blogger tricks | blogger widgets | blogger templates

What are NoFollow Links and what is thier impact on your search engine rankings.?

2012-06-04T15:51:00.000+05:00

What are No-Follow Links and what is their impact on search engine rankings.? is a common and probably most confusing question that comes in every webmaster's and SEO's mind. There is lot of difference of opinion between the professionals about importance of No-Follow backlinks. Some build No-Follow backlinks on niche blogs and forums for building audience, some build for a natural looking linking profile with a mixture of Do-Follow and No-Follow links and some don't even bother creating because they think that this is a total waste of time as Google gives no weight to such links.

Though its really just shooting in the dark that how Google treats every backlink that you create because that depends on too many factors, like the age of site you are linking too and its relevancy to your site's content, its page rank, authority and link attributes (No-Follow or Do-Follow). Google checks all these metrics to determine the quality of your backlinks and will treat them accordingly. So lets dive in and see what is the real story.

What are No-follow links? Which sites use them?

Years back Search Engine Algorithm was so simple and Search Engine Optimization was easy. But as we all know that spammers out there are always so busy in finding out shortcuts to get what they want and making our life difficult, and this is exactly what happened with Search Engine Optimization. Spammers found out that blog and forum commenting are an easy way to get backlinks so they abused the blogs and forums to fill their needs forcing the webmasters to come up with something like (rel="nofollow") tag which can be added to a site's HTML and is an instruction to search engines that outbound links should not influence the target URL's ranking in the search engine index. Search Engines can still see the outbound link but they won't follow it. However there are some places where No-follow links are always present, even if the webmasters did not deliberately put them there, and its always good to know in advance what are those places?

Blog Comments: Most of the popular blogging platforms have made links within the comments "NoFollow" by default to prevent link spam. Which means your links will be visible, will be clickable but will not have that kind of link juice if the links were in a blog post itself.

Forum Postings: Again to discourage link spam, most of the forums make links in forum threads No-follow by default. Wiki sites have also done the same to prevent link spam.

Paid Links: Sometimes SEO's and webmasters buy links of high page rank and high authority sites in their niche to manipulate Search Engine Results. This method is against Google's Webmaster Guidelines. Remember that only buying and selling links to pass page rank to other sites and to manipulate search engine results is against Google's Webmaster Guidelines, though it can be done for advertising purposes but you have to add (rel="nofollow") tag to paid links according to Google, this way links will not pass any value or page rank.

Should you be creating No-follow backlinks for your blog?

If i simply say "YES" then you will probably saying Whoa !! hold on buddy, what about some other SEO guys who say that No-follow backlinks like blog comment links and Forum links are nothing but just a waste of time because they don't pass any link juice or ranking to the linking site. Then my answer would be that you must have a natural looking linking profile containing a mixture of high and low PR Do-follow and No-follow links. I will talk about this link building strategy in detail in some other post because that is a whole another topic.

But you must understand that if No-follow links exist then they mean something and its a totally miss conception that they don't pass any value. To prove this thing "Brian Gilley" wrote a detailed article about his experiment that No-follow links do pass value , i would recommend you better check that out too. A No-follow link coming from a high PR and long established authority site weights less then that Do-follow link coming from the same site, but they do pass some value. You can't just build only Do-follow backlinks as they won't look natural, and on the other hand blog comments links on your niche blogs and forums are very important piece of audience building puzzle. They help you build relations with your niche bloggers which may benefit you later on.

Conclusion

May be still some of you guys will not agree with me, but hay..SEO is not a straight forward job that you keep on building backlinks like crazy without having a clear goal in your mind and you will reach on top ultimately, that's totally wrong. You need to check lot of matrices before launching your link building campaign and you must have a clear goal what you want to achieve from your link building campaign. You also need to balance quality and quantity of backlinks. And i think my also find my other article about How To Build High Authority Links Like .edu .gov .mil useful. Share the knowledge if you liked this article and don't forget to post your valuable opinions.. :-)

How To Add Automatic Post Summaries With Image Thumbnails in blogger

2012-01-31T18:28:00.001+05:00

In this tutorial i will show you how to add automatic post summaries with image thumbnails in blogger in right way. After blogging for a while i felt the need of this trick that could automatically split my post into summaries of equal length so i don't have to split my post into summaries manually and finally i got my hands on a JavaScript technique that was just kind of a thing i was looking for

But as we know that we can't specify the dimensions in JavaScript like we so in CSS because it won't render it the same way as a web browser does. That's why you have to play around with the dimensions to get what you want. But there are some advantages of this one over some older techniques. This was actually a technique used to display popular and recent post with short summaries and small thumbnail but we can use it to display post summaries with thumbnails in blogger with some tweaking.

1. As soon as you implement this technique all of your blog post will be automatically striped out into post summaries. You won't have to go back and split older posts into summaries manually.
2. Thumbnails will be equally sized throughout the blog that will look more natural and professional. You can get rid of images that are messing up your blog design.

How to add post summaries with image thumbnails in blogger

I assume that you are logged in to blogger dashboard, now go to Design > Edit HTML and check the expand widget template.
Press CTRL+F and find </head> tag.
Copy the following code and paste it above </head> tag.

Again press CTRL+F and find <data:post.body/>.
Replace it with following code.

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;item&quot;'>
<data:post.body/>
<b:else/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;static_page&quot;'>
<data:post.body/>
<b:else/>
<div expr:id='&quot;summary&quot;   data:post.id'>
<data:post.body/>
</div>
<script type='text/javascript'>
createSummaryAndThumb(&quot;summary<data:post.id/>&quot;);
</script>
<div style='clear: both;'/>
<span class='rmlink' style='font-weight:bold;padding:5px;float:right;text-align:right;'><a expr:href='data:post.url' >Read more ... </a></span>
</b:if>
</b:if>

Configuration:

summary_noimg = 500;
This is the number of characters shown if the post does not contain any image.

summary_img = 500;
This is the number of characters shown if the post contains image.

img_thumb_height = 130;
Height of the thumbnail created.

img_thumb_width = 130;
Width of the thumbnail created.

Note: The problem here is that if you have used different image sizes in your design then they wont be equal in size. Take a look at the image below to understand what i mean.

So make sure that you are using images of the same size in the blog to keep the consistency. currently with this configuration i am using images of 200 x 200 pixels in my blog. You can use image size that better suits your blog design and of course you have to play with the configurations also to get what you want.

Conclusion:

In case of any trouble implementing this in your blog, you can comment below. I am here to help. But i will recommend trying on your own first. GOOD LUCK..!

Best Open Source Comment Systems For Your Blog

2012-01-11T15:54:00.001+05:00

Today we're going to talk about comments, why they are an effective tool to keep your blog readers engaged and how much they are helpful in developing relationship with your blog readers? And then we will talk about some 3rd party open-source comment systems that you can use on your blog if yo are fed up with old WordPress or blogger comment system, or even if you want to tackle the spam problem.

Reasons why you may need to use 3rd party comment system

Spam. Almost every one is facing comment spamming problem and these 3rd party comment systems have proved that they have much better protection against spam.

Integration. The best thing about these 3rd party open source comment systems is that they have some really intelligent and awesome design that can easily blend in with your blog template and it integrates seamlessly with your blog no matter if it is on blogger, WordPress or any other platform. With default comment systems it is a bit tricky to customize the nested comments, author comments etc. So why not avoid that trouble and let the 3rd party comment systems handle that for you.?

Managing All Comments. This is what I love about blog comment systems is that it gives you the ability to manage comments and interactions on your blog, but also gives you the ability to manage and review comments you’ve left on other blogs, as well as see responses left for you by that blog’s author. Now that’s awesome!

I am sure there are much more benefits of 3rd party comment systems along with some drawbacks and you can help me with those by sharing your experience in comments below. So here are some best comment systems for your web sites and blog and these are all free to use.

DISQUS is the most awesome comment system preferred by most of the bloggers. I have used this on one of my blogs earlier and here are some good things about DISQUS.

Comment management and moderation options are flexible. Comment access options are also great and the best thing is that you can customize its look with CSS. you can read there design customization guide for further help.

Notification system is also convenient which lets the author know when a comment is posted and also lets the commenter know when author has replied his comment through email.

Another great feature in DISQUS is its social media integration and trackbacks which lets the author know who is sharing his blog post on social media like twitter etc..

Very powerful combat system against spam which also allows you to white-list or blacklist any ip for further comments. I will recommend using DISQUS in first place.

Intense Debate design and features almost look like DISQUS. You can see Intense Debate comment system in action below on this blog. I was using DISQUS on this blog before but switched to Intense Debate a while back to experience this one and its still on. Here are some good features of Intense Debate.

Intense Debate also has a very good email notification system just like DISQUS.

It also does a great job against spam with giving you the option of comment moderation and management.

I like their idea of "Voting" and "Reputation" which allows the blog readers to vote for the good comments and also allows the blog reader to post valuable comments to increase their rank.

They do have social media integration but i think this function is much better in DISQUS comment system.

LiveFyre is another real-time blog comments system similar to DISQUS and Intense Debate. Although I haven’t personally used it, from what I’ve seen it is probably most similar to Intense Debate in terms of functionality. Though they only support WordPress and tumbler so far but they are launching Blogger, Joomla and Drupal support very soon. As i haven't personally tried it yet so i will not recommend it, but it doesn't mean you can't use it. At least you can try it just to share your experience with others who haven't yet.

Pynxe is newly introduced comment system. I learned about it a few days back but i haven't tried it yet on my test blogs to give you a detailed review. But as far as i know they are more then a comment system. They have support for all kind of website platforms. They have a Forum It Widget, a Comment System Widget. Really easy to use. I will suggest you try it on your test blogs and see if you are able to comment below to share your experience to help other readers. Till then i will try to find some more cool open source comment systems to update this post.

Conclusion

I hope this post will be helpful for you and i am also pretty sure that there are some other free Comment systems that i haven't listed here and i don't know about them so feel free to mention them in your comments and also share your experience with others to help them....Have a good day..!!

Large Drop Down Main Navigation Menu With jQuery & CSS3

2011-12-28T23:58:00.004+05:00

Main navigation menu is the first place where an end user will look for the sake of information and if your main navigation bar is looking UN-professional and sloppy then it will play a major role in making your site non trust worthy.Because if you cannot spend a little time on making your website user friendly then how can you provide them good information's that they can trust.?? So the best practice is to first of all organize your website in such a manner that visitor can easily navigate through your site. If you have large number of contents on your website then you must use a large drop down menu with sub and sub categories on it.

People love things that they can easily get and this is what that makes them come back to your site again and again and make them loyal to you. So here is a large horizontal drop down main navigation menu with css3 and jQuery available in 8 different themes. It is also divided into sub categories which is really awesome and user friendly. I will recommend using this one if you have lot of contents on your site. Feel free to choose any navigation bar menu that best fits in your blog or website.

Advantages of this Large Drop Down jQuerry menu

> Cross browser compatibility.
> Simple structure makes it easy to setup and update without messing with main blog template.
> Multiple pre-designed color schemes.
> Fully customizable with CSS.
> Fantastic transition, scrolling and hover effects.
> Powered by jQuery and CSS3.

LIVE DEMO

Login to your blogger account.
Go to Design > Page Elements > Add a Gadget > HTML/JavaScript.
Copy the following link structure and paste it in there. ( This is just a demonstration, you can edit the list items according to your needs later, but lets keep it this way for now).

<ul id="ldd_menu" class="ldd_menu">
    <li>
    <span>Vacations</span><!-- Increases to 510px in width-->
    <div class="ldd_submenu">
    <ul>
     <li class="ldd_heading">By Location</li>
     <li><a href="#">South America</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Antartica</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Africa</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Asia and Australia</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Europe</a></li>
    </ul>
    <ul>
     <li class="ldd_heading">By Category</li>
     <li><a href="#">Sun &amp; Beach</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Adventure</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Science &amp; Education</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Extreme Sports</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Relaxing</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Spa and Wellness</a></li>
    </ul>
    <ul>
     <li class="ldd_heading">By Theme</li>
     <li><a href="#">Paradise Islands</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Cruises &amp; Boat Trips</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Wild Animals &amp; Safaris</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Nature Pure</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Helping others &amp; For Hope</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Diving</a></li>
    </ul>
    <a class="ldd_subfoot" href="#">   New Deals</a>
    </div>
    </li>
    <li>
    <span>Equipment</span>
    <div class="ldd_submenu">
    <ul>
     <li class="ldd_heading">By Location</li>
     <li><a href="#">South America</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Antartica</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Africa</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Asia and Australia</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Europe</a></li>
    </ul>
    <ul>
     <li class="ldd_heading">By Category</li>
     <li><a href="#">Sun &amp; Beach</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Adventure</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Science &amp; Education</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Extreme Sports</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Relaxing</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Spa and Wellness</a></li>
    </ul>
    <ul>
     <li class="ldd_heading">By Theme</li>
     <li><a href="#">Paradise Islands</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Cruises &amp; Boat Trips</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Wild Animals &amp; Safaris</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Nature Pure</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Helping others &amp; For Hope</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Diving</a></li>
    </ul>
    <a class="ldd_subfoot" href="#">   New Deals</a>
    </div>
    </li>
    <li>
    <span>Locations</span>
    <div class="ldd_submenu">
    <ul>
     <li class="ldd_heading">By Location</li>
     <li><a href="#">South America</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Antartica</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Africa</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Asia and Australia</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Europe</a></li>
    </ul>
    <ul>
     <li class="ldd_heading">By Category</li>
     <li><a href="#">Sun &amp; Beach</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Adventure</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Science &amp; Education</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Extreme Sports</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Relaxing</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Spa and Wellness</a></li>
    </ul>
    <ul>
     <li class="ldd_heading">By Theme</li>
     <li><a href="#">Paradise Islands</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Cruises &amp; Boat Trips</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Wild Animals &amp; Safaris</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Nature Pure</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Helping others &amp; For Hope</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Diving</a></li>
    </ul>
    <a class="ldd_subfoot" href="#">   New Deals</a>
    </div>
    </li>
    </ul>


<style>
ul.ldd_menu{
 margin:0px;
 padding:0;
 display:block;
 height:50px;
 background-color:#D04528;
 list-style:none;
 font-family:"Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;
 border-top:1px solid #EF593B;
 border-bottom:1px solid #EF593B;
 border-left:10px solid #D04528;
 -moz-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12;
 -webkit-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12;
 -box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12;
}
ul.ldd_menu a{
 text-decoration:none;
}
ul.ldd_menu > li{
 float:left;
 position:relative;
}
ul.ldd_menu > li > span{
 float:left;
 color:#fff;
 background-color:#D04528;
 height:50px;
 line-height:50px;
 cursor:default;
 padding:0px 20px;
 text-shadow:0px 0px 1px #fff;
 border-right:1px solid #DF7B61;
 border-left:1px solid #C44D37;
}
ul.ldd_menu .ldd_submenu{
 position:absolute;
 top:50px;
 width:550px;
 display:none;
 opacity:0.95;
 left:0px;
 font-size:10px;
 background: #C34328;
 border-top:1px solid #EF593B;
 -moz-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12 inset;
 -webkit-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12 inset;
 -box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12 inset;
}
a.ldd_subfoot{
 background-color:#f0f0f0;
 color:#444;
 display:block;
 clear:both;
 padding:15px 20px;
 text-transform:uppercase;
 font-family: Arial, serif;
 font-size:12px;
 text-shadow:0px 0px 1px #fff;
 -moz-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #777 inset;
 -webkit-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #777 inset;
 -box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #777 inset;
}
ul.ldd_menu ul{
 list-style:none;
 float:left;
 border-left:1px solid #DF7B61;
 margin:20px 0px 10px 30px;
 padding:10px;
}
li.ldd_heading{
 font-family: Georgia, serif;
 font-size: 13px;
 font-style: italic;
 color:#FFB39F;
 text-shadow:0px 0px 1px #B03E23;
 padding:0px 0px 10px 0px;
}
ul.ldd_menu ul li a{
 font-family: Arial, serif;
 font-size:10px;
 line-height:20px;
 color:#fff;
 padding:1px 3px;
}
ul.ldd_menu ul li a:hover{
 -moz-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #333;
 -webkit-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #333;
 box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #333;
 background:#AF412B;
}
</style>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min.js"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript">
            $(function() {
    /**
     * the menu
     */
    var $menu = $('#ldd_menu');
    
    /**
     * for each list element,
     * we show the submenu when hovering and
     * expand the span element (title) to 510px
     */
    $menu.children('li').each(function(){
     var $this = $(this);
     var $span = $this.children('span');
     $span.data('width',$span.width());
     
     $this.bind('mouseenter',function(){
      $menu.find('.ldd_submenu').stop(true,true).hide();
      $span.stop().animate({'width':'510px'},300,function(){
       $this.find('.ldd_submenu').slideDown(300);
      });
     }).bind('mouseleave',function(){
      $this.find('.ldd_submenu').stop(true,true).hide();
      $span.stop().animate({'width':$span.data('width')+ 'px'},300);
     });
    });
            });
        </script>

Save the gadget and you are done.
Now check if it is working fine, then come back and change the contents in navigation menu according to your need.
You can also change the theme of your navigation bar. Just replace the CSS code with any of the followings. To do so look at the above CSS Code in black between <style> and </style> and replace it with one of the following styles.
Its a lot of code up there so be careful with that.

ul.ldd_menu{
 margin:0px;
 padding:0;
 display:block;
 height:50px;
 background-color:#890200;
 list-style:none;
 font-family:&quot;Trebuchet MS&quot;, sans-serif;
 border-top:1px groove #890200;
 border-bottom:1px groove #EF593B;
 -moz-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12;
 -webkit-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12;
 -box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12;
}
ul.ldd_menu a{
 text-decoration:none;
}
ul.ldd_menu &gt; li{
 float:left;
 position:relative;
}
ul.ldd_menu &gt; li &gt; span{
 float:left;
 color:#FFB39F;
 background-color:#890200;
 height:50px;
 line-height:50px;
 cursor:default;
 padding:0px 20px;
 text-shadow:0px 0px 1px #fff;
 border-right:1px solid #DF7B61;
 border-left:1px solid #C44D37;
}
ul.ldd_menu .ldd_submenu{
 position:absolute;
 top:50px;
 width:550px;
 display:none;
 opacity:0.95;
 left:0px;
 font-size:10px;
 background: #890200;
 border-top:1px solid #EF593B;
 -moz-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12 inset;
 -webkit-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12 inset;
 -box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12 inset;
}
a.ldd_subfoot{
 background-color:#965251;
 color:#E7EACE;
 display:block;
 clear:both;
 padding:15px 20px;
 text-transform:uppercase;
 font-family: Arial, serif;
 font-size:12px;
 text-shadow:0px 0px 1px #fff;
 -moz-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #777 inset;
 -webkit-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #777 inset;
 -box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #777 inset;
}
ul.ldd_menu ul{
 list-style:none;
 float:left;
 border-left:1px solid #DF7B61;
 margin:20px 0px 10px 30px;
 padding:10px;
}
li.ldd_heading{
 font-family: Georgia, serif;
 font-size: 13px;
 font-style: italic;
 color:#FFB39F;
 text-shadow:0px 0px 1px #B03E23;
 padding:0px 0px 10px 0px;
}
ul.ldd_menu ul li a{
 font-family: Arial, serif;
 font-size:10px;
 line-height:20px;
 color:#E7EACE;
 padding:1px 3px;
}
ul.ldd_menu ul li a:hover{
 -moz-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #333;
 -webkit-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #333;
 box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #333;
 border:1px groove #FFB39F;
 border-radius:2px;
 -webkit-border-radius:2px;
 -moz-border-radius:2px;
}

ul.ldd_menu{
 margin:0px;
 padding:0;
 display:block;
 height:50px;
 background-color:#3F3F3F;
 list-style:none;
 font-family:"Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;
 border-top:1px solid #777777;
 border-bottom:1px solid #777777;
 border-left:10px solid #3F3F3F;
 -moz-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12;
 -webkit-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12;
 -box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12;
}
ul.ldd_menu a{
 text-decoration:none;
}
ul.ldd_menu > li{
 float:left;
 position:relative;
}
ul.ldd_menu > li > span{
 float:left;
 color:#fff;
 background-color:#3F3F3F;
 height:50px;
 line-height:50px;
 cursor:default;
 padding:0px 20px;
 text-shadow:0px 0px 1px #fff;
 border-right:1px solid #777777;
 border-left:1px solid #777777;
}
ul.ldd_menu .ldd_submenu{
 position:absolute;
 top:50px;
 width:550px;
 display:none;
 opacity:0.95;
 left:0px;
 font-size:10px;
 background: #878787;
 border-top:1px solid #fff;
 -moz-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12 inset;
 -webkit-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12 inset;
 -box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12 inset;
}
a.ldd_subfoot{
 background-color:#3F3F3F;
 color:#fff;
 display:block;
 clear:both;
 padding:15px 20px;
 text-transform:uppercase;
 font-family: Arial, serif;
 font-size:12px;
 text-shadow:0px 0px 1px #fff;
 -moz-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #777 inset;
 -webkit-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #777 inset;
 -box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #777 inset;
}
ul.ldd_menu ul{
 list-style:none;
 float:left;
 border-left:1px groove #fff;
 margin:20px 0px 10px 30px;
 padding:10px;
}
li.ldd_heading{
 font-family: Georgia, serif;
 font-size: 13px;
 font-style: italic;
 color:#444;
 text-shadow:0px 0px 1px #B03E23;
 padding:0px 0px 10px 0px;
}
ul.ldd_menu ul li a{
 font-family: Arial, serif;
 font-size:10px;
 line-height:20px;
 color:#fff;
 padding:1px 3px;
}
ul.ldd_menu ul li a:hover{
 -moz-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #333;
 -webkit-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #333;
 box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #333;
 background:#3F3F3F;
 border-radius:2px;
 -webkit-border-radius:2px;
 -moz-border-radius:2px;
}

ul.ldd_menu{
 margin:0px;
 padding:0;
 display:block;
 height:50px;
 border-top:1px groove #fff;
 border-bottom:1px groove #fff;
    font-weight:bold;
 background: #eeeeee; /* Old browsers */
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #eeeeee 0%, #cccccc 63%); /* FF3.6  */
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#eeeeee), color-stop(63%,#cccccc)); /* Chrome,Safari4  */
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #eeeeee 0%,#cccccc 63%); /* Chrome10 ,Safari5.1  */
background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #eeeeee 0%,#cccccc 63%); /* Opera 11.10  */
background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #eeeeee 0%,#cccccc 63%); /* IE10  */
background: linear-gradient(top, #eeeeee 0%,#cccccc 63%); /* W3C */
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#eeeeee', endColorstr='#cccccc',GradientType=0 ); /* IE6-9 */
 list-style:none;
 font-family:"Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;
 -moz-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12;
 -webkit-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12;
 -box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12;
}
ul.ldd_menu a{
 text-decoration:none;
}
ul.ldd_menu > li{
 float:left;
 position:relative;
}
ul.ldd_menu > li > span{
 float:left;
 color:#444;
background: #eeeeee; /* Old browsers */
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #eeeeee 0%, #cccccc 63%); /* FF3.6  */
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#eeeeee), color-stop(63%,#cccccc)); /* Chrome,Safari4  */
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #eeeeee 0%,#cccccc 63%); /* Chrome10 ,Safari5.1  */
background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #eeeeee 0%,#cccccc 63%); /* Opera 11.10  */
background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #eeeeee 0%,#cccccc 63%); /* IE10  */
background: linear-gradient(top, #eeeeee 0%,#cccccc 63%); /* W3C */
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#eeeeee', endColorstr='#cccccc',GradientType=0 ); /* IE6-9 */
 height:50px;
 line-height:50px;
 cursor:default;
 padding:0px 20px;
 text-shadow:0px 0px 1px #fff;
 border-right:1px groove #ffffff;
}
ul.ldd_menu .ldd_submenu{
 position:absolute;
 top:50px;
 width:550px;
 display:none;
 opacity:0.95;
 left:0px;
 font-size:10px;
 background: #28343b; /* Old browsers */
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #28343b 0%, #828c95 64%, #b5bdc8 100%); /* FF3.6  */
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#28343b), color-stop(64%,#828c95), color-stop(100%,#b5bdc8)); /* Chrome,Safari4  */
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #28343b 0%,#828c95 64%,#b5bdc8 100%); /* Chrome10 ,Safari5.1  */
background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #28343b 0%,#828c95 64%,#b5bdc8 100%); /* Opera 11.10  */
background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #28343b 0%,#828c95 64%,#b5bdc8 100%); /* IE10  */
background: linear-gradient(top, #28343b 0%,#828c95 64%,#b5bdc8 100%); /* W3C */
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#28343b', endColorstr='#b5bdc8',GradientType=0 ); /* IE6-9 */
 border-top:1px groove #fff;
 -moz-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12 inset;
 -webkit-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12 inset;
 -box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12 inset;
}
a.ldd_subfoot{
 background: #eeeeee; /* Old browsers */
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #eeeeee 0%, #cccccc 63%); /* FF3.6  */
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#eeeeee), color-stop(63%,#cccccc)); /* Chrome,Safari4  */
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #eeeeee 0%,#cccccc 63%); /* Chrome10 ,Safari5.1  */
background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #eeeeee 0%,#cccccc 63%); /* Opera 11.10  */
background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #eeeeee 0%,#cccccc 63%); /* IE10  */
background: linear-gradient(top, #eeeeee 0%,#cccccc 63%); /* W3C */
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#eeeeee', endColorstr='#cccccc',GradientType=0 ); /* IE6-9 */
 color:#840707;
 display:block;
 clear:both;
 padding:15px 20px;
 text-transform:uppercase;
 font-family: Arial, serif;
 font-size:12px;
 text-shadow:0px 0px 1px #fff;
 -moz-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #777 inset;
 -webkit-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #777 inset;
 -box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #777 inset;
}
ul.ldd_menu ul{
 list-style:none;
 float:left;
 border-left:1px groove #fff;
 margin:20px 0px 10px 30px;
 padding:10px;
}
li.ldd_heading{
 font-family: Georgia, serif;
 font-size: 13px;
 font-style: italic;
 font-weight:bold;
 color:#fff;
 text-shadow:0px 0px 1px #B03E23;
 padding:0px 0px 10px 0px;
}
ul.ldd_menu ul li a{
 font-family: Arial, serif;
 font-size:10px;
 line-height:20px;
 color:#fff;
 padding:1px 3px;
}
ul.ldd_menu ul li a:hover{
 -moz-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #333;
 -webkit-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #333;
 box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #333;
 background:#3F3F3F;
 border-radius:2px;
 -webkit-border-radius:2px;
 -moz-border-radius:2px;
}

ul.ldd_menu{
 margin:0px;
 padding:0;
 display:block;
 height:50px;
 border-top:1px groove #444;
 border-bottom:1px groove #444;
    font-weight:bold;
 background: #7d7e7d; /* Old browsers */
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #7d7e7d 0%, #0e0e0e 100%); /* FF3.6  */
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#7d7e7d), color-stop(100%,#0e0e0e)); /* Chrome,Safari4  */
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #7d7e7d 0%,#0e0e0e 100%); /* Chrome10 ,Safari5.1  */
background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #7d7e7d 0%,#0e0e0e 100%); /* Opera 11.10  */
background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #7d7e7d 0%,#0e0e0e 100%); /* IE10  */
background: linear-gradient(top, #7d7e7d 0%,#0e0e0e 100%); /* W3C */
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#7d7e7d', endColorstr='#0e0e0e',GradientType=0 ); /* IE6-9 */
 list-style:none;
 font-family:"Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;
 -moz-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12;
 -webkit-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12;
 -box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12;
}
ul.ldd_menu a{
 text-decoration:none;
}
ul.ldd_menu > li{
 float:left;
 position:relative;
}
ul.ldd_menu > li > span{
 float:left;
 color:#ADADAD;
background: #7d7e7d; /* Old browsers */
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #7d7e7d 0%, #0e0e0e 100%); /* FF3.6  */
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#7d7e7d), color-stop(100%,#0e0e0e)); /* Chrome,Safari4  */
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #7d7e7d 0%,#0e0e0e 100%); /* Chrome10 ,Safari5.1  */
background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #7d7e7d 0%,#0e0e0e 100%); /* Opera 11.10  */
background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #7d7e7d 0%,#0e0e0e 100%); /* IE10  */
background: linear-gradient(top, #7d7e7d 0%,#0e0e0e 100%); /* W3C */
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#7d7e7d', endColorstr='#0e0e0e',GradientType=0 ); /* IE6-9 */
 height:50px;
 line-height:50px;
 cursor:default;
 padding:0px 20px;
 text-shadow:0px 0px 1px #fff;
 border-right:1px groove #C4C4C4;
}
ul.ldd_menu .ldd_submenu{
 position:absolute;
 top:50px;
 width:550px;
 display:none;
 opacity:0.95;
 left:0px;
 font-size:10px;
 border-top:1px groove #444;
 background: #ffffff; /* Old browsers */
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #ffffff 0%, #f6f6f6 47%, #ededed 100%); /* FF3.6  */
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#ffffff), color-stop(47%,#f6f6f6), color-stop(100%,#ededed)); /* Chrome,Safari4  */
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #ffffff 0%,#f6f6f6 47%,#ededed 100%); /* Chrome10 ,Safari5.1  */
background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #ffffff 0%,#f6f6f6 47%,#ededed 100%); /* Opera 11.10  */
background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #ffffff 0%,#f6f6f6 47%,#ededed 100%); /* IE10  */
background: linear-gradient(top, #ffffff 0%,#f6f6f6 47%,#ededed 100%); /* W3C */
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#ffffff', endColorstr='#ededed',GradientType=0 ); /* IE6-9 */
 -moz-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12 inset;
 -webkit-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12 inset;
 -box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12 inset;
}
a.ldd_subfoot{
 background: #7d7e7d; /* Old browsers */
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #7d7e7d 0%, #0e0e0e 100%); /* FF3.6  */
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#7d7e7d), color-stop(100%,#0e0e0e)); /* Chrome,Safari4  */
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #7d7e7d 0%,#0e0e0e 100%); /* Chrome10 ,Safari5.1  */
background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #7d7e7d 0%,#0e0e0e 100%); /* Opera 11.10  */
background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #7d7e7d 0%,#0e0e0e 100%); /* IE10  */
background: linear-gradient(top, #7d7e7d 0%,#0e0e0e 100%); /* W3C */
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#7d7e7d', endColorstr='#0e0e0e',GradientType=0 ); /* IE6-9 */
 color:#fff;
 display:block;
 clear:both;
 padding:15px 20px;
 text-transform:uppercase;
 font-family: Arial, serif;
 font-size:12px;
 text-shadow:0px 0px 1px #fff;
 -moz-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #777 inset;
 -webkit-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #777 inset;
 -box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #777 inset;
}
ul.ldd_menu ul{
 list-style:none;
 float:left;
 border-left:1px groove #fff;
 margin:20px 0px 10px 30px;
 padding:10px;
}
li.ldd_heading{
 font-family: Georgia, serif;
 font-size: 13px;
 font-style: italic;
 font-weight:bold;
 color:#878787;
 text-shadow:0px 0px 1px #B03E23;
 padding:0px 0px 10px 0px;
}
ul.ldd_menu ul li a{
 font-family: Arial, serif;
 font-size:10px;
 line-height:20px;
 color:#878787;
 padding:1px 3px;
}
ul.ldd_menu ul li a:hover{
 -moz-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #333;
 -webkit-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #333;
 box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #333;
 background:#DDDDDD;
 color:#000000;
 border-radius:2px;
 -webkit-border-radius:2px;
 -moz-border-radius:2px;
}

ul.ldd_menu{
 margin:0px;
 padding:0;
 display:block;
 height:50px;
 border-top:2px groove #87E9FF;
    font-weight:bold;
 background: #93cede; /* Old browsers */
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #93cede 0%, #75bdd1 41%, #49a5bf 100%); /* FF3.6  */
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#93cede), color-stop(41%,#75bdd1), color-stop(100%,#49a5bf)); /* Chrome,Safari4  */
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #93cede 0%,#75bdd1 41%,#49a5bf 100%); /* Chrome10 ,Safari5.1  */
background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #93cede 0%,#75bdd1 41%,#49a5bf 100%); /* Opera 11.10  */
background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #93cede 0%,#75bdd1 41%,#49a5bf 100%); /* IE10  */
background: linear-gradient(top, #93cede 0%,#75bdd1 41%,#49a5bf 100%); /* W3C */
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#93cede', endColorstr='#49a5bf',GradientType=0 ); /* IE6-9 */
 list-style:none;
 font-family:"Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;
 -moz-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12;
 -webkit-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12;
 -box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12;
}
ul.ldd_menu a{
 text-decoration:none;
}
ul.ldd_menu > li{
 float:left;
 position:relative;
}
ul.ldd_menu > li > span{
 float:left;
 color:#ffffff;
background: #93cede; /* Old browsers */
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #93cede 0%, #75bdd1 41%, #49a5bf 100%); /* FF3.6  */
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#93cede), color-stop(41%,#75bdd1), color-stop(100%,#49a5bf)); /* Chrome,Safari4  */
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #93cede 0%,#75bdd1 41%,#49a5bf 100%); /* Chrome10 ,Safari5.1  */
background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #93cede 0%,#75bdd1 41%,#49a5bf 100%); /* Opera 11.10  */
background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #93cede 0%,#75bdd1 41%,#49a5bf 100%); /* IE10  */
background: linear-gradient(top, #93cede 0%,#75bdd1 41%,#49a5bf 100%); /* W3C */
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#93cede', endColorstr='#49a5bf',GradientType=0 ); /* IE6-9 */
 height:50px;
 line-height:50px;
 cursor:default;
 padding:0px 20px;
 text-shadow:0px 0px 1px #fff;
 border-right:2px groove #87E9FF;
}
ul.ldd_menu .ldd_submenu{
 position:absolute;
 top:50px;
 width:550px;
 display:none;
 opacity:0.95;
 left:0px;
 font-size:10px;
 background: #ffffff; /* Old browsers */
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #ffffff 0%, #f6f6f6 47%, #ededed 100%); /* FF3.6  */
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#ffffff), color-stop(47%,#f6f6f6), color-stop(100%,#ededed)); /* Chrome,Safari4  */
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #ffffff 0%,#f6f6f6 47%,#ededed 100%); /* Chrome10 ,Safari5.1  */
background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #ffffff 0%,#f6f6f6 47%,#ededed 100%); /* Opera 11.10  */
background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #ffffff 0%,#f6f6f6 47%,#ededed 100%); /* IE10  */
background: linear-gradient(top, #ffffff 0%,#f6f6f6 47%,#ededed 100%); /* W3C */
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#ffffff', endColorstr='#ededed',GradientType=0 ); /* IE6-9 */
 -moz-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12 inset;
 -webkit-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12 inset;
 -box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12 inset;
}
a.ldd_subfoot{
 background: #93cede; /* Old browsers */
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #93cede 0%, #75bdd1 41%, #49a5bf 100%); /* FF3.6  */
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#93cede), color-stop(41%,#75bdd1), color-stop(100%,#49a5bf)); /* Chrome,Safari4  */
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #93cede 0%,#75bdd1 41%,#49a5bf 100%); /* Chrome10 ,Safari5.1  */
background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #93cede 0%,#75bdd1 41%,#49a5bf 100%); /* Opera 11.10  */
background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #93cede 0%,#75bdd1 41%,#49a5bf 100%); /* IE10  */
background: linear-gradient(top, #93cede 0%,#75bdd1 41%,#49a5bf 100%); /* W3C */
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#93cede', endColorstr='#49a5bf',GradientType=0 ); /* IE6-9 */
 color:#fff;
 display:block;
 clear:both;
 padding:15px 20px;
 text-transform:uppercase;
 font-family: Arial, serif;
 font-size:12px;
 border-top:2px groove #87E9FF;
 text-shadow:0px 0px 1px #fff;
 -moz-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #777 inset;
 -webkit-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #777 inset;
 -box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #777 inset;
}
ul.ldd_menu ul{
 list-style:none;
 float:left;
 border-left:1px groove #fff;
 margin:20px 0px 10px 30px;
 padding:10px;
}
li.ldd_heading{
 font-family: Georgia, serif;
 font-size: 13px;
 font-style: italic;
 font-weight:bold;
 color:#878787;
 text-shadow:0px 0px 1px #B03E23;
 padding:0px 0px 10px 0px;
}
ul.ldd_menu ul li a{
 font-family: Arial, serif;
 font-size:10px;
 line-height:20px;
 color:#878787;
 padding:1px 3px;
}
ul.ldd_menu ul li a:hover{
 -moz-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #333;
 -webkit-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #333;
 box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #333;
 color:#000000;
 border-radius:2px;
 -webkit-border-radius:2px;
 -moz-border-radius:2px;
}

ul.ldd_menu{
 margin:0px;
 padding:0;
 display:block;
 height:50px;
 border-top:2px groove #87E9FF;
    font-weight:bold;
 background: #93cede; /* Old browsers */
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #93cede 0%, #75bdd1 41%, #49a5bf 100%); /* FF3.6  */
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#93cede), color-stop(41%,#75bdd1), color-stop(100%,#49a5bf)); /* Chrome,Safari4  */
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #93cede 0%,#75bdd1 41%,#49a5bf 100%); /* Chrome10 ,Safari5.1  */
background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #93cede 0%,#75bdd1 41%,#49a5bf 100%); /* Opera 11.10  */
background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #93cede 0%,#75bdd1 41%,#49a5bf 100%); /* IE10  */
background: linear-gradient(top, #93cede 0%,#75bdd1 41%,#49a5bf 100%); /* W3C */
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#93cede', endColorstr='#49a5bf',GradientType=0 ); /* IE6-9 */
 list-style:none;
 font-family:"Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;
 -moz-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12;
 -webkit-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12;
 -box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12;
}
ul.ldd_menu a{
 text-decoration:none;
}
ul.ldd_menu > li{
 float:left;
 position:relative;
}
ul.ldd_menu > li > span{
 float:left;
 color:#ffffff;
background: #93cede; /* Old browsers */
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #93cede 0%, #75bdd1 41%, #49a5bf 100%); /* FF3.6  */
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#93cede), color-stop(41%,#75bdd1), color-stop(100%,#49a5bf)); /* Chrome,Safari4  */
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #93cede 0%,#75bdd1 41%,#49a5bf 100%); /* Chrome10 ,Safari5.1  */
background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #93cede 0%,#75bdd1 41%,#49a5bf 100%); /* Opera 11.10  */
background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #93cede 0%,#75bdd1 41%,#49a5bf 100%); /* IE10  */
background: linear-gradient(top, #93cede 0%,#75bdd1 41%,#49a5bf 100%); /* W3C */
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#93cede', endColorstr='#49a5bf',GradientType=0 ); /* IE6-9 */
 height:50px;
 line-height:50px;
 cursor:default;
 padding:0px 20px;
 text-shadow:0px 0px 1px #fff;
 border-right:2px groove #87E9FF;
}
ul.ldd_menu .ldd_submenu{
 position:absolute;
 top:50px;
 width:550px;
 display:none;
 opacity:0.95;
 left:0px;
 font-size:10px;
 background: #f2f9fe; /* Old browsers */
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #f2f9fe 0%, #d6f0fd 100%); /* FF3.6  */
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#f2f9fe), color-stop(100%,#d6f0fd)); /* Chrome,Safari4  */
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #f2f9fe 0%,#d6f0fd 100%); /* Chrome10 ,Safari5.1  */
background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #f2f9fe 0%,#d6f0fd 100%); /* Opera 11.10  */
background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #f2f9fe 0%,#d6f0fd 100%); /* IE10  */
background: linear-gradient(top, #f2f9fe 0%,#d6f0fd 100%); /* W3C */
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#f2f9fe', endColorstr='#d6f0fd',GradientType=0 ); /* IE6-9 */
 -moz-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12 inset;
 -webkit-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12 inset;
 -box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12 inset;
}
a.ldd_subfoot{
 background: #93cede; /* Old browsers */
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #93cede 0%, #75bdd1 41%, #49a5bf 100%); /* FF3.6  */
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#93cede), color-stop(41%,#75bdd1), color-stop(100%,#49a5bf)); /* Chrome,Safari4  */
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #93cede 0%,#75bdd1 41%,#49a5bf 100%); /* Chrome10 ,Safari5.1  */
background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #93cede 0%,#75bdd1 41%,#49a5bf 100%); /* Opera 11.10  */
background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #93cede 0%,#75bdd1 41%,#49a5bf 100%); /* IE10  */
background: linear-gradient(top, #93cede 0%,#75bdd1 41%,#49a5bf 100%); /* W3C */
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#93cede', endColorstr='#49a5bf',GradientType=0 ); /* IE6-9 */
 color:#fff;
 display:block;
 clear:both;
 padding:15px 20px;
 text-transform:uppercase;
 font-family: Arial, serif;
 font-size:12px;
 border-top:2px groove #87E9FF;
 text-shadow:0px 0px 1px #fff;
 -moz-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #777 inset;
 -webkit-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #777 inset;
 -box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #777 inset;
}
ul.ldd_menu ul{
 list-style:none;
 float:left;
 border-left:1px groove #fff;
 margin:20px 0px 10px 30px;
 padding:10px;
}
li.ldd_heading{
 font-family: Georgia, serif;
 font-size: 13px;
 font-style: italic;
 font-weight:bold;
 color:#878787;
 text-shadow:0px 0px 1px #B03E23;
 padding:0px 0px 10px 0px;
}
ul.ldd_menu ul li a{
 font-family: Arial, serif;
 font-size:10px;
 line-height:20px;
 color:#878787;
 padding:1px 3px;
}
ul.ldd_menu ul li a:hover{
 -moz-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #333;
 -webkit-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #333;
 box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #333;
 color:#000000;
 border-radius:2px;
 -webkit-border-radius:2px;
 -moz-border-radius:2px;
}

ul.ldd_menu{
 margin:0px;
 padding:0;
 display:block;
 height:50px;
 background: #cedce7; /* Old browsers */
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #cedce7 0%, #596a72 100%); /* FF3.6  */
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#cedce7), color-stop(100%,#596a72)); /* Chrome,Safari4  */
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #cedce7 0%,#596a72 100%); /* Chrome10 ,Safari5.1  */
background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #cedce7 0%,#596a72 100%); /* Opera 11.10  */
background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #cedce7 0%,#596a72 100%); /* IE10  */
background: linear-gradient(top, #cedce7 0%,#596a72 100%); /* W3C */
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#cedce7', endColorstr='#596a72',GradientType=0 ); /* IE6-9 */
 list-style:none;
 font-family:"Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;
 border-top:1px solid #979FA3;
 border-bottom:1px solid #979FA3;
 -moz-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12;
 -webkit-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12;
 -box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12;
}
ul.ldd_menu a{
 text-decoration:none;
}
ul.ldd_menu > li{
 float:left;
 position:relative;
}
ul.ldd_menu > li > span{
 float:left;
 color:#444;
 font-style:italic;
 font-weight:bold;
 background: #cedce7; /* Old browsers */
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #cedce7 0%, #596a72 100%); /* FF3.6  */
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#cedce7), color-stop(100%,#596a72)); /* Chrome,Safari4  */
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #cedce7 0%,#596a72 100%); /* Chrome10 ,Safari5.1  */
background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #cedce7 0%,#596a72 100%); /* Opera 11.10  */
background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #cedce7 0%,#596a72 100%); /* IE10  */
background: linear-gradient(top, #cedce7 0%,#596a72 100%); /* W3C */
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#cedce7', endColorstr='#596a72',GradientType=0 ); /* IE6-9 */
 height:50px;
 line-height:50px;
 cursor:default;
 padding:0px 20px;
 text-shadow:0px 0px 1px #fff;
 border-right:1px solid #979FA3;
}
ul.ldd_menu .ldd_submenu{
 position:absolute;
 top:50px;
 width:550px;
 display:none;
 opacity:0.95;
 left:0px;
 font-size:10px;
background: #eeeeee; /* Old browsers */
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #eeeeee 0%, #eeeeee 100%); /* FF3.6  */
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#eeeeee), color-stop(100%,#eeeeee)); /* Chrome,Safari4  */
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #eeeeee 0%,#eeeeee 100%); /* Chrome10 ,Safari5.1  */
background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #eeeeee 0%,#eeeeee 100%); /* Opera 11.10  */
background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #eeeeee 0%,#eeeeee 100%); /* IE10  */
background: linear-gradient(top, #eeeeee 0%,#eeeeee 100%); /* W3C */
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#eeeeee', endColorstr='#eeeeee',GradientType=0 ); /* IE6-9 */
 border-top:2px groove #D8E8BE;
 -moz-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12 inset;
 -webkit-box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12 inset;
 -box-shadow:0px 3px 4px #591E12 inset;
}
a.ldd_subfoot{
 background: #cedce7; /* Old browsers */
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #cedce7 0%, #596a72 100%); /* FF3.6  */
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#cedce7), color-stop(100%,#596a72)); /* Chrome,Safari4  */
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #cedce7 0%,#596a72 100%); /* Chrome10 ,Safari5.1  */
background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #cedce7 0%,#596a72 100%); /* Opera 11.10  */
background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #cedce7 0%,#596a72 100%); /* IE10  */
background: linear-gradient(top, #cedce7 0%,#596a72 100%); /* W3C */
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#cedce7', endColorstr='#596a72',GradientType=0 ); /* IE6-9 */
 color:#444;
 font-weight:bold;
 font-style:italic;
 display:block;
 clear:both;
 padding:15px 20px;
 text-transform:uppercase;
 font-family: Arial, serif;
 font-size:12px;
 text-shadow:0px 0px 1px #fff;
 -moz-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #777 inset;
 -webkit-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #777 inset;
 -box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #777 inset;
}
ul.ldd_menu ul{
 list-style:none;
 float:left;
 border-left:2px groove #979FA3;
 margin:20px 0px 10px 30px;
 padding:10px;
}
li.ldd_heading{
 font-family: arial;
 font-size: 13px;
 font-style:normal;
 font-weight:bold;
 color:#979FA3;
 text-shadow:0px 0px 1px #B03E23;
 padding:0px 0px 10px 0px;
}
ul.ldd_menu ul li a{
 font-family: Arial, serif;
 font-size:10px;
 line-height:20px;
 color:#444;
 padding:1px 3px;
}
ul.ldd_menu ul li a:hover{
 -moz-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #333;
 -webkit-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #333;
 box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #333;
 font-size:11px;
}

Conclusion

I hope this post was helpful. I have spent lot of time on this large drop down menu to make it best as i can so don't go without saying any thing and without sharing the love. Good Luck

How To Build High Authority Links Like .edu .gov .mil

2011-10-09T14:40:00.002+05:00

If you have read my previous article about link building Link Building Walk-through then you might have noticed that i have emphasized on high PR and authority links. But that was just an over view of link building and i haven't explained some important parts more specifically, and one of them is How to get authoritative links. Remember when i say high Page Rank, i don't mean that green little toolbar that show you the page rank of a web page and when i say Authoritative Links, i don't mean only high PR links. Ok now this needs a bit of explaining. First of all page rank of a website is not what page rank toolbar shows you and high page rank sites are not the only authority sites.

Years back search system of search engines was very simple but things are changed now,search process has become more complex. Spammers took the advantage of search engines and used unethical tactics [ keyword spamming, ghost writing, and other black hat seo tricks] to get high ranking in search engines which forced the search engines to take some serious steps to improve the ranking system and to provide the searcher with best relevant results, so they came up with another ranking system so called Trust Rank to measure the credibility of a web site.

What Are High Authority BackLinks??

A while back links coming from High Page Rank site was considered to be an Authoritative link, and still link from High Page Rank sites have great impact on search engine ranking but basically educational institution & universities sites ( .edu ), government sites ( .gov ) and military sites ( .mil ) are considered as high authority sites because these are non commercial sites and are very trusted. Assumption is that good sites only link to good sites because they don't want to harm themselves by linking to junk sites. So when search engine will crawl these High Authority sites he will find links to high quality sites, he will follow those sites and will find that those sites are also linking to quality sites. Now question is How To Get Authority Links ? without buying them so search engines show some respect to your site.

How To Find & Get Links From High Authority Sites?

Those who realize the importance of High Authority ( .edu, .gov , .mil ) links will surely jump to this post without reading the previous part of the article, i totally understand the excitement so lets get straight to the point.

Spy On Your Competitors

SEO Experts says that they have seen proven results that even a single back link from High Authority sites ( .edu, .gov, .mil ) can push your ranking to an un expected good position. So spying on your competitor is a great thing to do, If he is doing great in search engines then its obvious that he has a really good link profile or there are some links from High Authority sites pointing to his site. So check your competitor's incoming links and pay special attention to the sites you think are High profile that you might have missed. I recommend using Yahoo site explorer and back link watch for this purpose. Once you found those sites, visit them and figure out what kind of links are those, they are comment links, profile links or links coming from author boxes. Then try to get those links. Most of the time webmasters accept links that are relevant to the topic and have some good information, so if your site is good resource of information, you won't have trouble getting those links.

Find Out ( .edu, .gov, .mil ) Sites Linking To Your Competitor

One of the online tool that i use most of the time is WooRank. It provides great information about on-page and of-page seo of any site. Use this tool to check hoe many .gov, .edu and .mil links are pointing to your competitor's site. You can also use this simple Yahoo search command for this purpose.

linkdomain:www.domain.com site:edu

If you go to Yahoo Search and type linkdomain:www.google.com site:edu, you will get all the EDU sites that are linking to google.com. Now you can put your competitor's site in place of www.google.com and you can also change edu to gov, mil. Find out why those sites are linking to your competitor. If that link is coming from an article then write a better version of that article and you can ask the webmaster to include your article too because of relevancy and good contents.

Get Links From ( .edu, .gov, .mil ) Blogs On Your Niche

One of the great thing you can do is that you can find .edu, .gov and .mil blogs in your niche. Which is easy way to get High Authority links. There is a simple Google search command that can help you finding the High Authority blogs in your niche.. Go to google and type the following:

Keyword+inurl:blog site:.edu

Replace “keyword” with your targeted keyword or key phrase. For example If I’m looking for edu blogs that talk about Blogger Tricks or Blogger Widgets, i can search for Blogger Tricks+inurl:blog site:.edu. And it will give me a good list of blogs that has talked about blogger Tricks. So if you have some top notch articles about those topics that authors are talking about on that blog then webmaster will link to your blog to provide his readers more valuable contents. Be careful with the keywords because some time Google returns with some junk links if there are not much relevant information about your targeted keyword or it is confusing..

There might be some other ways to find High Authority sites and get free links from them, but i know this much and these are also easy to use techniques. Don't expect for magics. If you use the above mansion methods, you will find lot of High Authority sites that can link to you and you won't have to pay for that but it might not be easy. you have to work hard to make them believe that your site really worth linking to.

Beautiful Navigation bar menues with cool JQuery Hover Effect - Part - 1

2011-10-06T14:25:00.010+05:00

A very professional and elegant looking navigation menu for blogger with cool JQuery hover effect. Now available in 6 different color variations and each one is just great. compatible with all browsers with lot of unique features. You can install this navigation menu on your blogs and can use it any way you want.

jQuery Menu Features

Full cross-browser compatibility
Fully accessible even when JavaScript is turned off, as a pure CSS menu
Search engines optimized
Clear unordered list (LI and UL HTML tags) structure of jQuery menu
Easy to setup and update
Fantastic animation and transition effects
Multiple pre-desinded color schemes
Completely customizable styling with CSS
Powered by jQuery
Extremely small - 3kb uncompressed

Demos

License

Free to use on both personal and commercial sites but you have to place following link in your blog / website footer or any where you want.

<a href="http://apycom.com/">Menus</a>.<a href="http://bloggeranalytics.blogspot.com/">Blogger Widgets</a>

Yellow Green Navigation Bar With Jquery Hover Effects

How To install......

1 Login to blogger.
2 Go to Design > Page Elements > Add a new html / JavaScript Gadget.
3 Copy the following code and paste in in Html / JavaScript Gadget.

<div id="menu">
  <ul class="menu">
   <li><a href="#" class="parent"><span>Home</span></a>
    <div><ul>
     <li><a href="#" class="parent"><span>Sub Item 1</span></a>
      <div><ul>
       <li><a href="#" class="parent"><span>Sub Item 1.1</span></a>
        <div><ul>
        <li><a href="#"><span>Sub Item 1.1.1</span></a></li>
        <li><a href="#"><span>Sub Item 1.1.2</span></a></li>
        </ul></div>
       </li>
       <li><a href="#"><span>Sub Item 1.2</span></a></li>
       <li><a href="#"><span>Sub Item 1.3</span></a></li>
       <li><a href="#"><span>Sub Item 1.4</span></a></li>
       <li><a href="#"><span>Sub Item 1.5</span></a></li>
       <li><a href="#"><span>Sub Item 1.6</span></a></li>
       <li><a href="#" class="parent"><span>Sub Item 1.7</span></a>
        <div><ul>
        <li><a href="#"><span>Sub Item 1.7.1</span></a></li>
        <li><a href="#"><span>Sub Item 1.7.2</span></a></li>
        </ul></div>
       </li>
      </ul></div>
     </li>
     <li><a href="#"><span>Sub Item 2</span></a></li>
     <li><a href="#"><span>Sub Item 3</span></a></li>
    </ul></div>
   </li>
   <li><a href="#"><span>Product Info</span></a>
    <div><ul>
     <li><a href="#" class="parent"><span>Sub Item 1</span></a>
      <div><ul>
      <li><a href="#"><span>Sub Item 1.1</span></a></li>
      <li><a href="#"><span>Sub Item 1.2</span></a></li>
      </ul></div>
     </li>
     <li><a href="#" class="parent"><span>Sub Item 2</span></a>
      <div><ul>
      <li><a href="#"><span>Sub Item 2.1</span></a></li>
      <li><a href="#"><span>Sub Item 2.2</span></a></li>
      </ul></div>
     </li>
     <li><a href="#"><span>Sub Item 3</span></a></li>
     <li><a href="#"><span>Sub Item 4</span></a></li>
     <li><a href="#"><span>Sub Item 5</span></a></li>
     <li><a href="#"><span>Sub Item 6</span></a></li>
     <li><a href="#"><span>Sub Item 7</span></a></li>
    </ul></div>
   </li>
   <li><a href="#"><span>Help</span></a></li>
   <li class="last"><a href="#"><span>Contacts</span></a></li>
  </ul>
 </div>

4 Replace the" # " in above code with your menu links and delete the extra list items.
5 Save the Gadget and drag it to the top navigation bar position.
6 Now go to Edit HTML tab and click Expand Widget Template check box.
7 Now copy the following code and paste it above the </head> tag.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://webrank.opendrive.com/files/46826701_33SLA_a3b2/jquery.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://webrank.opendrive.com/files/46826698_3CxQ7/menu.js"></script>

8 Now find ]]></b:skin> and paste following CSS code above it.

/**
 *********************************************
 * Prototype of styles for horizontal CSS-menu
 * @data 30.06.2009
 *********************************************
 * (X)HTML-scheme:
 *  <div id="menu">
 *      <ul class="menu">
 *          <li><a href="#" class="parent"><span>level 1</span></a>
 *              <ul>
 *                  <li><a href="#" class="parent"><span>level 2</span></a>
 *                      <ul><li><a href="#"><span>level 3</span></a></li></ul>
 *                  </li>
 *              </ul>
 *          </li>
 *          <li class="last"><a href="#"><span>level 1</span></a></li>
 *      </ul>
 *  </div>
 *********************************************
 */

/* menu::base */
div#menu {
    height:41px;
    background:url(https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-HnDV7PPfoPY/ToKG3czQ2cI/AAAAAAAAAYM/mwAZfL5i0WI/main-bg.png) repeat-x;
}

div#menu ul {
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0;
    list-style: none;
    float: left;
}
div#menu ul.menu {
    padding-left: 30px;
}

div#menu li {
    position: relative;
    z-index: 9;
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0 5px 0 0;
    display: block;
    float: left;
}
div#menu li:hover>ul {
    left: -2px;
}

div#menu a {
    position: relative;
    z-index: 10;
    height: 41px;
    display: block;
    float: left;
    line-height: 41px;
    text-decoration: none;
    font: normal 12px Trebuchet MS;
}
div#menu a:hover, div#menu a:hover span { color: #fff; }
div#menu li.current a {}

div#menu span {
    display: block;
    cursor: pointer;
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
    background-position: 95% 0;
}
div#menu ul ul a.parent span {
    background-position:95% 8px;
    background-image: url(https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-Mnf-3dHMRTg/ToKG22eWa1I/AAAAAAAAAYA/Zrcr4-1h3As/item-pointer.gif);
}
div#menu ul ul a.parent:hover span {
    background-image: url(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-n9MQ76JC-Bw/ToKG2wiNTVI/AAAAAAAAAX8/cDHRoltqCrw/item-pointer-mover.gif);
}

/* menu::level1 */
div#menu a {
    padding: 0 10px 0 10px;
    line-height: 30px;
    color: #e5e5e5;
}
div#menu span {
    margin-top: 5px;
}/**@replace#1*/
div#menu li { background: url(https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-049CCj35JKg/ToKG3bSFADI/AAAAAAAAAYQ/KMgPSMukKH8/main-delimiter.png) 98% 4px no-repeat; }
div#menu li.last { background: none; }

/* menu::level2 */
div#menu ul ul li { background: none; }
div#menu ul ul {
    position: absolute;
    top: 38px;
    left: -999em;
    width: 163px;
    padding: 5px 0 0 0;
    background: rgb(45,45,45);
    margin-top:1px;
}
div#menu ul ul a {
    padding: 0 0 0 15px;
    height: auto;
    float: none;
    display: block;
    line-height: 24px;
    color: rgb(169,169,169);
}
div#menu ul ul span {
    margin-top: 0;
    padding-right: 15px;
    _padding-right: 20px;
    color: rgb(169,169,169);
}
div#menu ul ul a:hover span {
    color: #fff;
}
div#menu ul ul li.last { background: none; }
div#menu ul ul li {
    width: 100%;
}

/* menu::level3 */
div#menu ul ul ul {
    padding: 0;
    margin: -38px 0 0 163px !important;
    margin-left:172px;
}

/* colors */
div#menu ul ul ul { background: rgb(41,41,41); }
div#menu ul ul ul ul { background: rgb(38,38,38); }
div#menu ul ul ul ul { background: rgb(35,35,35); }

/* lava lamp */
div#menu li.back {
    background: url(https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-lpyp3La3Kvc/ToKG3GUpDZI/AAAAAAAAAYI/aY1pyty7hTo/lava.png) no-repeat right -44px !important;
    background-image: url(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-O-6TZeTfSAQ/ToKG2zOVK4I/AAAAAAAAAYE/Y0M6JKTFC90/lava.gif);
    width: 13px;
    height: 44px;
    z-index: 8;
    position: absolute;
    margin: -1px 0 0 -5px;
}
div#menu li.back .left {
    background: url(https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-lpyp3La3Kvc/ToKG3GUpDZI/AAAAAAAAAYI/aY1pyty7hTo/lava.png) no-repeat top left !important;
    background-image: url(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-O-6TZeTfSAQ/ToKG2zOVK4I/AAAAAAAAAYE/Y0M6JKTFC90/lava.gif);
    height: 44px;
    margin-right: 8px;
}

9 Click the Preview button, if all correct then Save the template.
10 That's it. Your navigation menu is installed. You can get rid of your older navigation menu now.

Black Navigation Bar With Jquery Hover Effects

How To install......

> Follow the first 6 steps from above.
> Now in step 7 copy the following code and paste it above the </head> tag.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://webrank.opendrive.com/files/47958980_Rzojz/jquery.js"></script>
 <script type="text/javascript" src="http://webrank.opendrive.com/files/47958977_6iKxU/menu.js"></script>

> Now find ]]></b:skin> and paste following CSS code above it.

/**
 *********************************************
 * Prototype of styles for horizontal CSS-menu
 * @data 30.06.2009
 *********************************************
 * (X)HTML-scheme:
 *  <div id="menu">
 *      <ul class="menu">
 *          <li><a href="#" class="parent"><span>level 1</span></a>
 *              <ul>
 *                  <li><a href="#" class="parent"><span>level 2</span></a>
 *                      <ul><li><a href="#"><span>level 3</span></a></li></ul>
 *                  </li>
 *              </ul>
 *          </li>
 *          <li class="last"><a href="#"><span>level 1</span></a></li>
 *      </ul>
 *  </div>
 *********************************************
 */

/* menu::base */
div#menu {
    height:41px;
    background:url(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-3KyQN5m2uEo/To91Nd3mINI/AAAAAAAAAhw/DHf7OCY-w6c/s41/main-bg.png) repeat-x;
}

div#menu ul {
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0;
    list-style: none;
    float: left;
}
div#menu ul.menu {
    padding-left: 30px;
}

div#menu li {
    position: relative;
    z-index: 9;
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0 5px 0 0;
    display: block;
    float: left;
}
div#menu li:hover>ul {
    left: -2px;
}

div#menu a {
    position: relative;
    z-index: 10;
    height: 41px;
    display: block;
    float: left;
    line-height: 41px;
    text-decoration: none;
    font: normal 12px Trebuchet MS;
}
div#menu a:hover, div#menu a:hover span { color: #fff; }
div#menu li.current a {}

div#menu span {
    display: block;
    cursor: pointer;
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
    background-position: 95% 0;
}
div#menu ul ul a.parent span {
    background-position:95% 8px;
    background-image: url(https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-Wo13rm3ATMk/To91M1hFPNI/AAAAAAAAAhc/UDA-WliYpIQ/s10/item-pointer.gif);
}
div#menu ul ul a.parent:hover span {
    background-image: url(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-jtf5gWMjvmU/To91M0mEzII/AAAAAAAAAhg/DYSYtwsohOw/s10/item-pointer-mover.gif);
}

/* menu::level1 */
div#menu a {
    padding: 0 10px 0 10px;
    line-height: 30px;
    color: #e5e5e5;
}
div#menu span {
    margin-top: 5px;
}/**@replace#1*/
div#menu li { background: url(https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-p9PoLfvkgB4/To91NaM9mNI/AAAAAAAAAhs/T7EhzCKtcbE/s32/main-delimiter.png) 98% 4px no-repeat; }
div#menu li.last { background: none; }

/* menu::level2 */
div#menu ul ul li { background: none; }
div#menu ul ul {
    position: absolute;
    top: 38px;
    left: -999em;
    width: 163px;
    padding: 5px 0 0 0;
    background: rgb(45,45,45);
    margin-top:1px;
}
div#menu ul ul a {
    padding: 0 0 0 15px;
    height: auto;
    float: none;
    display: block;
    line-height: 24px;
    color: rgb(169,169,169);
}
div#menu ul ul span {
    margin-top: 0;
    padding-right: 15px;
    _padding-right: 20px;
    color: rgb(169,169,169);
}
div#menu ul ul a:hover span {
    color: #fff;
}
div#menu ul ul li.last { background: none; }
div#menu ul ul li {
    width: 100%;
}

/* menu::level3 */
div#menu ul ul ul {
    padding: 0;
    margin: -38px 0 0 163px !important;
    margin-left:172px;
}

/* colors */
div#menu ul ul ul { background: rgb(41,41,41); }
div#menu ul ul ul ul { background: rgb(38,38,38); }
div#menu ul ul ul ul { background: rgb(35,35,35); }

/* lava lamp */
div#menu li.back {
    background: url(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-GLCuHKR1zjw/To91NPCb80I/AAAAAAAAAho/WLgr0WxzJ1Y/s229/lava.png) no-repeat right -44px !important;
    background-image: url(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-78qgmsz_XAE/To91My68dgI/AAAAAAAAAhk/wO3RVPK5718/s229/lava.gif);
    width: 13px;
    height: 44px;
    z-index: 8;
    position: absolute;
    margin: -1px 0 0 -5px;
}
div#menu li.back .left {
    background: url(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-GLCuHKR1zjw/To91NPCb80I/AAAAAAAAAho/WLgr0WxzJ1Y/s229/lava.png) no-repeat top left !important;
    background-image: url(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-78qgmsz_XAE/To91My68dgI/AAAAAAAAAhk/wO3RVPK5718/s229/lava.gif);
    height: 44px;
    margin-right: 8px;
}

9 Click the Preview button, if all correct then Save the template.
10 That's it. Your navigation menu is installed. You can get rid of your older navigation menu now.

Deep Sky Blue Navigation Bar With Jquery Hover Effects

How To install......

> Follow the first 6 steps from above.
> Now in step 7 copy the following code and paste it above the </head> tag.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://webrank.opendrive.com/files/47957412_9PSsY/jquery.js"></script>
 <script type="text/javascript" src="http://webrank.opendrive.com/files/47957409_e4pIq/menu.js"></script>

> Now find ]]></b:skin> and paste following CSS code above it.

/**
 *********************************************
 * Prototype of styles for horizontal CSS-menu
 * @data 30.06.2009
 *********************************************
 * (X)HTML-scheme:
 *  <div id="menu">
 *      <ul class="menu">
 *          <li><a href="#" class="parent"><span>level 1</span></a>
 *              <ul>
 *                  <li><a href="#" class="parent"><span>level 2</span></a>
 *                      <ul><li><a href="#"><span>level 3</span></a></li></ul>
 *                  </li>
 *              </ul>
 *          </li>
 *          <li class="last"><a href="#"><span>level 1</span></a></li>
 *      </ul>
 *  </div>
 *********************************************
 */

/* menu::base */
div#menu {
    height:41px;
    background:url(https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Io7SSjcDMYI/To92Wk7o69I/AAAAAAAAAiM/JF6dkw_UKAQ/s41/main-bg.png) repeat-x;
}

div#menu ul {
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0;
    list-style: none;
    float: left;
}
div#menu ul.menu {
    padding-left: 30px;
}

div#menu li {
    position: relative;
    z-index: 9;
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0 5px 0 0;
    display: block;
    float: left;
}
div#menu li:hover>ul {
    left: -2px;
}

div#menu a {
    position: relative;
    z-index: 10;
    height: 41px;
    display: block;
    float: left;
    line-height: 41px;
    text-decoration: none;
    font: normal 12px Trebuchet MS;
}
div#menu a:hover, div#menu a:hover span { color: #fff; }
div#menu li.current a {}

div#menu span {
    display: block;
    cursor: pointer;
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
    background-position: 95% 0;
}
div#menu ul ul a.parent span {
    background-position:95% 8px;
    background-image: url(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-s36BxCFiVok/To92XP_7_vI/AAAAAAAAAiU/NfFQ82eQ2MQ/s10/item-pointer.gif);
}
div#menu ul ul a.parent:hover span {
    background-image: url(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-nquIeTVAb4o/To92WPp3vAI/AAAAAAAAAiA/tbU2-W8245c/s10/item-pointer-mover.gif);
}

/* menu::level1 */
div#menu a {
    padding: 0 10px 0 10px;
    line-height: 30px;
    color: #e5e5e5;
}
div#menu span {
    margin-top: 5px;
}/**@replace#1*/
div#menu li { background: url(https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-dN11DSko_1M/To92W0cfYvI/AAAAAAAAAiQ/e6h0r2dbf1c/s32/main-delimiter.png) 98% 4px no-repeat; }
div#menu li.last { background: none; }

/* menu::level2 */
div#menu ul ul li { background: none; }
div#menu ul ul {
    position: absolute;
    top: 38px;
    left: -999em;
    width: 163px;
    padding: 5px 0 0 0;
    background: rgb(45,45,45);
    margin-top:1px;
}
div#menu ul ul a {
    padding: 0 0 0 15px;
    height: auto;
    float: none;
    display: block;
    line-height: 24px;
    color: rgb(169,169,169);
}
div#menu ul ul span {
    margin-top: 0;
    padding-right: 15px;
    _padding-right: 20px;
    color: rgb(169,169,169);
}
div#menu ul ul a:hover span {
    color: #fff;
}
div#menu ul ul li.last { background: none; }
div#menu ul ul li {
    width: 100%;
}

/* menu::level3 */
div#menu ul ul ul {
    padding: 0;
    margin: -38px 0 0 163px !important;
    margin-left:172px;
}

/* colors */
div#menu ul ul ul { background: rgb(41,41,41); }
div#menu ul ul ul ul { background: rgb(38,38,38); }
div#menu ul ul ul ul { background: rgb(35,35,35); }

/* lava lamp */
div#menu li.back {
    background: url(https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-mBDSaGOPOFc/To92WayAaEI/AAAAAAAAAiI/hxFjQi16yCY/s229/lava.png) no-repeat right -44px !important;
    background-image: url(https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-MFPAhA_mMxs/To92WdjbLpI/AAAAAAAAAiE/_kVUozlvUps/s229/lava.gif);
    width: 13px;
    height: 44px;
    z-index: 8;
    position: absolute;
    margin: -1px 0 0 -5px;
}
div#menu li.back .left {
    background: url(https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-mBDSaGOPOFc/To92WayAaEI/AAAAAAAAAiI/hxFjQi16yCY/s229/lava.png) no-repeat top left !important;
    background-image: url(https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-MFPAhA_mMxs/To92WdjbLpI/AAAAAAAAAiE/_kVUozlvUps/s229/lava.gif);
    height: 44px;
    margin-right: 8px;
}

Click the Preview button, if all correct then Save the template.
10 That's it. Your navigation menu is installed. You can get rid of your older navigation menu now.

Use Syntax Highlighter To Display Source Codes In blog Post

2011-10-06T07:41:00.002+05:00

Previously i have written a post How to Display Scripts and Codes in Blogger Posts. Which was simple tutorial and also easy to use. Today i am going to show you how you can use Syntax Highlighter to display scripts and codes in your blog post more professional and nice way. You may have seen Syntax Highlighter on many wordpress blogs, it displays the codes with syntax coloring as displayed in Html or any other scripting language editor. I recommend using Syntax Highlighter in your blog posts when ever you have to display some source codes and i hope you will love it.

How to install syntax highlighter in blogger

1. Login to blogger click Design > HTML Editor .
2. Copy the following CSS code and paste it above ]]--></b:skin>

.dp-highlighter
{
 font-family: "Consolas", "Monaco", "Courier New", Courier, monospace;
 font-size: 12px;
 background-color: #E7E5DC;
 width: 99%;
 overflow: auto;
 margin: 18px 0 18px 0 !important;
 padding-top: 1px; /* adds a little border on top when controls are hidden */
}

/* clear styles */
.dp-highlighter ol,
.dp-highlighter ol li,
.dp-highlighter ol li span 
{
 margin: 0;
 padding: 0;
 border: none;
}

.dp-highlighter a,
.dp-highlighter a:hover
{
 background: none;
 border: none;
 padding: 0;
 margin: 0;
}

.dp-highlighter .bar
{
 padding-left: 45px;
}

.dp-highlighter.collapsed .bar,
.dp-highlighter.nogutter .bar
{
 padding-left: 0px;
}

.dp-highlighter ol
{
 list-style: decimal; /* for ie */
 background-color: #fff;
 margin: 0px 0px 1px 45px !important; /* 1px bottom margin seems to fix occasional Firefox scrolling */
 padding: 0px;
 color: #5C5C5C;
}

.dp-highlighter.nogutter ol,
.dp-highlighter.nogutter ol li
{
 list-style: none !important;
 margin-left: 0px !important;
}

.dp-highlighter ol li,
.dp-highlighter .columns div
{
 list-style: decimal-leading-zero; /* better look for others, override cascade from OL */
 list-style-position: outside !important;
 border-left: 3px solid #6CE26C;
 background-color: #F8F8F8;
 color: #5C5C5C;
 padding: 0 3px 0 10px !important;
 margin: 0 !important;
 line-height: 14px;
}

.dp-highlighter.nogutter ol li,
.dp-highlighter.nogutter .columns div
{
 border: 0;
}

.dp-highlighter .columns
{
 background-color: #F8F8F8;
 color: gray;
 overflow: hidden;
 width: 100%;
}

.dp-highlighter .columns div
{
 padding-bottom: 5px;
}

.dp-highlighter ol li.alt
{
 background-color: #FFF;
 color: inherit;
}

.dp-highlighter ol li span
{
 color: black;
 background-color: inherit;
}

/* Adjust some properties when collapsed */

.dp-highlighter.collapsed ol
{
 margin: 0px;
}

.dp-highlighter.collapsed ol li
{
 display: none;
}

/* Additional modifications when in print-view */

.dp-highlighter.printing
{
 border: none;
}

.dp-highlighter.printing .tools
{
 display: none !important;
}

.dp-highlighter.printing li
{
 display: list-item !important;
}

/* Styles for the tools */

.dp-highlighter .tools
{
 padding: 3px 8px 3px 10px;
 font: 9px Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
 color: silver;
 background-color: #f8f8f8;
 padding-bottom: 10px;
 border-left: 3px solid #6CE26C;
}

.dp-highlighter.nogutter .tools
{
 border-left: 0;
}

.dp-highlighter.collapsed .tools
{
 border-bottom: 0;
}

.dp-highlighter .tools a
{
 font-size: 9px;
 color: #a0a0a0;
 background-color: inherit;
 text-decoration: none;
 margin-right: 10px;
}

.dp-highlighter .tools a:hover
{
 color: red;
 background-color: inherit;
 text-decoration: underline;
}

/* About dialog styles */

.dp-about { background-color: #fff; color: #333; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; }
.dp-about table { width: 100%; height: 100%; font-size: 11px; font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif !important; }
.dp-about td { padding: 10px; vertical-align: top; }
.dp-about .copy { border-bottom: 1px solid #ACA899; height: 95%; }
.dp-about .title { color: red; background-color: inherit; font-weight: bold; }
.dp-about .para { margin: 0 0 4px 0; }
.dp-about .footer { background-color: #ECEADB; color: #333; border-top: 1px solid #fff; text-align: right; }
.dp-about .close { font-size: 11px; font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif !important; background-color: #ECEADB; color: #333; width: 60px; height: 22px; }

/* Language specific styles */

.dp-highlighter .comment, .dp-highlighter .comments { color: #008200; background-color: inherit; }
.dp-highlighter .string { color: blue; background-color: inherit; }
.dp-highlighter .keyword { color: #069; font-weight: bold; background-color: inherit; }
.dp-highlighter .preprocessor { color: gray; background-color: inherit; }

3. Then copy the following code and paste it before </head> tag.

4. Scroll to the bottom of your blogger template and paste the following code above </body> tag

<!-- Add-in Script for syntax highlighting -->  
<script language='javascript'>  
dp.SyntaxHighlighter.BloggerMode();  
dp.SyntaxHighlighter.HighlightAll('code');  
</script>

5. Use the "Preview" button to make sure your website is correct, then click "Save Template".
6. When composing a blog entry that contains source code, click the "Edit Html" tab and put your source code (with html-escaped characters) between these tags:

<pre name="code" class="cpp">  
    ...Your html-escaped code goes here...  
    </pre>

In the end

Replace "cpp" with whatever language you're using, like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XHTML,C++ etc. Check out complete list of programing languages here.

Make sure that you enter only HTML escaped code to stay out of trouble. Entering codes directly will lead to UN-predictable formatting. You can Google for HTML escaper or you can use this one.

Link Building Walkthrough – Almost Complete

2011-10-05T18:31:00.007+05:00

External links are one of the main and very important component of any SEO campaign. Obviously external links alone can't help you rank to the top but they have very high impact on your over all search engine ranking because search engines take them very seriously. There are so many confusions in link building process therefore sometimes it's UN-predictable which way you are going if you don't have a clear SEO strategy and because many webmasters and bloggers out there who are new to link building and SEO, i thought i should write an article about complete walk-through of link building in which i will try to cover the basics of link building the best i can.

What is Link Building?

Link Building is basically the process of getting quality Web sites to link to your Web site, it works like their recommendation and vote for your site and those back links can play important role in your search engine ranking.

Why is Link Building Important?

You can't deny the importance of link building, it is very essential for your SEO campaign. This is one of those important pieces of SEO that have very high impact on your search engine ranking, so you don't want to miss it. Currently all major search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing uses your link popularity to judge the quality of your site. As i said earlier, back links are just like votes or recommendations toward your site. If a website of high page rank and high authority links to your site, its weight will be more then low page rank and non trusted sites. I will discuss this later more preciously.

Do All The Links Carry Equal Weight?

The most important and common question asked by webmasters is that " Does search engines treat all back links equally? ", and the answer is very simple.............NO. Each website has its own reputation and there are some important factors counted by search engines to determine the reputation / trust rank of any website. There might be 100 websites of same niche having a Google PR-4, but they won't have equal authority level. It will depend on the links pointing to those sites, quality of back links, website's age, traffic rank etc. So if a websites of higher trust profile links to your site, it will leave good impression and more link juice rather then a website of low profile which is new to market and doesn't have any reputation to share some with you. Also keep in mind that a No-Follow link from an authority site may have more value then a Do-Follow link from a non trusted site.

Which Sites are Worth Getting a Link From?

There are thousands of quality and authority sites on the internet that you can use in your link building process. Question is, How you will judge the quality of any website. Well i have listed some metrics below that you can use to judge the quality of any website.

Age of the Website matters

Older sites would be better, as they are more trusted by search engines due to being long time around. You can find the age of any website by going to http://whois.webrankstats.com/ or you can use Firefox plugin Webrank Toolbar.

Page Rank

Most of the webmasters don't pay much attention to page rank as it is not accurate. You can see Google page rank of any website live if you are using Google page rank toolbar or Firefox Webrank Toolbar. It displays the quality of any websites with numbers from 1 to 10. Google updates the page rank about 3 to 4 time an year, and even page rank displayed on the toolbar is not pretty much accurate. But still it is a good metric to judge the quality of a web site.

No. of Pages Indexed

This is also an important metric i like to use to determine how many pages of specific site are indexed in Goggle as Goggle indexes the pages very quickly with respect to Bing and Yahoo. So if a website have thousands of pages indexed in Google it means that website has been in business for long time is also a trusted site. You can use Firefox plugin Webrank Toolbar, it will tell you the number of pages indexed in Google, Yahoo and Bing on page load but if you are using any other browser then you can go to Google Search and type – site:www.domain.com . this will show you the pages indexed in Google. This is a much preferred method because toolbars are not accurate most of the time.

No. of Incoming Links

As i said earlier that when a trusted site links to your site it actually shares the trust, so it is important for you to see who is linking to the domain that you are testing for authority. If you see popular and quality sites linking to to that site it is indication that this is also a quality site and linking to this site would be nice. There are free tools that you can use to check the back links pointing to any site. You can use Yahoo site explorer, Backlink Watch or you can just go to Google or Yahoo and type http://www.domain.com

Traffic

Traffic rank also an important metric to determine the site authority. If a website is getting a lot of traffic then it means that people trust that site and therefore website gets lot of new and returning visitors daily. You can use free tools like Alexa, Quancast and Compete etc to check the traffic rank of any website. Tools like Quancast and Compete don't monitor the traffic below a certain threshold. Lower rank on Alexa means website is getting lot of traffic.There are lot more other free services you can use to determine the authority of a site. Just Google for it.

How Do I Get These Links?

There are two types of link building. The first type is Organic or Natural link building and the other type is Artificial link building.

Organic Link Building

Organic link building is basically a link building process in which you build back links naturally as search engines tell us. In organic link building, you build all back links manually without using any bots or automated software in other words you use only white hat SEO tactics. Here are some important tips regarding Organic link building.

Write Quality Content

Authority websites prefer to link with a website that is link worthy. Link worthy means that your site contains useful material for visitors that they can take benefit of. So if you don't have quality content's then you can't expect people to link to your site. Think about your audience and write contents according to their needs. Content don't only mean text, it could be any thing like videos, pictures, applications etc. that people can take benefit of.

Start a Blog

I have seen many small and medium businesses that is purely commercial in nature, they go to different SEO firms hoping that they can just pay and get 10,000 back links to their site and rock. But this is not how it works anymore. Do you think search engines won't notice that a website is launched a week or two ago and now all of a sudden thousands of links are pointing to it. Search engines have strict rules about " paid links " and they hate this. But still when you hire an SEO firm they buy some links and also create some natural links to make it look natural, specially they buy .edu, .gov and .mil links as these are highly authoritative sites and have very high impact on your search engine ranking.

You may wonder that if you have an e-commerce store then why the heck somebody will link to you naturally when they know people won't find anything helpful on your site. As you know search engines read text on your site to determine what this is about and rank the site accordingly, that's why you may have noticed that blog's rank very quickly as compares to commercial sites like shopping stores, because they don't have much text contents on them for search engines to read.

I have personal experience of optimizing an e-commerce site of my friend and i noticed it is much harder then optimizing a text rich site. Just because optimizing a site have less written contents doesn't mean you can't get high ranking for that site. Now if you had experience of visiting an e-commerce site you have noticed that they have also attached a blog with their site where people can read reviews about different products before they buy. And product reviews are very important for people as they help them to make decision about any product. Now if you had a blog attached to your site you have more chances that people will link to your site naturally. Just update your blog regularly and you will be fine.

Take Advantage of Social Bookmarking & other social Networks

Social bookmarking is one of the best source of traffic but lot of webmasters don't pay special attention to this. It is also a great source of attracting links. If you are a good writer and you wrote a good article or product review and posted it on social bookmarking, there will be thousands of people who are interested in that product will read that. So if they found your article useful then chances are that they will vote for the article and may be they write about that in their blog and give a link to your site.

Now if your article gained popularity in Social bookmarking sites like Stumble upon, Digg, Reddit, Mixx etc. your story will automatically jump to the top and gets more exposure resulting in more targeted traffic and chances of back links. In other hand if you have a new site and you are also writing a blog but not taking advantage of social bookmarking then you are kind of wasting your time. No one will read your blog because they don't know about it. So it is a best practice to use social bookmarking to give your contents more exposure and increase its reach as much as possible.

People Love Freebies

People love freebies. You can get lot of quality back links without much effort by giving away free stuff like eBooks, video tutorials, applications and templates. For instance if you are a programmer then you can develop widgets, plugins, application and web or blog templates and give away then definitely you will get unique back links from other sites related to your niche. Always remember that when you do something for your community, do not ask them to link back to you, don't ask to return the favor. If your contents and freebies are helpful then they will naturally link back to you. If you are good at web designing then you can create nice web templates and place your links at the footer, when ever someone will use that template he will leave that link intact and you will get another free back link.

Artificial Link Building

Artificial links are those who can be manipulated, so link requests, directory submission, article submission, paid links etc. all falls under this category.

Link Requests / Exchange

This is probably the most common and worst kind of link building technique. though their is nothing wrong with this method but people use it in wrong way which is really annoying for webmasters when they receive dozen of junk emails daily from people asking them to link to their site while their website is not even relevant. Here are some situations when webmasters ignore your link request

The ones that starts with “Dear Webmaster…”
When you mention “PR” in your Email
The sender has no idea of what Link building actually is.
The email is impersonal and spammy .
You are asking the wrong guy because your website is not relevant to his.
Your website has a horrible design and also filled with junk contents with no usability.
Your website has no valuable information but only contains affiliate links & banners.
Your website is new and is not even indexed by any of the search engines.
Your website has more outbound links than the number of quality content.

Most of the webmasters really care about those sites they are linking to. So they won't link to your site if it is not relevant in first place, if your site don't have good contents, good structure or reputation they won't link to your site and they won't link to your site if they have no chance of traffic coming from you site.

Link Request / Exchange That Works

You can ask other bloggers of your niche to put your blog under their blog roll. This technique works really well and you can get a back link along with some serious traffic. You will have more chance of inclusion if you only send request to blogs of your niche. Before asking any blogger to include your blog under their blog roll ask yourself some questions

If you were the owner of that blog would you link to your own blog?
Do you think your blog is relevant to his?
Do you think your blog's quality is equal to his blog?

If your blog is new and you are asking another high profile blog to link to you then you will be ignored as your blog won't add up any value to his blog. Blogging is all about passion. So if you are passionate about a specific niche and you have great knowledge on specific topic then you can ask other bloggers of that niche to review your blog and give feedback. If they found your contents resourceful they will automatically link to you which will result in traffic and will also leave good impression on your over all ranking

Directory Submission

Few years back people used to search web directories to find useful websites and to fill their needs but ever since Google and Yahoo came up with their search engines people use search engines to find websites instead of web directories. Though web directories can provide you with the Do-Follow back links but quality web directories are very few that worth linking to. There are so many low quality web directories online hosted on the same IP's and they won't help you with your ranking.

Article Submission

Submitting articles to different high PR article directories is also a good practice that can give you some quality deep links along with partially targeted traffic. Article Directories allow you to add author bio at the bottom of the article where you can leave about 2-3 back links to your site. One back link to your home page and two other links to deep pages of your web site with your targeted keyword phrases which is really nice. But i will suggest writing quality contents for your site first then for article directories, incase if someone come to your site from an article directory he can find more useful contents.Some good article directories are Article base, Article dashboard, Ezine articles etc.

Guest Blogging

Some professional blogs allow guest blogging. you can write quality contents for blog on your niche and also can place back links to your blog inn author bio just like article directories, but it is more effective and worthy then article directories. Not all the guest posts are approved by the webmasters but you can try your luck. But if you can provide quality contents that rally add value to that blog, chances are that they will accept your article and you can write more contents for them once you have build some good reputation. guest blogging the best way to get some serious traffic and more link juice.

Press Release submission

Press release submission is also a good way to get some good PR and back links. But Writing a professional and effective press release require some experience. So if you don't have that kind of experience then it would be better for you to hire a professional. Press release submission is a good idea for professional and commercial blogs. If you are running a personal blog and don't want to spend extra cash then skip this one.

Widgets / Footer Links/ Plugins

Create useful web site / blog widgets, web / blog templates and distribute them to your blog readers for free. You can place a link to your home page in footer credits. remember that footer links have less weight.

Start an Affiliate Program

You can start an affiliate program giving other webmasters of your niche to promote your products and services and earn a specific % age of revenue. So if you got 1000 affiliate then it means you got 1000 links, because they all will be linking to your site to promote your product.

Paid Links

This must be the last tactic that a webmaster should think to use because lot of SEO's including me don't recommend this. Some of you may argue with me and say , hay man what's the matter with you? paid links still work. Well i agree they still work as long as you stay under the radar. But we all know search engines are improving their algorithms every day and are making improvements to their ranking system, then why putting your business at risk. I believe the best way is White Hat SEO and i love doing it. Natural link building has long lasting impact on your ranking, though it is really slow process and can take several months depending on the competitiveness of your keyword for your site to appear on page 1 of Google but it really worth spending time because it will pay of in the end.

Conclusion

I have pretty much tried to cover the link building topic but i am sure this is not it. There must be lot of things that i haven't experienced or i don't know. I hope you took your time to read this long article. In case i missed something or you have any question, comment below and i will try to clear your mind.

12 Most Beautiful Photo Gallery Templates For Blogger

2011-09-30T22:49:00.005+05:00

Today i was looking for a nice looking photo gallery blogger template for my another wallpapers blog and came across some beautiful photo gallery templates. I thought i should share them with you, may be they will help you when you need them. Finding right blogger template is very difficult because they don't fill your needs completely, until you design one for your self. Even if you find one, you will never stop tweaking it. I don't think of myself that i will ever be satisfied with my blog's look. There are so many blogger templates online but i found that most of them are not compatible with all major web browsers, specially with IE8. So you must have at least 3 different web browsers to check your template's compatibility. Here are those 12 photo gallery blogger templates.

1. Gallery

Demo Download

2. sGallery

Demo Download

3. Hybrid

Demo Download

4. Dreamy

Demo Download

5. ShowCase Light

Demo Download

6. ShowCase

Demo Download

7. Mosaicus

Demo Download

8. PhotoPlus Lit

Demo Download

9. PhotoPlus

Demo Download

10. Lock Heart

Demo Download

11. Gallery Zone

Demo Download

12. Wallbase

Demo Download

Please feel free to share these photo gallery blogger templates with your friends and fellow bloggers. In case of any trouble regarding these templates, leave a comment below and i will try to fix your issue.

Awesome Popup Social Media Sharing Widget For Blogger

2011-09-30T08:49:00.004+05:00

In this tutorial i am going to show you how you can add a very nice and awesome looking social media sharing widget to your blog. You may have seen floating social media sharing widget and social bookmarking widgets at the top and bottom of blog posts, but this one is a little different. It is fixed to the bottom of your page. Currently it is showing 8 social networking buttons, it allows the reader to minimize the widget and also to pop open when needed. This social bookmarking widget has very nice and appealing look so it surely will help you get more exposure through social media.

Install Awesome Social Media Sharing Widget In Blogger

1. Login to your blogger account .

2. Go to Design > Page Elements .

3. Click Add a Gadget and select HTML/JavaScript .

4. Copy the following code and paste it in HTML/JavaScript widget then click Save button .

<a href="http://bloggeranalytics.blogspot.com"><small>Grab  Bookmark Gadget</small></a><a  href="http://web.informer.com/button/providers/list"><img  id="Webinformer_FavoritesButton_Button"  src="http://s.web.informer.com/images/b2.gif" alt="Web Informer Button"  style="border: 0" /></a>
<script src="http://s.web.informer.com/favorites-button.js?glass,"  type="text/javascript" charset="UTF-8"></script><a  href='http://bloggeranalytics.blogspot.com'><img alt='Blogger Tricks'   src='http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_rKG-ziTSNUQ/TQ5eV0U0EiI/AAAAAAAACik/xo2eFaDbfrE/s1600/best+blogger+tips.png'/></a>

5. You can drag and drop this widget anywhere, it won't effect its position and it will still appear at the bottom. Check this widget in action at DEMO page .

Blogger Introduced Dynamic Views - Whats Right Whats Wrong

2011-09-28T22:38:00.005+05:00

Recently Blogger has officially launched a new function in blogger blogspot by default called Dynamic Views. Built with latest web technology (AJAX, HTML5 and CSS3). its a great feature that will change your readers browsing experience. Very much lighter then any old traditional blogger template and its loading time is about 40 percent faster then old blogger templates. Dynamic views are designed by keeping end user in mind to improve readability.It is a pre-designed automated code which rearranges your content containers or div areas.

You can choose from seven different views that display text and photos differently. For example, if you have lots of photos on your blog, you may like using Flipcard or Snapshot. If your blog is more text-heavy, then Classic, Sidebar (what you’re seeing now on Blogger Buzz) or Timeslide would be preferable. As this is a new feature therefore this is for sure that there will be some flaws, and actually there are some. But i would recommend trying this feature on one of your test blogs.

How to Enable dynamic View For your blog?

Go To blogger > Design > Template Designer .

Don't forget the standers procedure of backing up your blog when you are going to experiment something new.

Now you have 7 different layout options namely classic, Flipcard, magazine, mosaic, sidebar, snapshot, Timeslide.

Choose the one you like and hit the "Apply to Blog" button at the top-right corner and Done.!

You can Revert to your old blogger template any time.

Simply Go To blogger > Design > Template Designer and then click on Live on blog thumbnail and click Apply to blog, and your old template will be restored intact.

Advantages of Dynamic Views

The best advantage of Dynamic Views is that this feature is perfactly coded by code masters and therefore it is fully compatible with major web browsers like Firefox, IE8, Chrome and Safari. As i said earlier that Dynamic Views are created by keeping end user in mind so there are almost no images used to improve load time of the blog page and improved readibility is the main focus. If you ever have a chance of visiting blog of any Google official then you will see that there is just simple CSS and text in their blog, They just hate images i guess. You can see Matt Cutts blog who is Google'software engneer.

Disadvantages of Dynamic Views

Besides some advantages there are some parts that still require some attention and improvement. The real bad thing about Dynamic Views is that you almost loose controle over appearance of your blog. You cant controle widget placement or post body apperance, and i think uncle Sam forgot about sidebar. Sidebar widgets are deleted or replaced as soon as you apply the Dynamic View. Lot of bloggers will hate this. I think this would be best for those bloggers who are running their personal diary or non commercial blogs. But if you are running a commercial blog and are displaying ads on your blog then you better stay away from this right now. There is lot more in this feature which needs improvement. May be commercial bloggers can use this feature in near feature.

Optimize Your Google SERP Snippet For More Organic Traffic

2011-09-26T00:18:00.005+05:00

As you all know as a blogger or a webmaster that people use search engines to find the websites online and to fill their needs, and search engines show them a list of websites relevant to their search term. Those listings consists of a title and a short description of the website and that's what really matters. Because that title and short description is the key thing that forces the searcher to click on your website. If your listing is not best describing the services you provide and are not compelling then you really are leaving some real cash on the table.

It mean that being on the top ten listing can't help you if you are not helping yourself. If your blog have lot of useful contents that searcher is looking for but your search result listing is telling the wrong story then visitor will never click on your site. There is a whole lot difference between making a good plane and executing a good plane. So presentation really matters. Think for a while that SERP listing is the 1st impression of your site and tell me what kind of fool would want that to be a bad impression...

How To Optimize SERP Snippet In Best Way?

Optimizing SERP snippet can bring you a lot of organic traffic and can maximize your click through rate. Almost all the search engines shows the same number of characters in the search results but we will talk about Google SERP snippet as many people use Google for online search purpose. There are two elements in search engine result pages Title and Meta Description. Lets see how we can utilize these two elements in the best way.

Google shows up to 70 characters ( including spaces ) of a page's title in its search results. If page title exceeds 70 characters then then Google will as many whole word as it can and the rest will be replaced with an ellipsis (...). Best thing is to keep title with in 70 characters, it would look much nicer and appealing to the searcher.

Google will show 156 characters of meta description in search result and rest of the characters will be replaced with an ellipsis (...) like title. Description may be more then 156 characters but it would be much better to use main keyword phrases in the beginning.

It is a really challenging thing to tell the whole story in such short words when you know that whole thing relies on it. Best option is to use your most important keywords in the beginning of title, do not use more then 3 to 4 keywords in the title. Then keep the meta description with in the limited number of characters and write an appealing meta description which contains all of your important keywords in it.

I recommend using SERP Snippet Optimizer which is a free online service to optimize your search engine listing for your greater benefits. By using this tool you can optimize your SERP listing and can see a preview of your listing as it will appear in search results and i believe it will really help. You can take a peak at your competitor's SERP listing to get an idea how they utilized keywords in it. Think like a searcher, what you are you looking for and what you want from site. Your listing must look stand out and you will see a noticeable increase in your organic traffic.

I really believe this article would be a good help for new bloggers and webmasters. If you have any problem regarding your blog or SEO then you can ask in the comment section, i would love to help.

Add A Reply To Comment Button In Blogger Blog

2011-09-24T23:19:00.006+05:00

Adding a reply button to blogger comments is a great feature and i like it very much. You may have seen reply to comment buttons in many WordPress blogs which is really helpful for you and your blog visitors to communicate. Basically it is a WordPress feature but it doesn't mean we cannot use it in blogger. Though blogger have so many limitations with respect to WordPress but there are still many things we can do. So in this tutorial i am gonna show you how to add a reply button to blogger comments. There are also number of reply buttons too and you can choose whatever button you like. This is very easy tutorial but it would be better to follow the steps carefully. Lets get started...

How To Add Reply To comment buttons in blogger

1. Login to blogger and from Dashboard...click Design > Edit HTML .

2. Click Expand widget template .

3. Press CTRL+F and find <data:commentPostedByMsg/>

4. Now copy the following piece of code and paste it right below <data:commentPostedByMsg/>

<a href='http://bloggeranalytics.blogspot.com'><img  alt='Best Blogger Tricks'  src='http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_rKG-ziTSNUQ/TQ5eV0U0EiI/AAAAAAAACik/xo2eFaDbfrE/s1600/best+blogger+tips.png' /></a><span  class='comment-reply'><a  expr:href='&quot;https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=YOUR-BLOG-ID-HERE&amp;postID=&quot;  + data:post.id +  &quot;&amp;isPopup=true&amp;postBody=%40%3C%61%20%68%72%65%66%3D%22%23&quot;  + data:comment.anchorName + &quot;%22%3E&quot; +  data:comment.author + &quot;%3C%2F%61%3E#form&quot;'  onclick='javascript:window.open(this.href,  &quot;bloggerPopup&quot;,  &quot;toolbar=0,location=0,statusbar=1,menubar=0,scrollbars=yes,width=400,height=450&quot;);  return false;'><img  src='http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_rKG-ziTSNUQ/TMXpH8OvBlI/AAAAAAAAB6A/DKWa4_r1wLE/s1600/Reply+Button+4.jpg'  style='float:right;' title='Reply To This  Comment'/></a></span>

5. Now you have to add your blog id in this code. So replace highlighted text in Red with your blog id where it says YOUR-BLOG-ID-HERE.

6. You can get your unique blogger blog id by going to Dashboard > New Post, and your blog id will be shown at the end of url like this.

7. Now click save and its done.

Customizations

To change comment reply button simply replace the orange highlighted button url with any of the following buttons url.

Reply button 1

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_rKG-ziTSNUQ/TMXpJD64CbI/AAAAAAAAB6M/2jnYoOG3qrg/s1600/Reply+Button+7.png alt="blogger widgets"

Reply button 2

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_rKG-ziTSNUQ/TMXpGUnq_lI/AAAAAAAAB50/s4Ox50TFl5E/s1600/Reply+Button+1.jpg alt="blogger widgets"

Reply button 3

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_rKG-ziTSNUQ/TMXpHXw481I/AAAAAAAAB54/KzG70HvbrcQ/s1600/Reply+Button+2.gif alt="blogger widgets"

Reply Button 4

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_rKG-ziTSNUQ/TMXpHlhsnxI/AAAAAAAAB58/wSopo-ERW5E/s1600/Reply+Button+3.jpg alt="blogger widgets"

Reply button 5

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_rKG-ziTSNUQ/TMXpH8OvBlI/AAAAAAAAB6A/DKWa4_r1wLE/s1600/Reply+Button+4.jpg alt="blogger widgets"

Reply button 6

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_rKG-ziTSNUQ/TMXpIXB0wvI/AAAAAAAAB6E/n1x-Bs_LAJE/s1600/Reply+Button+5.jpg alt="blogger widgets"

That is it. I hope you found this post useful. Comment below in case of any problem, i would love to help. Don't forget to share this if you think your friends might like this.

SEO Mistakes You Are Making And Still Don't Know

2011-09-23T13:25:00.004+05:00

External linking is very important part of SEO strategy and it also is the most challenging and time taking process. You can't see the results immediately and it may take months to know which way you are going. So it will be lot better to straighten things up before going SEO road. Link building is not a simple thing and not every one can do it in best way so there are lot of mistakes that people make but these few are common, so i thought i should write about it. I hope you will find this helpful. please take some time to give feed back. It would be really nice.

Judging a Site's Authority by Page Rank Alone

Good and quality link building is the key to successful SEO and quality link building means link building with only high PR and authority sites. There are so many sites out there and almost every one is different from other, so how do you judge which one is a good site? And the answer is authority of the website. Though Page Rank of the website is also an important factor but it can be misleading as Google updates Page Rank about 4 times a year, but if we say that page Rank is only matric to judge the authority of the site then it won't be right.

If you search for a keyword phrase in Google you will see 10 results on page 1 and you will also see that some of those sites have low page rank, less number of back links but they are on top while websites of higher Page Rank with greater amount of back links and indexed pages are lying at the bottom. I am not asking to totally ignore the page rank but be aware of its limitations. SEOmoz have two useful matrices to judge the site authority, mozRank and mozTrust. Also try to know how people see a site and how they react, what they think about the site and how they judge the site if it is good or not.?

Look at the site and ask yourself

Do you feel like it is a trusted site?
Does it have good number of visitors who take the contents seriously?
Site surely is an authority site but is it relevant to the contents of my site/contents/topic?

Targeting Only One Keyword Phrase To Build Links

When a link points back to your site, search engines think they are voting for you, so if there are 1,000 links pointing to yours site then they must be using more then 1 key phrase to make it look natural. your primary keyword phrase must be your priority but just don't stuck with it, use your secondary keyword phrase, your brand name and your site name time to time, So they will all blend in to give ore natural link backs also opening opportunities for internal pages of your site and your brand name to be recognized.

Aiming For Unknown Amount Of Links

If you are in for a famous keyword phrase then you might be looking for huge competition. Use your competitiveness research method to determine who is your competitor and how many links he got?Now if he has 1,000 back links then your aim must be 2-5 % more then that. because may be your competitor is also running an SEO campaign, but it won't be a big one as he already is on top of search engine result pages. Also keep track of what you are doing and what you have achieved so far. Keep track of your position in SERP it will also give you a clue about your work. If you don't set a goal and you are not clear about what you are going after then you will be spending more time in link building then focusing on social media to get some serious traffic.

Only Building Links To Home Page ( No Deep Links )

Link to your home page are most important but this is not just the end. You can link to your other pages on the site, you can also create an internal linking structure by linking your sub pages to each other. This will improve your over all ranking and ill also provide you with more traffic, you can rank for more keywords and also internal linking helps to keep visitor interested and he can found interesting contents on your site that he might miss otherwise.

Related Keyword That Your Competitor Is Not Ranking For

Your competitor might be on top of SERPS for 1,2 or may be 3 but he can't be ranking for all keyword phrases that you are targeting so target the keyword phrases that he is missing. That's why i always keep talking about keyword research. It opens new windows of opportunities for you. Digging into your competitor's linking structure will also give you important insights and you can improve your SEO strategy accordingly. Because knowing your competitor is far more better then firing in the dark.

External linking is changing constantly, back links pointing to your site won't be live for long and search engine will loose track of them. So create a good linking profile and even after approaching your goal, you must not forget SEO. You will be constantly needing back link to keep you on top. because there must be some one coming after you as you went after some one. Write good contents and use your keyword phrases in your contents, it may rank your page naturally and it will stay there for long and will help you in long run.

Learn HTML & CSS Quickly

2011-09-22T21:54:00.005+05:00

Read this book and learn HTML and CSS quickly. If you are new to blogger or new to coding then it is for sure that you will face many difficulties managing your blog or website. Though blogger is a platform where non coders can also work efficiently but you must have at least basic knowledge of codes and programming so you know what you are doing and what is going on. This is the best book i have ever found for beginners to understand HTML and CSS more quickly. There are illustrations and examples of each and every HTML and CSS element that you face in web designing.

So it is a must read book. If you have printer then print it out. It has only 304 pages. If you find trouble understanding or using any HTML or CSS element in your blogger template then just open this eBook, go to table of contents and find that element that you are looking for. You will see every thing explained about that HTML or CSS element in there with different previews. I bet you will like this eBook. It really is a great resource for new bloggers or non coders. You might find so many other eBooks online about understanding HTML and CSS but they probably have not covered all the topics so now you don't need to search ...............here it is. Download it for free and also distribute it in your friends.

Description:

Name: Brilliant HTML and CSS
Author: James A Brannen
Pages: 304
Released: 2009

Download

How To Add Two Google Adsense Units Side By Side

2011-09-20T23:57:00.004+05:00

Adding two square 250 x 250 or 300 x 250 Google adsense units in your blog posts is a good practice that you can use. You might have seen on many professional and old blogs that they have added two Adsense units side by side under post header, which is kinda nice and also can increase your Google adsense earnings. In start i tried adding two Google adsense blocks in my blog post's but instead of left and right, they were shown up and down which was not what i was looking for. But i figured it out that if i create a table with one row and two columns then i can achieve what i want. And it worked for me. So it you are also willing to apply the same technique to add two adsense units side by side in your blog under post title or anywhare else in your blog post then do this.

Where ever you want to place your ad go to Html view in your post editor and paste the following code


     CODE HERE      CODE HERE

Then paste your adsense code where it says CODE HERE . Publish your post and that will be it.

I hope this post was helpful for you. Please leave feed back. It encourages me to write more useful contents. If this post can help your friends then go ahead and .....Share it

Understanding On-page and Of-page SEO

2011-09-19T07:34:00.006+05:00

On-page SEO and Of-page SEO are two terms used in SEO world and every blogger and webmaster must be aware of these two terms and must know how to implement these two terms on their blog or site in best way to get most out of their SEO campaigns. The fact is that so many bloggers out there don't know this. So here i am writing this article for those bloggers specially new bloggers to understand SEO so they don't have any problem when it comes to Search Engine Optimization.

1. On-Page SEO

On-Page SEO means SEO techniques you can implement with in your blog's contents, like using keywords in right places in right way, writing valuable contents and so on. Here are about 9 pieces of On-page SEO that you must take care of. Some of these things should be done before starting your blog and some must be done when writing contents for your blog.

1. Domain Name Must Be Relevent To The Contents Of The Blog

Choosing the domain is the 1st thing you do when starting a blog, so it would be the best to choose most relevant domain name for your blog that contains at least your one most important keyword. Try to use short and general words in your domain name so people can easily remember them. And Dont use cheap domain names like .info, .co.cc, .ws ets. Google and other major seearch engines give them less weight so it may be difficult for you when it will come to SEO.

2. Use Title Tags Effectly

Blog titles are the words or sentences shown at the title bar of your browser. Blog title is mostly name of your blog so when people see the title they know what this page is about. Every page has its own title. Mosre importantly your blog title or Title Tags are most important places to use your keywords because search engines give them lot of weight. So always use your most important keywords at the beginning of the title tags.

3. Use Keywords In Post Title

After blog title post titles are most important places to use your keywords. First of all search engines look at your domain name, then title tags and then post titles. So if your domain name, blog title and contents of your blog are telling the same thing then you wont believe how easy it will be for you to rank. Search engines will find your contents relevant to your domain name and title so they will rank you for those keywords considdering relevant. So use your important keywords in post tile accordingly.

4. Write A Killer Description

Blog or site description is the small paragraph shown under the title of the website when searched on the search engine. Description tell the searcher what this web / blog is about and what kind of services they provide, so if they find description attrective and felt like this site may fill their needs then they will click on your site. Also search engines give lot of weight to description. So description tags are also a good place to use your keywords.

5. Utilize heading tags [ H1, H2, H3 etc ]

Heading tags like H1, H2...H5 etc are also most important places for you to use your keywords and search engines really care about heading tags. So use your keywords here too.

6. Utilize Text Styling

When writing blog post for your blog, always use text styling accordingly, Highlight important words, specially your keywords, underline important words and make them bold. Underlined, italic or bold text is considered important by search engines, so using your keywords rich post title and keywords in this way can rank your blog post in search engines pretty quickly.

7. Internal Linking [ Links to other pages of your blog ]

Internal linking means links from one post to other post within your blog. Internal linking is also very important, as it is helpful for blog visitors and also can help you to rank your blog posts. When you create internal links to your blog posts, search engines think that this might be very important so they may rank your post if competition is low or medium.

8. Blog / Site Loading Speed

This change to the web site ranking method is implemented recently by search engines. According to this, Blog's of web site's speed would also be a factor in search engines ranking. So it is very important to keep your blog up to date, use less Flash, JavaScripts on your page so it take less time to load. Because if your blog is taking longer to load then you might loose visitors, which is not good and also excessive use of Flash & JavaScript will make difficult for search engines to read your pages. You can also increase your blog speed by compressing your CSS code. Go to CSS Compressor paste your CSS code in their and press compress. When done.. copy compressed code and replace with your existing CSS code.

9. Use Alt Attributes For Images

Search engines are good but their is one problem with them that they cannot see the images. So you have to use alternative text or Alt attributes with your images to tell the search engine that what this image is about. Though it may not help you with your search engine rankings because spammers were using image Alt attributes for keyword stuffing to rank quickly, but it would be nice to keep your blog clean the best you can.

2. Of-page SEO

Of-page SEO is all about link building. In this technique, You submit your site / blog on related web directories or blog directories, article directories, social bookmarking sites, related forums, RSS directories. You can also write guest posts to high PR blogs related to your niche and place a link back to your blog in the author resource box. Backlinks are like recommendations, More backlinks means more chances to get high ranking in your niche. [ Refer to How To Find Right And Profitable Niche For Your Blog for help regarding choosing a niche ] And when i say backlinks then i mean only quality backlinks, and when i say quality backlinks...it means that backlinks only from high PR sites. So don't waste your time building backlinks from 0 PR sites or low PR because they don't do any good for you but you will loose your credibility instead. 1 Backlink from PR-9 site is lot more better then 1000 backlinks from PR-0 website. So always keep in mind that the higher the PR of a web site is, the more credible / trusted that is in search engine's point of view and search engines will give more weight links from such site. Remember that link building is about both......quality and quantity.

Google Webmaster's Tools

Google webmaster's Tools is very valuable addition to Google products. Submit your site map in Google Webmaster's Tools at first place so Google can crawl your blog more efficiently and can index more and more of your live pages.

Last Words

I hope you must have got something new from this post and your mind would be clear about SEO. For more valuable and informative articles please subscribe to the Newsletter or Subscribe to RSS feeds to get fresh updates right away. Don't Forget to leave your feedback.

How To Add Social Media Sharing Widget At The Bottom Of Blogger Post ?

2011-09-18T22:05:00.006+05:00

In this tutorial i am gonna show you how you can add great looking social media sharing widget just like mine in your blogger blog post with very nice hover effect. I tried many social media widgets for my blog in the beginning, they were fancy but i was not satisfied with them, and i was always looking to customize my blog template to make it look nice with great 1st impression and finally i found out this one. I hope you guys will love this social media widget. You can add this widget to your blog by CSS3 or JQuery, whatever suits you best, both have same effect...

How Add Social Bookmarking Widget under post body?

1. Go to Blogger Dashboard > Design > Edit HTML.>
2. Check Expand Widget Templates check-box
3. Press CTRL+F and find this tag </head>.
4. Right above </head> tag, copy and paste the following code.

5. Again press CTRL+F and search for <data:post.body/> tag .
6. And just after <data:post.body/> copy and paste the following code .

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;item&quot;'>

 <ul class='way2blogging-social' id='way2blogging-cssanime'>

  <li class='way2blogging-facebook'>

   <a expr:href='&quot;http://www.facebook.com/share.php?v=4&amp;src=bm&amp;u=&quot; + data:post.url + &quot;&amp;t=&quot; + data:post.title ' onclick='window.open(this.href,&apos;sharer&apos;,&apos;toolbar=0,status=0,width=626,height=436&apos;); return false;' rel='nofollow' title='Share this on Facebook'><strong>Facebook</strong></a>

  </li>

  <li class='way2blogging-twitter'>

   <a expr:href='&quot;http://twitter.com/home?status=&quot; + data:post.title + &quot; -- &quot; + data:post.url ' rel='nofollow' title='Tweet This!'><strong>Twitter</strong></a>

  </li>

  <li class='way2blogging-googlebuzz'>

   <a expr:href='&quot;http://www.google.com/buzz/post?url=&quot; + data:post.url + &quot;&amp;imageurl=&quot;' rel='nofollow' title='Post on GoogleBuzz'><strong>Google Buzz</strong></a>

  </li>

  <li class='way2blogging-stumbleupon'>

   <a expr:href='&quot;http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=&quot; + data:post.url + &quot;&amp;title=&quot; + data:post.title ' rel='nofollow' title='Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon'><strong>StumbleUpon</strong></a>

  </li>

  <li class='way2blogging-digg'>

   <a expr:href='&quot;http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&amp;url=&quot; + data:post.url + &quot;&amp;title=&quot; + data:post.title ' rel='nofollow' title='Digg this!'><strong>Digg</strong></a>

  </li>

  <li class='way2blogging-delicious'>

   <a expr:href='&quot;http://delicious.com/post?url=&quot; + data:post.url + &quot;&amp;title=&quot; + data:post.title ' rel='nofollow' title='Share this on del.icio.us'><strong>Delicious</strong></a>

  </li>

  <li class='way2blogging-linkedin'>

   <a expr:href='&quot;http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&amp;url=&quot; + data:post.url + &quot;&amp;title=&quot; + data:post.title + &quot;&amp;summary=&amp;source=&quot;' rel='nofollow' title='Share this on LinkedIn'><strong>LinkedIn</strong></a>

  </li>

  <li class='way2blogging-reddit'>

   <a expr:href='&quot;http://reddit.com/submit?url=&quot; + data:post.url + &quot;&amp;title=&quot; + data:post.title ' rel='nofollow' title='Share this on Reddit'><strong>Reddit</strong></a>

  </li>

  <li class='way2blogging-technorati'>

   <a expr:href='&quot;http://technorati.com/faves?add=&quot; + data:post.url ' rel='nofollow' title='Share this on Technorati'><strong>Technorati</strong></a>

  </li>

 </ul>

</b:if>

Save your template and there must be Social Media Sharing Buttons at the bottom of your each blog post. This looks like a lengthy tutorial but it is very easy. Just follow the steps carefully and there you go. Enjoy...!!

Did You Like It..?? Share It

Add Smooth Scroll To Top Button In Blogger

2011-09-18T19:42:00.005+05:00

In this tutorial i will tell you how to add a smooth scroll to top button at the bottom right of your blog, so visitors can easily scroll to top when they reach at the bottom of the blog. Unlike any other widget it won't jump to the top but will scroll smoothly and maintain the speed to the top. So if you want to install this scroll to top widget in your blog then follow these two steps...

Step 1. Adding JQuery Plugin to your blog template

(Ignore this step if your blog have already a JQuery Plugin)

a. Go to Blogger Dashboard > Design > Edit HTML .
b. Press CTRL+F and search for </head> tag.
c. Copy the following piece of code and paste before / above </head> tag .

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.1/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

STEP 2. Adding Scroll To Top widget code

a. Go to Blogger Dashboard > Design > Edit Html .
b. Press CTRL+F and search for </head> tag.
c. Copy the following piece of code and paste before / above </head> tag, and Save your template.

And that's it. Now save your template and you are done, you have added a nice and smooth scroll back to top widget in your blogger blog. Thanks for reading, please leave your feedback, Subscribe to newsletter for latest updates and like my page on Facebook on the right side.

Share this post if this may help your friends..!

How to add Author Box In Blogger Blog Post

2011-09-17T02:08:00.003+05:00

You might have seen Author box or resource box at the bottom of every blog post in WordPress blogs. Which really adds up in blog's value and look, so i thought why not use Author box widget in blogger. Because people love to know about the person behind the blog. It will also help those bloggers who have more then one authors writing for their blogs. Remember that author box will not show on home page with post summery. It will only shows up at the bottom of full blog post which is really nice. So if you want to add the author resource box under your blog posts then follow the steps below . . .

Add Author Box Under post body

1. Login to your blogger account .
2. Go to Design > Edit HTML.
3. Download your existing template before proceeding further and messing with code .
4. Click Expand Widget Template.
5. Press CTRL+F and find ]]></b:skin> .

6 . Just above add the ]]></b:skin> following code.

/***** Author Box ********************/
.author-box {
background: #F7F7F7;
margin: 20px 0 40px 0;
padding: 10px;
border: 1px solid #E6E6E6;
overflow: auto;
}
.author-box p {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}
.author-box img {
background: #FFFFFF;
float: left;
margin: 0 10px 0 0;
padding: 4px;
border: 1px solid #E6E6E6;
}

7. Again press CTRL+F and find <div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-1'/> and paste the following code below it.


About Author

WRITE ABOUT YOU HERE

8. Now replace the YOUR IMAGE URL with your image url and replace WRITE ABOUT HERE with your bio or whatever you want to say.

9. Click Save and you are done. Go to any blog post and you will see your author box there at the bottom of your blog post.

Enjoy and don't forget to leave your feedback. Also Subscribe to RSS feed for latest updates.

How to Display Scripts and Codes in Blogger Posts ( old school )

2011-09-16T21:59:00.003+05:00

In this article i will tell you how to display codes and scripts in blogger blog in more professional way. If you want to share some code with your readers which is related to a blogger widget or blogger trick then it is very important that code must be looking stand out from rest of the post so readers won't have trouble copying or understanding the code spinets. So follow the steps in the post below how to display scripts and codes in blogger posts. I hope you must be looking for this...

For instance if you are willing to display some XML code in blogger post, it will be alright. But when it comes to HTML codes, they are automatically striped out. So we need to fix that issue. For example if you want to display code 1 in your blog post, browser will automatically strip it out and show you 2 instead of 1.

1. <h1> Related Posts </h1>
2. Related Posts

To avoid this thing we must be able to display codes and snippets in special sections so browser can't read them. You can do this by creating simple tables in blog post editor but that will become too messy. So use the following method instead.

1. Login to your Blogger Account .
2. Go to Design Section .
3. Then select Edit HTML tab .
4. Find ]]</b:skin> .
5. Copy the following code and paste it above the ]]</b:skin> .

.codeview li{color:#333;font-size:13px;line-height:24px;font-weight:normal;margin:0;padding:0}
.codeview{margin:15px 15px 15px 35px;padding:10px;clear:both;list-style-type:none;font:normal "Courier New","MS Sans Serif",sans-serif,serif;background:url('http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nDNgmK8FIyI/TEKte0tjVOI/AAAAAAAAAN4/UekZZxFJvlk/w2b_codeicon.gif') no-repeat scroll bottom right #EFFBF5;border-top:1px solid #eee;border-right:2px solid #ccc;border-bottom:2px solid #ccc;border-left:1px solid #eee}

Now while writing the blog post if you want to display some CSS, JavaScript or HTML code in there, Go to HTML view and create a div section and paste your code in that div section and publish the post.

Enjoy...! and please leave your feedback about this post and subscribe to RSS feed for fresh updates.

How To Monitor Your Blog Traffic.?

2011-09-15T23:53:00.008+05:00

In this article i will tell you how to monitor your blog traffic. Lot of new bloggers don't give importance to keeping track of their visitors, but infect it is very interesting to know about your blog visitors, what they are looking for, how much time they are spending on your site and where on the earth they are coming from. If you monitor your blog traffic in right and professional way you ca not only make your blog more better but you will also see more traffic coming to your blog and more traffic means more conversion rates. There are so many tools out there that you can use to monitor your blog traffic, and best thing is that they are all free. you can use those tools to get important insights of your blog visitors like...

Country (location) of visitors
Language
Browsers they use
Monitor resolution
Time spent on your site
Visited pages
Percentage of new visitors

And some other details. Any analytic tool will provide you with all these information's which will help you to improve your blog. I am listing some free tools that you can use to monitor your blog traffic.

SIMPLE HIT COUNTERS

Hit counters are not a professional way to monitor blog or website traffic but they are pretty much helpful. They are easy to instal and they just provide you number of visitors came to your blog. If you think this is the tool you are looking for then here are some places you can find them, or you can just Google for free hit counters or visitors counters.

Free hit counters
Bravenet hit counters

Detailed Analysis Tools

If you are a serious blogger and spending your valuable in writing for your blog then it will be a must for you to monitor your blog traffic with one of these professional traffic monitoring tools. These tools will provide you with lot of detailed information about your blog visitors that you will feel like you know them. All of these tools are free but some tools have option to upgrade to premium, in that way they will provide you with more detailed data about your blog visitors.

1. GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Google Analytics is one of my favorite tools when it comes to tracking your blog traffic. It is totally free, developed by Google and provides you with very detailed data about your blog visitors. Installing Google Analytics is very easy, you can use your existing Google account with Google Analytics. If you are confused about how to install Google Analytics on your blog then read about it. There are so many articles written about it already.

2. STATCOUNTER

StatCounter is also a good choice, i am also using this tool for one of my own sites. It is also free and provides you with lot of interesting and detailed reports about your blog traffic. You can see your weekly, monthly or annual reports. You have to create an account, copy some code they will provide you and paste that in your blog and it will start monitoring your visitors, you won't have to do anything else. You can create multiple projects if you have more then one site to monitor. fast and accurate reports, totally free, no ads. Read instructions.

3. SITEMETER

Site meter also has some powerful features, but it keeps track of unique visitors and specific page views about each visitor only, but as i said it limits the data to unique visitors only. and will show you the detailed report of last 100 visitors came to your blog. If you want to get more out of it...you will have to upgrade your account which starts from 6.99 $. Read installation and tracking instructions Here .

MAPS and REAL-TIME TRACKING

1. CLUSTR MAPS

Cluster Map is a small gadget that monitors visitor's location and shows it on the map of the world installed in your sidebar or footer. You can also zoom in to the map. If you have less then 2500 visitors on your blog daily then you can use this, it is also free.

2. FEEDJIT

with FEEDJIT , you can watch your visitors arriving in real-time...It easy to install, and it can also give you some extra traffic...people just love to click. Keep in mind that free version is ad suported.

3. BLOG CATALOG

Blog Catalog tells you about recent visitors and is great way to monitor real time traffic. It shows the box with a recent visitors + their avatar. You can get some extra traffic with it, it's easy to install, it's customizable, and free of course...To use it, you have to join the Blog Catalog community, which is a positive thing...

How To Highlight Author Comments In Blogger Blog.?

2011-09-13T18:06:00.004+05:00

In this tutorial i will tell you how to highlight author comments or blog admin's comments in blogger blog. It is really nice practice to do with blogger because highlighting author comments adds a spice in your blog's look and also makes author comments stand out and blog visitors can easily see who is saying what. There might be many other tricks to highlight author comments but i will tell you as simple one which will make your comment system look more professional. Follow the steps below carefully, it won't take more then 2 minutes . . .

1. Login to your blogger account .
2. From dashboard select Design > Edit HTML .
3. Backup your template before proceeding any further in case any thing goes wrong .
4. Click on Expand Widget template .
5. Press CTRL+F and find following codes .

There will be code in between these two lines of code, you all you have to is to replace that existing code with code given below.

6. Copy the following code and paste between <b:loop values='data:post.comments' var='comment'> and </b:loop>.

<div expr:class='&quot;author-comment &quot;   data:comment.authorClass'>
            <dt class='comment-author' expr:id='data:comment.anchorName'>
              <b:if cond='data:comment.favicon'>
                <img expr:src='data:comment.favicon' height='16px' style='margin-bottom:-2px;' width='16px'/>
              </b:if>
              <a expr:name='data:comment.anchorName'/>
              <b:if cond='data:blog.enabledCommentProfileImages'>
                <data:comment.authorAvatarImage/>
              </b:if>
              <b:if cond='data:comment.authorUrl'>
                <a expr:href='data:comment.authorUrl' rel='nofollow'><data:comment.author/></a>
              <b:else/>
                <data:comment.author/>
              </b:if>
              <data:commentPostedByMsg/>
            </dt>
            <dd class='comment-body' expr:id='data:widget.instanceId   data:comment.cmtBodyIdPostfix'>
              <b:if cond='data:comment.isDeleted'>
                <span class='deleted-comment'><data:comment.body/></span>
              <b:else/>
                <p>
                  <data:comment.body/>
                </p>
              </b:if>
            </dd>
            <dd class='comment-footer'>
              <span class='comment-timestamp'>
                <a expr:href='data:comment.url' title='comment permalink'>
                  <data:comment.timestamp/>
                </a>
                <b:include data='comment' name='commentDeleteIcon'/>
              </span>
            </dd>
          </div>

7. Now again press CTRL+F and find ]]></b:skin> .
8. Right above code. Paste the following code. It will look like this .

.comment-footer{
margin-bottom:0 !important;
}
.author-comment{
background-color:#EDEDEF;
padding:5px;
margin-bottom:1.5em;
border:1px solid #ccc;
border-radius:10px;
}
.author-comment.blog-author {
background: #C6C6C6;
}

Customizationz:

1. To change the background of author comments, change the background color of .author-comment selector in CSS.
To change the background of the commentor's comments, change the background color of .author-comment.blog-author in CSS.
After all set, click save template, you can always come back top change the CSS values to meet your requirements.

3 Tips To Write A successful Blog Post

2011-09-11T23:41:00.005+05:00

Writing a successful blog post is the key to your blog's success, Your blog post must be original with unique title and must rank in SERPS. Without Contents written in proper way, it would be lot harder for you to rank well even if you do SEO. There are three main steps in writing a successful blog post. This is really really essential for you to express your thoughts clearly, professionally and effectively through your writings. Because people really care about what they are reading and they don't have time to waste on worthless and poorly written contents, and if you failed to fulfill their requirements you will see a noticeable decline in your blog's efficiency. Here are the 3 tips to write a successful blog post . . .

Properly Formatted

A vast majority of blog or content writers who are new to writing don't care about sentence formation and spellings. Also lot of blog writers don't care about reviewing their blog post before hitting the submit button and leave so many words misspelled along with grammar mistakes. Poor sentence construction will derail your blog post long before the reader even has a chance to get past the first paragraph. Even experienced writers sometime face this kind of situation but re reading your blog post before sending it live can make really big difference. If you are not good with spellings or grammar then their are so many free apps and software's online you may use to check your writing for any potential errors.

Relevant To Your Blog's Topic

Even if you grab content ideas from other blogs or websites, make sure to grab ideas that fit the topic of your blog. If your blog is about Blogger Tricks, you don’t want to publish an article on your blog about any other topic that has nothing to do with blogger tricks. If you stick with your blog topic and post only relevant contents then it will be easier for search engines to categorize your blog and it will also be easier for you to optimize your site for search engines. If you are not following these simple tips then you are loosing credibility and you will see a noticeable increase in your bounce rate, you can keep an eye on your bounce rate if you are using Google Analytics to keep an eye on your blog's traffic. Find out what kind and class of audience you have on your blog and what are they looking for. Write original, informative and interesting contents for them to keep them engaged with you and make them come back later to read more from you.

Written With Purpose

Before writing a blog post, sit back for a while and think what message you want to deliver to your blog visitors, make step by step road map like, first little introduction to the topic, little background if needed and then your message. Try to list the main points of the blog post, and make them bold or mark them with bullets, it will make lot easier for your audience to scan through it and decide if this is what they are looking for..?

Famous Last Words

Always keep these simple steps in mind to write a successful blog post, Writing a good and keywords ruched blog post in proper way will make things easier for you, Your article will rank for those keywords naturally without any SEO. Always remember that everyone can create a blog, but not everyone can have a successful one. If you have any secret tip under your sleeves, i would love to know, you can share below.

7 SEO Techniques To Avoid

2011-09-10T15:31:00.008+05:00

If you want your website to rank well in search engines then you must avoid these SEO techniques. In the world of SEO so many new things are coming and lot of people first come into this don't know lot of things. Every webmaster wants to rank quickly in search engines and they do things they think are right but they are not. As search engines are always making changes to their ranking algorithms to improve their ranking methods and to show the most relevant results for keywords people type in, there are so many things that were ethical to do in the past but they are no longer in the picture. Following are 7 SEO techniques people should avoid no matter what happens. . .

1. Meta Keywords

Mata Keywords tag was used to be the main tag to tell the search engines that what kind of contents this website contains and what are the relevant keywords for those contents. Meta Keywords tag lies in the head section of the web page and webmaster used to fill these tags with the keywords he wants to rank for. But what happened that spammers Found out that repeating certain keywords over and over again in Meta Keywords tag cause the website to rank well and quickly. But soon Google and other search engines eventually caught on to this and made a major change to their ranking algorithms. The major change was shifting focus to back links rather than Meta tags. Now Mata Keywords tag has little to no impact in search engine ranking.

2. Keyword Stuffing

Spammers used Mata Keywords tag to use their targeted keywords over and over and stuffing Meta Keywords tag with keywords for awhile.But when algorithms were changed to giving less or no importance to Meta tags, They shifted keyword stuffing technique to other HTML elements like. Keyword stuffing titles, headers, alt attributes of images and page content and soon became popular techniques for gaining improved search engine rankings. As Google is always improving their algorithms to improve ranking criteria they soon found out that keywords are being misused in those parts of the website where they shouldn't be. So they made changes once again and now keyword stuffing won't give you better ranking if you are using your targeted keywords in your HTML elements or contents of your pages beyond the limit of keywords density.

3. Keyword Density

When search engines cracked the keywords stuffing technique they came up with an alternative called Keyword Density. Soon webmasters found out that if they use their keywords in the contents of the specific pages to a specific % age they can get higher ranking. Webmasters started adding keywords to their contents to a %age they were thinking was right and they started loosing focus on the quality of the contents. Think for a moment that you have visited a site to read some contents you are looking for and found out that they are nothing but bunch of keywords shuffling around in the whole article. You will leave the page and chances are that you won't come back, which is really bad in webmaster's point of view. So webmasters and SEO's are not giving Keywords Density as they were in the past and are writing contents for the visitors who might come to the site, find contents useful and chances are they might come back and that's what webmaster's and SEO's are working for. Contents written in this manner and using your targeted keywords in the title and contents in very limited %age which is under 4% would not only give you higher ranking but will also award you with the loyalty of the visitor.

4. Hidden Text

Contents have great impact on the search engine ranking because they contain your keywords, but you can't stuff contents with keywords and make them look UN-natural. So webmaster's came up with something called Hidden Text, in this way they can use their targeted keywords in the contents without distracting the visitor because he can't see that text. Webmasters used to add keywords in the contents and give them same color as the background. So it can not only deceive the visitor but also the search engine, using this technique in present will not give you any ranking benefit but will rather cause dropping it.

5. Footer Links

adding a list of hundreds of keywords targeted links to your footer was a common way of getting ranking in search engines as search engine finds your site most relevant for those keywords because they are being used most in your site, but it won't work now.

6. Site Wide Links

The common concept was that if a link from high PR site could improve your ranking, how about getting many links from same high PR site? Though it did worked for a while too but now it don't work the same way. Getting 1 link or 1000 from the same site won't make a difference, 1000 links would have the same impact on your ranking as 1 link.

7. Forum Post and Blog Comment Links

As experienced link builder i always think that why people spend so many time in building links from forums and blogs. Adding a worthless comment in blog or a post i the forum and a link pointing to your site is not worth spending your valuable time. And most of the time i have seen people commenting on a "blogger tricks" blog and placing a back-link to their blog which is about green products or health care. It won't do any good for you even if that is a high rank blog, because it is not relevant to yours. There are so many other ethical and professional ways you can use to build back-links without spamming someones blog or forum and making it harder for them to clean up your mess.

Make sure you avoid these UN-ethical techniques and only use white hat SEO techniques for longer run.