Lauren Wayne

FeedBurner feed too big? How to fix it

2011-12-02T05:00:00.000-08:00

My recent FeedBurner woe:

Click any image to embiggen.

The past few days, I noticed signs that my RSS feed for Hobo Mama wasn't updating, though it took me awhile to believe it.

I caught glimpses first in CommentLuv entries when I commented on other sites. It kept pulling up my "Gratitude Challenge" post from Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, even though I subsequently posted on Sunday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. I didn't really think much of it the first few times, or the first couple days — I just used Ping-o-Matic to give my feed a little boost and figured it would fix itself.

But after it had been a week, I noticed the delay wasn't just in CommentLuv. It was in the sidebar widgets on my other sites; it was in Google Reader; and — most obviously, now that I looked for it — the delay was on my feed's page itself.

I went to FeedBurner, through which I burn all my feeds, for the answer. I clicked right through to the humorously named "Troubleshootize" tab, hoping the humor didn't mean they wouldn't take this plight seriously.

Not having the RSS feed update, after all, is death to a blog. Readers who rely on feed readers, email subscriptions, and apps on handheld devices to notify them of new posts will assume that silence means there's no new content. My pageviews and comments would fall off the map, because no one would be seeing the posts I was writing. Indeed, my FeedBurner stats for the past few days were dismal.

Here's what Troubleshootize suggested:

The trouble: Your FeedBurner feed isn't up-to-date with your Original Feed.
The fix: Try pinging FeedBurner using our Ping page. This action tells FeedBurner to go check your feed for updates immediately.

So I tried pinging FeedBurner directly, waited a bit, and checked my feed again. No updates.

Next idea:

The trouble: Invalid characters or XML markup in content items, often introduced by composing your posts in Microsoft Word or embedding JavaScript code in a post.
The fix: Check your feeds for validity problems: Original Feed Validity, FeedBurner Feed Validity. See if any errors are reported, Then, check out this help topic for removing unwanted characters from your posts if mysterious characters seem to be to blame.

Nope, both verifications came back as valid.

This one seemed promising:

The trouble: Your Original Feed is too doggone big! FeedBurner does not process feeds that are larger than 512K. Remember, your feed is an update on your content — not an archive for it — and you should use your publishing tools' controls to make sure your feed doesn't grow like kudzu possessed.
The fix: Follow this help topic to control feed file size with Blogger; other publishing tools have similar controls.

But I couldn't figure out if my feed was too large. The help page suggested going to web-sniffer.net to "look at the report it returns; there should be a value in kilobytes for the size of your feed in an 'uncompressed' format." Well, I looked, and I didn't see any such thing. I had a really hard time locating any other (working) calculators online that would confirm whether my feed was too large or not — and I couldn't even figure out what made it too large. How was I in control of its size? Why wasn't FeedBurner?

I also checked The FeedBurner Status Blog and the help group, but there wasn't anything more helpful than what was in the troubleshooting documentation.

So I moved on to the bottom:

The text:

The Nuclear Option: "Resyncing" your feed
As a last resort with a regular feed or a podcast, you can resync your feed. You should only resync if your feed is more than 1 hour out-of-date and pinging FeedBurner does not update it or your podcast files are not being turned into enclosures by our SmartCast service.

"More than 1 hour"? Mine was a week out-of-date!

After a search to see if anyone reported this "nuclear" approach as destructive, I hesitantly pushed the resync button, then waited.

Nothing. Still not updating, even with a nuclear attack.

All that was left was to return to the "too big" idea.

From the help page:

FeedBurner will not process an original feed from your blog if it is greater than 512K in size. (This limitation only applies to the actual size of the feed file itself and does not include any images or media files you may have linked to or embedded in your posts.) To get a feed larger than 512K back down to size on Blogger, you need to add a parameter to the address for your original feed's URL — the one that FeedBurner checks for updates in order to keep your FeedBurner feed current — that tells Blogger to shorten it to a specific number of posts.

Well … OK. I was in fact on Blogger, so maybe that was it.

Here are the steps to shrink your feed size, as per the help file:

In FeedBurner, click "Edit Feed Details…" below your feed's title. It's up at the top of your particular feed's page, above the tabs.

In the Original Feed Address field, change the URL there to the following format: http://myblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?max-results=3
(So mine was http://hobomama.blogspot…)

Click Save Feed Details. Wait for FeedBurner to reburn the feed and update.

What confused/concerned me at this point were these notations:

(Note that max-results sets the number of posts you want to have appear in your FeedBurner feed. Any integer value between 1 and 500 is permitted.)

And later:

Bloggers: Do you write lengthy posts and come up against FeedBurner's 512K limit to total feed size? You will want to set max-results to a small number in order to keep the feed file size under control. You may need to experiment with the max-results setting to get the ideal feed size. How to tell the filesize of your feed? Enter its address into www.web-sniffer.net and look at the report it returns; there should be a value in kilobytes for the size of your feed in an "uncompressed" format.

Oh-kaaay. I tried 500 first, then 400, 300, 200 100, then 50, 40, 30 … and then gave up and went with 3. You can experiment as you want, but nothing but 3 worked for me.

What bothered me about this was there was no indication of what the number meant. Were they saying they would look for a maximum of three new posts at a time (every half-hour, as I understand their usual pinging process)? Or did it mean it would slice the archives in my feed to a measly three posts back?

The error I got until I got to 3 was the same every time, telling me my feed size was "larger than 576K," no matter if I had 500 or 10 as the limiting number. Only 3 brought it below this, according to the error message. How did my posts from Sunday, Tuesday, and Wednesday push it over the edge to such an extreme? It just didn't make sense.

Then there was this:

podcasters: Don't ever want an episode to drop off of your feed? Set this value to 500. (What happens on episode 501? Pandemonium!)

I'm guessing this is some sort of joke, but I don't find weirdness particularly helpful in a help article. I don't even have podcasts, but it's cryptic statements like this that made me wonder if the purpose of the number was to trim my archives to 3 (or whatever number) posts.

Well, here's the good news: Set to 3, my feed refreshed and updated. I almost immediately received an email (I subscribe to my own feed both by email and in a reader, to keep tabs on it for just this reason!) with the last three posts it hadn't mailed out before. Google Reader showed all the recent posts, and I checked the archives to see what the toll had been. My RSS feed in Reader stretched back to September 2009 before I changed the code, and afterwards, it stretched back to … September 2009. (Hobo Mama began in September 2007, by the by.) So, no worries. I just wish the help topic had indicated that!

Besides the shoddy attitude in help, other things that irritated me:

FeedBurner's link (web-sniffer) to determine my feed's size did diddly squat for the purpose.
I received no emailed notice from FeedBurner that there was a problem with my feed. It was up to me to recognize that it wasn't updating, and it took a week for that to sink in. A week with who knows what percentage of my readership bailing!
Even more egregious, there was no indication when I logged into FeedBurner, on my dashboard, or on my feed's page, that there was anything wrong! Until I started typing a new "?max-results=X" code and playing around with what number to put in place of the X, FeedBurner gave me no error message to tell me (a) that there was anything wrong with my feed and (b) what it was! That screen capture at the top of this post is what finally appeared, and here's what it said: "Your feed filesize is larger than 576K. You need to reduce its size in order for FeedBurner to process it. Tips for controlling feed file size with Blogger can be found in Tech Tips on FeedBurner Forums, our support site." Note, no links to the appropriate tips, just a shove to go find them yourself.
As I mentioned before, I also think it's bizarre that feed size isn't something FeedBurner controls for you. Instead of chiding you, "Remember, your feed is an update on your content — not an archive for it — and you should use your publishing tools' controls to make sure your feed doesn't grow like kudzu possessed," why doesn't FeedBurner just make sure that feeds follow its size limitations by imposing them from the start? They handle most of the other inner workings of feed-dom. Why leave this one to the novices?

My advice to you?

Don't let this keep you from using FeedBurner, because it has awesome functionality. But do subscribe to your own feeds and check in on them regularly to be sure they're working and that they look the way you want them to.
If your feed isn't updating, try pinging first.
If that doesn't work, head to resyncing under Troubleshootize, with no fear.
If you're on Blogger and there's still no joy after — oh, I don't know, maybe give it an hour — then Edit Feed Details as in the above steps. You might as well go straight for "max-results=3," though you're free to play around with other numbers if you think you'll get lucky.

So that's my experience with shrinking feed file size and getting a feed to update again. Here's hoping it never gets mysteriously bloated again!

Has this ever happened to you? Is it because I'm too wordy? Is it kind of cool that my wordiness broke FeedBurner? No? Why not? Discuss.

How to take a blogging break … but keep your blog going

2011-11-29T05:57:00.000-08:00

Today I would like to welcome Dionna from Code Name: Mama, who has written a guest post about taking a rest from your blog while keeping up your readership.

Lauren's note: When I was expecting Alrik, I was brainstorming ways to continue my blog for the sake of my readers and my advertisers while taking a highly valued babymoon. Now Dionna's in the same boat! For you it might be a vacation or family trip or just some needed time to disconnect from the screen. These are Dionna's ideas for stepping away from the blog but keeping up a basic amount of posting.

New babies, vacations, outside obligations, blogging burn-out. All bloggers need a break sometimes — it can even be healthy to plan a regular break into your annual blogging schedule. If you're worried about losing readers and subscribers during your absence, here are some tips that might help ease your mind.

1. Republish your own guest posts.

Have you had guest posts published at other sites? Run those! Unless you made a deal to the contrary, you still retain the copyright. Just be sure to check the other site's guest post policy to make sure you're within its exclusivity terms.¹ Include a note that it's been republished from a post previously seen on the host blog, with the appropriate link.

2. Repost old posts.

Readership changes from month to month, year to year. If you've been blogging awhile, surely there are old posts you can rerun. If you republish posts from when you were a beginning blogger with less of a following, you may be pleasantly surprised by the increased response to old posts. Include a note again mentioning that it's been republished (and possibly edited) for any hardcore archive delvers among your readers.

3. Book guest posters who will promote their own posts.

If you're going to be AWOL from your blog, you'll likely also be taking a hiatus from social media. Call on guest posters you trust to promote their own posts on their blog, Twitter, and Facebook and to respond to commenters. Don't hesitate to tell them that part of the deal is they need to interact, since you'll be taking a break.

4. Skip regularly scheduled posts.

Do you have a habitual post you put up every week (Wordless Wednesday, recipes on Friday, Sunday Surf)? Skip it, and don't feel guilty AT ALL.

5. Schedule some quick shots.

Try to schedule a few posts ahead, but don't make them be ambitious. There's something to be said for short, 1-2 paragraph posts — think of them as the blogging equivalent to a witty or insightful status update.

6. Warn your readers.

Let your readers know in advance you will be taking a break. Turn it into a post asking for guest posters! Your readers will understand, and they will welcome you back when you return.

Dionna is a lawyer turned work-at-home mama of an amazing son and an incredible new daughter. You can normally find Dionna over at Code Name: Mama where she shares information, resources, and her thoughts on natural parenting, consensual living, eclectic learning, and compassionate advocacy.

Photo courtesy sylvie szafranski on flickr (cc)

1 For example, here is the guest post "exclusivity" policy for Natural Parents Network: "While contributors to Natural Parents Network maintain the copyright to all their work, we ask that you not post your submission anywhere else (including your own blog) whether paid or unpaid, for 90 days after publication on Natural Parents Network. This exclusivity adds value for our readers without our asking you to give us copyright on your work. Similarly, we will wait 90 days to republish any previously published article."^↩

Meta description + meta keyword for Blogger templates

2011-10-18T12:56:00.000-07:00

Jorje had a good blogging question today. I thought I'd post the answer for anyone else looking to improve SEO (search engine optimization).

For those on Blogger, … they posted this this morning:

Please recheck your XML template, and fill meta description + meta keyword with your blog description and keyword, it's very important to promote your blog :)

Jorje wanted to know where to find the meta tags.

Head to your template!

(Click on any image to see it larger.)

Go to Design --> Edit HTML.

Before working on your template, Download Full Template to save a backup. That way, you can revert to your previous version if something goes horribly wrong.

You make your changes in the big text box, and click Save Template when you're done.

Here's where to go if you're in the new Blogger interface:

Go to Template --> Edit HTML.

You will now get a warning that you should do no such thing:

Again, back up your template before proceeding.

Then you'll be in the same sort of window:

Now that you know where to go, here's what you do once you get there.

Here's where I move to the tutorial I found on BloggerTricks:

"Adding meta tags to blogger(blogspot) blogs,websites-SEO"

You can tell it's an SEO-focused site from that weird title…

You can pop on over to read the whole article, but I'll sum up the main points here, using another site of theirs, plus another one I found, that helped me.

1. First go to Free Online Meta Tags Generator Tool.

Fill in your information there (title, description, your blog's keywords, etc.) and receive the code you'll need. Here's how it looks when I filled it in for Hobo Mama:

The code in the bottom box is what you copy and paste.

2. Add the above code to your template.

Do a find/search for this code string in your template:
<b:include data="blog" name="all-head-content">

Paste the meta tags code you generated just after that line in your template.

3. Save your template.

Reference the above "Edit HTML" screenshots to see where.

4. Analyze your meta tags.

Use this free online analyzer tool:
Free Metatags Analyzer

Simply fill in your site's URL in the box and ask for the analysis.

It will flag errors, tell you whether you have too many or too few keywords, give a percentage of relevancy of your keywords to your page's content, and offer a few other tips on improving your SEO (making search engines happy).

If you need to make any changes to your meta tags after the analysis, you can just find them in your template and make them from there, or erase and start over from step 1.

Further discussion: Have you ever meta tag you didn't like?

How to create footnotes in Blogger

2011-08-22T14:48:00.000-07:00

By popular demand …

Even though there's no built-in way to create footnotes in Blogger, it's easy enough to code linked footnotes into a post in HTML view. Here's how I do it.

What it looks like for readers

This is my post text with a linked footnote at the end.¹

When readers click on the footnote number, it jumps them down to the footnote. Clicking an arrow after the footnote conveniently jumps them back up to where they left off.

Footnotes are a great solution for tangential or additional text, such as caveats, resource citations, or pointless jokes. (I especially prefer the latter.) Readers can choose whether to continue reading the main text, or be delightfully distracted down to your bonus offerings, and then back up again when they're ready to resume.

The HTML code for you

You must enter this code in "Edit HTML" view in Blogger. (I have a tutorial explaining the difference between Edit HTML and Compose if you're not familiar with the two.)

Code to put in the text where you want the footnote's number to appear:

<a href="#1" name="top1"><sup>1</sup></a>

All right, which is easier for you? I pasted it above so you can see it easily, but here's the same code in a grab box for easier copying/pasting. Take your pick!

Code to place at the bottom of your post:

<hr width="80%">
<p>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">
<a name="1"><b>1 </b></a>FOOTNOTE<a href="#top1"><sup>↩</sup></a>
</span>

Obviously, replace "FOOTNOTE" with the actual footnote!

Explanation of the codes

These footnotes work through a simplistic process of "name" URLs that reference each other. You tag each part of the footnote with a name. The footnote number in the text is named "top1," and the footnote number at the bottom of the post is named "1."

Then the paired URLs send readers back and forth between these "names" through the href codes. Telling the URL to go to href="#1" sends it to the post's URL but with #1 appended. That # sign tells the code to look for a name that matches what's after the #, and it finds it in our footnote named "1."

Multiple footnotes

If you want multiple footnotes, you simply need to paste the following parts of the codes again, substituting the numbers you need for the word "NUMBER."

Code to put in the text where you want another footnote's number to appear:

<a href="#NUMBER" name="topNUMBER"><sup>NUMBER</sup></a>

That's three replacements at the top, if you're counting.

Code to place at the bottom of your post for multiple footnotes:

You want to add in this line after your first footnote line as many times as you need it.

<a name="NUMBER"><b>NUMBER </b></a>FOOTNOTE<a href="#topNUMBER"><sup>↩</sup></a>

Again, replace the three instances of "NUMBER" with the number you're on.

Here's a grab code for 5 footnotes:

Styling your footnotes

Obviously, you can feel free to alter these codes cosmetically to suit your blog. This is just what I came up with. The basic structure is the "name" links, and the rest is decoration.

I used a "sup" command to make the footnote numbers superscript in the text, added an "hr" line at the bottom to separate the footnotes from the post's text, made the footnote font "x-small" in size, and used a little superscripted ↩ symbol for returning to the text location. Any of those elements could be changed as you wish. For instance, you could have your footnotes appear in a different font face or color, or change how you separate off your footnote area. If you want to copy mine as is, I don't mind, though I'd love any shout-outs to this post you'd care to give!

Tips

I keep these codes handy in a text file on my desktop, so I can easily copy and paste them into a post when I need a footnote.

The biggest warning I can offer is NEVER switch back to Compose view once you've inserted the footnote code in Edit HTML. Sorry to semi-shout, but this will mess your code up, yo.

Here's, again, the tutorial on using Edit HTML vs. Compose. If you're comfortable crafting a post solely in Edit HTML view, then just do that, and you're golden. If you prefer Compose or like to switch between the two, you'll need to add your footnotes at the very end in HTML view, and then hit publish. If you need to get back into that same post to edit, you'll need to do so in HTML view again. Blogger has a usually helpful little thing where it "remembers" what view you used last time — if it was Compose, you might need to start (or edit) a new (different or throwaway) post in Edit HTML, and then open the one with the footnotes.

Also, these footnotes won't work on the main page of your blog, only on the specific post pages, unless you alter the URLs to have the post page URLs within the code (i.e., not just href="#1" but href="http://www.laurenwayne.com/2010/10/how-to-make-blog-button-grab-box.html#1" or whatever your specific URL is). This is because the generic href="#1" is looking for the "name" tags on the current page only. I figure most people are used to clicking over into a blog post for footnotes — I have to when I'm reading posts in a reader, for instance.

Occasionally, even if you're diligent about opening posts only in Edit HTML, Blogger will "helpfully" fill in a placeholder URL in front of your # commands when you reopen a post to edit it. In that case, either delete the nonsense URL Blogger has inserted, or replace it with the post's URL if you know it. That will keep the footnotes intact in the future.

Thoughts? Questions? What fanciness do you use for footnotes in Blogger?

1 This is my sample footnote. You can click the little arrow at the end of this footnote to get back to where you were.^↩

How to add "Read More" jump tags in Blogger

2011-02-11T17:27:00.000-08:00

My new favorite thing in Blogger? Adding "read more" tags to posts. I'd seen this feature on WordPress and other blogs before but hadn't realized it was a Blogger feature, too. I think it's been here for donkey's years, but I was slow to catch on to the benefits!

Here's a little tutorial that will explain "read more" links and let you know why and how you should add them!

What's a "read more" tag?

First things first! If you have no idea what I'm talking about, take a look at my Hobo Mama homepage (for I have not performed the same editing wonders on this site yet!).

(Click on images to see them larger.)

The "read more" link is at the bottom of the post that's been truncated. When you click on it, it links to the original article URL plus the #more tag at the end — in this case, this link: http://www.hobomama.com/2011/02/fat-and-pregnant-heartbeat-video.html#more. So if you're reading from a page and choose to "read more," you will get popped into the article at the point where you left off. On the other hand, if you click on the URL as a whole from another source (in a blog reader or from a Tweet, for instance), you'll see that the "more" tag is undetectable when the post is expanded (try it here: http://www.hobomama.com/2011/02/fat-and-pregnant-heartbeat-video.html). Then it simply shows you the post as a whole, and the "more" coding is invisible.

Other examples of a "read more" link at work can be seen in non-Blogger applications such as our WordPress-based Natural Parents Network homepage, which has a sort of magazine/excerpt vibe to it. You get a digest version of all the current posts and can click on the "Read More…" links if you're interested to, well, read more.

Why do I want "read more" tags?

Scanning and searching is easier

The biggest reason is to make pages that encompass a lot of posts less cumbersome for readers to scroll through and find what they want. This is true for your home page as well as any category/label search pages.

For instance, I've recently gone back and added in "more" tags on all my posts tagged with Elimination Communication on Hobo Mama. If you look at the category page for elimination communication now —

http://www.hobomama.com/search/label/elimination%20communication
— you can easily scroll through 19 partial posts on the subject and decide whether each article is really what you're looking for. (I'm guilty of popping labels onto posts that are only distantly related in some convoluted way in my mind….)

By contrast, I went to a label where I hadn't yet added jump tags, and only six posts loaded, in their entirety. That makes it a lot harder for readers looking for a particular article to comb through your category tags, particularly if you have a lot of articles shuffled into a particular category. They have to keep clicking on "Older Posts" at the bottom of the page, again and again and again, in the hopes of finding the one article they're looking for.

I was going to show you the difference between the two ("read more" tags vs. no "read more" tags), but I plan to change all mine over as I have time. The best method I can think of, if you don't have "read more" tags yourself and you're on Blogger, is to load your own homepage or a category page and see how clunky it is to wade through it all.

More information, less space

The other benefit, and it's related, is that you can show highlights from more articles on a single page. For instance, I used to have to keep my Hobo Mama homepage at a maximum of four posts (under Settings --> Formatting --> "Show at most X posts on the main page"). My posts tend to be long and have a lot of images, so it took too long to load more than that and sometimes the multiple javascripts would interfere with certain browsers.

With the "read more" jump tags, however, I can keep each individual post down to a manageable excerpt size and therefore safely and conveniently show more total posts on a page at once, making it more likely that a visitor will see something enticing.

How do I get me some of that sweet "read more" action?

So you're convinced! Now, how to add in those "read more" tags to your own posts? Fortunately, it's easy!

(Click on images to see them larger.)

It's easiest to do in "Compose" mode¹, because there's a little icon right there to press! As you can see in the top row of this screenshot, the icon looks like a page that's been ripped in half, symbolizing that a portion of the post is before the jump and a portion after.

Once you click the icon, this gray-with-black-dotted line pops into your post to show you where the jump will fall. You can delete it or copy and paste it elsewhere if you change your mind.

Alternatively, if you're in Edit HTML mode¹ (I tend to write in HTML view, so I think that's why I didn't notice the "read more" icon for so long!), you can type in the HTML code for a jump yourself:



Just copy and paste that HTML coding tidbit wherever you want your jump link to appear.

To make things easier on me, I actually created a draft post with just that code in it that I saved with a date in the future so it's always at the top of my drafts list. Then, whenever I need the "read more" code, I can just open the draft and copy and paste. Another option I just thought of is to add it to your Post Template box, which makes things even easier in the long run as you're composing new posts in Edit HTML view. Simply go to Settings --> Formatting --> Post Template, paste it in and save your settings. I pasted in <br><br><br><br> so it wouldn't be at the very top. Then the coding will show up in every new post — just make sure to move it where you want to before you publish a post!

Jump around!

A couple final notes:

I've heard that some older or nonstandard Blogger templates don't work automatically with the "read more" tags, so you might have to update or tweak your template in that case. My Hobo Mama template was automatically outfitted with the functionality and worked with no further fiddling on my part, but this template is not working. However, I want to upgrade my template here, anyway, so I'll deal with that later. If you're also having problems, let me know and I'll try to help you out!

Since you can't conveniently add custom excerpts yet for articles in Blogger the way you can in WordPress (see this link as an example of a string of posts in WordPress that mostly have handcrafted excerpts along with selected featured images), you might want to hone your skills at writing opening paragraphs that can function as an overarching preview for the article to come. I know I'm guilty of rambling on for awhile at the beginning of my posts (it's fun!) before getting to the point. But if you know that your before-the-jump paragraphs are all readers will see to choose whether or not to click and read further, you might find yourself making sure those opening paragraphs are concise and tempting enough to lure readers in further. Along the same lines, you might want any opening images to be pertinent, since whatever is up at the top is what will show. (Of course, you choose where the jump goes, so you can ultimately arrange it however you'd like!)

Rest assured, too, that anyone clicking on a URL from another source (such as Twitter or Facebook) or following your feed in a reader or email subscription will see the full post. These "read more" tags don't affect anyone clicking on a regular post link, only people browsing your home site or a category search page. To my point of view, those are exactly the times you want readers exposed to a wide variety of articles, so that's perfect for my needs.

If you want to make sure that the "read more" tag doesn't put extra spaces and line breaks into your post, simply don't add them in! You can smush the "read more" coding right up against any other words or html, without any extra spaces or line breaks around it, and the break will happen there as planned.

Enjoy your "read more" tags — your readers will!

1 If you need a simple mini-course on the difference between Compose and Edit HTML view in Blogger, see my tutorial "How to edit HTML in Blogger."^↩

Google Reader shared items: Your public feed for reading recommendations

2011-01-25T19:07:00.000-08:00

Do you want an easy way to share blog posts and online articles with your friends and readers?

Google Reader has a way to share items and create a public feed with all your reading recommendations.

I first heard about this idea from Paige of Baby Dust Diaries, in a footnote on her Sunday Surf. (If she has an awesome, longer tutorial somewhere I'm missing, she or someone can let me know!)

In this how-to, I'll pass on what I learned from Paige and teach you how to set up your own Shared Items feed in Google Reader, add to it easily from Google Reader, and publish the feed to your blog.

In a future how-to, I'll talk about some further Google Reader goodies, including a way to add items to your shared feed from outside Reader, and even if you're not subscribed to a feed for an article you want to reference. I'll also talk about how to show off a public feed on your blog or other site.

Absolute basics

You need to have a Google Reader account and be subscribed to your favorite blogs. I'm going to skip ahead at this point and assume you've got that part figured out, but if you need help, let me know and I can do a separate tutorial!

Add to your shared items

(Click on any image to see it larger.)

Whenever you open an article in Google Reader and scroll to the end, you'll see these options. The two relevant ones are "Share" and "Share with note."

To add an article to your shared items, simply click on either share option.

"Share" will add it automatically to your shared items. The little feed icon will turn orange.

"Share with note" lets you add a comment to your item. A box pops up like so:

You type in your comment and click "Post Item."

(Notice you could also add a note but uncheck "Add to shared items," if you wanted a private note to yourself.)

"Your shared items" in Reader

(Remember, click on any image to see it larger.)

To see the items you've shared, go to "Your stuff" in the left sidebar. If there's a plus-sign (+) next to "Your stuff," click on it to show the drop-down menu. Select "Shared Items." If you want to see only the items you've left notes on, click on "Notes."

You can see an article I shared and the note I wrote to go along with it in the blue box ("I want to live in a treehouse!").

(In case you're wondering, I blurred out my feeds because I give them weird names ;) and, yes, I have more than 1,000 unread items, which means I've broken the Google counters.)

How to unshare an item

If you want to take back your share, look at the bottom of the post where the orange icon is. The word will now say "Unshare," so just click it again to remove it from your shared items.

If you wrote a note, click "Delete" next to the little trash can instead (the icon that used to be a pencil and paper).

(Look at the picture above to see both the "Unshare" and "Delete" icons.)

Make your shared items public!

So now you've shared them, but who's seeing them? We have to go mess with the settings to make sure it's all the people you want!

The link for Sharing Settings is http://www.google.com/reader/view/#friends-manager-page. It's linked on various pages, such as toward the top of "Shared items" and "People you follow."

You can also navigate there (it's a little hard to find, but in case they change that link!) by going this route:

Click "Settings" in the top right header, and wait for the drop-down menu. Select "Reader settings."

(Remember, click on any image to see it larger.)

Click the tab that reads "Folders and Tags." There you can see the message next to "Your shared items," "Shared items can be configured on the sharing settings page," and "sharing settings" is linked. Ta-da!

The top option lets you choose whether your shared items are "Protected" (you choose which groups can view them, based on your Google Contacts) or "Public" (open to anyone online). You can also see whose recommendations you're following, and who's following yours, and you can search for new public shared item feeds to track.

Set your style

Now that you have a public feed, you also get to style your Shared Items page, on the same "Shared settings" page. There are four (rather limited) options, so choose whichever one makes you happiest.

You can also choose a custom URL (such as http://www.google.com/reader/shared/hobomama), which makes it easier to tell friends about your new public feed.

We'll talk more about emailing the link below, and we'll get into adding a clip to your blog in a future installment, but feel free to play around!

Your public feed

Now when you click either on "Preview your shared items page in a new window" or paste or type that new URL into a window, you will see what your public sees.

Reader pulls information from your Google profile (such as your name and links to other public accounts), so make sure your Google profile is displaying information the way you want it.

Share your shared items!

Now you can hand out the URL of your public feed (e.g., http://www.google.com/reader/shared/hobomama) to let people know to follow along or subscribe.

People can also follow you in Google Reader by entering your name under "Find more people" on the "Sharing settings" page. They'll then click on "People you follow" in the left sidebar to see your shared items mingled with the items of other public feeds.

In "Sharing settings," there are two opportunities to email a link to your shared feed to your friends. They don't even need a Google account (just internet access) to view your shared items feed. If they do have a Google account, you could recommend that they follow you in Reader.

Have fun and start sharing!

And stay tuned for advanced Google Reader goodies!

Incidentally, feel free to follow my shared items public feed! I share articles about parenting, blogging, and writing, along with other fun tidbits, such as about treehouse living. You can also follow me in Google Reader by entering "Lauren Wayne" under "Find more people" on the "Sharing settings" page and finding my cute little face.

Choosing who can comment in Blogger: Allowing the option of name and URL

2011-01-12T06:43:00.000-08:00

Dionna of Code Name: Mama and I are writing a few blogging tutorials of particular use for our Carnival of Natural Parenting participants. This topic is loosely related to the carnival, because certain options allow for easier commenting on Blogger blogs.

Do you want to adjust your comment settings in Blogger to determine which readers can comment?

Choosing what permissions to grant commenters (from requiring registration to allowing anonymous commenters) can affect how easy it is for people to comment — and, therefore, how likely readers will be to convert to commenters. Specifically, you might receive more comments if you allow commenters to type in their own name and URL or comment anonymously, because it can be appealing for certain commenters.

Everything has its pros and cons, of course, which we'll cover in a bit. For now, here's where you find the options, what they mean, and what they look like in action.

The four commenting permission options in Blogger

Blogger has four permissions options for its commenting system. Go to your Dashboard, then choose the Settings tab, then Comments. (There's a main tab labeled "Comments," as well, but we want the sub-tab under Settings.)

Look for "Who Can Comment?"

Here are the options. Start from the bottom up to go from most restrictive to least:

"Only members of this blog" — Commenters have to be contributors or administrators of the blog and must be logged in to Blogger to comment.
"Users with Google Accounts" — This is the default for Blogger. Anyone commenting must have a Google account and sign in to Google.
"Registered Users - Includes OpenID" — This opens up commenting to people who don't have a Google/Blogger account but still requires that they identify themselves in some way by logging in with an outside account. This expands the accounts commenters can sign in, in addition to Google, with LiveJournal, WordPress, TypePad, and AIM. Commenters choose their preferred account, enter their URL or username, and then OpenID takes them to a separate page to authorize with their password.
"Anyone - Includes Anonymous Users" — This is the most open of all the commenting options, and is the only one that allows for Name and URL entry. It also is the only one that allows anonymous commenters.

Once you decide which option you prefer, select the little circle next to your choice. Then scroll to the end of the page and make sure to click Save Settings.

Here's what they look like in action, both from the perspective of the commenter, and what a comment looks like live when it's published. Then we'll talk a little bit more about why you might choose each of the four options.

What the commenting options look like

Here is what each option looks like, first from the commenter's perspective on the comment form, and then live once published. (Your comment form might look different, depending on which form option you chose, but the permissions options will be the same.) In these examples with the comment form, I've selected option #4 up above, allowing all users, including name/URL and anonymous. If you've selected a more limited option, you simply won't see the extra options on the comment form, and Blogger will give a special message if only Google accounts are permitted to let commenters know that anonymous comments are not allowed.

The first option is to use a Blogger/Google account. (This is the only option you'll see for #1 and #2 in the permissions options above, and this option will remain visible for #3 and #4.) Commenters can sign in on the comment form; if they're already signed in, their Google profile name will already show up in place of the username/password sign-in section and they can opt to sign out if desired.

Live, the comment will show the display name they chose for their Google/Blogger profile, as well as any avatar they uploaded, and it will link to the profile. The profile can then direct a reader to the commenter's blog and other information. Here's what it looks like in action:

I was hovering my mouse over the link, so the linked profile is shown in the bar along the bottom.

As mentioned before, OpenID allows commenters to sign in with LiveJournal, WordPress, TypePad, or AIM. (This corresponds to permissions option #3 as well as #4 from above.)

Here's what an OpenID comment looks like online:

You can see the OpenID icon next to the person's name, and that their registered website is linked up.

This is the Name/URL option. Entering a URL is optional. Therefore, a person can comment, for all intents and purposes, anonymously using this option by entering a name (or pseudonym) in the Name field but no URL below. (This you will see only with permissions option #4 above.)

This is what name and URL look like published. The name for the commenter shows whatever the commenter has entered in the Name field, there's no avatar associated, and the linked site is whatever was entered into the URL field. Again, commenters can choose not to enter a URL, in which case the name would show up without any link, similar to Anonymous below.

This is the completely Anonymous option. No information is taken from the commenter at all. (This also you will see only with permissions option #4.)

This is what an anonymous comment looks like. As you can see, there's no linking at all, and it's fully anonymous. Name/URL comments without a URL will look the same, with whatever name was entered into the Name field in place of "Anonymous."

Pros and cons of the four options

You have to consider your own comment policy when choosing your permissions options. How open or restricted do you want your blog to be to commenters?

I'll go through each of the four options and describe why you might choose each.

"Only members of this blog" — This would be useful, as far as I can see, only on a private or semi-private group blog — for instance, if you started a blog so that a group could share ideas with each other, or if your family had a blog where each member could post pictures and updates but you weren't inviting public exposure. You will obviously limit the comments you receive, because no uninvited outsiders can comment at all. This can be useful if you want to keep discussion limited to team members.
"Users with Google Accounts" — This is a good option if you want to have a safeguard up for who can comment. It's likely to keep the laziest spammers and trolls away, because it requires signing into an established Google account. However, it doesn't guarantee that you as the blogger will know where commenters are coming from; Google profiles can be marked as hidden. For commenters who have their own sites, it doesn't give as much instant gratification in terms of linking to their blogs, because it's a two-step process: Click on profile link, then click on the website from the profile (if linked there). Google profiles aren't that customizable, either. A plus for commenters is that many, many people have Google accounts now, so it's likely they'll already be signed in to one, making commenting straightforward. It will, however, exclude anyone who doesn't have a Google account and doesn't want to create one, or who doesn't want the Google account publicized, even with a hidden profile.
"Registered Users - Includes OpenID" — OpenID allows bloggers from other platforms to log in as authorized users and leave a comment. This will give some traceability to comments, which again reduces the likelihood of spam or troll comments. A downside for commenters is that OpenID isn't as readily understood as the other commenting options. Because it goes to an extra page for logging in, there can be fear (sometimes justifiable) that a comment draft will be lost before the log-in process is completed (or if it cannot be completed, due to a mistyped password or the like). It also doesn't allow for personalized avatars next to the commenter's name, just the default OpenID icon.
"Anyone - Includes Anonymous Users" — This, the most open of all the commenting options, will greatly please bloggers who wish to have a clear link to their own website, and will also relieve genuine commenters who don't have a handy account to log into to comment. However, it also opens you up to the most troll and spam comments, due to the ease of the anonymous functions. See below for some further thoughts on this. Some blogs might be conducive to supporting anonymous commenters, such as if you regularly write about sensitive subjects and wish for there to be frank conversation, if you want numbers of commenters over quality of discussion, or if you want ease of quick and repeated commenting, such as for a giveaway site. (Again, setting your comment policy will help you determine your own goals.) You will probably attract the most commenters with this option, because it allows for the easiest commenting and the most possibilities for commenters to choose from.

Here's my opining on the four options. I used to allow #3, the Registered Users option with OpenID. However, I eventually switched to #4, for the purpose of allowing Name/URL comments. However, I dislike that I can't turn off anonymous comments separately. I feel like there should be an option before #4 that allows a WordPress-like comment option (name and email address required, with URL as an optional field), but no anonymous users. Sure, trolls and the like could still enter a fake or unused email address and a pseudonym (or "anonymous"), but at least they'd be traceable to some extent, and the accountability would, I think, cut down on the nasties.

I'd also like to be able to track and manage IP addresses from commenters, so that I can block repeat offenders, whitelist the good guys, and identify problem commenters from the back end.

(As we're making our wish lists, take a second to vote on Blogger ideas you like best, and let's cross our fingers they're implemented soon!)

If you are in the same boat of wanting to open your blog to the most commenters you can but would rather avoid spam and trolls, there are a few actions you can take, in rough order from most difficult to easiest:

Switch to WordPress or an alternate blogging platform. This isn't a sarcastic joke; I know people who have switched for the comments alone. For me personally, it's not worth it. I'm comfortable with Blogger — to the extent that I switched this blog from WordPress. But switching to WordPress would indeed give you WordPress-like commenting features!
Install an alternative commenting system. The two I know of for Blogger are Disqus and IntenseDebate. I went back and forth on the idea of one or the other, and even tried them out on a test blog, but they both had their drawbacks as well. Also, you'll want to be fairly confident with fooling around with your template's html and other settings if you want to install outside comments (which means you're probably not reading my tutorials, see?). For now, I'm sitting tight and waiting for Blogger to improve…
Heighten your moderation of comments in Blogger. The good news is, Blogger has finally implemented a spam filter, so many spam comments are indeed caught in that net now (not all, but the most obvious and offensive ones generally are). You can add to your defenses by going to Dashboard --> Settings --> Comments again and scroll down to the sections marked "Comment moderation" and "Show word verification for comments?" I'll go through these options more thoroughly in a future post, but for now, just know that you can choose whether comments post automatically, or whether you get to review them ahead of time (either in email or in your main Comments tab). Know, too, that you can at any time delete a comment that doesn't square with your policy, and you can mark spam comments as such to improve the filtering over time. For word verification, you can choose whether commenters must type in a random "word" to comment, as seen in the comment form screenshots above. This greatly cuts down on the amount of automated robo-spam. You can also turn off comments entirely on certain posts, such as after a determined number of days or if you're receiving more spam than usual on particular posts. There are pros and cons to all these comment moderation choices, so I'll discuss that in more detail later. Basically, the fewer restrictions you have, the easier it is for people to comment, and the more freely they are likely to comment. This includes genuine readers with insightful things to say — and spammers selling you their latest pills, as well as mean anonymous types swooping in to flame you and scurry. It depends, again, on how open you wish to be, what environment you want to cultivate on your blog, and how hands-on you want to be about your comment moderating.

So, those are the current options Blogger has for allowing types of comments. Here's hoping for even more options in the future!

What commenting options have you enabled on your blog, whether on Blogger or another platform? What commenting options make you most likely to comment?

Setting up thumbnail linkies & choosing the right dimensions

2011-01-12T04:42:00.000-08:00

In honor of Wordless Wednesday, I bring you an entirely not-wordless post on crafting user-friendly thumbnail linkies — those link-ups that allow users to attach a small linked image and title on your blog, brought to us in this incarnation by Linky Tools (formerly McLinky). It's perfect for Wordless Wednesday, giveaways, recipe and craft roundups, and any other image-heavy blog hopping or blog carnivals.

There are other purveyors of thumbnail linkies, but I'm talking exclusively about Linky Tools in this tutorial.

I would specifically like to draw your attention to the length of the input box. For the user, this is the title of the thumbnail they enter.

First, an overview:

(Click on images to view them larger.)

To create a thumbnail linky, simply go to your dashboard (you have to have created a free account beforehand), head to the right to "Create a new linky," and select "Thumbnail" from the drop-down menu before hitting "Go."

This is the default thumbnail linky page.

From the top down, here's what's on the page.

First, you enter a List Title. This is for your eyes only, just to keep track of the linkies in your dashboard. I date mine and note what the linky was for (e.g., Wordless Wednesday 110112).
The Length of User Title Entry is the fairly awkward terminology to describe how long the text box is the linker-upper will see. It's the title to the thumbnail that the user types in, and you determine how many characters they're allowed. The default is a puny 20 characters, so this is what you'll almost certainly want to change.
Size of Thumbnails (or, as it inexplicably but somewhat humorously reads, ThuThumbnails) is how big the images will be on your page. The default is the smallest, 40 pixels.
Start and Stop Date/Time (not in picture). This lets you set the duration. Ending the linky after a reasonable entry time helps cut down on spam links coming in later on. I keep Wordless Wednesday linkies open till Saturday, to give people a few days to straggle in. Giveaway linkies set to open on a certain day might stay open till the next week's linky goes live. The start date defaults to the current time you draft the linky. If you want to pre-date it or post-date it, you can do so. For instance, if I'm drafting a Wordless Wednesday post on a Tuesday, I typically set the start date to Wednesday at midnight, just to be matchy.

Choose the right sizes:

Here's where you can choose the size of the thumbnails and adjust the length of the user-entered title.

To skip down to the thumbnail sizes, Brent Riggs has helpfully provided blue-green squares demonstrating each size, noted below the squares as pixels (length and width), from 40 to 200.

I've found that most useful thumbnail linkies are between 80px and 160px. I use 120px. Very link-intensive pages often choose 40px. It somewhat depends on how many thumbnails you expect to receive, because the smaller ones will load faster, while the bigger ones will be more aesthetically pleasing.

Whichever size you choose, make sure you change the Length of User Title Entry.

Change it out from the default of 20 characters to a character length appropriate to the thumbnail size.

You can see Brent's help text:

"For thumbnail linky's, the width of the area that HOLDS the title is the same width as the thumbnail image size you choose below. So, you should choose an title entry size that is relevant to the thumbnail image size."

Then there is a suggested list of appropriately matching thumbnail sizes and character lengths. I recommend paying attention to the suggestions, because they generally work.

For instance, I use 50 characters to match my preferred thumbnail size of 120 pixels.

The problem with setting too few characters? Users won't have enough room to enter the title of their post, particularly for a giveaway linky, which usually demands a blog name, giveaway item, and end date. Twenty characters is nowhere near enough for most people to jam in that amount of info, so something in that case has to be left out. There might have to be a balance made in favor of larger thumbnails to allow users sufficient space to enter the characters they need (more characters for giveaways, fewer for Wordless Wednesday and other more casual link-ups).

The problem with setting too many characters? Some users will max out the character length, but then if the thumbnail is too small (or the blog's template calls for a font that is wider than average), some of the lines of text will be chopped off and lost. Since it's impossible for a user to self-edit an entry, there's no convenient solution for the user once that happens. There's only leaving it as is, double posting with a new and smaller title, or emailing the blog owner for help in the editing.

(Click to see images actual size.)

120 pixels with 50 character limit titles (from my blog) — the images are clear, and the titles fit in whole. However, this size might be too bulky for blogs with many links.

These above are 80 pixels in size with a balanced title length. (Again, click to see the image actual size.) Every title fits, although they're a little squishy vertically, which is presumably due to an interaction with the blog's template fonts and can't easily be altered (without altering the template, which seems like overkill for such a small problem).

40 pixel size above (the smallest) with a character limit that's a little too big for the image width. Click on the image to view it actual size. You can see that the bottom right title for Natural Parents Network cuts off at the bottom. Even though it wasn't over the character limit, using that many characters exceeded the allowable display size. The 40 pixel size is petite, which makes images harder to see, but is useful for blogs that anticipate a lot of links and need a faster loading time.

So be sure to choose your image size and character length thoughtfully.

Grab the code:

Once you've chosen all your options, you can then save and create your linky. It will deposit you back onto the Dashboard, where you can get your code.

(Note that you can also Manage Links by deleting any that are objectionable and Edit List at the lefthand side to quickly change your options, such as thumbnail size, character limit, and duration.)

Once you click "Get Code," a box will pop up. One final warning: If your system is anything like mine, it will pop it up so that half the box (the relevant half for me, as it turns out) is hidden up past the top of my screen. I have to scroll up to see the full box, but that's what's needed.

Blogger, self-hosted WordPress blogs, and other blogs that allow Javascript should use the top code. (That's most people, in other words.)

Blogs hosted for free at WordPress need to use the bottom code. WordPress-hosted blogs don't allow Javascript, so Linky Tools hosts the linky in a separate window off-site. This is for blogs ending in .wordpress.com. If that's you, go with the second option.

If that's not you, go with the first.

And that's all. Paste it into your blog post. (See here for how to paste HTML into Blogger and here for how to paste HTML into WordPress.)

Once you publish your post (assuming you didn't set your start date to the future), your cute little thumbnail linky will be live and ready to accept that first eager linker.

Enjoy!

Uploading a new blog button without changing the button code

2010-10-10T13:56:00.000-07:00

If you have a blog button or badge (a little square logo advertising your site) hosted on Photobucket, you might have been in the tricky position of wanting to change the button without making everyone who has your button already change the button code on their blog.

There is a relatively simple(ish) way to make it a bit harder on your end but easy-peasy and seamless to everyone else. The next time their pages load, your new button will appear, with no effort on their part. Much easier than sending out pleas to change the code, yes?

The trick is to upload your new button to your web hosting site using the same file name, which will therefore give it the same URL as the old button.

Note: This trick will not, as far as I know, work if you've uploaded your image to Blogger or Flickr, and I don't know if it works on WordPress-hosted images. Which frankly is a good enough reason to advise you to use Photobucket for important images, so you have more control. If you host your own images on a server, then the following tips can still apply — but you probably already knew how to do this.

How to keep a direct link in Photobucket

For instance, here is the HoboMama.com blog button:

Here is the direct link for that image:
http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/ee159/lintpicker/Elements/hobo-mama-button-200x200.jpg

The piece of information after the last slash is the name of the image file, so hobo-mama-button-200x200.jpg

If you wanted to upload a new picture but keep the same direct link URL, here's what to do, in this order (very important):

Create the new image in your photo-editing software and save it with the same name as the original (e.g., hobo-mama-button-200x200.jpg).
Go to Photobucket and find the image you want to replace. Click "delete" on the old image, acknowledging that you will be breaking all the links that are looking for this image (but only temporarily!). Make sure you have a backup of the image on your computer in case you want it in the future. (Optional: You can always re-upload it to Photobucket with a different file name [for instance, rename it hobo-mama-button-200x200-archive.jpg before uploading] if you want it archived online.)
Upload your new image to Photobucket, in the same folder as the old one. The new direct link will be the same as the old one (http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/ee159/lintpicker/Elements/hobo-mama-button-200x200.jpg), as long as you were careful to name your file the same as the old file.

It's important to delete the old image before uploading the new image. Otherwise, Photobucket will rename the new file slightly to differentiate between the two and the direct link will be different.

And, again, if you have different folders within Photobucket, make sure to upload to the same folder, since that becomes part of the URL as well (Elements/ in my example).

This trick comes in handy for regular blog buttons, but also for advertisements and giveaways. Say you wanted to advertise on someone else's blogs, such as for your Etsy shop. You might make your ad seasonal but do all the changes on your end. So, you could create an ad with summer products, and then easily switch it out to winter products later in the year. As long as you kept the file name the same (e.g., hobo-mama-ad.jpg) and deleted the old ad image, you wouldn't have to have your advertisement hosts change their code at all to be current.

Or, for a special giveaway event, such as some review blogs do — a baby shower bash or a holiday-themed event — you could name your button for that something like hobo-mama-reviews-giveaway-event.jpg and then just keep updating the image but under the same name each time. That way, your event button on people's blogs would never be out of date!

Hope that helps, and that all your bloggy fans will appreciate the new image that magically appears on their screens!

How to make a blog button grab box

2010-10-09T07:14:00.000-07:00

If you have a blog button or badge now (a little square logo advertising your site), do you want to know how to make a little box so people can grab the code? Like so:

It's actually really easy. All you need to do is figure out the code for the button, and then place it within this placeholder code:

<form><textarea rows="5" cols="20" readonly="readonly"> INSERT BLOG BUTTON CODE HERE </textarea></form>

You can alter the size of the grab box by experimenting with different numbers for rows and cols (columns). The "readonly" command is optional, but it prevents people from accidentally deleting or editing the code in the box as they're copying and pasting.

Tomorrow I'll give you a tip on updating your image without making your fans change their button code. And if you missed yesterday's post on creating the code, check it out here.

How to make a blog button code

2010-10-08T15:03:00.000-07:00

Do you want a blog button or badge, a little square logo to advertise your site, business, or giveaways? Once you have a basic image uploaded to an image host, it's easy enough to figure out the code.

Here's my basic button code:

<div align="center"><a href="http://www.HoboMama.com" target="_blank" title="Hobo Mama"><img src="http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/ee159/lintpicker/Elements/hobo-mama-button-200x200.jpg" width="150" height="150" alt="Hobo Mama: A Natural Parenting Blog" /></a></div>

From the top down, here are the elements in my button code. You can feel free to copy what you like.

I've chosen to center mine, which is the opening and closing div tags.
Then I have a link to my website: <a href="http://www.HoboMama.com" target="_blank" title="Hobo Mama"> I've chosen target="_blank" so that it opens in a new window when someone clicks on it, and I put my website name in the title tag, so that anyone hovering a mouse over the image will see what page it links to. (You can try it on the top image to see what I mean.)
Now it's time for the real point of this code, which is the image for the button itself: <img src="http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/ee159/lintpicker/Elements/hobo-mama-button-200x200.jpg" width="150" height="150" alt="Hobo Mama: A Natural Parenting Blog" />
- The src tag is where you put the direct link to your button. (I recommend using Photobucket or self-hosting the image, because you'll have some control over changing the file in the future if you ever want to alter the image without changing the button code.)
- The width and height are how big you want your button to appear, and of course the people who grab your button can alter the size as they wish. A 125x125 is a good standard size. I made mine a little larger — for attention, I guess. You can see from the file name that the button image is actually 200x200, so that fans could make the button as large as that without degrading the quality. I recommend making your button image similarly a bit oversized in case of zealous fans!
- The alt tag lets you give your image a name, so that it will show up in search engine results. I recommend putting a good, brief description of your blog here. It will also help fans who have lots of buttons keep track of which one's yours when they're looking at the code alone.
Then make sure to close off all the tags you opened: </a></div>

Make sure you test out the button before giving the code to anyone else. Try publishing it in a blog post or your sidebar and make sure the image shows up the way you want it, and that if you click on it, it goes to the right page.Tomorrow I'll have a post on putting your code into a grab box so your fans can get your code for themselves!

Blocking Google AdSense formula ads for parenting and breastfeeding sites

2010-08-13T05:41:00.000-07:00

Updated for the new version of Google AdSense, February 2012

At the bottom of this post is a boxed list of URLs of WHO Code violators to paste into the ad filter at Google AdSense. Feel free to skip there if you know what you're doing. If you want more information on how to filter AdSense ads and how the URLs were chosen, read on.

If you're a breastfeeding activist who wants to abide by the World Health Organization's International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes (aka the WHO Code — PDF here),¹ but who also wants to pick up a little Google AdSense revenue on a blog, you probably have been stuck with a conundrum.

AdSense sells ad space based on keywords, and advertisers vie for page views and position according to a bid system. Formula companies specifically bid for keywords like "breastfeeding," and they have big budgets, so they often win the page view. They also use deceptive lead-ins like a title offering breastfeeding help, when the ad will spit you out onto a formula page.

Parenting bloggers will in all innocence write a blog post related to breastfeeding success, only to find the accompanying ads undermine their efforts and distress their readers.

Google AdSense filtering options

Google AdSense doesn't have a helpful category opt-out the way BlogHer ads have added, after pressure by PhD in Parenting, with a specific WHO Code-compliant category to check that opts interested members out of ads promoting "infant formula, related companies, artificial nipples or pacifiers or bottles."

The opt-out categories Google offers are more limited:

Cosmetic procedures and surgery
Dating
Drugs and supplements
Get rich quick
Politics
Religion
Ringtones and downloadables
Sexual and reproductive health
Sexually suggestive
Video games
Weight loss

(You can opt out of any of these categories through the category filter checkboxes at the Allow & Block Ads tab --> Sensitive Categories in the left sidebar.)

However, there is one way to specify which ads you will not allow on your site, and that is by entering specific Advertiser URLs within the Blocking options. Click on the tab labeled "Allow & Block Ads," and then choose "Advertiser URLs" from the links along the left sidebar, under "Blocking options."

Click to enlarge

The premise is to keep competitors' ads off your site, but it can be used to ban any particular URL from appearing. The guidelines Google gives are as follows [text below from an obsolete version of the help center]:

The competitive ad filter works by blocking ads that link to specific URLs. This way, you can easily block all ads that are linked to your competitor at www.example.com. By entering a top level domain such as www.example.com, you'll also block all ads that link to subdirectories below that domain. The following rules apply to the competitive ad filter:

* Entering example.com will block ads to example.com and example.com/sub
* Entering example.com will also block ads to www.example.com and forums.example.com
* www.example.com will block ads to www.example.com but not to forums.example.com or example.com
* example.com/sub will not block ads to example.com/products or example.com/sub/index.html

Generally, it's a good idea to leave the 'www' off of URLs in your filter list to provide for broader filtering.

For our purposes, we will include as many URLs we can that are related to marketing in violation of the WHO Code.

The list parameters

Finding and entering each URL is a tedious and herculean task. Wait, did I just compare myself to Hercules? Well, at least someone amenable to tedium.

The list below contains:

URLs for formula websites for multiple countries (with relevant and varied domain endings, such as .com, .de. .co.uk, etc. — in some cases, no specific site exists as of yet at a specific domain suffix, but I've included them in case a site is added at some time in the future)
websites of parent companies of formula companies
other WHO Code violators' websites, such as bottle or breast pump manufacturers that do not abide by the WHO Code
websites of related products (such as other brands and sub-companies under the violating parent companies, like Butterfinger for Nestlé and Simplisse for Dr. Brown's)
websites that consistently advertise such products or under such keywords (for instance, Target and YouTube, respectively, any of which URLs you are welcome to remove from the blacklist if you disagree with such reasoning; I was getting pretty annoyed after seeing them time and again when searching for formula keywords and can't guarantee they won't have similarly offensive ad content)

I've compiled as many as I could by searching for formula product names in multiple countries, and by going to the root company websites to gather as many brands and products as I could and then search for their URLs. As I searched, I also looked along the side and top for Google Ads (hey, find 'em where they live!) and blacklisted any ads that consistently showed up for formula keywords, that promoted formula or bottles in violation of the WHO Code, or that appeared to be advertisements for the companies on the blacklist.

I would like to thank TheLactivista on Twitter, PhD in Parenting, and Crunchy Domestic Goddess for giving me a solid head start. The rest was booooring Google searches for all the domains I could find. Thank goodness Nestlé is thorough in promoting its brands and URLs.

Reporting problem domains

The problem with this list is that formula companies are sneaky and are always coming up with new URLs to weasel past any such filters. Please report any new offending URLs you see in a Google ad (it must be the URL at the bottom of the ad, not the name or text above) so that I can add it to the list. We will not be able to eradicate unwelcome ads from showing up, but this list will hopefully cut down on the amount of unintentional page views, make the WHO Code violators' job harder, and continue our activism for breastfeeding support against the unethical marketing practiced by WHO Code violators.

To report new URLs that are in violation of the WHO Code, leave a comment on this post or contact me by email. To ensure violating companies are not given link love, any comments you leave with a URL can be obscured by adding spaces or spelling out "dot com" or similar techniques.

Activating the blacklist

To activate the list on your AdSense, go to your Adsense homepage and then select the "Allow & block ads" tab along the top. Click on "Advertiser URLs" in the left sidebar (see first screenshot), and then copy and paste the contents of the box below into the text box at the top of the ad-blocking page. Click "Block URLs" to save.

Click to enlarge

At the top where it says "Advertiser URL > Product:" you'll see that the "Content" field after that is a drop-down menu. Click on it and choose other AdSense products that you use. Paste the same list into each of those. For instance, I also participate in AdSense for feeds and search, so I pasted it into those products for my account.

Click to enlarge

Anytime a new URL is reported, come back to this page to copy the newest list, or enter it manually in all three boxes and save your changes.

The URLs are automatically sorted in alphabetical order, so it's easy to find a specific one.

Here is the list of URLs to block

Click within the box, then select all and copy.

1-formula.com<br />100grand.com<br />abbott.com<br />abbott.com.pk<br />abbottnutrition.ca<br />abbottnutrition.co.kr<br />abbottnutrition.co.uk<br />abbottnutrition.com<br />abmarketunlimited.com<br />apomio.de<br />atfalwyeth.com<br />avent.com<br />babiesrus.com<br />babyfeedingchoice.org<br />babyfoodzone.com<br />babyformulafeed.com<br />babymilk.com<br />babymilk.de<br />babymilk.nestle.com<br />babyruth.com<br />babyservice.de<br />babywell.com<br />babywuvinc.com<br />bangla.pl<br />bayer.com.au<br />bayer.de<br />bebivita.co.uk<br />bebivita.de<br />bebivita.lu<br />bizrate.com<br />bledina.com<br />bms.com<br />breastfeedingbasics.org<br />brightbeginnings.com<br />buitoni.com<br />butterfinger.com<br />butterfingercomedynetwork.com<br />buycheapr.com<br />campina.de<br />campina.es<br />campina.nl<br />celebrationcorner.com<br />cocinandocon-nestle.com<br />coddlelife.com<br />coffee-mate.com<br />cofranlait.fr<br />cookeatshare.com<br />couponmountain.com<br />cpk.com<br />danone.com<br />dauermilch.de<br />descrubemaggi.com<br />diapers.com<br />docsimon.com<br />dolce-gusto.com<br />dreyers.com<br />dreyersinc.com<br />drugstore.com<br />drumstick.com<br />dutchlady.com.my<br />eac.dk<br />ecomel.nl<br />ecomom.com<br />edys.com<br />enfagrow.com<br />enfamil.ca<br />enfamil.co.uk<br />enfamil.com<br />evian.com<br />facebook.com<br />fcdf.nl<br />flaschenmilch.de<br />frenchclick.co.uk<br />frieslandcampina.com<br />frieslandfoods.com<br />frieslandfoods.com.hk<br />friso.com.sg<br />frisokindervoeding.nl<br />frostypawstreats.com<br />frozen.cpk.com<br />gerber.ca<br />gerber.co.uk<br />gerber.com<br />goodfoodgoodideas.com<br />goplaylabels.com<br />guigoz.fr<br />haagen-dazs.com<br />heinz.com<br />heinzbaby.co.uk<br />heinzbaby.com<br />heinzbaby4hcp.co.uk<br />heinzforbaby.com.au<br />heinznurture.com.au<br />helpthehoneybees.com<br />hipp.co.uk<br />hipp.de<br />hippbabyclub.co.uk<br />hotpockets.com<br />houseparty.com<br />humana-asia.com<br />humana-milchunion.coop<br />humana-unternehmensgruppe.com<br />humana.de<br />humana.mn<br />icecream.com<br />ifm.com<br />ifm.net<br />infantformula.org<br />infanurture.com.au<br />ishopindian.com<br />jahanbehbood.com<br />juicyjuice.com<br />kids.icecream.com<br />kraft.com<br />kraftfoods.com<br />kraftrecipes.com<br />lalechera.com<br />leancuisine.com<br />leanpockets.com<br />learningcurve.com/breastflow<br />materna.co.il <br />meadjohnson.com<br />meals.com<br />medela.ca<br />medela.co.uk<br />medela.com<br />membersmarkformula.com<br />mimijumi.com<br />mims.com<br />mjn.com<br />mommavens.com<br />momsfeedingfreedom.com<br />myheinz.com<br />naturesone.com<br />nescafeusa.com<br />nespresso.com<br />nesquik.com<br />nestle-abuelita.com<br />nestle-baby.ca<br />nestle-baby.co.uk<br />nestle-baby.com<br />nestle-delicias.com<br />nestle-nutrition.com<br />nestle-purelife.us<br />nestle-waters.com<br />nestle-watersna.com<br />nestle.ca<br />nestle.co.uk<br />nestle.com<br />nestle.de<br />nestle.fr<br />nestle.it<br />nestlecafe.com<br />nestlecrunch.com<br />nestlefamily.com<br />nestlehotcocoa.com<br />nestlekitchens.com<br />nestlenido.com<br />nestlenutrition-institute.org<br />nestlenutrition.com<br />nestlenutritionstore.com<br />nestlepurinacareers.com<br />nestleusa.com<br />newbornbabyitems.com<br />newzealandmilk.com<br />novalac.com<br />novalac.com.au<br />nuk.com<br />numico.com<br />nurturebaby.co.nz<br />orderneocate.net<br />organic-baby-resource.com<br />pampers.com<br />parents.com<br />parentschoiceformula.com<br />pbmstore.com<br />pediasure.ca<br />pediasure.co.kr<br />pediasure.co.uk<br />pediasure.com<br />pediasure.com.au<br />pfizer.com<br />pharmacommunications.ca<br />philips-store.com<br />philips.com<br />powerbar.com<br />purelifebestlife.com<br />purina.com<br />raisinets.com<br />research.nestle.com<br />rossmannversand.de<br />shoppingedge.com<br />similac.ca<br />similac.co.kr<br />similac.co.uk<br />similac.com<br />similac.com.au<br />simplisse.ca<br />simplisse.co.uk<br />simplisse.com<br />skinnycow.com<br />slowchurned.com<br />smahcp.co.uk<br />smanutrition.co.uk<br />stouffers.com<br />target.com<br />tasterschoice.com<br />theindianfoodstore.com<br />tommeetippee.ca<br />tommeetippee.co.uk<br />tommeetippee.com<br />tommeetippee.us<br />toysrus.com<br />twitter.com<br />valess.be<br />verybestbaby.com<br />verybestbaking.com<br />villagemama.com<br />vitanea.pl<br />walmart.com<br />weilbaby.ca<br />weilbaby.co.uk<br />weilbaby.com<br />whattoexpect.com<br />willywonka.com<br />wonka.com<br />wyeth.com<br />wyeth.com.br<br />wyethnutrition.com<br />wyethnutritionals.com<br />youtube.com

Remember, we need your help to monitor for new URLs that must be blocked. Please report the specific URL by leaving a comment on this post or contacting me by email.

1 I will be writing more about the WHO Code and why it's important over at Hobo Mama, my parenting blog. As a quick summary, the WHO Code seeks to stem the outrageous marketing techniques used by infant formula manufacturers and related companies to undermine breastfeeding globally, despite such companies' clear knowledge of the WHO Code. Violations of the WHO Code have been disastrous for babies in developing nations and have had measurable deleterious effects on breastfeeding success and infant health in developed nations. Promoting the WHO Code is about ensuring the dissemination of appropriate information about infant feeding and supporting parents' choice in the matter, and is not an attack against any parents for their own choices or experiences in infant feeding.^↩

Creating your comment moderation policy

2010-07-26T08:37:00.000-07:00

When you first start blogging, you'll probably have either zero comments or just your mom chiming in from time to time. But sooner or later, you'll have to figure out what to do about the comments you receive.

When I talk about comment moderation in this post, I don't mean the how of moderating comments, though that's a good idea for another post. For the purposes of this discussion, you might moderate comments by turning them off completely on certain posts or on your blog as a whole, manually approving each comment as it comes through and not allowing certain comments or commenters through your gate, or deleting comments once they're already posted. It doesn't matter for now. Whichever method you choose, you are framing a comment policy, deciding who gets a say and who doesn't.

There are some who protest that a blogger's choice to moderate comments amounts to censorship. This is hogwash. Censorship is when the government or authority prevents the little guy from being heard. Your blog is more like your living room, and you get to choose whom to invite inside. Once someone is there, you also have the choice to kick that person out if things get rowdy. Whether certain commenters or would-be commenters like it or not, you as the blogger are in charge and make the rules.

If you have a private blog, your rules can be entirely of your own making. If you have a more collaborative or public blog, such as the blog of a well-known newspaper, there are probably already rules in place for what does and doesn't get (or stay) published online or in its pages. For instance, newspapers and magazines generally try to present a balanced picture of what readers are saying in response to articles in the letters to the editor section — but they still don't print every letter that comes in, so even there, choices are being made.

So how will you form your comment policy?

There's no single answer, because everyone's blog atmosphere, and every blogger's tolerance level for discord, varies.

The easiest way to deal with comments is to let absolutely everything through. This allows the blogger to avoid any responsibility for policing, and everyone is allowed a voice. Unfortunately, "everyone" will include spammers and trolls, and this sort of atmosphere can be very unwelcoming for the discriminating reader. Don't get me wrong — many very popular sites have this sort of anything-goes comment atmosphere, so it's apparently working for some people and blogs — but you have to ask yourself what kind of atmosphere you're trying to promote. To go back to the living-room analogy, is your blog a party den, where everyone's whooping it up and chugging beer? Then, sure, let the comments be a free-for-all. But, if you're running a blog on, say, poetry writing and you picture your blog "living room" as a sedate conversation between intellectual artist types, I can guarantee you they're going to sidle out the door of your raucous party rather than staying to contribute. The anything-goes sites are better when you want hit-and-run participation (think YouTube, as one example), and the moderated sites are better when you want to build a community; either is a possibility, so consider what you're looking for in your audience.

Let's say you've decided to do some sort of comment moderation. On the other end of the spectrum, then, are blogs that delete without mercy any comment that disagrees with the blogger. This can also be a frightening atmosphere to step into as a reader unless you're prepared to brown-nose and nothing else. If you're never sure your comment will see the light of day, you're less likely to want to bother trying. And as a blogger, it's probably a chore to support that big head on just one neck.

So, somewhere in the middle then, eh? All right, here are some possible avenues to explore as you cobble together your own middle-ground commenting approval system:

Decide whether you're going to allow anonymous commenters. Some do, and some don't. I usually allow it if I think it's a comment left in good faith (particularly if it's left on a post about a sensitive topic), but not if I think the commenter's posting just to be inflammatory. Some people think anonymity gives them a license to be obnoxious with impunity, and I like to prove that isn't the case.

Decide what level of spam filtering you want to do. This doesn't refer just to whether you use a spam filter or word verification. Inevitably, someone will sneak through anyway. I for one do not allow comments from people with SEO names ("dining room tables," I'm talking to you!) or who post seemingly "helpful" comments pointing people to the same manufacturer's site as the answer to all problems on a certain topic. If someone wants to post about their company or product, I'd much prefer it to be out in the open and related to the subject at hand, and then I don't object. Sneakiness gets my goat, and earns a comment the axe.

Some sites thrive on discord and debate, and some aim to bring together like-minded people in a supportive environment. I can honestly say I understand both sides, and it's really up to you what sort of environment (living room) you want to foster. If you enjoy arguing into the night in real life, you might invite lengthy comment threads that throw facts and opinions back and forth. If that sort of thing gives your stomach butterflies and fills your sleep with nightmares (no, seriously, been there!), then encourage a more encouraging atmosphere. One way to do the latter, besides or instead of deleting comments that don't align with your beliefs, is to respond to comments in the calm and supportive manner you wish the discussion to proceed. If, on the other hand, you wish to encourage a rousing debate, you can stir things up in the comments by being as inflammatory as you hope others will be. Note that having an argumentative comment thread can be intimidating to readers who are conflict-averse, so do this only if you don't mind not hearing from such readers, and if you don't mind attracting commenters who are there just out of a sheer love of arguing. The downside to a calmer, supportive environment from the reader's perspective can be a sense of stasis, of not needing to read or respond to comments because of an expectation that everyone will be agreeing anyway. Think through what you envision your blog looking like, and see if you can't find the position that will keep you and (most of) your readers happy.

Some blogs deal regularly with sensitive topics and have a comment policy to exclude any comments or commenters who can't play by certain fundamental rules. For instance, if it's a fat-acceptance blog, the comment policy might warn off those who will post comments that are condemnatory toward fat people. If it's a body-acceptance blog, the comment policy might be broadened also to exclude comments that are condemnatory toward bodies of any size. If you have a particular ethic in mind with your blog, you might want to exclude comments that violate that ethic. It's up to you. Some bloggers prefer to allow through such comments and then debate and educate the commenter on the offensive language or position. Again, some of this decision will depend on what you want your living room atmosphere to be.

Finally, once you decide on a commenting policy, it's best to state it somewhere on your blog, in a dedicated post or page, or even just a paragraph in the sidebar or above your comment box. That way, you can refer to it if things start taking a downturn or if someone protests a comment deletion. I know, you're referring to your own writing to prove your authority, but for some reason, it works. If people know you've thought this out beforehand, they're more likely to go along with your decision.

What is your comment policy? What do you value in the comment space of blogs you frequently read? What do you wish was different?

Photo courtesy Premasagar on flickr (cc)

"Usernames must be at least 5 characters long" Facebook bug for custom URLs

2010-06-29T08:54:00.000-07:00

If you've been getting this obnoxious error message —

"Usernames must be at least
5 characters long"

— when you're trying to set your Facebook custom URL, you're not alone.

I was having this problem lately. After much thought, trial and error while typing in possibilities, and a public opinion poll, I had decided on the custom URL for my Hobo Mama page: http://www.facebook.com/HoboMamaBlog

I toddled off to the Facebook link to claim my URL — http://www.facebook.com/username — which works both for personal Facebook pages and for business/blog/etc. fan pages.

I typed my choice into the little box and hit "Check availability." And, um … no. Facebook scolded me with an incomprehensible message: "Usernames must be at least 5 characters long."

HoboMamaBlog, I read. HoboMamaBlog. I stared at it. I squinted. Yes, even without all the bother of actual counting, that sucker was definitely over 5 characters.

Well, good old Google to the rescue.

I found this Hubspot blog post by Ellie Mirman: "How to Create a Facebook Page Vanity URL." Ellie in the post did not explain the error and offer a workaround — but Ellie in the comments section helpfully did!

Piecing Ellie's advice together with some advice I found on a Facebook forum that I for some reason can't locate at the moment, I played around with entering my name, erasing it, clicking "Check availability" while there was nothing in the box, then typing it in again. It still took a few tries, but eventually: It took! I have my new Facebook page URL!¹

So, basically, it's a known bug. Facebook is aware of the issue (I'm told), but so far this is the best workaround.

Assuming you don't yet have a Facebook custom URL, here are the details on how to get one:

First, the why: It's easier! You can tell people to find you on Facebook by saying, "Go to Facebook slash HoboMamaBlog." Rather than saying, "Go to facebook.com/pages/Hobo-Mama/322453825286." Oof, what a mouthful! The former also fits better on business or calling cards, darling. And, you know, why not? It's fun; it's cute; it shows you care.

So you want one? Good.

Where: Go to http://www.facebook.com/username.

You can click on images to see them bigger.

Personal first: You will have to set a personal user name first if you don't already have one before setting any for your pages. My personal Facebook name is http://www.facebook.com/hobomama (and feel free to friend me if you like). As you can see, I "stole" hobomama from myself so it was no longer available when I wanted it for my blog's Facebook page, which meant I belatedly had to come up with something else.

Permanence: Do think long and hard about what you want your permanent URLs to be, for all your Facebook profiles and pages, because so far Facebook is being hard-nosed about allowing changes to usernames. Basically, you can change your personal one once. You cannot change your business (page) ones. You cannot transfer a username to or from someone else. (So on that note, triple check your spelling, too!)

Eligibility: All verified Facebook accounts are allowed to set a personal username. Fan pages, however, must have 25 fans before you can set a username for a fan page.² (This is to prevent name squatting.)

What's in a name:

Usernames can only contain alphanumeric characters (A-Z, 0-9) or a period ("."). I was kind of bummed that no other punctuation was allowed, such as an underscore. If you use a period for your own aesthetic sensibilities, know that it does not make your username unique from the same name without the period(s). That is, "hobo.mama" is considered the same as "hobomama." I did check, thanks to Toni Lamn's suggestion.
Usernames must be at least 5 characters long. Har har har. But it's true. "HM" wouldn't fly.
You can't claim someone else's username. (Duh.)
You can't claim a copyrighted username — or you might be able to, but Facebook can then take it away if a rights holder complains. So even if your last name is McDonald and you're managing your family fan page, don't bother registering "mcdonalds" as your username.
"Certain words" are not allowed. I think we can all guess what might be on that list. But, really, do you want your mother to see such a username? Shame on you for even considering it. Unless you're not Facebook friends with your mom. Then it might sort of rock.
You're also not allowed to use super generic words like "pizza" or "flowers," to prevent (again) people from squatting on popular SEO terms.

How: Type in your username and click "Check availability." If you get the infamous "5 characters" error and your username is, in fact, more than 5 characters, then backspace, click "Check availability" anyway, then type again. Rinse, repeat. Hopefully one of those times Facebook will obey and let you go through with the process. You'll get a big warning that this will go on your permanent record. If you are happy with same, go ahead and confirm. Congratulations! You have a personal username, i.e., custom URL with Facebook.

Down to business: So, if you have a Facebook fan (er, "like") page and want a username for that one (or multiple pages), then you just go back to the same link — http://www.facebook.com/username — and start again.

Click "Set a username for your Pages" underneath the yellow box telling you your personal username has already been set.
You'll see a drop-down menu with all the pages where you're an administrator. Select the one you want.
The same rules for usernames as above apply.
The same error might also apply, so use the delete-and-click workaround.
Remember the important differences between fan page usernames and personal:
- You need at least 25 people "liking" your page before you're allowed to set a name.
- The name you choose will be permanent. Full stop.
Once you're ready, click to confirm.

That's it! Now you should be the owner of a brand-new Facebook Page custom URL. If you have multiple pages, just repeat the process again.

More info can be found in the Facebook help section on the subject.

Enjoy! And visit me. And like me! I'm nice.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lauren-Wayne-author/104277789602502?ref=ts (sigh — so long, so ugly)
http://www.facebook.com/HoboMamaBlog
http://www.facebook.com/CarNatPar
(I set that one, too, while I was at it.)

Thanks again to Ellie for posting the workaround!

1 I only have a custom URL so far for my Hobo Mama page, because my Lauren Wayne page is soooo lonely that I do not as yet qualify for one. Anyone want to "like" me there? Anyone?^↩
2 Did I mention I need more fans? I need more fans.

^↩

How to turn off comments in Blogger

2010-06-22T22:46:00.000-07:00

There are times you want to stop readers from commenting on a post, either from the very start or after a certain time.

For instance:

If you run a giveaway that has ended, you will want to prevent any new entries after the closing of the contest.
If you are writing a post that is unconducive to commenting, such as an About Me or Advertising page, you might want comments turned off from the time you post.
If you have posted on a controversial topic and are receiving too many negative encounters with trolls, you might choose to turn off comments on that particular post.
If you are going on vacation or need a break from the internet, you might choose to turn off comments until you return and can moderate and reply.

There are many reasons to turn off comments on a specific post¹, and it's easy to do in Blogger.

Click on images to enlarge.

Go into Posting --> Edit Posts, and then click "Edit" next to the post you want to work with. Once on the post-editing screen, you'll see a link at the bottom of the post box that says "Post Options." Click on this to launch a drop-down menu of further options.

In posts, the Blogger default setting is to allow comments. If you want to stop commenting from here on out, click "Don't allow, show existing" (as with a giveaway). If you want to hide all the comments on the post as well as preventing new comments from being made (as potentially with an inflammatory set of comments), click "Don't allow, hide existing." Note that neither setting deletes comments that have been made, and you can revert the settings to "Allow" at any time.

Be sure to click "Publish Post" (the orange button) at the bottom to make your settings live!

If you are working in the new Pages function in Blogger, be aware that the default setting is "Don't allow, hide existing." You can leave this or change it as you wish. Be sure to click "Publish Page" if you want a change in settings to take effect!

That's it.

It's easy enough, and much easier than putting up flashing warnings on a giveaway that's ended yelling at potential entrants not to enter! It will save those potential entrants from wasting time or feeling embarrassed that they've entered a contest that was over, so it's a nice goodwill gesture if you're a giveaway host. I try to turn off comments as soon as a giveaway has ended.

Stay tuned for a tutorial on turning off comments in WordPress.

1There is also a way to turn off comments on your blog completely, but we can cover that in a separate tutorial.^↩

Get rid of "You are posting comments too quickly" in WordPress

2010-06-12T23:07:00.000-07:00

Here's another easy tutorial for me to write, because I'm not writing it.

I happened across this post from 3 Kids and Us when I was looking for information about that annoying WordPress message that greets me whenever I'm entering a giveaway:

You are posting comments too quickly. Slow down.

That chaps my hide, because — dang it — I want to post my giveaway entries quickly! I don't need to dilly-dally and think about whether I'm following someone on Google Friend Connect. It's especially annoying if I'm just copying and pasting a repeated comment for multiple entries, say 3 entries for grabbing a button — I really don't need time to consider. Come on, just post my comment already, WordPress!

Thank goodness, Cat from 3 Kids and Us knows the solution, so click on over to read about installing the Disable Check Comment Flood plug-in — and then, please, if you are a WordPress giveaway host, do it. Cat also gives advice on how to prevent comment spam after installing this plug-in.

This isn't a problem in Blogger, by the by, where I can post comments as fast my merry fingers can paste them on in.

Install the DoFollow Plugin for Wordpress

2010-06-02T15:55:00.000-07:00

Today I would like to welcome Tom (aka CodeNamePapa), who has written a guest post about how to give your fellow bloggers and Carnival participants a little link love on your site. Tom is an IT guru, and he is one half of the natural parenting duo responsible for one amazing son. You can normally find Tom's wife Dionna over at Code Name: Mama where she shares information, resources, and her thoughts on natural parenting and life with a toddler.

[Editor's note: If you are a Blogger user, stay tuned for a follow-up post on DoFollow for Blogger.]

Hello. I'm here to talk about something you may or may not spend a lot of time thinking about: the inner workings of your comments' links for self-hosted Wordpress sites.¹

I could make this the shortest guest post ever and simply say, "Do your commenters a favor and install the DoFollow plugin from Semiologic." But, since I enjoy being "a tech nerd" (or whatever Dionna calls me) I've written plenty more on the subject at hand — if you'd like to have some background information (or don't want to install plugins willy-nilly) please read on.

NoFollow vs. DoFollow for Wordpress blog comments

I'm going to break this post up into three sections:

How do Google's bots search/scan my site, and what is PageRank?
What is NoFollow?
What is DoFollow?

1. Google bots & PageRank:

In a nutshell, part of how Google and other search engines work is as follows:

Google has computers (aka "bots") set up to scan the internet for new pages and content.
Eventually, a bot will scan your site.
Once the bot has seen enough, it will use the links it finds and skip to the next page/article/site to scan.
The bot uses links that may be pointing internally to your own site or they may point externally to someone else's site.

"PageRank" is Google's algorithm that determines how important/popular your site is.² A small part of the formula involves how many pages link to YOUR page. For example, if you have a brand-new site, you'll have low PageRank because no one else knows about your site yet. Older sites or sites that everyone knows about will have higher PageRank because they have more content, and more sites link to that content.

The description above is super-simplified and not a complete explanation of how it works (no one actually knows how it works — except maybe Morpheus), but for this post it will suffice in order to explain the next two points.

2. What is NoFollow?

NoFollow was created about 5 years ago to combat comment spam. Since it was implemented, the default Wordpress setup adds a "nofollow" attribute to any links in a comment. As a search bot reads through your site, it will see the links in comments — but once it sees rel="nofollow" it will ignore the link and move on.

The benefit of this is that should spam comments exist on your site, Google won't use those spammy links as evidence that the spam site has important content, and the spam site won't have its PageRank raised. Why does that matter? Because if a spam site has high PageRank, it could conceivably start appearing higher on a search results page when YOU use Google to find something. I think we can agree that it's a good thing for spam sites not to be boosted in search results.

NoFollow keeps the web a little safer by not rewarding spammers for getting their links displayed on your site and scanned by the search bots. This page — http://codex.wordpress.org/Nofollow — does a lot better job of explaining it in-depth.

You may be wondering, "What about real sites from real people? Shouldn't real sites from loyal readers experience the benefit that a link on my site would provide?" This is where the Do Follow plugin comes in.

3. What is DoFollow?

A link that is considered "dofollow" (i.e. a link that does not have a "nofollow" tag) would tell the Google bot "follow this link and have fun crawling that page, too." The link itself doesn't need to say rel="dofollow" — the bots will follow any link unless it's told not to (i.e. unless the link says rel="nofollow").

What plugin do we recommend to get rid of "nofollow" in comment links? We are using the Do Follow plugin from Semiologic. The plugin simply strips the "nofollow" tag from links in comments, thereby making that link "Do Follow" just like any links you'd place within your own content.

Further explanation can be found on Semiologic's site. You can install the plugin from your Wordpress Admin panel (Plugins, Add New, search for "Do Follow", and Install).

4. Don't Let Spammers Off So Easily

By using the DoFollow plugin, there is a slight risk that a spam link could be scanned by a search bot. Of course, there are additional steps available to keep this from ever happening.

One step is to configure Wordpress to hold all comments for moderation — this means you will sort out manually what comments are spam and which are real. You can also configure Wordpress to automatically approve a comment if that commenter has gotten a comment approved previously (these options are available in your Wordpress Admin screen under Settings, Discussion).

The best way to do the bulk of comment filtering is with the Akismet plugin. It's a tool that has saved us from countless hours sifting through comments to decide which are real and which are spam.

How do you install Akismet? Well, once Wordpress installs, Akismet is already installed, too! All you have to do at that point is activate Akismet from the plugins panel. If you are a Wordpress.com user (meaning they host your site for you) Akismet is running in the background 24/7 without your having to do anything.

Give a Little Link Love to Fellow Bloggers

By installing the DoFollow plugin (or similar), you are giving a little bit of link love to bloggers who take the time to leave comments on your site. Will it encourage people to comment? Probably not³ — but it's one small way you can thank those who provide feedback on your writing.

Have you installed DoFollow or a similar program? Have you noticed any differences?

1 If you are a Wordpress.com user (you host your site through Wordpress.com rather than just using their blogging software on your own privately-owned site), it does not look like you can install plugins of this type.^↩
2 To see what your PageRank is, just visit the PageRank Checker.^↩
3Although you can find various badges and lists to advertise yourself as a DoFollow blog if you think it would inspire your readers.^↩

How to use FeedBurner to maximize your blog — Part 2: Advanced goodies

2010-05-20T17:14:00.000-07:00

Paige of the Baby Dust Diaries is a NASA research librarian by day — and mother to Aellyn and inspiring blogger — well, I was going to say "by night," but let's say be accurate and say all the time. She has volunteered to write a few guest posts on topics that come naturally to her in her line of work. Visit Paige over at The Baby Dust Diaries for more on natural parenting, breastfeeding, gentle discipline, infertility, and life with a miracle baby.

How To Use FeedBurner To Maximize Your Blog — Part 2: Advanced Goodies

By Paige of The Baby Dust Diaries

In Part 1 we looked at the basics of why and how to start using FeedBurner. In this article we'll look at some cool things you can do now that you have a FeedBurner account.

1. FeedFlare

FeedFlare allows readers to share your post directly from their feed reader by putting social media sites directly in your feed. This service is not activated by default, but it is easy to use.

Click on the Optimize tab in FeedBurner and select FeedFlare.

In the list, select which services you want to include in your feed (there is also a site option which I won't look at in this article). Scroll down to the bottom to see what it will look like in your feed.

You can click and drag to rearrange your FeedFlares. I think going with the most used services is smart. You can add hundreds more that have been created by users. The one I recommend adding is Twitter which you can add by copying this URL: http://www.feedburner.com/fb/static/flareunits/twitthis.xml into the Add More FeedFlare box

Once you like the FeedFlares you've chosen and their order click on Activate.

2. BuzzBoost

Now we can get really fancy. My favorite service in FeedBurner is BuzzBoost. It seems like such a simple thing but it can be really powerful if you know how to use it. What BuzzBoost does is give you HTML code that will embed your blog's feed in any website in which you can put HTML. With one piece of code the feed will update automatically.

So, how does this help? Have you ever wanted to have a static page or widget on your blog with your posts on a particular topic? For example, I have pages on my blog on some of my main topics. For example, I blog a lot about Infertility and I have a static page with some introductory text and then I wanted to show my most recent posts related to Infertility. If you click on the page you can see I have a list of my Infertility blog posts. One way to do this is to manually type in the post title with link and a description each time you make a new topical post. Who wants to do that? BuzzBoost will do it for you automatically!

All you need to know is that you blogging platform has RSS feeds for each of your tags, labels, or categories and how to form them.

How To Find A Specific RSS Feed

In Blogger: Each of your labels has its own feed of the form http://xxx.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/labelname

For example, when I was on blogger I had the following feed for my label "infertility": http://babydustdiaries.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/infertility

In Wordpress: Each of your categories has its own feed of the form http://xxx.wordpress.com/category/categoryname/feed/

For example, in Wordpress I have the following feed for my category "infertility" http://www.babydustdiaries.com/category/infertility/feed/

Each of your tags also has its own feed of the form
http://xxx.wordpress.com/tag/tagname/feed/

For example, I have the following feed for my tag "cosleeping"
http://www.babydustdiaries.com/tag/cosleeping/feed/

I have less experience with Typepad, but this page has some instructions on how to get a category specific feed.

Now BuzzBoost the Feed

Ok you have your specific feed — now we want to BuzzBoost it! Log in to FeedBurner and click on the Publicize tab and choose BuzzBoost.

There are a number of settings you can choose for your feed once you Activate the service.

You can preview what your feed will look like:

Once you are happy with how it looks you can copy the code provided:

This code can then be pasted right into the page or Text/HTML widget on your blog. Note: If you normally blog in a visual mode you will need to convert to HTML or Code view to paste the script. (Here's how to get to Edit HTML view in WordPress and in Blogger.)

Voila! Now each time you post something new with that cateogry, label, or tag it will automatically add it to your list!

You might find yourself using this in a number of different ways. Many bloggers have a list of essential posts or favorite posts. You could do this dynamically just by creating a "favorite" tag when you post. You can also embed it directly in a post if you want to load related posts. For example, in my How Did You Find Me post I used Buzz Boost to summarize my posts based on my Google Analytics keywords.

3. Socialize

You can also use Feedburner to send your feed items to your Twitter account. This means that each time you publish a post it will be tweeted automatically. There are many other services to do this (like Twitterfeed.com and this plugin for wordpress) but what I like about using FeedBurner is the options it provides.

Go to Publicize > Socialize

Add your twitter account and choose your options. I really like that it includes a "leave room for retweets" since you want people to easily be able to pass the word about your posts this makes sure that the tweet is short enough to allow a "RT @yourname" to fit before it for retweeting purposes. You can also add hashtags and any additional text.

Next you can choose how to order the items and how many new items to post. Note, this only looks for *new* items so you don't have to worry about spamming your twitter followers with multiple, repeat posts. For most bloggers there would only be one new post at a time. You can also use the keyword filter to only tweet items on a specific topic category or label from your blog.

You can see a preview of what your tweets will look like. Don't forget to activate the service.

That's it. Now all of your new posts will go to Twitter automatically!

I hope this helps you save time while maximizing the power of your blog. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to help! Contact me by commenting here or email me at babydustdiaries (at) gmail (dot) com.

How to use FeedBurner to maximize your blog — Part 1: The basics

2010-05-18T17:34:00.000-07:00

How To Use FeedBurner To Maximize Your Blog — Part 1: The Basics

By Paige of The Baby Dust Diaries

In my day job I create, manage, and teach others how to maximize social media at NASA. Every time I write something like this article about utilizing Twitter, in my mind I'm writing a version for all my blog friends. Since Lauren and Dionna have put such great tutorials here to help specifically for the Carnival of Natural Parenting, I thought it might be nice to share some of the tools I use for blogging as well.

One of the tools I think every blogger should use is FeedBurner. FeedBurner is now owned by Google, but I've been using it since its inception and it just gets better and better. The main goal of FeedBurner is to maximze your blog's RSS feed — allowing people multiple ways to easily subscribe to your content. It actually does much more than that!

Manage Your Feed

If you do nothing else from this article you should definitely do this. Sign your blog's feed up for FeedBurner and change your subscription links to reflect this. First I'll explain why and then exactly how to do this.

Why?

First, it makes it easier for readers to subscribe to your blog. Instead of seeing raw xml like this (click on pictures to see them larger):

Your readers will see a friendly page with multiple options for subscribing to your feed including email:

Second, it makes your blog's feed free from the specific blog platform you are using. For example if you are on Blogger your feed address is something like http://www.babydustdiaries.com/atom.xml and if you are on Wordpress it looks like http://www.babydustdiaries.com/?feed=rss2. Now, first some RSS readers don't accept all formats, so a feed that ends in atom.xml might not be compatible. More importantly if you ever need to move your blog (like I recently had to from Blogger to Wordpress) all of your readers would need to be notified and go out of their way to resubscribe to your feed.

With FeedBurner you are given a custom feed address similar to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheBabyDustDaires that will never change. This means when I went from Blogger to Wordpress it was transparent to my readers who were already subscribed. They didn't have to do anything!

How?

It couldn't be easier to sign up for FeedBurner (and it's free!). FeedBurner will even "discover" your feed if you don't know the URL.

You can sign in to FeedBurner with your Google account (the same if you have Gmail, or a Google Reader Account) or you can create an account.
Once you are in, just put the URL of your blog (e.g. http://myblog.blogspot.com) in the FeedBurner box and hit enter. You will then be prompted to give your feed a name and custom address
You want to write down this URL since we'll be using it in a moment. (And you can always find it again at the top of your feed's page under Edit Feed Details.) Click Next.
Next FeedBurner asks if you want to track usage of your feed. You can choose what is important to you here and you can always change your mind later. Click Next.
Now we want to direct your blog's feed to the new address.

In Blogger:
From your Dashboard go to Settings > Site Feed and then enter your FeedBurner address (inlcuding the http://) in to the Post Feed Redirect URL box.

In TypePad:
From your Dashboard go to Configure > Feeds section.

Click on Connect this Feed to FeedBurner.

Enter your FeedBurner username and password and click Sign In.

Select the FeedBurner feed you just created and click Continue.

Click Save Changes.

In Wordpress:
You can use the following method for self-hosted or Wordpress.com hosted blogs. Self-hosted blogs can also use this plugin. Feedburner has what they call a "Chicklet" or image tag that directs users to your feed.

In FeedBurner click on the Publicize tab.

Locate and click the Chicklet Chooser service.

The form shown below loads into the right side of the screen:

This form contains several options for buttons that promote (and link to) your FeedBurner feed.

Click the radio button next to the button you want to display on your site.

Copy the HTML shown in the bottom section of the Chicklet Chooser. You will paste this HTML into your WordPress site template.

From the WordPress Dashboard, click the Appearance and then the Widgets option. Drag the text widget from the Available Widgets area to your Sidebar. Click the right side of the widget to expand it.

Paste the code you copied from FeedBurner in an earlier step into the content field.

Click Save Changes.

This Chicklet method also works on many other platforms. You can use a custom image instead of one of the ones they offer by hosting your own image and changing the code for the <img src="http://this is the URL for your image">.

That's the basics of using FeedBurner for your blog! Stay tuned for Part 2 for some advanced FeedBurner goodies!

If you have any questions I'd be happy to help! Contact me by commenting here or email me at babydustdiaries (at) gmail (dot) com.

How to schedule a post and get its permalink in WordPress

2010-04-07T03:55:00.000-07:00

Dionna of Code Name: Mama and I are writing a few blogging tutorials of particular use for our Carnival of Natural Parenting participants. Today I would like to welcome Tom & Dionna, who have written a guest post about scheduling a post in Wordpress and figuring out what its URL will be, to help in posting to the carnival and emailing us the link. Tom is an IT guru, Dionna is a lawyer turned work-at-home mama, and together they form the natural parenting duo responsible for one amazing son. You can normally find Dionna over at Code Name: Mama where she shares information, resources, and her thoughts on natural parenting and life with a toddler.

Here is a tutorial on how to schedule a post in Wordpress and figure out what its permalink (URL) will be (this post complements Lauren's earlier post for Blogger users on figuring out a post URL in advance and scheduling a post in Blogger).

*This tutorial assumes your permalinks are in date and/or title format.

These tips will come in handy if you want to:

have your carnival entry post at a certain time while you're not otherwise available
email us the post URL in advance (such as when using the carnival's monthly Google form)

How do I schedule a post?

Before you can determine what your permalink will be, you must schedule your post. If you try to get the permalink before scheduling the post, your permalink will be incorrect. Here are the steps to schedule your post:

1. Add a new post:

2. Edit scheduling.

This is the important step — to get your permalink with the correct date and title, you have to schedule this post for the date you want it to publish. Click "Edit" (next to "Publish immediately") to start this process.

3. Confirm the date.

Put the correct date/time in place for your post to publish, then click OK to confirm. For example, if you are scheduling a post for the Carnival of Natural Parenting, the Carnival is always live on the second Tuesday of each month.

How do I determine what my post's permalink will be?

4. Title the post.

Go ahead and title your post now. Your post title can be edited later if need be, but know that doing so will also change your permalink.

5. My permalink is wrong!

As you type, your permalink will auto-fill underneath the title window - but wait! That permalink has the wrong date! We'll fix this in Step 6...

6. Save the draft.

Saving the draft will update the permalink with the correct "date" and title embedded.

7. My permalink is now correct!

Check it out, the permalink updated with the "correct" date — the one you specified in your Scheduling window.

8. Overview screenshot.

At this point, here's a shot of my test post — notice the permalink is right, the "Schedule For" area shows the correct time, etc. Click this image for a full-size view.

We hope that was helpful! If you have any questions or need clarification, please leave a comment or contact Dionna and Tom directly at Code Name: Mama.

How to schedule a post in Blogger

2010-04-06T05:17:00.000-07:00

Dionna of Code Name: Mama and I are writing a few blogging tutorials of particular use for our Carnival of Natural Parenting participants. This one will help in scheduling your article to post on Carnival day!

Here's a little tutorial on how to schedule a post in Blogger (Blogspot) for a specific time and day.

This is useful if you want a post to go live at a certain time but will not be available to hit the publish button yourself (such as if you want your Carnival post to go live just after midnight but you'll be asleep by then).

It can also help your blog maintain a businesslike image if you schedule all or certain important posts to go live at a predictable time each day or week (such as a giveaway linky that readers can count on to show up at 9:00 a.m. each Thursday, for example).

(Note to my Carnival friends: You do not have to schedule your post; it's just a how-to in case you want to for your own convenience.)

1. Click on "Post Options" at the bottom of the posting box.

You can click on any of these pictures to see them bigger.

Before you schedule, make sure your post is exactly the way you want it to go live. Use the "Preview" function that's next to "Edit HTML" at the top of this box. There's more info on using "Preview" in this post on editing HTML in Blogger.

If everything looks good? Then click "Post Options" to expand the drop-down options menu.

2. Click on "Scheduled At" to show the schedule box.

The default is "Automatic," which posts at the date and time you click "Publish Post."

However, you can choose your own posting date and time by clicking "Scheduled At." It will drop down a new box.

3. Fill in your preferred date and time.

To schedule a post, fill in the date and time you want your post to go live — for instance, 12:01 AM on the carnival day as a suggestion!

For U.S. English(-language) settings, at least, the formatting is "(M)M/DD/YY" for the date and "(H)H:MM AM/PM" for the time. (Note: The time zone is whatever your settings are set at. You can change the time zone at Settings --> Formatting --> Time Zone.)

Then click "Publish Post." Now your post is scheduled! It will go live at the time you scheduled.

4. Receive a confirmation that your post is scheduled.

Once you click "Publish Post," you will be rerouted to the "Edit Posts" page.

There will be a highlighted confirmation at the top telling you your post will be published at the date and time you specified. Check that it's correct.

In the list of posts, your scheduled post will have "scheduled" next to the date. Again, make sure the date is correct.

If you need to make changes, click on "Edit Post" and repeat the steps. Make sure to click "Publish Post" again if you want to reschedule. If you click "Save as Draft," it will unschedule your post and save it instead.

5. My version of Blogger looks different!

If you have an older version of Blogger, it will look something like this instead:

It's actually just as easy or even easier to schedule in the older version. Once you click on "Post Options," you'll automatically see the date and time boxes. Just fill in your preferred date and time and click "Publish Post" to schedule.

(Note: You can switch to the Updated Editor under Settings --> Basic --> Select post editor.)

Warnings about scheduling your post

Be careful that your post is completely ready. Use the Preview function (at the top your post box next to "Edit HTML") to make sure everything will look the way you want it to when it goes live if you won't be around to check and make changes.
If you want to edit your post in any way before the scheduled date, you must click "Publish Post" again when you're done to reschedule the publishing. If you change your mind and don't want it to publish automatically, however, you can click "Save as Draft" instead. That will switch it to the usual draft form.

Convert your time zone for deadlines

2010-04-06T02:19:00.000-07:00

Dionna of Code Name: Mama and I are writing a few blogging tutorials of particular use for our Carnival of Natural Parenting participants. This one will help in making sure you get your carnival submission in by the right time, no matter where in the world you live!

All right, this is probably one of the lighter tutorials for our carnival participants, but it does come up every month, and I might as well have a blog post to point people to.

All the writers outside of the Pacific time zone I set the deadline for want to know: When is the article due in their time?

This tutorial can also help anyone who's writing for an editor across time-zone lines or entering a contest with a firm deadline.

Submissions for the Carnival of Natural Parenting are due by 11:59 p.m. Pacific time. Now, I'm not encouraging anyone to wait until the very last second to turn their entries in (although I generally do just that), but it's good to know the latest you can click "send" on the email, isn't it?

But if you live nowhere near Pacific time and can't do the math in your head:

You need a time zone converter.

Here's one:

World Time Server

The top line is showing you 11:45 p.m. (Daylight Saving Time) for Pacific time, the time zone I chose, because I live in Seattle. I wanted as much time as possible to turn in my article. I'm like that.

Find your own country, city, or state in the drop-down menu where it says "In."

Voila! Now you know what your actual deadline is.

Here's a cheat sheet for some of our most common entry time zones, adjusted for 11:59 p.m. PDT. If I say "next day," that means that time on the date after the stated carnival due date (for this carnival, then, April 7).

Time Zone	Adjusted Time
Hawaii Time	8:59 p.m.
Alaska Aleutian Time	9:59 p.m.
Alaska Time	10:59 p.m.
Pacific Time	11:59 p.m.
Mountain Time	12:59 a.m. (next day)
Central Time	1:59 a.m. (next day)
Eastern Time	2:59 a.m. (next day)
Atlantic Time	3:59 a.m. (next day)
Western Africa Time	6:59 a.m. (next day)
Greenwich Mean Time	7:59 a.m. (next day)
Central European Time	8:59 a.m. (next day)
Eastern European Time	9:59 a.m. (next day)
India Standard Time	12:29 p.m. (next day)
Western Australia	2:59 p.m. (next day)
Japan Standard Time	3:59 p.m. (next day)
Australia New South Wales Time	4:59 p.m. (next day)
New Zealand Time	6:59 p.m. (next day)

What time zones am I forgetting? I'll add places if you leave a comment with a request.

Hope that helps you as you plan your procrastination!

April 11, ETA: I realized you might like a chart for Eastern time as well, since some of our Carnival day deadlines are in Eastern. Here you go, a conversion of noon EDT!

Time Zone	Adjusted Time
Hawaii Time	6:00 a.m.
Alaska Aleutian Time	7:00 a.m.
Alaska Time	8:00 a.m.
Pacific Time	9:00 a.m.
Mountain Time	10:00 a.m.
Central Time	11:00 a.m.
Eastern Time	12:00 p.m.
Atlantic Time	1:00 p.m.
Western Africa Time	4:00 p.m.
Greenwich Mean Time	5:00 p.m.
Central European Time	6:00 p.m.
Eastern European Time	7:00 p.m.
India Standard Time	9:30 p.m.
Western Australia	12:00 a.m. (next day)
Japan Standard Time	1:00 a.m. (next day)
Australia New South Wales Time	2:00 a.m. (next day)
New Zealand Time	4:00 a.m. (next day)

P.S. A Facebook comment from mamamilkers said about this post: "I think you made have just taken nerd to the nth degree ;)" I'll take that as a compliment...

How to edit HTML in Wordpress

2010-04-05T15:34:00.000-07:00

Dionna of Code Name: Mama and I are writing a few blogging tutorials of particular use for our Carnival of Natural Parenting participants. Today I would like to welcome Tom & Dionna, who have written a guest post about editing HTML in Wordpress, to help in pasting the carnival code blurbs. Tom is an IT guru, Dionna is a lawyer turned work-at-home mama, and together they form the natural parenting duo responsible for one amazing son. You can normally find Dionna over at Code Name: Mama where she shares information, resources, and her thoughts on natural parenting and life with a toddler.

When you are writing posts in Wordpress (for example, when you are preparing your entry for the Carnival of Natural Parenting), it is often helpful to know how to edit in HTML. This tutorial (like Lauren's earlier tutorial on editing HTML in Blogger) will show you how to:

add HTML code to a post and
copy your post's HTML for use elsewhere.

How do I add HTML code?

Most people probably use the Visual tab for writing blog posts in Wordpress (if you use the HTML tab exclusively, this mini-tutorial is stuff you already know). Let's look at the basic steps for adding HTML code to a post.

1. Identify "Visual" or "HTML":

You know you're in the Visual tab if you have all of these extra formatting options that work like Microsoft Word. The HTML tab has very few options available.

2. Write your post in the "Visual" tab. Once you've got your post written and saved, it's time to insert the HTML code.

3. Switch to the "HTML" tab:

4. Paste your HTML code.

This is the screen where you can add in HTML code. Simply navigate to the area of the post where you want to insert the code and paste it in.

Let's say, for example, that you have received the intro blurb for this month's Carnival of Natural Parenting from Dionna (at Code Name: Mama) and Lauren (at Hobo Mama). The intro blurb should go at the very top of your post, so copy the code from the Carnival email, position your cursor at the beginning of the post, and paste. Voila!

If you have the ending blurb (the list of all of the Carnival participants), you'd copy and paste that at the very end of your post. Easy peasy.

A helpful hint: if you are copying HTML code from a Word document, then you are also copying all of Word's weird styling and formatting code automatically. Instead of copying and pasting straight from Word, copy it, paste it first into Notepad, TextEdit, or a similar simple text editor, then copy and paste from Notepad into Wordpress. Notepad does not retain any styling/formatting code, and Wordpress will be happier.

5. Save the draft.

Before you switch back to the Visual tab to see how pretty everything looks, you should save your draft.

A word of warning: Wordpress doesn't always "work right" when you switch between Visual and HTML and go back-and-forth and switch it more and more. We don't know why. Our advice would be to switch between them, make your changes, and then "Save Draft" prior to switching back to the other tab. Without doing this (who knows why) Wordpress will "lose" the code you just typed/pasted in HTML, or it won't display your text the way it was formatted in Visual.

6. Preview before you Publish.

Once it's saved, feel free to check out the Visual tab, or "Preview" your post to see how it will look on your site.

How do I copy my post's HTML code for use elsewhere?

There are at least two instances that we can think of that it would be helpful to copy/paste a blog post.

First: if you have written a long post and want to split it into several smaller pieces, you are more likely to retain all of your formatting by copying and pasting from the HTML tab rather than from the Visual tab.
Second: if you are submitting a guest post to another site, it is customary to send your post in HTML format.

And it's really quite easy. Just write and save your post, switch to the HTML tab (see Step 3 above), hit "Control + A" ("Control" = "Command" in Mac) to select all of your text, "Control + C" to copy it, and then paste it (either into an email or a Notepad document).

We hope that was helpful! If you have any questions or need clarification, please leave a comment or contact Dionna and Tom directly at Code Name: Mama.

How to determine your Blogger post URL in advance

2010-04-03T04:59:00.000-07:00

Dionna of Code Name: Mama and I are writing a few blogging tutorials of particular use for our Carnival of Natural Parenting participants. This one will help in determining your post URL in advance!

Here's a little tutorial on how to determine your post's link in Blogger (Blogspot) before you've published a post. This is useful if you want to figure out ahead of time what your URL will be once you've published. There's also a trick to choosing your own post URL, which I will share at the end.

(Note to my Carnival friends: You do not have to do this; it's just a how-to in case you want to — for instance, if you'll be busy on the morning of the Carnival and want to get sending us the post URL taken care of in advance.)

Let's take a look at how this works.

The title of this post is "How to determine your Blogger post URL in advance," but here's the post URL:
http://www.laurenwayne.com/2010/04/determine-blogger-post-url-in-advance.html

The post URL is the address of the specific post. It's what shows up in the address bar at the top of your browser when you've clicked on a post's title in a blog (not just on the blog's homepage, or the URL would look just like: http://www.laurenwayne.com).

In some blogging platforms, you can view your post URL in advance and edit it to be what you want. In Blogger so far, nuh-uh. It seems to be a change that's a-coming, but till then — we have to make do.

What you have to understand is the rules behind how Blogger creates the URL. Then you can:

know what your URL will be ahead of time
actually choose what your URL will be, if you so desire (say, to increase SEO)

How Blogger determines your URL

Blogger takes whatever you type into the Title box at the top of your post and creates the URL from that.

Your URL will have these parts:
http://[blog URL]/[year]/[month as two digits]/[post title up to 39 characters].html

See the parts again here:
http://www.laurenwayne.com/2010/04/determine-blogger-post-url-in-advance.html
http://[blog URL = www.laurenwayne.com]/2010 [year]/04 [month]/determine-blogger-post-url-in-advance [37 characters, including the hyphens] .html

Here is an online character counter to help you determine how many characters your title is:
http://www.javascriptkit.com/script/script2/charcount.shtml

Blogger's URL rules:

Blogger takes up to the first 39 characters.
The 39 characters includes spaces, which it changes into hyphens.
Blogger ignores the words "the," "a," and "an."
Blogger ignores punctuation, such as colons, commas, or dashes. (Hyphens, however, are retained as hyphens.)
If 39 characters would cut into the middle of a word, Blogger stops before that word.
If you've used the exact title before in that month, Blogger will follow the same rules for the post title but then append an underscore and a two-digit number to the end of the duplicate, such as "_07" or "_20" to distinguish them. This doesn't come up a whole lot, but I wanted to mention it since sometimes it does. For instance, if you do a Wordless Wednesday every week with the title "Wordless Wednesday" alone, Blogger will add an underscore and two-digit identifier to the subsequent posts with that same title. The underscore and numbers can go over the 39-character limit. (You can see an example here, from a post I double-imported by accident, but that's a tutorial for another day...)

So here are a couple other samples of how Blogger would create a post URL:

The post title of "How to determine your post URL in Blogger" would become http://www.laurenwayne.com/2010/04/how-to-determine-your-post-url-in.html (The word "Blogger" makes it 41 characters, so the URL would stop beforehand.)
A post title of "The way to determine your Blogger post URL in advance" from November 2008 at laurenwayne.blogspot.com would become http://www.laurenwayne.blogspot.com/2008/11/way-to-determine-your-blogger-post-url.html ("The" is dropped, and "in advance" is over the character limit.)

(If you are a Carnival participant and just wanted to know how to determine your post URL in advance, you can stop here. Whatever title you've chosen, just count the number of characters, including spaces but leaving out "the" and "a," and stop when you get to 39. Then cobble together the other elements of the post URL, and you can email that to us. Again, you don't have to do this. I know it's complicated and messy, so don't feel obligated to figure it all out. I'm only putting the information out there in case you want to for your own reasons.)

Now, for anyone who likes this sort of thing — if you want a different post URL from your post title, as I have? Read on.

Choosing your own URL

Now, you'll note that the title of my post: "How to determine your Blogger post URL in advance" doesn't match my post URL: http://www.laurenwayne.com/2010/04/determine-blogger-post-url-in-advance.html

That's because I've chosen to optimize my post title in this case to make it more attractive to search engines. (Or so I think...)

If I had let Blogger auto-create the post URL from my preferred title, it would have been http://www.laurenwayne.com/2010/04/how-to-determine-your-blogger-post-url.html and I would have lost the "in advance" part. I decided that was more important than the "how to" or the "your."

To force Blogger to create the URL I want, I follow this process:

I figure out what the best use of my 39 characters would be.
I put those 39 characters into my post title box: Determine Blogger post URL in advance
I publish the post and check that the URL worked as I'd hoped. (Cross your fingers!)
If all is well, I quickly go back in to the edit the post and change the title to my preferred title: How to determine your Blogger post URL in advance
I hit Publish again, and now I have the right title and my preferred URL.

Downsides of creating your own URL that doesn't match the post title?

You have to go back in and change the title to be what you want it, tout de suite.

Regardless, anyone who's signed up for an email subscription will automatically receive the "wrong" title. People who access your blog in readers or through your website will see the updated title as soon as you correct it. I like to put the correct title at the top of the post, both for ease in grabbing it to paste into the title box quickly, and so that email readers will get the right title somewhere.

If you have an automated service that, say, Tweets your RSS feed whenever something posts, it will likely also grab the wrong title unless you are really fast at updating the title.

So it's a little messy, but that's the price you pay (for Blogger's shortsightedness...). Let's hope Blogger will eventually catch up on this issue and let us view and edit our post URLs in a much more streamlined fashion!

(I read somewhere that it's supposed to be a feature of Blogger in Draft right now, but it's not working for me, and I've been working in Draft view for months. Sigh...)

How to number comments in Blogger

2010-03-27T16:00:00.000-07:00

Do you want numbered comments in Blogger?

This comes in particularly useful if you have a giveaway site and use Random.org to select your winners, because counting the comments by hand can be a real chore. For instance, my recent giveaway of a Mini Mei Tai? Getting to comment #72 was a breeze with pre-numbered comments.

It also helps you if you'd like to reference a comment by number rather than through some complicated description — e.g., "the third comment by one of the people named Jane" or "the comment that posted at 9:32 a.m." Instead you can just say, "comment 23."

Well, this is going to be my easiest tutorial to write, because I'm just going to refer you over to my savior in this instance:

Susie at The Computery:
How to number your comments

Go forth, paste the new code into your template at (one of the) required spot(s) and see if your comments end up numbered for ya! You can see she keeps updating her post with tips gleaned from the comments, so if you can't get it to work — or if you can, but in a different way — let Susie know in a comment on her post. You can also scan the recent comments for anyone who's solved a similar problem to yours. (For instance, I agree with comment #60 — see how easy this is! — that you can put your comments back to pop-up afterwards.)

All I can say is: Blogger made this whole thing right complicated for us simple folk. But if you really, really try (multiple options if necessary), you can get your comments numbered. I found the pasting location that worked for me, though I still can't get the over-200-comments issue to resolve itself. Oh, well, something to work on when that matters to me!

While you're over at The Computery, check out all the great blogging tutorials there! And note that Susie has other websites, too, where she posts links to things like how to make a handbag out of an old book. (Because how cool is that?!)