version
http://hoctro.blogspot.com/2007/01/killer-hack-related-articles-by-labels.html
Modified Version
http://www.jackbook.com/2007/09/related-posts-entries-on-blogger-blogspot.html

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Blog Tool & Resource - Blog Editor / Widgets / Templates / Themes / Poll / Blog Directories / Ping Services

Desktop / Stand Alone Blog Editor

Well I usually use the online default editor. But for all of you out there desperately seeking much more our of your blog editor, there are plenty of options available

ScribeFire (previously Performancing for Firefox) (Firefox Add-on/Free)

http://www.scribefire.com/

w.bloggar (Windows/Free)

http://wbloggar.com/

ecto (MacOSX ,Windows /Shareware)

ecto is a feature-rich desktop blogging client for MacOSX and Windows, supporting a wide range of weblog systems, such as

Blogger, Blojsom, Drupal, MovableType, Nucleus, SquareSpace, TypePad,

WordPress

http://infinite-sushi.com/software/ecto/

Qumana

(Mac,Windows/Free)

Qumana is a simple desktop

editor for Windows and Mac OS that helps you write to multiple blogs all from one convenient interface.

http://lycos.qumana.com/

Zoundry Blogwriter (Windows/ Free)

http://www.zoundry.com/download.html

Thingamablog (Windows,Mac, Linux/Free)

Thingamablog is a cross-platform, standalone blogging application that makes authoring and publishing your weblogs almost effortless. Unlike most blogging solutions, Thingamablog does not require a third-party blogging host, a cgi/php enabled web host, or a MySQL database. In fact, all you need to setup, and manage, a blog with Thingamablog is FTP, SFTP, or network access to a web server.

http://thingamablog.sourceforge.net/

BlogDesk (Windows/Free)

BlogDesk is optimized for the blog systems WordPress, MovableType, Drupal, Serendipity and ExpressionEngine as well as the bloghosters Blogg.de and Twoday.net.

http://www.blogdesk.org/en/download.htm

Post2Blog (Windows/Free)

Post2Blog 3 is a freeware handy blog editor with live spell-checking support for pro-bloggers

http://www.bytescout.com/post2blog.html

BlogJet (Windows/Shareware)

BlogJet is a shareware windows blog client for managing multiple blogs.

http://www.codingrobots.com/blogjet/

BloGTK Blog Editor (Linux/Free)

Nice blog editor for Linux.

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=87493

QTM (Linux/Free)

QTM is another Linux based blogging client which is presently capable of composing, formatting and submitting blog entries to a weblog.

http://qtm.blogistan.co.uk/

Bleezer (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux /Free)

Bleezer is a freeware. Works on Windows, OS X, and Linux.

http://www.larryborsato.com/bleezer/

blogBuddy (windows/Free)

blogBuddy is a small Windows 95/NT/ME/2000/XP program written in Delphi that manages Blogger.com and other weblogs which implement the Blogger API.

http://blogbuddy.sourceforge.net/

Drivel (Linux/Free)

http://www.dropline.net/drivel/

iJournal (Mac/Free)

http://ijournal.os10.org/wiki/index.php/IJournal

Blogger for Word (MS – Word Blogger Addin /Free)

http://buzz.blogger.com/bloggerforword.html

Blog Widgets

Widgets are a nice way to dress up your blog and providing extra features at the same time. Be it FEEDJIT or aStore or any other widget they always spice up the blog. Here is a list of links where you can find out more about widgets and also many nice widgets for your blog.

http://technorati.com/widgets/blogwidgets

http://mashable.com/2007/09/06/widgets-2/

http://weblogtoolscollection.com/

http://wordpress.org/development/2006/03/widgets-plugin/

http://www.widgetbox.com/

http://www.blogrush.com/

http://www.majikwidget.com/mw/index.php

http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?AddBloggerWidget

http://www.blogorator.com/

http://www.widgets-blog.com/

http://www.widgipedia.com/widgets/search/tag/blogger

http://googletranslategadget.blogspot.com/

http://widgets.wordpress.com/

http://codex.wordpress.org/Widgets_SubPanel

http://buzz.blogger.com/2007/02/make-your-own-blogger-widgets.html

Resources for Blog Templates

BlogSkins
http://www.blogskins.com/

Free Blogger Templates
http://www.finalsense.com/services/blog_templates/

Layouts Gala
Free CSS Templates
http://blog.html.it/layoutgala/

Free Templates for Blogger, Blogsky, Persian blog, and Movable Type
http://www.ehsany.com/

Templates for Blogger
http://www.geckoandfly.com/blogspot-templates/

http://blogger-templates.blogspot.com/

http://blogspottemplates.blogspot.com/

http://www.pyzam.com/bloggertemplates

http://freetemplates.blogspot.com/

http://www.bloggingthemes.com/

Blogger Templates Directory
http://blogger-templates-directory.blogspot.com/

Wordpress Themes

http://themes.wordpress.net/

http://themes.enquira.com/category/wordpress-themes/

http://topwpthemes.com/

http://www.romow.com/blog/category/free-wordpress-themes/

http://www.ventedoy.com/themes/

http://www.bestwpthemes.com/

http://www.templatesfactory.net/blog/category/wp-themes/

http://www.wordpresstheme.com/

http://www.askgraphics.com/freetemplates/

http://wpgarden.com/

http://templatextreme.com/products/wordpress-themes/list.php

http://themez.info/

http://cureless.net/works/wp-themes/

Lot of WP Themes

http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/category/wordpress-templates-wordpress-skins-wordpress-themes/

Polling Widgets / Services

Want to add a poll to your post? It’s simple to do with all these easy to use polling services.

http://www.quimble.com/

http://www.addpoll.com/

http://www.pollpub.com/

http://polls.blogflux.com/

http://blog.jalenack.com/archives/democracy/

http://www.blogpolls.com/

http://www.vizu.com/

http://www.blogpoll.com/poll/

http://dev.wp-plugins.org/wiki/wp-polls (Wordpress Only)

http://www.bloggeries.com/makepoll.php

http://www.htmlpoll.com/

http://www.blogpolling.com/

http://pollcode.com/

Blog Directories

One of the ways to bring more traffic to your blog (although not most effective and fast) is to submit your blog to blog directories. Most of them don’t charge you for listing. Below is a list of Blog Directories

http://www.bloggeries.com/

http://www.blogarama.com/

http://www.weblogalot.com/

http://www.blogdirs.com/

http://www.blogrankings.com/

http://www.blog-directory.org/

http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/

http://www.bestblogs.org/

http://blo.gs/

http://www.bloggapedia.com/

http://blogs.botw.org/

http://blogannounce.info/

http://www.topblogarea.com/

http://www.bloghints.com/

http://www.blogcatalog.com/

http://www.bloghub.com/

http://www.blogtoplist.com/

http://www.totalblogdirectory.com/

Blog Ping Services

Pinging means or notifying a number of services that keep track of blogs that your blog has been updated and hence, they crawl and index your site. This is a very important way to increase traffic to your blog though often neglected.

Below is the list of a few ping services which automatically pings several ping servers at the click of a button.

http://pingomatic.com/

http://pingoat.com/

http://pings.ws/

http://autopinger.com/

http://freeblogping.com/

http://blo.gs/ping.php

http://www.kping.com/

http://technorati.com/ping

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Add This

If you find your posts getting too clumsy because of the numerous buttons at the bottom which link to the various Bookmarking sites well there's one nice solution. Use 'Add This'. Add This displays only a single button which links to a page where you can select the bookmarking service you want. Want to know which Bookmarking services are supported, take a look at the image below. This is the page it takes you to when you click on that button. All you need to do is click on the icon of the bookmarking site you want and submit your story. And yeah don't forget to click the 'Add This' button below if you liked this story.

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