Unknown or strange URLs in Blogger Stats

You are a blogger of sorts and your favourite pastime is to endlessly stare at your Blogger Stats hoping that hits will keep on coming if you just sit there and look at it, like me! And as you are looking at your "countless" number of less than 100 clicks and hits and unique views on your blog, you come across strange URLs that claim to refer your blog to people. Not bad, you think and click on the referrer link to see which is this benevolent site that sends you a lot of traffic! Ya, referrer spammers win!

Referrer Spam, which is also known as Log Spam or Referrer Bombing, is the act of "using a fake referrer url that points to the site the spammer wishes to advertise." This practice started as Blogging became popular. Bloggers, in their endless quest for 'link love', started publishing the sites that send them referrals. Some of them automated the process and linked the referrer list to the Analytics they used. Now, that encouraged spammers to send referrer spam so that the link of the site they wanted to advertise gets listed in a Blogger's Referrer List.

Bloggers with a lot of visits to their Blogs may not see these Referrer Spam often, as Referrer Spammers or Log Spammers send less than 20 to 25 automated hits to a Blog so that they will not get caught by Spam Fighting Teams of different Tech Companies. But those of us who drive less than hundred people a day to our Blogs will notice them immediately and click  on whatever godforsaken links they are referring us to.

How can we prevent unknown or strange URLs or referrer spammers from attacking our Blogger Stats or Analytics Logs? Here are a few things you can do to keep referrer spammers at bay:

1. Hide your statistics  and list of top referrers so that referrer spammers look elsewhere for their link baits. This way you can save people who visit your blog from clicking on links they are not supposed to.
2. Use Web Analytics Sites you trust. Some of these Analytic Sites keep their stats open and help spammers analyze your web traffic to target you. They target you if you are a blogger who gets less than 100 visits a day
3. If you are using Wordpress as your Blog Platform, you can use a plug-in called Referrer Bouncer. You can go to the Referrer Bouncer from here. 
4. Those of you are using Blogger as you Blog Platform need to patiently wait and hope that Google will trace the Spammer one day and block him/her because he/she is sending too many automated requests to its servers. Until then, make sure that you do not publish your Blogger Stat and you do not click on any of those unfamiliar or suspicious URLs that claim to send you a lot of traffic. 

Windows Live Writer: Blogging made easier!

I always used to wish if I could take my own sweet time offline to write a post and publish it once I am done. That was not possible till I found Windows Live Writer.

To me blogging was always something I did online. From typing a post to proof reading it to publishing it. Typos used to creep in and I always had to go back and edit a post even after I published it. I tried a few Offline Blogging Applications. But none of them was worth the bargain. They were very basic and I don’t think any of they really understood what a blogger wants. I think Windows Live Writer understands a blogger better than many of the blogging platforms available today.

Live Writer provides a blogger with many options, options that many blogging platforms, including blogger can not give you. The best thing about Live Writer is the Preview Option. Live Writer downloads your log template so that it can show you the post as it is going to appear in the blog. From hyperlinking to inserting pictures to embedding maps to you name it and it is like Live Writer has it. Following the Google and Firefox steps, Microsoft has also allowed others to develop plugins and addons for Live Writer.

It makes blogging easier is one thing.It also makes blogging much more interesting than it was!

wibiya: make your blog a bit more interactive!

It's toolbar time for blogs. I don't know if you have noticed the blue toolbar on techedIN. It is there because I wanted to make techedIN a bit more interactive than it was. This feature on techedIN is brought to you by Wibiya, an Israeli start-up that is specialized in creating 'customized web-based toolbars.'

What value does it add to your blog? Well, see for yourself how it adds value to techedIN.

1. One click and you can translate the page into 11 languages, one at a time. Wibiya uses the Translation Feature offered by Google to do this. When you click on the 'Translate' button, you are redirected to the tool that Google uses to translate a page. The user interface of techedIN remains as it is. Only the content gets translated. 
2. Another feature I liked is the option to view random posts. Click on the Random Post button and it will take you to one of the posts on techedIN which you would have otherwise missed out, as it is archived.
3. The toolbar can also give you a list of recent posts. One click and you get a list of recent posts. Click on the one you want to read and it will take you there.
4. The toolbar also has options to let readers subscribe to the RSS Feed or share a post with a community. 
5. Wibiya also gives you an option to share notifications with your readers. It is a flash pop-up that shows up as you load the blog. I toyed with the idea of using it as a pop-up always annoys readers. I thought I wouldn't use it. I changed my mind when I saw how effectively it can be used to interact with the readers. I have adapted the notification pop-up [I don't know if I should call it a pop up. It is a flash-object that shows up as the blog loads and goes off on its own in a few seconds.] I christened the pop-up as 'News @ techedIN' I thought it can be used to share IT related news that I find interesting with the readers. No harm in it, what do you think?

 Wibiya also gives you features like creating a Blog Community on Facebook and promoting it on your blog. I decided against using that feature for now, as I do not have enough time in my hand to promote a community.

You can also let readers tweet your posts. I decided against using it as I already have retweet option enabled for the posts on my blog.

What more? Wibiya has a community to help users tackle the toolbar management issues.

And I really liked the way it looks on my blog. I received my first compliment from a reader for making the blog look good, after I installed the toolbar.

I think you should go ahead and give it a shot. And don't forget to tell me what you felt about it!

Image from Wibiya's Site

Happy News Bloggers: Mr. Murdoch will charge for online content from next year!

Rupert Murdoch is an old man now. 78 years old. As an old man, may be he has lost that spark which saw him rise to the position of the media emperor he is today. Perhaps, that is the reason why he has announced the most uncharming business decision of his career the day before yesterday- a decision to make all his news sites available only to users who pay, from next year.

He said, :"Quality journalism is not cheap,..The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive distribution channels but it has not made content free. We intend to charge for all our news websites."

You should read people's reaction to that. Many reacted as though, it is not a big deal and they consider News Corps news sites as crap. Most of them said they don't care as they are not going to pay to read his sites anyway. News Analysers sounded very disappointed that a person like Murdoch took such a naive decision. Stories ran on blogs and technology review sites on how this decision is all about News Corps digging its own grave. Journalists are wondering how and why this is too risky for nothing. One reviewer even went to the extent of saying only Apple can save newspapers.

Is Murdoch serious about what he said or was he just testing the waters? True, his business ventures reported a net loss of $ 3.4 Billion this fiscal year. True, recession is at its best and on-line advertisement revenue is dipping. True, Wall Street Journal, a paid news site from Murdoch is doing relatively well and has users paying to read news. But, is he serious? Or was he, as I said, just testing the waters? Or, was it just a sudden outburst of frustration? May be, it was all the three put together.

Why do I say that? I think Murdoch is missing a key point here. On-line content is just a tool. I don't believe that Internet is all about Information. Internet is about advertisements. Certain products are just tools to sell certain other products. Why do Google let me search for free? Why does Google or Wordpress permit me to upload content on my blog for free? Why do social communities allow me in for free? Why are there many sites that give me many of their services for free? Why are open source applications free? Why is the news free, after all? I think these things are free because they want me to stick around as long as possible. You stick around so that you buy something, sooner or later.

 This is not a new business model. In India we have temples and churches organizing festivals around their theme of worship. They spend a lot of money, organizing a fare, staging plays or other performances by professional artists etc. These religious festivals last for five to ten days. The plays or other performances go well into midnights. You don't pay anything to watch a play during the festival. Why do they do it for free? Because, they know that people who come to the festival will visit the temple or church to pray. But the few coins they offer when they pray is not the target! People come to these festivals to set up stalls that sell from glass bangles to kitchenware. They pay lovely loads of cash to people who run the temple or church as rent for these five to ten days. In fact, there are groups of people in India, who travel from one festival spot to another and make a decent living!

To me, Internet sounds like a temple or church festival. And people who make content available or provide spaces for people to meet are like the Temple or Church Committee Members. They run the show. Sites like Murdoch's or Google's or Facebook's or Twitter's are these plays or performances staged during this Big Bang Festival called Internet. People come to the festival, because these performances are for free. And as they come, some of them, sooner or later most of them, will buy from the people who set up stalls in Google's or Murdoch's or Facebook's or Twitter's premises.

What happens if Murdoch makes his sites 'pay-per-click' as he says? May be there are going to be people who are willing to pay like there are people to read Wall Street Journal. But imagine the number of people who would have read Wall Street Journal, if it was available for free?

And if Murdoch is going to hide his content behind the 'paywalls', what about those people who hit the search engines for anything and everything? Google, Bing and Yahoo! If they won't have traces of Murdoch's Sites, won't he disappear from the minds of people gradually? This is why I said, Murdoch's announcement is happy news to Bloggers.

I am sure he will not hide all his content behind the paywalls. He will float enough summary of news stories around to make sure that he is on search engines. May be he will enter into deals with Search Engines to make sure that he is there, when people search. But even then,, it is happy news for bloggers!

Experts say that about 90% of his traffic will die because of this decision. Let Murdoch take his ten percent! Where will the rest go? The rest will trun to sites that make content available for free. I think, if Murdoch will implement his decision, there is going to be an increase in traffic to blogs we have around. Is this not happy news bloggers?

Image from Wikipedia

Blog-a-Ton: A Blogathon is on!

Here I am, writing a post for the second time in a day, because, again, I couldn't resist. I thought I must share this with you right now:

Search Engine Optimization and Backlinks are very common terms among Bloggers these days and almost every blogger worries about them. More backlinks mean higher Search Engine Optimization [SEO] or in other words chances are high that you are placed on the first page of a Google Search Result. And Vipul Grover is right - Blog-a-Ton is one way Bloggers can enhance their SEO, gaining enough backlinks by participating in it.

What is Blog-a-Ton? It is a very simple idea, adapted from Blogathon. Let's hear what Vipul himself says about Blog-a-Ton:

The idea was simple as I posted on the forum:
We'll choose a day and a topic to blog on. On that day we all will write a post on our blog on the given topic.
After the write-up, we will include the links to the write-ups of fellow blogathon participants.
This will not only help us in making new friends in blogging world but also give us a lot of backlinks.

More than Baclinks and SEO, what I liked about Blog-a-Ton is the people participation. Vipul Grover posted the idea of a Blogathon on IndiBlogger a  month ago. It slowly caught up with people and they launched a blog to take the idea forward in July 2009. The first leg of Blog-a-Ton was on August 1, 2009. The topic was announced on July 12, 2009. About 12 Bloggers participated and wrote on the topic "The Cream and Scum of Blogging"

I know 12 people are nothing compared to the number of Bloggers on the Blogosphere. But Blog-a-Ton has a long way to go and I think they will achieve their target of making it an event where 100 people participate regularly.

As I am writing this post, the 12 posts are placed for review and voting. I have read almost all the posts and all of them are really good, I would say. You gain an insight into how different people can interpret a given idea in different ways. I think the socio-cultural implications of the difference is worth a research.

The votes are kept confidential and the way it is, will be out only on August 4, 2009. I don't really care who wins. I am really happy about the fact that people are participating. And I hope more Bloggers are going to join the Blog-a-Ton Bandwagon soon.

IndiBlogger: Save yourself from 'Blogger's Depression"

The question is: why does one blog? Don't get me wrong looking at the Adsense and AdBrite Advertisements you see on my blog! They are there because I am trying to see how true are the tall claims by Affiliate Sites about you making millions of dollars out of affiliations. They are there because I am trying to make sense of how much different Affiliate Sites pay for each link I permit them to put on techedIN. No Blogger has become a millionaire running advertisments on his/her blog. I am in total agreement with Nikhil Narayan when he says in an Interview given to Blogadda: "After accumulating a whopping 10 USD in over 3 years, I realised that no one clicks on those Google Ads even by mistake. Then I tried other ads like Komli andTyroo. The height of optimism was joining the Shaadi.com affiliate program through which I gained nothing but monthly emails that gave me hope that I will soon start earning. After enough failures, I took off all the ads."

Then, why does one blog? I think most of us blog with the hope that someone somewhere is going to read what we wrote and appreciate it. May be, I am not too sure about you. I blog with the hope that someone [as many 'someones' as possible] reads what I blog. At one point in life everyone wants to be a 'popular' writer and 'blogging' gives us that satisfying feeling that we have become one. I go and look at my Google Analytics Report at least once a day. I am on the top of the world when I see the 'visits' graph shooting up. I don't purposefully look at the bounce rate for the fear of 'blogger's depression'.

Talking about Blogger's Depression: I think I recently stumbled upon another way in which I can possibly overcome it. IndiBlogger - a blogger commuinty for Indian Bloggers that saves you from the fear of no one taking a serious look at your Blog. I joined the Community with the hope that more people are going to read what I blog. And I am not disappointed that I did. My Google Analytics Report shows me that IndiBlogger is now at the top of the list in my report on traffic through Referral Sites. I have also found that the bounce rate came pleasingly down a few days after I had created a profile on IndiBlogger.

There are a few things I liked about IndiBlogger, which I will share with you like I usually do:

1. They have this 'Blog Directory' where they list all the bloggers and their blogs once they join. It looks like they have this 'soft corner' for new bloggers or new members, which I think is a good thing. The most recent ones to join the community gets to be on the top of the 'Blog Directory' featured on the Home Page of IndiBlogger. 
2. In my attempt to take teachedIN to as many people as possible, I have tried many Blog Directories and Blogger Communities. Almost all of them are strict about you giving a reciprocal link to their site. I have instances where Directories have rejected my membership because I was not willing to give them a reciprocal link. Please do not misunderstand - it is not that I don't want to thank these Blog Directory Guys for giving me a space to showcase my Blog. It is more about my freedom to choose if I want to publicly display an affiliation or not. When you make reciprocal linking compulsory, you are forcing me to thank you.  I was happy to see that IndiBlogger does not insist on you giving them a reciprocal link. [Many a times a reciprocal link is like leaving a trail. Leaving a trail on-line is not always advisable.] I was happy to see that they permit you to choose if you want to display their badge or not. 
3. Another feature I liked about IndiBlogger is 'Blog Reviews' Of course, they do not entertain 'shameless self-promotion.' Asking for a 'Blog Review' is one way IndiBlogger satisfies those who are particular about promoting their Blog. Fact is, the more you participate in the forum on IndiBlogger, the more people will know you and come to read your blog. And if you don't have time to participate actively in the discussions happening on IndiBlogger, the next best thing is asking for a Blog Review. 
4. There is another way to increase your bandwidth and reach. IndiBlogger lets you build a network. You can add fellow bloggers to your reading list. It is a 'win-win' You can keep track of those people you like to read and you can also make people take note of you by following them. I think I got the first 'it-makes-me-happy-you-read--it-because-you-wanted-to-read-it' comment on techedIN, after I joined IndiBlogger.
5. They also have this IndiBlogger Ranking and IndiVine. Ya, IndiVine is an adaptation of Grape Vine. I think it gives you a categorized list of Blog Posts. I think they have an option to rank posts too. I did not have an opportunity to make sense of IndiVine so far as it is undergoing a major revamp as I am writing this. But, I think I'll like that feature too.

IndiBlogger also arranges Blogger Meets. This tells me, here are a group of people who take the idea of supporting bloggers seriously!

Blogadda: get your blog listed and let people read you

We all know! Most of us, small time bloggers, keep wondering when and how people will notice our blog and start reading it. In my perpetual search for ways in which one can get a blog noticed, I recently stumbled up on Blogadda. Blogadda provides "Indian bloggers a platform to showcase their blogs."

Let us hear what Blogadda says about themselves:

There are super Indian bloggers waiting for an audience to discover them. Blogadda provides Indian bloggers a platform to showcase their blogs.We've read a lot of blogs over time and continue to do so, and found that there wasn't a single resource to discover blogs of our interests. And this is how Blogadda.com was born.

Joining Blogadda is very simple. Here is what the site asked me to do: First, I registered an account like I would do to join any other site. Blogadda lets you use the site only after you verify your email and add a link to Blogadda on your blog. Once you create an account, verify it from a mail sent to your email address from Blogadda. You can now register your blog with Blogadda. Then copy and paste the html code to your blog. They say that their team will visit the blog to see if there is a link to Blogadda from your blog and they send you an email if your blog is approved. Well, I don't mind that. We are living in a 'win-win world'.

I stayed on the site, after registering my blog, for sometime. A few things caught my eye: One, Blogadda updates 'Recent Posts' every hour so that blogs that are active get noticed. [Well, Iam not going into the issue of one hour time lapse. Something is always better than absolutely nothing at all.] Two, I liked the way Blogadda lets users post useful tips on Blogging and selects and features the best. [Well, I would have loved to read all the tips that members post. I couldn't locate a link that took me to all that members posted. For time being, I feel this is good.] Three, I read a a couple of 'super blogger' interviews. [Well, I liked all that I read. They gave such insights into how blogging is happening in our part of the world and how 'super bloggers' are looking at it.] Four, Blogadda won't permit spam site promoters to be registered with them. [Well, I have no clue if they have spelt out a clear policy about what is spam and what is not. I haven't found anything on the site that tell me what is spam, yet. However, no-spam policy is a good policy.]

Blogadda shows how a good idea can go a long way. I don't know how many have registered their blogs on Blogadda. However, from the look of things, I think Indian Bloggers are joining the site like bees go where honey is available. Perhaps, the only issue is what a comparison between the number of members and the number of people who actually read what appears on Blogadda will show us! I hope as many people are taking time to use Blogadda as their one-stop source for 'Blog Reading' as there are members.

twitterfeed: Promote your blog using Twitter

I hope you remember me telling you, I created a Twitter Account to promote techedIN. I decided to post a link to techedIN on Twitter, every time I published something here. Now, publishing a post on Twitter about my Blogger Post involves at least 14 clicks often and sometimes more than that. [Don't believe me? Try copying and pasting the title and link to your post on Twitter and clicking Update.] On Internet, the lesser the clicks and the lesser scrolling the better. Anything automatic is highly appreciated.

Automatic Posting of Blog Feeds to Twitter!! This is why I liked the idea of Twitterfeed. Create an account with Twitterfeed, add your Blog RSS URL to the site and it will take care of the rest of it. Every time you post something on your Blog [the Bolg you added to Twitterfeed], it will post a snippet of the same on your Twitter Account. That is cool, isn't it?

More than anything I liked the idea of "Twitter Feed Analytics." on Twitterfeed. The site gives you an idea about how many users must have clicked on the link to your post. There is only one reason why I like anything that analyses the links or content I post - they save me from the evergrowing fear of no one reading what you write! [Now, that is another fear! Fear of None Reading? What do you call it? No -Reader-o-phobea?]

Usually, I don't permit third party sites to have access to any of my accounts for fear of spam! However, the idea of Twitterfeed looked so cool to me that I couldn't resist. Who wouldn't like to save a little time? Now that Twitterfeed takes care of my 'Blog Promotion' on Twitter, I can breath easy and think of doing something else, using the time I used to spend for those '14 Boring Clicks to Post my Blog on Twitter'.

Twitter on your Blog!

I was all against Twitter untill I launched techedIN. I don't like the idea of strangers following me and my activities appearing on the public time line. I once used Twitter and found that more than friends, strangers followed what I was doing and posting on twitter. Every time I posted something I got a follower and most of them I am sure were spammers from the look of their profiles.

Yes, I know! Twitter gives me this option of protecting my updates from the public time line. I started using it and since none of my friends are on Twitter, I found this idea of posting for myself disgusting.

Having said all this, I still think Twitter is a cool idea. Cool idea if you have friends and relatives following what you are up to. Unfortunately, in India, for most folks social networking is at the most a profile on Orkut. It has not gone beyond that and I don't know if it will go beyond that in the near future. So, I think, I got to wait till most of my friends and relatives get on the Twitter bandwagon to post what exactly I am doing where!

Till I see my folks on Twitter, I think my Twitter Account can be used for promoting what I post on techedIN. Ya, it is a mutual promotion. I use Twitter to promote what I do on techedIN and Twitter uses my blog to promote their site. How? I have put this Twitter Badge on my blog and it certainly links back to Twitter. And when my people read my Blog, I hope they will notice the Twitter Badge on my Blog and try visiting the site and create a profile and start tweeting.

How did I put this badge on my Blog? It is very simple. If you have a profile on twitter, go to the Settings Page. On the Account Settings Page, Twitter gives you an option to add your site address. [You can add your site there and it is in a way a promotional link to your blog or site] Right below where you add your site address, there is a link to the Twitter Widget Page. Click on it and go to the Twitter's 'Get a Widget' Page. There you have five options to choose from. If all that you need is a simple widget to go on your blog, you can click on Blogger or TypePad or Other and get your widget. But if you have a taste and want your widget to look cool, I suggest you go for the Facebook compatible Flash Widget. This is what i chose and it goes well on Blogger. All that you need to do is to copy the script and add to your Blog from your Blogger Layout Page.

Every time I have a new post, I post a link to it on Twitter. And I kind of get someone, at least one person, following me per post. Most of them are spammers, I know. But I don't care now. I don't care because even if spammers are reading it, I'll be only happy that hopefully they will come and read what I have on my blog. That's not a bad deal at all, is it? Gradually, I hope, real people with good intetions, real people who are interested in what I got to say, will start following me. Till then, I don't mind even if spammers and hackers follow what I post on Twitter!

iPaper from Scribd: a cool way to share printed documents!

One of my friends wrote a literary review and got it published in one of the leading magazines. He had sent me the write-up in pdf format and I wanted to share the same with people on an online social community. I wanted them to read the write-up without downloading and saving it on their computers. I wanted it to be so because I know the more clicks involved the less likely are people going to read the write-up. I wanted to embed the pdf file on my post so that limited number of mouse-clicks are involved to read the write-up.

Now, I know that You Tube Videos can be embedded. Google Documents can be embedded. Slideshows can be embedded. Then, there must be some way I can embed a pdf file too. I have no clue how to code. So the only way out is Google Search. And Google Seach took me to Scribd.

Here is what the Scribd people say about themselves:

Scribd began with a simple observation — that the desire for self-expression through the written word is as old as humanity itself. But even with the proliferation of blogs and other self-publishing tools, there was no easy way for average people to publish to a readership of millions.

Today, Scribd is the largest social publishing company in the world — the website where more than 60 million people each month discover and share original writings and documents.

Scribd’s vision is to liberate the written word — to turn everyone into a publisher and create the best possible reading experience on the web and mobile platforms.

Democratizing Publishing

With Scribd’s iPaper document reader, anyone can easily upload and immediately share their original works on Scribd.com or any other website. iPaper transforms "print" files like PDF, Word or PowerPoint into web document — with all the fonts, layout and artwork that makes your document unique.

Your work can be shared with Scribd's community of passionate readers, and because your document is indexed for search engine optimization, your screenplay, novel or even sheet music and recipes can be discovered by the world.

At Scribd, we built a technology that’s broken barriers to traditional publishing and in the process also built one of the largest readerships in the world.

Like you see in the picture below, Scribd lets you upload files. You can either upload to Share or Sell.

You should have an account with Scribd to upload files, of course. The registration with Scribd is a simple process. All you need is a valid email id which you require to verify after registration. However, Scribd lets you upload files even before you verify the email id. Once the process is complete you can either share the link with others or copy paste the code to your site to embed the document.

What you see above is a document loading on Scribd. Scribd's iPaper powers the document you have uploaded. It downloads easily and you can read the file without having to download and saving it on your computer. Now, this is what I call 'making life easy.'

Use Google Webmaster Tools: Let people notice your Blogger Blog!

Why do you write a blog? Obviously, so that people will read it, appreciate or criticize it, comment on your post and come back to read you. And if you are, like me, dreaming about making easy money through affiliated links, you would want more people to read it. Now, how is it possible for you to let people know that you have a blog worth reading, to make sure that it does not get lost in the labyrinth of World Wide Web. This is where Google Webmaster Tools comes to your help.

I was excited to find out that Google Webmaster Tools will notify Google every time I post something and this will help people who search for keywords I write about find me easily.[Of course, depending on my page ranking and if I don't violate the terms and conditions.] I went straight ahead from my Google Analytics Page to Google Webmaster Tools. I registered techedIN with Google Webmaster Tools. First, I was asked to type in the site address after clicking on Add Site, on Google Webmaster Tools. Now, there is this final verification step to complete and Google asked me to put the meta tag, they have provided, on my site or to upload the html file they created to verify my site. Now, both doesn't work on Blogger. If I try to paste the meta tag to my template code, it just wouldn't accept the code. Blogger told me it cannot save the tag as it looks incomplete. And to upload the html file, there is no option on blogger. I was flabbergasted. This is a great opportunity for small time bloggers like me and it is a pity I can't use it. C'mon! Don't give up! Google never lets you down and that's what I love about these guys. They have a solution for most of your online needs. [And even your online luxuries!]

See what I found, looking for a way to add my Blogger Blog to Google Webmaster Tools, on You Tube. The Google Guys have a video, showing me how I add my Blogger Blog to Google Webmaster Tools. See for your self:

Hunting Blogger Templates!!

Ever since I took this idea of blogging into my head and joined Blogger.com I wanted my blogs to look 'cool'. I wanted my blogs to look cool because I visited hundreds of blogs that looked cool and different. The templates that Blogger gave me looked very ordinary. Sure, I can tweak the templates using the Layout Options and Widgets in Blogger. But that was never enough, the kind of person I am. Now, I have no idea how to put complicated codes in place to make my blog look the way I want. Therefore, the only option left was go template hunting.

I googled 'Blogger Templates' and got a list of sites that let you pick stylish templates for your blog. I took a look at the first ten of the 6000000 plus results Google offered me. I went to each of them to see how I can pick one 'cool' template for my site. There were many of them. And I finally settled for BTemplates.

There are reasons why I chose BTemplates. First of all the templates come free of cost. Then, these guys at BTemplates offer a wide variety of templates. Two columns, three columns, four columns, rounded, funky - you name it and they got it there. Another thing, they got their list arranged in such a way that it is pretty easy to look at what they have on offer and make your pick.  But what impressed me the most was  the way they packaged their product.

The guys at work for BTemplates pack their templates in zip files. You can take a look at the template, go for a live demo and download the file if you liked what you were looking at. The zip file got two things. One, the template. Two, detailed instructions to help you install the template.

Here is what I did: I downloaded the zip file that contained the template and unzipped it. Then, I clicked the Layout Tab on my blogger dashboard. Then, I opened the html code option. There is a button there that asks you to upload your template. But before clicking that I saved my original template on my computer, using the link that helps us back up the file. Once I uploaded the template I wanted to, there was a message that asked me if I wanted to keep some of the widgets. I clicked 'No'. And bingo, the new template was loaded and my blog looked very cool to me.

I am happy!!