Releasing Blogger Notification Bar!



Blogger Notification BarLooks like the new year is near! Out of the premium sets of design resources in our repository, we often share one of them as a freebie when the occasion is precious. There are many creative premium widgets, tools and plugins that we managed to develop this month for our regular clients and out of these I will be sharing just two such resources as a new year gift. They are: (1) Blogger Notification bar widget that you can see live on our blog at the top and (2) a Blogger Template entitled "Salahuddin Ayubi" which is far better than any of the templates we designed so far and makes us really jealous when we compare it to our current design of MBT blog itself!











Copyright



Bloggers and developers are hereby advised not to sell or redistribute the widget codes. You are also instructed not to remove MBT's watermark from the notification bar. Removing the watermark will break the entire code, leaving all your efforts in vain.


Premium version includes no watermarks. If you wish to buy the widget for Wordpress, Joomla or even Blogger Blogs, then you may kindly contact us via our services page.


What's New in it?



This notification bar works best by grabbing readers attention and helps you to focus readers towards important deals, announcements or any story. It functions on pure JQuery light-weight functions and is compatible with all major browsers including IE9.


Custom, unique and non-commercial plugins are always better then public designs. HelloBar is now too common and used everywhere and you may not like the limited design customizations offers provided by them along with their logo on the plugin. HelloBar also requests URL redirection and you need to register to use it. Scripts are stored at Hellobar server and the browser needs to send a request in order to display it on your blog or site. Really not appropriate if you don't like redirections and attribution links.


Blogger Notification bar requires no registration and provides far better design flexibility. The scripts are less than 6KB in size and fully hosted at your server.  You can change its look and theme to any color that may blend your layouts. Every single element is well structured and can easily be configured. A perfect tool to play with.


I will be always available to provide any help required here on this page.

You may also enjoy trying out some of our previous stickybars:



Installing Notification Bar on blogger


You may follow the easy steps mentioned below in order to add the widget to your blogger blogs. Same procedure will work for any other platform like Wordpress.


  1. Go To Blogger > Template

  2. Backup your template

  3. Click Edit HTML

  4. Search for <head>

  5. Paste the following scripts just below it:



<script src='http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js' type='text/javascript'></script>

<!--Blogger Notification Bar by www.MyBloggerTricks.com-->

<script language='JavaScript'>

//<![CDATA[

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//]]>
</script>

      6.   Next search for ]]></b:skin>

      7.   Just above it paste the following styles:


/* ----Blogger Notification bar by www.MyBloggerTricks.com----- */

#bloggernotificationWrap{

    display: none;

    margin: 0;

    padding: 0;

    position: fixed;

    margin-top: -41px;

    z-index: 999999;

    width: 100%;

    height: 41px;

}

#bloggernotification {

    width: 100%;

    height: 28px;

    margin: 0px;

    padding-top: 7px;

    text-align: center;

    background: none repeat scroll #2E2F2E;

    position: relative;

    box-shadow:0px 1px 3px #666;

    z-index: 9998;

    text-decoration: none;

    color: #cccccc;

    font-family: arial,sans-serif;

    font-size: 13px;

    font-weight: bold;

    text-shadow: 1px 1px 1px #000;

    border-bottom:2px solid #fff;

}



#bloggernotification a{

    text-decoration: none;

    color:#FFFC00;

     font-family: arial,sans-serif;

    font-size: 13px;

    font-weight: bold;

    text-shadow: 1px 1px 1px #000;

    outline: none;

}

#bloggernotification a:hover{

    text-decoration: underline;

}

#bloggernotificationWrap #closebloggernotification{

    display: block;

    position: absolute;

    top: 0;

    right: 23px;

    height: 40px;

    width: 21px;

    background: url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJKIEip3O_M81B6OkfzvgoScCN5wBp2cydQ1jUdUCbRKEr5_L1UnkzoTcJdNt02EtcGrpXQ5RwTdFo2B1OF3ku55TLe6v7wq1mmPR7qqqMSX4fi38dEnhx3ltUYDRHaIuaQ1Qr1MBx27LW/s400/light.png) no-repeat 0 center;

    cursor: pointer;

}

#bloggernotificationWrap #closebloggernotification:hover{

    background-position: -21px 50%;

}

#bloggernotificationWrap.bottomPosition #closebloggernotification{

    background-position: right 50%;

}

#bloggernotificationWrap.bottomPosition #closebloggernotification:hover{

    background-position: -42px 50%;

}

#bloggernotificationWrap #openbloggernotification{

    display: block;

    position: absolute;

    top: -6px;

    right: 15px;

    padding: 0 7px;

    background: #2E2F2E;

    border-left: 3px solid #fff;

    border-right: 3px solid #fff;

    border-bottom: 3px solid #fff;

    cursor: pointer;

    z-index: 1;

    -webkit-border-bottom-right-radius: 5px;

    -webkit-border-bottom-left-radius: 5px;

    -moz-border-radius-bottomright: 5px;

    -moz-border-radius-bottomleft: 5px;

    border-bottom-right-radius: 5px;

    border-bottom-left-radius: 5px;

       box-shadow:0px 1px 3px #666;

}

#bloggernotificationWrap #openbloggernotification span{

    display: block;

    width: 21px;

    height: 34px;

    background: url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJKIEip3O_M81B6OkfzvgoScCN5wBp2cydQ1jUdUCbRKEr5_L1UnkzoTcJdNt02EtcGrpXQ5RwTdFo2B1OF3ku55TLe6v7wq1mmPR7qqqMSX4fi38dEnhx3ltUYDRHaIuaQ1Qr1MBx27LW/s400/light.png) no-repeat right 50%;

}



Make these Design changes if you wish:


  • To change the background color of the bar simply edit #2E2F2E

  • To change text color edit #cccccc

  • To change hyperlink color edit #FFFC00

  • To change anything else, just post me your query in the comment form below! :)


      8.  Finally to make the bar appear just add the following code below <body>


<div class='openbloggernotification' id='bloggernotificationWrap' style='display: block; margin-top: 0px;'><div id='bloggernotification'>



Write Your Notification Message Here

<span id='closebloggernotification'/></div><span id='openbloggernotification' style='top: -6px;'><span/></span></div>



<br/><br/>

     9. Save your template and you are all done!


Creating links  


To create links inside the notification bar use the following code:


<a class='link' href='ADD-URL-HERE' target='_blank'>Link Text</a>

You must add the class='link' , which is required by the script.


Need help?



This plugin would work just fine if all the above steps are carefully followed. The steps are extremely easy to try. I just hope you find it worth using. If you ran into any technical problem just feel confident to leave your comments. I would love to help you out. Wishing you all the best of life buddies. Peace and blessings pals! :)


Animation using CSS3 KeyFrames and jQuery's scrollTop() function

css3 keyframesJquery is indeed the most compressed and efficient library of JavaScript introduced so far that has made a web developer's job more easy. Its built in functions of show(), hide(), AJAX() and my beloved scrollTop() are indeed the most used functions that gives a new life to user interface (UI). CSS3 animations using @Keyframes rule is one of the most innovative things I came across so far. Pseudo elements such as :before and :after are increasingly being used now because they eliminated the use of unnecessary div tags.

These days since  I am on vocations I am trying to improve skills of both Jquery and CSS3. From the combination of beautiful web tricks that I learnt so far, I managed to design a simple scroll to top button that uses JQuery's scrollTop function to produce smooth scrolling and is spiced up with CSS3 effects to make it stand out. I have created just two sample versions with circular and rectangular shapes. The Styles are extremely easy to be customized. Lets first see a demo for the circular one:


Live Demo

Don't forget to check our previously released versions of back to top buttons:

 

How to add it to Blogger?

  1. Go To Blogger > Template
  2. Back up your template
  3. Click Edit HTML
  4. Search for <head>
  5. Just below it paste the following scripts:

<script src='http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js' type='text/javascript'/>
<script src='http://downloads.mybloggertricks.com/scrolltop.js' type='text/javascript'/>

Note: I have included the dynamic link for jquery so you wont need to update it when a new version of Jquery is released. It will update automatically.

   6.  Now Search for ]]></b:skin>

   7. Just above it paste one of the following styles

For circular one use this code:

/* ----- MBT's Back-To-Top Button Circular version -----*/

@-webkit-keyframes arrow_to_top{
    0%{
        top:10px
    }
    50%{
        top:5px
    }
    100%{
        top:10px
    }
}
@-moz-keyframes arrow_to_top{
    0%{
        top:10px
    }
    50%{
        top:5px
    }
    100%{
        top:10px
    }

}
@keyframes arrow_to_top{
    0%{
        top:10px
    }
    50%{
        top:5px
    }
    100%{
        top:10px
    }

}

#back-top, #back-top:hover{
    position: fixed;
    display:block;
    display:none;
    bottom: 20px;
    right:20px;
    cursor:pointer;
    width: 52px;
    height:52px;
    text-align: center;
    text-decoration: none;
    color: #797e82;
    color: rgba(100,100,100,0.8);
    font-size:16px;
    border:1px solid #c5ccd3;
    border-radius:30px;
    z-index:9999;
    padding-top:35px;
    -webkit-box-sizing: border-box; 
    -moz-box-sizing: border-box;    
    box-sizing: border-box;             
    background: #dee1e7;
    background: rgba(208,215,222,0.5);
}

   
   
#back-top:hover{
    color:#000;
    text-shadow:1px 1px 0 #fff;
    background: #d0d7de;
    background: rgba(208,215,222,0.9);
    border-color:#8fa8c1;
}
#back-top:before{
    display:block;
    content:"";
    position:absolute;
    z-index:998;
    background: #e2e3e6;
    background: rgba(222,225,231,0.3);
    width: 66px;
    height:66px;
    border-radius:35px;
    border:1px solid #c5ccd3;
    top:-9px;
    left:-9px
}
#back-top:hover:before{
    border-color:#8fa8c1
}
#back-top:after{
    display:block;
    content:"";
    position:absolute;
    z-index:10000;
    background: url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFuOVRzhMhBC95-xzx7XQsdM8WPQX5Z-8mE__Zvs_qxReSicbX8bsSdR8FCgXDWv_0KhaA5xDqmgsP2Tk3t9gI_YkxOQt2oe5kiCD5-kMuhbai1YY9HHR5p4MnCS5GTqi5mLnVIdiOSAkQ/s400/sprite-mbt.png) -10px -5px no-repeat;
    opacity:0.5;
    width: 10px;
    height:23px;
    top:10px;
    left:50%;
    margin-left:-5px;
}

#back-top, #back-top:after, #back-top:before{
    -webkit-transition: 0.5s;
    -moz-transition: 0.5s;
    -o-transition: 0.5s;
    -ms-transition: 0.5s;
    transition: 0.5s;
}
#back-top:hover:after{
    opacity:1;

    -moz-animation-duration: .5s;
    -moz-animation-iteration-count: infinite;
    -moz-animation-name: arrow_to_top;
    -moz-animation-timing-function: linear;

    -webkit-animation-duration: .5s;
    -webkit-animation-iteration-count: infinite;
    -webkit-animation-name: arrow_to_top;
    -webkit-animation-timing-function: linear;

    animation-duration: .5s;
    animation-iteration-count: infinite;
    animation-name: arrow_to_top;
    animation-timing-function: linear;
}

For Rectangular one use this code:


/* ----- MBT's Back-To-Top Button Rectangular version -----*/

@-webkit-keyframes arrow_to_top{
    0%{
        top:10px
    }
    50%{
        top:5px
    }
    100%{
        top:10px
    }
}
@-moz-keyframes arrow_to_top{
    0%{
        top:10px
    }
    50%{
        top:5px
    }
    100%{
        top:10px
    }

}
@keyframes arrow_to_top{
    0%{
        top:10px
    }
    50%{
        top:5px
    }
    100%{
        top:10px
    }

}

#back-top, #back-top:hover{
    position: fixed;
    display:block;
    display:none;
    bottom: 20px;
    right:0px;
    cursor:pointer;
    width: 24px;
    height:34px;
    text-align: center;
    text-decoration: none;
    color: #797e82;
    color: rgba(100,100,100,0.8);
    font-size:16px;
    border:1px solid #c5ccd3;
    border-radius:2px;
    z-index:9999;
    padding-top:35px;
    -webkit-box-sizing: border-box; /* Safari/Chrome, other WebKit */
    -moz-box-sizing: border-box;    /* Firefox, other Gecko */
    box-sizing: border-box;         /* Opera/IE 8+ */
    margin:0px;
    background: #dee1e7;
    background: rgba(208,215,222,0.5);
}


#back-top:hover{
    color:#000;
    text-shadow:1px 1px 0 #fff;
    background: #d0d7de;
    background: rgba(208,215,222,0.9);
    border-color:#8fa8c1;
}
#back-top:before{
    display:block;
    content:"";
    position:absolute;
    z-index:998;
    background: #e2e3e6;
    background: rgba(222,225,231,0.3);
    width: 37px;
    height:50px;
    border-radius:2px;
    border:1px solid #c5ccd3;
    top:-9px;
    left:-9px
}
#back-top:hover:before{
    border-color:#8fa8c1
}
#back-top:after{
    display:block;
    content:"";
    position:absolute;
    z-index:10000;
    background: url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFuOVRzhMhBC95-xzx7XQsdM8WPQX5Z-8mE__Zvs_qxReSicbX8bsSdR8FCgXDWv_0KhaA5xDqmgsP2Tk3t9gI_YkxOQt2oe5kiCD5-kMuhbai1YY9HHR5p4MnCS5GTqi5mLnVIdiOSAkQ/s400/sprite-mbt.png) -10px -5px no-repeat;
    opacity:0.5;
    width: 10px;
    height:23px;
    top:7px;
    left:50%;
    margin-left:-5px;
}

#back-top, #back-top:after, #back-top:before{
    -webkit-transition: 0.5s;
    -moz-transition: 0.5s;
    -o-transition: 0.5s;
    -ms-transition: 0.5s;
    transition: 0.5s;
}
#back-top:hover:after{
    opacity:1;

    -moz-animation-duration: .5s;
    -moz-animation-iteration-count: infinite;
    -moz-animation-name: arrow_to_top;
    -moz-animation-timing-function: linear;

    -webkit-animation-duration: .5s;
    -webkit-animation-iteration-count: infinite;
    -webkit-animation-name: arrow_to_top;
    -webkit-animation-timing-function: linear;

    animation-duration: .5s;
    animation-iteration-count: infinite;
    animation-name: arrow_to_top;
    animation-timing-function: linear;
}

 

        8.   Now just one last step. Paste the following HTML code just below <body>


<a href='#top' id='back-top' style='right:0px; display: inline;'/>

Tip: Play with border-radius property to design more creative shapes yourself!

       9.    Save your template and you are all done!

Visit your blog and scroll to bottom to see it working just fine!

How it works?

The script shows and hides the button based on the position of the window. As soon as the user scrolls down, the script will activate the button through .show() function and as soon as the user moves up, the button disappears due to activation of .Hide() function. The soft fading effect also depends on the inner width of the window (i.e 1600px and 812px) and button location. The effects are introduced using simple Jquery built-in functions of fadeIn() and fadeOut().

The button will display to the bottom right corner of the page.

The opacity in button's background colors is introduced using rgba colors. Where thanks to the alpha channel the opacity of the object is easily controlled without introducing a separate property for it. In order to avoid IE's opacity issues I have included a separate property for background color using rgb settings. So the button would look the same in all browsers. However since IE does not support Keyframes animation, therefore the arrow wont animate in IE alone.

Questions?

I just hope this little object may help in adding a new spice to your blog's appearance. If you have any problems installing the widget, just post me a query. If you carefully observe the stylesheet & the scrolltop.js script for this widget, you will be able to learn almost everything about CSS3 and JQuery's widely used functions. Wish you great health and peace buddies. Peace and blessings. :)

Don't forget to check this beautiful image effects using CSS:

Tips To Create a Successful Google+ Community






google plus communitiesUnlike Facebook, Google plus has still a long way to go in terms of popularity and user profiles. Although Google has had been trying really hard to promote Google plus by affiliating it with all the other products that comes under the same brand, people often find this social network a dry one indeed. An interesting point here is the fact that Google plus offers more or less, a similar flavor to the users that they enjoy using Facebook, there is still something lacking when it comes to moderate the communities effectively. While the moderators seem confused about how to give a boost to their Google+ communities, Google seems to notice it and has now come up with some worth following solutions.




If you are looking for how to create and maintain a Google+ community successfully, you have got the right platform. We will first discuss the Dos’ and Donts’ that you need to take care of in order to attract followers and keep them involved in your community.


What you need to do?



No one likes to be a part of an unknown territory. Try promoting your community by targeting the potential followers, presenting your community as a platform where they can share their ideas.





add communities





What has been generally seen is the fact that owners often create a community and do not participate themselves. As a devoted owner, participate in the conversations, interacting with the followers, giving them a feeling that there is someone who is interested in listening and replying to them.





People love to know about hot stuff, they love more discussing it. Share latest and controversial news and ask for feedback. Most of the time people only speak when they are asked to.





Business has its own decent rules. Offering some power to the devoted followers is what keeps them glued to your community. Try adding moderators to your community who can manage content and help you out in keeping the platform alive.





Neither you, nor I know everything, isn’t it? How about learning from the followers and teaching them what they might not know? This is what helps building a smooth community.





Apart from the above stated must-do things, you should also add categories in your community to help guide discussions. We will discuss about categories in later part of the post.


What you Should Not Do?



Just breaking hot news on a community is not enough. What people mostly do is they often state the information without making it worthy enough to attract a single look of the reader.





People, usually the newbies aim high and work really low to reach their desired levels. In order to attract a good deal of followers you should first provide a reason to the readers to follow you. Never invite people to join your empty community. In fact, prepare your welcome message and expectations note before inviting followers so that when they land up on your community they get reasons to stay.





Never leave your community unmoderated. This is truly what brings a disaster to even those communities that initially survive to gather a considerable followership.




How to Use Categories in Google+ Community?



If you are a google+ user who is running a community too, you must know its importance. Categories, as the name suggests, organize the discussions in your community. These categories gives an idea to the member that what your community is all about in the first place, and next, in what topic he is interested in. Say if you have a community related to online business, a category for each section might be like, blogging, surveying, freelancing, etc.


google plus communities participation





Adding Discussion Categories:





Select Edit Community from action menu.


How to add Moderators to your Community?



Google+ is turning into an easy place to deal with. Adding moderators to your community is what that helps you only. To add moderators:



  1. Click members below your community’s photo



  2. Click the drop-down menu to the right of the member you’d like to add as a moderator



  3. Click Promote from member to moderator




What Moderator are allowed to do?



1) Add and edit categories


2) Remove posts


3) Remove members from the community


4) Ban members from the community


5) Add additional moderators





Works become easy and systematic if you know how to do it. Google Plus is the next huge social media or probably the biggest in upcoming days because what makes Google Plus a strong contestant is its backbone; that is Google, itself! Google Plus communities are significantly important in the online business strategies and one must know how to deal with them properly.





Best Wishes


Wordpress 3.5 Upgrade Errors: Forgot to Backup?

wordpress upgrade errorsWordpress version 3.5 recently got released and just like always, many webmasters are striking their heads against the wall due to newly introduced database errors. Wordpress emphasize greatly to backup your database before making any change but most often we forget to backup and click the Upgrade button in hurry- what follows next is a horrible nightmare for those who are not well versed with MySQL database management and error recognition. I recently got into the same trouble while updating our sister blog i.e. Smart Earning Methods.  I forgot to backup the database! Fortunately we receive schedule backups on our Email daily and this was no less than a blessing. The site I updated to WP 3.5, got messed up with plenty of Query errors all pointing to the plugin directory.

As a PHP developer, fortunately it was easy debugging these errors and restoring the database back to its normal working mode. We would share some tips here that will help you in fixing such errors no matter how big or small your problem be, the tips are enough to put your site back to work even if it gets hijacked or entire database gets deleted or crashed.

 

Things To do Before Upgrading Wordpress

 

1. Always Take Backup of Database Manually

There are several ways to take wordpress backup. The simplest and best way is to do it manually i.e. Through PHPMyAdmin. I never rely on plugins when it comes to Database and I suggest the same for everyone. However for schedule daily backups, I do make use of a plugin called WordPress Database Backup.

To backup your database through PHPMyAdmin there could be no better tutorial then the one given by the Wordpress Folks themselves:

2. Email the Backup Copy To your Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo Account

In order to ensure the backup you saved does not get infected while it stays in your hard drive. Its always wise to take two backups and store them on different locations. I normally keep one online using Gmail and one on my hard drive. You can either use the plugin I suggested in step#1 for Scheduling backups to email you the backup file or you can manually email yourself a copy of the backup you saved in step#1.

That's all!

Summary:

*Take backup of your Wordpress Database through PHPMyAdmin and save the same copy both online and offline.

 

Things To do After Upgrading Wordpress
Update Plugins!

Before even visiting your website to see how it looks after the update you must first update the plugins in you installed. Plugins with available updates would be clearly visible in the notification bar. Simply go to Plugins Tab and tick the check boxes next to all plugins and then select update from the drop down menu and hit Apply. All done! Visit your blog site now to see it working just fine. :)

update plugins

 

Fighting Plugin Errors

Its very common to see several MySQL errors displaying on your Homepage or Post Pages just after you make the update. This often happens because most Plugins also require compatibility update whenever a new version of Wordpress is released. Most often the developers fail to update their plugins in the wordpress repository. As a result when the new version is rolled out, plugins that aren't updated would fail to function properly and therefore you would see several errors on your screen. These errors look like the following:

 

 

Call to undefined function deactivate_plugins() in

/home/xxxx/public_html/xxxxxxxx.com/wp-content/plugins/commentluv/commentluv.php on line 56

The above error occurred for Commentluv plugin. The name of the plugin will be clearly mentioned in your errors and that's what you need to note down. A Plugin error will contain the Plugin  string.

Simply not down the plugin name and go to Plugins Tab to deactivate it. Once it is deactivated/disabled visit your site to find it working just fine. Repeat this process for every single plugin that may be causing issues.

Fighting Database Crash and Hackers

Probably this is the worst nightmare for those who often limit backup to database alone. there are two important things to backup when we talk of safety. They are:

1. Backing Up your Entire Wordpress Site

A database only includes your posts, comments, archives, categories, tags and other configuration data. It never saves the following most important media on your site,

  1. WordPress Core Installation
  2. Plugins
  3. Themes
  4. Images and Files
  5. JavaScript and PHP scripts
  6. Static Web Pages

So imagine a webmaster who sleeps peacefully every night thinking he is all safe because he keeps a daily backup of his database but in fact he is the one who is truly shattered when his site gets hijacked by unwelcomed intruders. He may succeed in saving a copy of the database but what about the site's images, JavaScript, PHP and stylesheets which are the rich elements that give true shape and color to the site?

Therefore you must always keep a backup of this rich media on your hard drive. There are several ways of backing up your entire wordpress site. I wont mention them here because there are several tutorials already written on this topic. The best tutorial so far being the following:

Your webhosting company keeps a backup of your site but you are never sure how fresh that backup copy is. Therefore to be on the safe side always run a Site backup at least once a week. It surely take hours to complete even with FTP, depending on your site size! :)

2. Backing Up Database

A database is the collection of all your site records in the form of tables. Its saves your posts, pages, comments, categories and other related data in well organized collections of tables. When you update, delete or insert any stuff in your wordpress site you are only running queries at front end in MYSQL database using your dashboard as the interface.

Backing up database means keeping a copy of all such important information of your site in a safe folder. A Database never contains your site images, stylesheets, scripts or other resources, it only saves text based records of your site.

We already discussed how to backup database manually using PHPMyAdmin.

Are you safe now?

Well if you have a backup copy of both site and database, then of course you can relax and enjoy your cup of coffee even if the site gets hacked by a moron!

 

Questions?

If you recently trouble-shooted yourself with any such mishap then feel free to post your query below and I would try my best to respond promptly. I just hope your online journey continues without bugs and errors. Happy wordpress 3.5 experience to all. Peace and blessings buddies! :)

Now You can Mention People inside Blog Posts with Google Plus!






mention people in BloggerRunning an online business through blogging can be really tough if you are not aware of how to manage your readers. What is generally seen is the fact that many bloggers often interact with their readers too friendly that their readers start taking their piece of knowledge for granted. There are no doubts about the value of the readers and a blogger should interact with his readers but again in a professional way.





Believing in the importance of smooth conversations in between the publishers and the readers, Google has now introduced a new way to link your devoted readers in your blogger post editor.




How to Link People?



Everybody loves to have an attention, its human nature. When it comes to your devoted readers, who contribute on your posts, sharing the best of their ideas, adding useful stuff on your blog, you really need to take them in consideration. With this new option, been introduced by Blogger, you can now add links of Google+ profile your readers, if needed. You can even link Google+ pages when you have to mention a person or a page in your blog





Here it is that how can you value your readers or people who somehow relates to your post.





1) Type “+” in your Blogger post Editor, followed by the name of the person who you want to add in your post.





2) The link would then be shown in your post





3) After sharing your post from Blogger to Google+, the linked person would be notified in the sharebox.





4) Clicking on the link would redirect the readers to the person’s Google+ account.





link people on blogger





Therefore, If you have some dedicated readers or hard-working co-authors like us, then you can now credit them by adding their Google+ links in your post.





Hoping to get some good notifications in my sharebox by Mohammad and other readers, (:D) from now onwards, leaving you on a note that value people who can contribute in your success!





Best Wishes,


Mohammad Chose Blogger, I Chose Hacking

An inspiring story by Rafay Baloch from RafayHackingArticles. Dating back to 2009 when I first met this guy.  


blog or hackWell, this post is not  an ordinary one that talks about "Making Six Figure Income Online" or making millions from blogging, it rather contains some interesting piece of advices for Novice Bloggers and also the Ninjas out there who are struggling hard to survive online.  It all started, when Mohammad and I met back in 2009 in a Snooker Club. We both were interested in blogging and Internet Marketing, so we therefore had arranged a meeting in order to share our existing blogging strategies.

A Challenge that Changed our lives

No work looks interesting unless you are fueled with the requirement amount of passion and motivation. Our meeting did not only increase our learning but set us viral with new online goals that were yet to achieve. We had a long argument about blogging niche. Mohammad was in favor of a niche that was well accepted by Ad networks and that guaranteed great reputation online both in the eyes of search engines and readers. He hated and still hates niches that promote explicit, racial, political and malicious content. Hacking according to him was a topic that could never be accepted online by sponsors, no matter how pure or ethical it may get. To some extent, all that he believed was true and still holds it sanctity. My blog on hacking never succeeded with Adsense, Infolinks or BuySellAds.  So my earning from all these sources were nil despite receiving millions of views per month and with over thousands of readers (23K RSS Readers + 18K Facebook Fans).

On the flip side, my opinion was that one could blog on anything he likes even hacking as long as he know how to market things properly. For me, security related stuff is no less than an addiction. I could not give up with the blog just because Ad networks were not accepting my niche.

Mustafa challenged that I could not make any kind of profit from my hacking blog, On contrary I challenged him that it's not possible to take MBT to the next level with so many Competitors around who are continuously publishing tons of widgets, templates and blogger related tutorials. I also challenged him that your blog will never get below 10k Alexa because it requires a lot of Traffic momentum. I still remember Mohammad's blog was having 100,000 Alexa rank at that time. Mohammad on contrary argued that almost anything could be achieved as long as you serve the blogosphere with something new and fresh. About Alexa, he quoted its all a game of playing with algorithm.

So, we both started working harder to prove our claims. I was earning nothing back in 2009, so I decided to study the strategies used by Six Figure Bloggers to make money online. I subscribed to all the big blogs and read their e-books, here is the interesting part of all of them, they never relied upon Ads! AdSense was never their primary earning source and most of them even didn't even use AdSense. If you observe their blogs [John Chow (Johnchow.com), Darren Rowse (Problogger.net),  Neil Patel (Quick Sprout)], you will find no Google Ads. They work on a more interesting strategy that is no less than a magic ball for many professional bloggers today.

 

So, How Did They Made Money?

 

You might be wondering that how do they make Six Figures from their blog without using adsense, Well their are a lot of answers to it. Mainly, they focus on two important things:

1. Building Readership

2. Selling Product.

 

1. Building A Readership

 

If you have a good readership you are not at the mercy of  Google, John chow's blog was really affected with Panda and Pengiun, but his earning did not drop, because he had built a strong readership. He has more than 250000 active daily visitors on his blog. Take a look at problogger.net, His blog has more than 168k daily RSS Subscribers, 178k+  twitter followers, so even if Google knocks his blog completely off, he would still make a decent amount of money. That's one reason why Mohammad emphasizes on the importance of Readership so much.

2. Selling The Product

 

Now all of these Six Figure bloggers have something in common, they have their own product and they are using their readership to market their products, Even if 10% of their readers buy their products, it's enough to make them more than Six figures. Along with it, you would see all these six figure bloggers, market each other's product. Which also explains the idea of co-operation to make more profits.

So, I applied their strategies, I started with Affiliate Marketing, where I sold keyloggers, Spywares to my blog readers, by writing a review about all of them, I chose Clickbank and Plimus as a platform for Affiliate Marketing. I was earning pretty good amount of money each and every month by marketing other  products related to my niche. However, as the competition grew larger, every one started copying our ideas of marketing the same products, I saw a significant drop in my earnings. So I used their second strategy to create my own Product.

Around August 2010, I finished writing my first eBook "A Beginners Guide To Ethical Hacking", and managed to launch it that very month. Next, I used their first strategy of building a readership, i started writing articles frequently and saw a significant increase in my blog's traffic, Next i started interacting with bloggers in my niche, i offered my affiliate program to the people in my niche. To bloggers with significant traffic, I offered them 60% of the share and to small scale bloggers I offered 50% of the share. After few months i had more than 100 affiliates, thus I started earning more!

Along with it, I signed up for advertising networks infolinks.com, chitika.com and sharecash.org, My traffic was more than 24k unique visitors, so I was making a huge profit with them.

But, suddenly things changed, I was struck with Panda effect, My blog's traffic dropped by 60%. I was also banned by infolinks, chitika.com and sharecash.org for serving hacking content. All of them asked me to remove the content, which i couldn't since i worked really hard on them. That's where Mohammad proved right to a bit. And all of sudden i was left at the mercy of my book "A Beginners Guide To Ethical hacking', So i stopped blogging for a month and started working on my new product, "Facebook Hacking Course", I finished it at the end of the month, Since my traffic was not really huge at that time, i did not had that much sales as i expected, but it was decent enough to make me good amount of money at the end of the month.

Next, i decided to write another free book, to convert my blog in to a brand, I wrote "An Introduction to keylogger, RATS And Malware" at the end of the year 2011. I promoted my affiliate products under that book and it worked wonders! That books are my biggest source of earning today along with an additional earning source called "Awards"

 

The Year 2012

 

Year 2012 was not a good year for me, I was struck with penguin effect, My traffic dropped again, So, i decided to work on improving my skills. I started writing more and more and on the other hand tried to practice what i learned. Around September 2012, I decided to take part in Bug bounty Programs and responsible disclosure programs of Internationally recognized companies like Microsoft, Ebay, Apple etc. The idea behind it is that you would need to find vulnerabilities in their websites and they would reward you for your discovery by either paying you a bug bounty or either adding you to a responsible disclosure page.

I started with Microsoft and got listed in it's responsible disclosure, The first listing was very difficult but it got easier and easier for me, I managed to get listed in more than 14 responsible disclosure pages within the time span of 3.5 months. Some notable disclosure pages are as follows:

Microsoft Security Researchers Award

 

I have been Acknowledged by Microsoft three times for findings various vulnerabilities in their websites:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/cc308575.aspx (August)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/cc308589.aspx (October)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/cc308589.aspx (November)

Acknowledgement From Eset Antivirus Company

 

Dear Mr. Baloch, ESET Security team would like to officially thank for reporting security vulnerabilities on webpage www.eset.tw on October 14, 2012. We acknowledge that Mr. Rafay Baloch, RHA has reported following vulnerabilities: Stored XSS vulnerability SQL injection vulnerability Your information has helped us and our partner responsible for the site to improve security of online services and has prevented malicious exploitation of these vulnerabilities. As a part of official gratitude we would like to provide you license for ESET Smart Security. Please let us know the e-mail address where we can send You the license information.

s pozdravom /

best regards

Daniel Chromek

CISA, CISM, CISSP, MBCI Chief Information Security Officer

Adobe Security Acknowledgments

http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/securityacknowledgments.html

 

Ebay Responsible Disclosure Page

Reported an XSS in Ebay, bypassed their security filters to make the vulnerability work:

http://pages.ebay.com/securitycenter/ResearchersAcknowledgement.html

 

 

$5000 Award from Paypal

Update: The price Reward has been increased to $10,000 now. :)

I started participating in Paypal bug bounty program around the mid of September, I started hunting bugs, at first it got duplicate, however, one day while i was hunting for vulnerabilities  in Paypal, I managed to find a huge vulnerability in Paypal i.e. Remote Code Execution, which managed me to run any command on Paypal's Server.
Initially Paypal has payed me 5000$, along with 1000$ for reporting other vulnerabilities such as XSS and information disclosure. Here is the screenshot:

$5000 Paypal award

Along with it, paypal also offered me job as a security engineer a.k.a Security Ninja, However, I am not planning to work for them at the moment, as my bachelors is currently in progress.

job offer from paypal

 

So Who Won?

It's the last month of 2012 and around 3 years have passed since we first met. Fortunately neither Mohammad could prove me wrong completely nor I could win over him. He is now running one of the most widely read blogs in Blogging niche with thousands of followers, contributors, resources and amazingly a Google blog that has the highest Alexa Rank i.e 6K out of millions of Google hosted Blogs. MBT is the only unofficial blogger blog with the highest Alexa rank mashAllah. His blog is now DMOZ listed and a repository of hundreds of creative plugins and widgets. He is still a loving friend and a dedicated blogger.

On the other hand, I succeeded in keeping honor of my claim by turning my simple blog into a lucrative Online Income engine. RHA blog is now read widely throughout India, USA and Pakistan. All its earnings are from ebook sales, product reviews and affiliate sales, with not a single Ad from any of the widely renown Contextual Ad networks (AdSense).

I would accept today that hacking wont get you accepted with Adsense or Chitika but if its your only passion and you have a strong belief that your skills can contribute to the online community then just don't stop and give it a go. Search engines do index content generously irrespective of the niche. So blog on anything as long as you know how to market it.

Message To Upcoming Hackers

 

My message to the ones who have just stepped up in this field is that there is nothing wrong in learn hacking techniques, what makes it wrong is the way you use it. There is a misconception among people that hackers have good jobs overseas, this is all wrong, if you associate the word hacker with your name then no organization will hire you. As they would think that you might be posing risk to their organization. Don't run after fame, it will just be for sometime.
Instead if you are really interested in pursuing your career in information security, I would suggest you to build your skills. Go after some certifications such as CISSP, CEH, CPTE etc. And start using your skills to help organizations make themselves secure, by reporting it to them.

Final Advice

 

My final advice to every one is not to run after money or fame, It will eventually come to you, Just focus on building your skills. Neither Mohammad nor I blogged for income, what we aimed at was readership. People follow you only when you offer something worth reading. I wish you all the best with your future endeavors and hope that this little post may motivate you to trigger your online journey right today. Jump inside the ring to battle the big giants out there who are still missing a great contender. Leaving you with this beautiful quote. 
Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, and riches take wings. Only one thing endures and that is character. – Horace Greeley


Google Explains How to Write a Proper Reconsideration Request?








Your blog can really make your life a complicated one if it gets into the bad lists of Google. Throughout my career as a blogger, I have come across many newbies who are often way too worried for their blog ratings. It has also been seen that sometimes a blog with a considerable rankings and readership goes under a sudden change, bringing disaster that keeps on increasing. It is important to understand the significance of a consistent good progress when it comes to an online earning business because, that is where you have no boss to appeal and no actual help to get the things fixed up for you. However, Google seems merciful enough to let the suffering bloggers a chance to help their blogs and offers a reconsideration request form that the bloggers have to fill and submit to the Google Team.









Although the name speaks all, the reconsideration request is what that works on your behalf to interact with Google for solving issues that might have lead in decreasing your rankings-and-earnings. By now, most of the bloggers do know about this facility, or rather opportunity, there are many of them who find it difficult to draft a good reconsideration request. Taking a serious notice of this, Matt Cuts, the head of Webspam, Google has answered what the team actually looks for in a reconsideration request.


1) Mention The Goal of Reconsideration request



Probably due to the language barriers or the misunderstandings about the scenario, bloggers sounds confused while stating the actual problem that they are facing. You need to first analyze the problem that might have created difficult circumstances for your business and once you are done with it, it is time to recover your mistakes.


2) Tell Google what it wants to know



It is important to understand that whatever happens to your blog is due to some reason behind it. Therefore, you need to tell Google about what has been done wrong by you mistakenly or unintentionally. For example, if there is something related to the Paid links, spamming, etc., you need to mention that and also the fact that now you have stopped doing so.





The team wants to know what has been done by you to cure the issue, like if it was related to the pagelinks, you should pull them down as much as possible and state your efforts in the reconsideration form too.


3) Assure Google for Future



Google is professional enough when it comes to the mistakes committed by the publishers. It is to be noted that not all the reconsideration requests are accepted by Google, in fact, only few requests are even taken into the notice. What Google looks in your request is the surety that you would not be repeating the similar blunders or violates the rules and regulations of Google in future.


4) Additional Details giving weightage



It is always better to keep your policies and goals transparent from Google. Adding details like the sites that you link to, using SEO for unethical stuff, etc., would earn you more trust of the team. Moreover, also suggest what you would be doing in order to avoid similar circumstances, say taking trainings, keeping a track of Google blogs, following the regulations, etc. To know more about it, also see this video.















Google can be a tough one when it comes to convincing it for reconsidering your blog and improve your ratings. Therefore, you need to be extra careful while drafting your request. A quality request would itself be considered as a plus point for you.





Best Wishes


How to Help Google Webmasters Know if your Site is Hacked?








website hacked labelThese days when online earning through blogs and websites is turning into one of the most appealing businesses, there are unavoidable risks of getting your website been hacked. How about malicious content been injected on your website, forcing your readers to never come back to pay a visit? The thought is itself awful, isn’t it? A good news is, Google has lately announced that it has some solutions for those webmasters who are the victim of website hacking.




As I have been saying in my previous posts, Google is smart enough to keep a track of everything, all the time and hence according to the new policies, the site that would be detected as a “hacked website” would be displayed with a warning message “This Site may be compromised”. This has been done to ensure safety of the users who might find the affected site in the search results and find themselves been overloaded with the malicious content.




What makes this news worthy to read is the fact that as a blogger, it is important for you to find whether your blog/website is at risk or not, because in case, it is, then there are wide chances that your website becomes a source to distribute the malicious content among your devoted readers. Moreover, when Google realizes that your site is compromising to facilitate the distribution of malwares, even your site would be having a warning indication in the Google search, affecting your page ranks and your earnings terribly. Therefore, Google has advised all the webmasters to verify their site in Webmaster Tools. Although there are some specific tips for preventing and removing malware from your site, it is still better to be on a safer side to avoid going through a bad phase in business.




A disease can be cured only if you predict it right; however, a dilemma here is that most of the Webmasters do not actually realize when their sites have been infected with the injected malwares. To overcome this, there are two common ways that can help in letting you know that there are malicious third- parties on your website. Let us first see these two ways and then we will talk about how to get your site cleaned from this unwanted mess.


1) Injected Content



As a blogger, you might know by now that what actually these hackers aim for, yes, all they want is to drag your potential traffic to their own sites. One common attempt of doing so is to influence search engines by injecting the links of their sites. This is done way too intelligently where these links are hidden, making their detection difficult by the webmaster. For example, injected malwares appear with your content, making it difficult for the webmaster to identify that he is a victim.




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Solution:


Making it easier for you, Google will diagnose all the sites for such injected content, and if your site is one of them, you will receive an e-mail about the notification of this detection. If you would find the content risky, you can then use Fetch as Google tool to check the content of your site.


2) Redirecting Users



There would be hardly anyone who would like to be redirected every time when he visits a site. A good way to hack a site is to redirect its users to malicious sites. This is what the users really hate and might never return to your site in fear of getting redirected again to spammy sites. Again, this can be done in several ways where the hacker might target the viewers who access your site through their mobiles or those who are coming from search engines. It was interesting to find that what actually hackers do. They actually modify the configuration files and serve different users with different contents.




 configuration files


Apart from this, such a hacking can also be done by injecting JavaScript into the source code of your site.




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Solution:


In order to avoid this, you need to keep a track of your server configuration files for such modifications. For the malicious behavior due to the JavaScript injection, the JavaScript may be designed to hide its purpose, helping terms look like, for example, “eval”, “decode” and “escape”.


Cleanup your Site and Prevent Hacking!



With the two common ways stated above, you can get to know whether your site is compromised or not. If you find your site in risk, then it is necessary to clean it up from the changes that the malwares have brought with them, also preventing your site from getting hacked in future again. You can clean up your site by following the instructions given by Google and prevent such compromises too.




However, you need to consider the sensitivity of the matter and must contact the Google team, informing about your site been compromised. For that you need to submit a reconsideration request after you clean up your site. This is important so that Google can then remove its warning label (indicating you as a compromised site) from its search results.




With that, the post comes to an end, We hope that nothing happens to the sites of our readers, because once affected, it really can bring disastrous outcomes.




Best Wishes,


You can now display just one 300X600 Ad Format on a page






google adsense limitationsBlogging is becoming the most promising online business gradually, however, there are few who find themselves lucky enough to enjoy a good revenue been generated through it. There is no doubt that advertisements act as the soul of earning and we must thank Google for introducing its AdSense program. It has been lately seen that Google seems more interested in targeting the issues of its clients and in order to enhance the earnings of the publishers, it has recently introduced a new 300x600 ad format, big enough to consume a large space of your blog. While the Publishers were delighted with the news, hoping to have more revenue, Google has announced that the new offer would also be having some limitations.


The Limitations



Considering the new format to be large enough, Google has now announced to have some changes in its policy to keep a balance in between the valuable content of the blog and the advertisements. If you were aiming high to achieve this golden opportunity by placing two or more 300x600 ads on your blog, this one is surely a bad news for you as you would now be permitted to place only one 300x600 ad unit on each page of your blog.


AdSense ad sizes


We previously saw that the limit for AdSense for content ad units was three ads per page, which is still the same, however, the slightest change is that you can now place only one 300x600 ad unit out of the three, choosing the two remaining ones of any other size.




Google states that the major reason for this limitation was to keep in view the needs of both, Users and the Advertisers. For those who have availed the offer to its fullest, placing more than one 300x600 ads on a single page, Google requests them to remove the ‘extra’ ads units by Jan 10, 2012 to avoid inconvenience. A notifying mail has been already sent to the affected publishers, asking them to make this update on their blog.




Although the news might not be a welcoming one for most of the bloggers, it is good to see that Google is taking interest and coming up with new strategies to enhance the online business for the publishers and the advertisers. It is soon to be expected that the team would announce new sizes and policies that would further contribute in boosting your earnings.




Share your views about it,


Wishes,