Blogtweaks

Debug your blog!

Wed, 17 May 2006 20:22:55 +0100

John T Unger has a great post on the sometimes overlooked problem of blog code debug. He lists online tools and ideas on finding those nasty problems that can cause your blog look broken. Well worth the read.

One small addition: besides browsershots browsercam also provides screenshots of your site displayed in various browsers and operating systems. Altough it's not free (but has a free trial period), we've used their services a few times before with great results.

Technorati Tags: blog, debug

.htaccess for beginners #3 - resources

Mon, 15 May 2006 19:52:53 +0100

As a closing post for our mini-series on .htaccess tricks, we provide you a few starting pages for more in-depth htaccess information.

Technorati Tags: htaccess

Apache tutorial

Probably the most authoritative source on .htaccess information - a tutorial from the makers of the Apache webserver.

htaccess cheatsheat

As the name says - small and very condensed infopage about the most popular tricks achieved with .htaccess files.

Comprehensive guide to htaccess

Long, but easy to follow tutorial with lots of examples.

.htaccess - the guide

Another long explanatory article with a few warning notes for FrontPage users.

So, that was it, hope you could find some new things in this .htaccess tricks series. We'll keep on posting new examples if something comes up, but you should be able to find solutions for most of your htaccess problems in the resources above. If not, feel free to ask in a comment!

The "Just do it!" methodology

Fri, 12 May 2006 16:39:29 +0100

I was about to write a post about this, but Chris McLeod outran me with his article. So just my comments: I'm definitely on the "Just do it!" side, it's much more motivating when you have a live blog from day 1 - and also you can realize faster if you have what it takes to keep it live, or not. Plus, you'll have a more mature blog once it gets out of the Google Sandbox - so unless you're doing something really top secret, I recommend you to start live. After all, we're in the beta-era, so nobody's going to mind if your blog's not perfect from the start.

New tools from Google

Wed, 10 May 2006 23:48:04 +0100

Today Google announced a set of new tools - out of which the most interesting is Google Trends. Just like a live version of Google Zeitgeist - with the ability to search. Let's see a few things that you can do with this tool!

Technorati Tags: google trends

Finding hot topics

You can see news mentions and searches for keywords - that can really help deciding if the chosen topic is worth to cover.

Refining keywords

You can compare different synonims for your chosen keywords, see news trends, and even break it down to regions. This is a unique possibility if you're targeting for a non-English audience!

Having fun

Seriously, just by checking when did iPod get cooler than playstation, what's the current stage of the google-microsoft-yahoo battle, or when did the web 2.0 hype jumped up should provide enough fun (and maybe post ideas to write about) for quite a long time. Enjoy!

More accurate Google Analytics

Mon, 08 May 2006 23:14:28 +0100

Are you frustrated because you cannot 100% trust Google Analytics' numbers? Well, first of all, forget the idea that there's such a thing as "100% accuracy" with web statistics - but here's a trick if you're using WordPress as a blog engine. Since you're always logged in when you check your own blog, you can filter out these hits caused by you by disabling the metric code in case a logged in user views the page. Smart WordPress tip from 100yen.
(via: ProBlogger)

Technorati Tags: google analytics, wordpress

Color me good: what colours to use in your blog design?

Sat, 06 May 2006 10:13:40 +0100

For the more artistically inclined, there is not much we can say. They will go ahead and go wild with their colours anyway. But for the rest of us, simple help is always appreciated. So here we go with a couple of good resource sites for your esthetic convenience.

Technorati Tags: colour, design

A very straightforward site is the bizarrely named Colorwhore, a "directory of nice colors". That is exactly what you get: just colors, some nicer than the others. While there is nothing truly guru-like about it, it can still surprise you with some interesting colours every now and then.

Up the scale is Colourlovers, where an unmistakable knack for British spelling is coupled with not just colours but also whole palettes. You can easily pick one of the authors whose palettes are in snyc with your taste and go on designing your blog from there.

Quite amazingly, not all colour sites are named after love and sex.

The Color Scheme Generator 2 by the Czech web magician Pixy is one site that will rarely induce naughty thoughts with its name. On the other hand, it is very useful in deciding what colours match what other colours. It has a colour wheel that lets you select and create palettes based on the ideas of color theory.

Further down the scientific road is Colors on the Web, a comprehensive site where colour aficionados can spend hours clicking, reading and learning. Don't forget to actually pick some colours and do some work with them afterwards!

Finally, if you decide that you are more interested in knowing about colors than actually using them, head over to the color theory article of Wikipedia for the full treatment. But then don't blame us if your fantastic, colourful new blog design never sees the light of day.

Where to get links?

Fri, 05 May 2006 18:51:26 +0100

Jim Boykin's got a really nice trick published today. The main point is: forget the homepage, do some research on the site where you'd like a link from, and ask for the most relevant and most valuable page instead. Worth to read.

Blog content positioning

Wed, 03 May 2006 18:37:52 +0100

It's a fact that people are scanning online content instead of reading it, but besides that, not many rules are helping bloggers to create better, more profitable designs. Regardless, we tried to collect some of the useful sources available - keep these in mind when you're (re)designing your blog.

Technorati Tags: usability, heatmap

F-shaped pattern for reading web content

Altough I'm not always agreeing with his conclusions, it's worth following Jakob Nielsen's usability newsletter, the alertbox. In a fairly new study he emphasized the scanning nature of the way we read webpages, and my opinion is that it's even more true for blog posts.

Heatmap of a traditional website

Altough this study is quite old, most of its results can still be applied to current blog designs. Notice, how the upper left corner contents get more attention, how clear, big headlines catch the eye, and the serious attention loss under the without-scroll area.

Blog heatmap example

Eyetool-testing is something not too many bloggers can afford, but the results of a recent one by Greg Edwards can give you some ideas on how your visitors might read your blog. If you have important information in a "hidden" darkblue section, you should consider a redesign.

Positioning ads on your blog

And finally there's the classic Google AdSense Heatmap and it's newer version aimed to forums. (I think this one can almost perfectly be applied to blog designs too.) If your blog has some advertising income, be sure to check that your ads are showing at the right places - you might gain some serious money by putting them to one of the red zones.

Using comments to boost interactivity on your blog 1: recent comments

Mon, 01 May 2006 21:01:40 +0100

If your blog is one that solicits and welcomes comments from the readers, you might just as well try and make the most of this. There are several ways comments can be used to increase traffic; the basic idea is to integrate comments into the fabric of the blog as smoothly and efficiently as possible.

Technorati Tags: comment, interactivity

If you are using a blog engine that supports filtering for the latest comments, go ahead and display them on your front page. Put them in a separate box or apply some other design that distinguishes them from the articles. It is important that you place them near or at the top of the page, so they are visible, without scrolling, as soon as the visitor gets to the page.

Doing so has multpile benefits. Your visitors will know which topics are 'hot' or currently discussed and they will be happy to see their own comments appearing on the front page. If you really want to go user friendly, and of course you would, display the author and a short excerpt of the comment AND the title of the post in the tooltip. This way, the visitors can position the cursor over the comment and see at once if the topic that the comment belongs to interests them.

MySpace hack collection

Fri, 28 Apr 2006 18:24:08 +0100

You must be familiar with the extremely popular MySpace site - but you might not know all the hidden or not so public possibilities to hack, tweak and finetune its behaviour. We collected the coolest modifications and tools to pimp your MySpace site.

Technorati Tags: myspace, hack

Beforewe get into details, one important note. Whatever you do with the tools below, be aware that violationg the MySpace Terms of Service might get your account banned. Beware.

Redesign your profile page

You don't like the cluttered, full of advertisement look of your MySpace profile? Head over to this article to know how you can tailor it to your needs.

Download any songs

If you like a song on MySpace, but you'd like to download it, not just listen to, there might be a solution for this too.

See who's reading your profile

Profilepeep provides a simple generated code to paste into your profile. You'll get a detailed list of the persons who checked your page.

Display news and blog items on your page

MySpace Feed lets you include the contents of other blogs or news sites into your MySpace page through RSS feeds.

MySpace bar for Firefox

MyspaceBar is a Firefox toolbar that simplifies navigation of Myspace. It provides quick links to most features of Myspace and will get you there in fewer clicks.

Design tutorials

MySpaceProDesigns provides tutorials and ready-to-use code samples to tweak your MySpace page.

Tools

List of downloadable tools to use with MySpace

A picture is worth a thousand words, not always

Thu, 27 Apr 2006 11:38:05 +0100

Should you use pictures to illustrate content in your blog posts? We think so. But don't do it just for its own sake.

Pictures do grab attention, especially in an otherwise simple design. The eye of the visitor thus caught most often jumps over to the headline and maybe scans the blurb for additional information. This means that, if you do provide pictures, they need to be in sync with the textual information, illustrate and preferably even add to the content.

If there is nothing to show, it's needless to invent. Look at, for instance, how we manage to get by without unnecessary visual inserts, concentrating instead on the text and, as a result, churning out amazingly useful posts like this one.

Technorati Tags: visual, pictures

Keep an eye on income possibilities

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 20:21:32 +0100

There's a long story on Mango Sauce on how the owner of the site got kicked from AdSense. I really wouldn't like to judge here, but my opinion is that using Google's service is a contract between you and Google that can be terminated from both parties at any time. My point is only that these events should keep you from putting all your eggs in the same basket. Always keep an eye on other advertising networks or monetizing possibilities, so whenever the relationship with your current income provider and you gets rough, you'll know you have other options.

Technorati Tags: adsense

Credits: the importance of being earnest

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 19:23:50 +0100

Should I credit the site where I found this link, when its author also just nicked it from another site?

That is a question that sometimes pops up in many of us. The answer is really clear: yes, you absolutely should. Don't be afraid that your main page looks like a linkblog at times; if you post links, that is exactly what it should look like. Be earnest and stand for what you are doing. There are still ways to add value to a link - which is the main reason your readers will come back to your blog.

Technorati Tags: credit, link

One easy way to do that is is to gather related links, post them together and give a short commentary. Voilá. You have just created some original content! Also, outlining the explanation of a link whose text might not be understood by the general reader is a good idea and a helpful one at that.

Whatever you do, make sure you credit your source. You can go the full mile and credit the entire chain of sources, provided your direct source also credited its source and so on. Not many people do this, and it might arguably be overdoing it a bit, but it may also be good to your stats if one of those sources notices your link and makes a comment - or even back link - about it on their site.

To achieve that, you will have to provide links with your credits, too. Don't be afraid that your readers will go to the credited source and leave you alone. One of the reasons they check back with you is that you spare them the extra work of visiting other sites. They will be greateful for a good tip, so the overall effect is positive.

With or without www.

Mon, 24 Apr 2006 21:20:37 +0100

If you have a top level domain name, probably you have your blog set up to work from www.blogname.com and blogname.com too. (In case not, you define should!) But do they display the same site? Are you sure? If the URL is different, some log analyzers, even search engines might think that they are actually two different sites - regardless of the exactly same content. But with a small .htaccess rule, you can redirect your visitors from one to another, while keeping all your old links working too.

Technorati Tags: redirect, htaccess

The concept is to create a redirect with a regular expression, telling your webserver to change all URLs starting with www.blogname.com to blogname.com, while keeping the rest of the URL untouched. The actual .htaccess file is pretty simple, all you have to do is change the two URLs from blogname.com to your blog's address:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^blogname\.com RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://blogname.com$1 [L,R=301] </IfModule>

If you have problems making this work, check our previous posts on .htaccess tricks.

Page title optimization

Fri, 21 Apr 2006 17:06:50 +0100

This article on formatting the title tag of your pages might seem to provide too much details for one simple thing - but this one thing is very important, since that's what potential visitors will see first from your blog posts in search engine result pages, social bookmarking services, etc. Remember the 2 second rule? Finetune your individual post page titles, you just have to set it up once.

Technorati Tags: title, optimization

One example: articles on this blog display the blog's name, the post's category and title in the browser's title bar. Since we're running under MovableType, we achieved this by changing the default <title> tag in the Individual Entry Archive from:

<title><$MTBlogName encode_html="1"$>: <$MTEntryTitle remove_html="1"$></title>

<title>Blogtweaks » <$MTEntryCategory encode_html="1"$> » <$MTEntryTitle encode_html="1"$></title>

After making any changes here, you should rebuild all your Individual Archives to make the modified title affect your old posts too.