Blogger Sitemap.xml Now Contains 150 Links Per Page - [FIX]

Have you observed a sudden drop in your Blogger sitemap index data inside your webmasters tools account? Do you see a major drop in your URLS Submitted data compared to Indexed data? If yes then there is nothing to worry because just this week Blogger has updated the total number of items in its Atom Feed and RSS Feed. The maximum number of blog post entries in these XML files were previously 500 Links but after this latest update, your blogspot XML feed has now been broken down into smaller groups containing a maximum of 151 Links in each page. This means that now webmasters will show a count of 151 in the Submitted data column which was previously 501 for URLS in web index. The default feed count is same i.e. 26 links in both RSS and Atom Feed.

This surely looks like a much better approach for faster indexing of your blog posts and this will also help Google webmasters tools to better organize your sitemap pages into smaller parts which are easy to index and crawl thus saving processing time. The same update is applied to Blogger Sitemap.xml file where each sub-page will now consist of only 150 links, previously 500 URLS were grouped per page.

UPDATE: Blogger Sitemap Generator - Version 2016 Just released!

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How to fix Submitted and Indexed Data Difference?

You are seeing this error or difference of sitemap data inside your webmasters search console account because you have submitted multiple custom sitemaps to Google either using our Sitemap Generator tool or using a custom sitemap submission method using atom feeds. This sitemaps are located at atom.xml. The screenshot below shows the

In the screen shot above you can observe that the submitted urls are 151 while the indexed urls are 496. The Indexed links are greater than submitted links because webmasters tool is showing you the old cached indexed count of blogger sitemap where the sitemap contained a maximum of 500 links. The indexed data is thus an old cached count while the submitted data shows the refreshed Link count after Blogger updated sitemaps.

Blogger introduced Dynamic Sitemaps for all blogspot blogs from January 2015 onwards. Now you can excess all your sitemap data from a single sitemap.xml file as shared below:

Your sitemap.xml file is hosted at this location:

http://Your-Blog.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml

Our Blog Parent sitemap is hosted under this link:

http://www.mybloggertricks.com/sitemap.xml

All you need to do is to delete the custom atom.xml sitemaps and instead submit sitemap.xml as the only sitemap inside your webmasters account. Follow these steps:
1. Go To Webmasters Tools > Crawl > Sitemaps
2. Delete all your old sitemaps which uses the atom.xml Feed structure

3. Next submit the dynamic sitemap.xml as the only sitemap

4. That's it!

This single parent sitemap will automatically update its sub-pages and submit your new posts to Google index. If you click the sitemap link you can easily see how many sub-pages does the sitemap contain. This is a better and standard way to create sitemaps and widely followed for wordpress blogs as well.This parent sitemap is divided into sub-pages each containing a total of 150 links per page. Since we have published around 1435 posts so far therefore the total number of our sitemap pages are thus 10 where each sitemap contains 150 links. It is basic math i.e. 10 x 150 = 1500

It takes around 24 hours for all links to get indexed. 

Already submitted sitemap.xml?

If you have already submitted the dynamic sitemap months ago but still see a difference in your submitted/indexed data then you just need to resubmit the sitemap so that Google may fetch all newly submitted links.

After resubmitting our sitemap the index data got back to normal:

Need Help?

I hope this clarifies all your answers and help you guys troubleshoot this technical SEO problem that you were facing recently. Let me know if I could be of any further assistance. Feel free to post your questions in the comment box below. Wishing a great weekend buddies. Peace and blessings! =)

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2015 HostGator Black Friday Discount For Bloggers - 80% OFF!

The time for people who can not afford high expensive webhosting costs has just arrived after 365 days! HostGator Black Friday / Cyber Monday Sales have officially started now with Flash sales as high as 80%. It is once in a year opportunity for bloggers to get huge discount deals on premium services. Being a consistent customer of HostGator services for the past 6 years, we receive exclusive discounts each year to share with our loyal readers so that they may get a considerable discount on all webhosting packages that they purchase. These sales will start from 27th Nov and will last till 30th Nov, 2015. This year we have received two types of special discount coupons from HostGator. One set of coupons offer a 65% Straight OFF whilst other set of Coupons are based on Flash Sales that will last only for ONE HOUR at different time interval. These flash sales are a straight 80% Discount! Domains will cost as less as $2.99 for .net and .com TLDs.

UPDATE: The Sale ended but you can still get a straight 25%-30% discount using the coupon "mbtblogdiscount"

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The count down timer below will last till the end of the Black Friday Sale. You only have limited time to make up your mind and start your online business dreams today.

Never Purchase Something unless you are convinced!

Before you make a purchase please read the article by clicking the link below to fully understand the importance of webhosting for your professional blogging and webmaster career online. This opportunity comes only once a year and only serious bloggers make productive use of it.

• READ: 10 Popular Questions on Why you must buy Webhosting

You can also read the following articles to better understand why we consider hostgator as the best choice of webmasters and why have we hosted all our 7 sites on hostgator:

• READ: Why buy Custom Domain for Blogger from HostGator?
• READ: Why we migrated this blogger blog to hostgator?

Which Plan to Purchase for Better Discount and SEO?

I strongly recommend that you read the following article for in-depth analysis:

• READ: HostGator best hosting plans for Bloggers

Just remember these points while choosing a plan:

• Choose Hatching Plan for 3 Years if you want to register just a single Domain
• Choose Baby Plan for 3 years if you wish to register multiple domains in future
• Business Plan is definitely not for you but for corporates!

We are using baby plan currently. Google often considers sites which are registered for few months or ONE year as spammy therefore in order to make sure you have an SEO edge and your site is considered as E-A-T (Expert, Authoritative, Trustworthy), do register for no less than 3 years. This will give you a better discount as well as favor in SEO rankings later.

How To Apply Coupons Correctly?

Follow these steps to make sure you get maximum saving on the package you purchase:

1 Go To Hostgator Welcome Page

2 Click the Get started Now! button followed by Choose A Plan button on next page.

3 Choose your Plan and hit the button (Up to 30% OFF) under it!

4 You will see two options:

• If you are registering a new domain then choose the first option. You will buy both Domain + Hosting.
• If you already own a domain then choose the second option. You will buy only Hosting here.

 

5 Next choose your Plan and fill the forms. Make sure you select the 36 months cycle which means 3 years:

6 Enter your Billing Info. You can pay both with a credit card or paypal. I did with Paypal.

7 In the "Additional Services" section uncheck all options because none is that useful.

8 Finally Comes the discount coupon section. Copy the Coupon codes that we have shared below and paste it inside this box and click validate.

 

9 In the Review Order Details section, confirm that the discount is applied. If you see a discount field then congratulations you have done all steps correctly!

10 Finally hit the "Checkout" button to make your payment with a healthy discount! =)

Note: In the above picture I have used the 25% discount coupon of mbtblogdiscount but the coupons I am sharing below are as high as 65-80%!

65% Discount Coupons - Deadline 1 Day

You can grab any of these coupons based on their expiry date. These coupons will work full day and you can apply them anytime during that specific Sale day. Note that the timings are in US standard Time. I have mentioned the Indo-Pak Standard Times also.

All Sales Follow this time:

US Time: 12:00 am till 11:59 pm CST

India Time: 11:30 am till 11:29 pm

Pakistan Time: 11:00 am till 10:59 pm

Sale Day: 27th November / Apply Now!

Coupon Code: BF2015  Expired

Sale Day: 28th November / Apply Now!

Coupon Code: SMB2015 Expired

Sale Day: 29th November / Apply Now!

Coupon Code: SUN2015 Expired

Sale Day: 30th November / Apply Now!

Coupon Code: CM2015 Expired

 

80% Discount Coupons - Deadline 1 Hour

Below you have the full FLASH SALE schedule. Each of these flash sales will only last ONE HOUR so if you really want a bigger discount of 80% OFF then try your luck during these times:

Note: All times are give in US standard Time. Use World Clock by following this targeted link for Indo-PAK times.

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 27th  - Expired

• 12am - 1am CST :   FRIFLASH1
• 6am - 7am CST :     FRIFLASH2
• 10am - 11am CST : FRIFLASH3
• 3pm - 4pm CST :     FRIFLASH4
• 5pm - 6pm CST :     FRIFLASH5
• Apply Now!

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 28th - Expired

• 3am - 4am CST :    SATFLASH1
• 12pm - 1pm CST : SATFLASH2
• 6pm - 7pm CST :   SATFLASH3
• Apply Now!

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 29th - Expired

• 2am - 3am CST :     SUNFLASH1
• 11am - 12pm CST : SUNFLASH2
• 8pm - 9pm CST :     SUNFLASH3
• Apply Now!

MONDAY NOVEMBER 30th Expired

• 2am - 3am CST :   MONFLASH1
• 8am - 9am CST :   MONFLASH2
• 12pm - 1pm CST : MONFLASH3
• 3pm - 4pm CST :   MONFLASH4
• 8pm - 9pm CST :   MONFLASH5
• Apply Now!

Need Help?

If you need help or advice with regard to anything we discussed above or need any support with any technical side then please feel confident to post your questions in the comment box below. I would love to offer my full support 24/7. Signing up for webhosting was the best decision we made back in the year 2009 and this is one reason which blessed us with a Full Time Office  and the first registered Company of Pro Bloggers in the country (i.e. STCnetwork). All praise be to God.

I wish the best of luck with all your future endeavors and pray that you succeed with all your online dreams and ambitions. May the best be yours. Peace and blessings buddies! =)

Disclaimer

We respect and trust our readers a lot. Therefore we would like to mention that the above post surely contains some affiliate links. When you make a purchase, we get a commission from the company. HostGator is so far the only product after Godaddy that we recommend to our readers because we are using it since 6 years and we can confidently recommend it to all our readers so that they could live a better future with quality products online.

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Blogger: 10 Popular Questions on Web Hosting

It is time to make up a decision! With over trillion of web pages published each day, competition is at its peak and if you have not yet made the decision to kick-start your online business in a professional way then you are missing a great deal of marketing edge. We receive tons of questions daily on webhosting through our forum, Emails and blog comments. To make sure we reply each question in detail, we have crafted this post with the only hope to clarify all your doubts concerning hosting your blogger blogs.  This post shares some of the very honest reasons that has helped us tremendously in becoming the Brand that we are today Alhamdulillah and this could have been never possible without making a wise decision of selecting the best web hosting company for our network blogs and websites.

Update:

We just published Exclusive HostGator Black Friday 80% discount Coupons. Sale ends in 3 Days. It is once in a year opportunity. Grab your hosting now!

1. Difference b/w Domain Hosting & Web Hosting?

Domain hosting means that you are simply purchasing a custom URL with TLD extensions like  .com .net or .org etc. which will mask  .blogspot.com. It costs around $10-$12 a year to buy a domain from blogger itself. With this option you only get a free email ID such as admin@yourblog.com. You can not upload files in your hosting nor can you create sub-domains. You are limited to Blogger Dashboard only.

Web hosting in layman terms is simply buying a storage space for your website online, just like a folder online. Your files will be stored in secured hard disks owned by the web hosting company. Like all our files of services page, tools and Forum are stored with our web host. When you buy webhosting you also get a free domain with it. You can choose to use your existing domain or buy a new one. You can upload JavaScript/CSS, PDF files, Videos, Audios, almost anything on your web host and each file will get your branded URL. For example we have stored our ebook " Pro blogger Secrets Revealed" on the subdomain "Downloads":

http://downloads.mybloggertricks.com/ProBlogger Secrets Revealed.pdf

2. What Can I Create with Web Hosting?

Webhosting gives you wings!

You can create almost anything using the software found in your webhost control Panel (Cpanel). We are using HostGator which gives us the power to create the following list of cool tools or websites.

1. Blog Software  eg: Wordpress, LifeType
2. Forum Software
3. Gallery Software
4. Website Builder - Free 5000 Fancy Templates!
5. Guestbook Software
6. Website Builder
7. Mail Software  eg: admin@mybloggertricks.com
8. Social Networking Software   eg: Facebook, mySpace
9. Wiki Software
10. Survey Software
11. Billing Software
12. Chat Software
13. Directory Software
14. eCommerce Software

3. Why Buy a Custom Domain?

Without it you are an unknown identity, without a brand name!

Because buying a custom domain means your first step towards serious online business! No sponsor or Ad network like buysellads will ever advertise on a free blog containing a free domain (.blogspot.com). Sponsors always look for professional bloggers who could give better promotion to their products. AdSense also gives more preference to sites with Custom domains. This gives you a big marketing edge.

Second free domains have less reputation in blogosphere, as a result people will rarely subscribe to your blog nor will choose to link your content or share your content in social media, as a result you loose several precious backlinks to rank you higher in SERPs. Thus you will suffer a lot when it comes to better blog marketing and blog SEO.

• Read: 10+ Reasons why you must buy a custom domain!

4. Can you Host a Blogger blog on a Private Web Server?

You can not host or transfer Blogger's Content Management System (CMS) anywhere else i.e the dashboard that helps you control your blog settings and publish posts. But you can surely host your Blogger Blog's Domain name and subdomains at Hostgator. You can surely upload files to your account and share it on your blog.

In our case we manage our blog from "www.blogger.com" but we manage all its subdomains and files (i.e. Our Forum, Contact page, Service Page) at "portal.hostgator.com/login"

5. Can you Transfer a Blogger blog To a Web host?

You can not host Blogger CMS system anywhere but you can surely host it's content (i.e. Posts & comments) on a web host if you choose to download all its files from

• Blogger > Settings > Other > Export Blog

Once you have download your blog, you can then transfer it to a new Blogging platform like Wordpress using your Web host. But first read this

• Why I don't recommend migrating your blogger blog to wordpress

Transferring or migrating your blog equals shifting your house from one place to another.

6. Do You really need Web hosting for a blogger Blog?

Every Serious Webmaster needs it!

90% Blogger users purchase only custom domain instead of web hosting because they think that web hosting is a lot expensive and they can't afford it. They also live in a misconception that why buy hosting when Blogger provides it for free i.e. You can upload images, videos for free on Picasa web album.

Its true that blogger blogs are hosted for free but with just custom domain hosting you are sacrificing a great investment. This is what you can not do with domain hosting:

1. You can not create sub domains
2. You can not create multiple email accounts
3. You can not create web pages
4. You can not create a Forum
5. You can not store or upload files and brand them with your custom URL.
6. You can not learn and experience new tools and technologies
7. You will always run after free storage services, thus making your blog's load time damn slow.

7. How much will web hosting cost you per month?

Less than McDonalds Big Mac!

It costs you less than $7/month or just $80/year! Imagine you waste more than $100-$200 per month on your stomach and accessories, a small budget can build your entire future career. I have shared some discount Coupon codes that you can use to get up to 25% discount on your hosting plan.

Within next few hours I will share 80% Discount coupons for Black Friday deals which is the best time to purchase webhosting with almost no investment at all.

Update: We just published the 80% Black Friday Discount Coupons! Grab it now!

Those with serious will to start their blogging careers will make use of this Black Friday and those who still think they don't need webhosting, they are missing a better online future and SEO boost.

8. Which is the best Web Hosting company?

Only experience can tell. You can only tell whether an Apple tastes good or not unless you had taken a bite. After having taken several bites for over 6 years, we can strongly recommend HostGator without doubts as the best choice of bloggers across all CMS platforms. Whether you are a Blogger or Wordpress user, HostGator is the name that hosts all celeb blogs, small or big. It has thus become the webhosting tycoon online after having hosted over 9,000,000 domains!

We hosted MyBloggerTricks with HostGator on 10th August, 2009 using the Hatchling Plan. Since then we never stopped launching new sites each year. We have a total of 7 sites hosted at hostGator at this moment. It is the mother that takes care of our sites and protects our data from infiltrators.

• Read: Why Host Blogger on HostGator?

• Read: HostGator Best Hosting Plans For Bloggers

9. Will Webhosting effect your Blog Traffic and SEO?

Web hosting will give a professional touch to your blog. It gives you a brand name and look. People will be more willing to share your content on social media and link back to your pages. Your reputation would increase threefold in blogosphere. The more backlinks you receive the better your Search engine ranking.

Google considers free domains mostly as spam and so do Sponsors. After purchasing a custom domain with a storage space, your blog will be trusted more as E-A-T (Expert, Authoritative and Trustworthy) . Your chances of getting accepted by AdSense and buysellads will increase tremendously as long as you continue producing High Quality content.  It is simply a Win-Win decision.

10. How do you upload files inside a Web Host?

Files are uploaded on your web hosting drive using a FTP client. I recommend Filezilla. Using it is extremely simple and you can find several tutorials on it online. It is a simple drag and drop tool. Transferring files from your computer to your web hosting was never that simple before. All it needs is a username and password after which your computer gets a direct access to your online files on your webhost directory. 

Have Questions?

As long as you ask questions, you will never find yourself in confusion. Each year I emphasize greatly on our readers to make up a better decision and start taking their online careers seriously. Some understand the logic behind these posts and react immediately. We have always found such readers living a happy career online with lucrative income. Those who try to compete online with free tools and services are often those who end up there online careers the earliest.

My best wishes are with all of you and I wish the coming Black Friday Deals starting from this (Friday to Monday) may help you in reshaping your online endeavors. Peace and blessings buddies. =)

Disclaimer

We respect and trust our readers a lot. Therefore we would like to mention that the above post surely contains some affiliate links. When you make a purchase, we get a commission from the company. HostGator is so far the only product after Godaddy that we recommend to our readers because we are using it since 6 years and we can confidently recommend it to all our readers so that they could live a better future with best products online.

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Leaked: Google Forced to Release their "Search Quality Ratings" Secrets!

Google quality rating secrets had been leaked several times by different third party agencies and most often by evaluators hired by Google itself. A time has come when Google has finally decided to release the full version of their Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines PDF ebook consisting of 160 Pages with in-depth knowledge for webmasters, Bloggers and SEOs around the globe. The Pandora box of what exactly a Low Quality and High Quality Content has been finally disclosed with tons of illustrative examples and case studies. This ebook is the most precious resource that Google's team of quality raters uses to rate a website and decide its fate. It is the only thing you need as a blogger to learn what it takes to be a top ranked website on Desktop and Mobile! You might have seen a sudden disappearance of AdSense Ads from our Posts and changes to our site's above-the-fold content. All these changes have been made today to make sure we abide by the rules Google wants to rank us higher on SERPs.

Download Now! Size: 8.29 MB

What's is so Magical about it?

Google never wanted you to read all of this ebook if it had not been leaked in chunks in recent years. This ebook is basically a training guide for agents Google hires to research the web and rate websites/blogs based on the guidelines Google proposed to them. So this ebook is never intended for publishers like you and I but we are fortunate that Google finally made it public and we can use it to get immense SEO knowledge from it.

It answers all the confusions revolving around the web on how Google ranks content, how its penalty algorithms like Google Panda and Penguin works and how exactly does Google identifies a Low Quality content from a High Quality content. After reading it you will be able to figure out all the mistakes you had been making that caused you consistent loss in search traffic.

1. Page Quality Rating Guidelines

This is the most important part of this ebook and the soul of it. Here you will find examples of sites that Google considers to fall in the category of Pages which are Low Quality, Lowest Quality, High Quality and Highest Quality. The Page Quality Rating scale is all that you need to understand.

In page#58 Google discusses the Top Three most important (Page Quality) PQ considerations which you must read.

2. Understanding Mobile User Needs

What do you do on your mobile smartphone? :)

Google answers it here through an image:

Here the book discusses Mobile users, Mobile Queries and Mobile results. More and more people are preferring mobiles over desktop devices for searching and this is one reason why you must make sure your blog design is fluid and responsive. We have written a detailed tutorial series on this for BlogSpot blogs which you can read:

• Read: Make your Blogger Template Responsive!

3. Needs Met Rating Guideline

You can surely skip this part if you want. Here the book discusses. Here the rating is done by focusing on mobile users by deciding how helpful and satisfying a certain search result is for the mobile user and whether or not it meets his needs.

4. Using The evaluation Platform

You can skip this part if you want. The Evaluation Platform is the system raters will use to acquire and rate websites. Only Authorized users can access it through this page.

Don't have time to read all the book?

No worries!

If those 160 pages are giving you a headache then I strongly recommend that you at least read the following pages and view the Image illustrations in each example:

1. Example of High Quality Pages ---------- Page#23
2. Example of Highest Quality Pages ------ Page#27
3. Example of Low Quality Pages ----------- Page#37
4. Example of Lowest Quality Pages ------- Page#48
5. Example of Medium Quality Pages ------ Page#55

What makes a High Quality Page?

According to this book a High quality rating requires at least one of the following Characteristics:

1. A satisfying amount of high quality Main Content (MC)
2. The page and website are E-A-T i.e Expert, Authoritative, and Trustworthy for the topic of the page.
3. The website has a good reputation for the topic of the page

Does your blog qualify for any one of the above mentioned PQ requirements? Even your About Us, Contact Us Pages help you rank higher! How regularly you update and maintain your blog also counts a lot. This book is a must read and I strongly recommend that you read it the sooner possible and act upon the advices given.

It's Time To Celebrate!

Indeed this ebook is all that we as publishers needed to better understand what exactly Google wants from us? It is surely no less than a treasure for bloggers and small web publishers.

I have started making some monetization changes by changing the locations of Ad slots to make sure they do not interfere with Main Content (MC) of my site and have placed all ads inside the Supplementary Content (SC) which includes your blog header/sidebar/footer. I will see how it effects our monthly stats and revenue.

I will keep you updated with several new interesting tips and will discuss some tutorials to help you improve the Page Quality of blog posts.

Let me know how any new discovery that may come across you after reading this ebook and share it with everyone here in the comments section so that we may all learn further from it. Did you now find the answer for your low search ranking? Do share it openly without hesitation! :)

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Use Human Readable "Date Format" in Blog Posts

This is probably the most request posted on blogger Timestamp and Date header format. This simplest trick of converting date formats in Blogger blogs is thus first time shared online using Data Layout Tags. The date inside BlogSpot posts are displayed in the format "MM/DD/YYYY" which is a non-readable formatting for mentioning the publishing time and date of an article. If you see the date format in MBT posts (i.e. Nov 21, 2015) you will observe that the formatting is done in a more human readable and visual way where Month and Day are comma separated from Year ( i.e. Month Day, Year ). The month is written in short abbreviated way followed by day and then year. A reader gets a clear idea of when the post was published by looking at the date at a glance instead of getting confused with the Western and Asian Date formatting of "MM/DD/YYYY" and "DD/MM/YYYY" respectively. In this tutorial we will use the simple technique of replacing the Timestamp layout tag inside posts with Date Header tag. In our JSON Tutorial series we will discuss a more advanced JavaScript approach to better control the styling of each element in the date formatting.

Before:

After:

Change Blogger Date Formatting inside Blog Posts

Follow these easy steps:

1 Go to Blogger > Template > Backup your template

2 Click Edit HTML

3 Search for this layout tag

<data:post.timestamp/>

4 The above code will appear twice. Once for mobile view and once for desktop view. Replace it twice with this layout tag:

<i class='fa fa-clock-o'/><data:post.dateHeader/>

Note: The yellow highlighted code will show a clock Icon next to the date, if you don't want this FontAwesome icon then simply remove the yellow code.

5 Save your template and you are almost done!

6 Next go to Settings > Language and Formatting > Formatting

From the drop down menu next to the Date Header Format select the first option i.e. Nov 21, 2015:

You can choose any formatting of your choice, the last two options are also good. In our case we chose the format: Nov 21, 2015

7 Click the "Save Settings" button and you are all done!

Need Help?

What we did was a simple solution to the existing problems faced with Post Date formatting. In our JSON tutorial we will adopt a JavaScript technique to give more advance control over the structure of Date. With that tutorial you will be able to style Month, Day and Year elements separately using CSS classes. The current solution is the easiest way for non-techy users. I hope this helps most in better displaying the Publish Timestamp on their blog posts. Do ask me any question you may have.

Peace and blessings buddies :)

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Display YouTube Video Thumbnails in Blogger

We have reached the stage of our Blogger JSON tutorial series where we will learn how to extract thumbnails from a YouTube video and display these featured thumbnails inside BlogSpot blogs recent posts widget. YouTube Data API is an excellent way to create 3rd party applications for users that could help them to search for YouTube videos, upload videos to YouTube, and update existing videos. It also helps you to retrieve playlists, favorite videos, and do much more. Since discussing YouTube API is beyond the scope of this tutorial therefore we will only discuss the thumbnails which are stored inside the tags <media:thumbnail/>. Understanding YouTube Video Feed is not our concern for this tutorial series. In this part we will first discuss the Thumbnail basic URL structure and will learn different techniques of embedding these thumbnails inside blog posts but in our next tutorial we will discuss how to dynamically show featured YouTube thumbnails inside the recent comments widget via JSON feed by retrieving the Thumbnail from the YouTube Iframe.

Note: Click the Button below to see full list of topics under discussion.

Topics List

Extract Thumbnails from a YouTube Video

Every YouTube Thumbnail has the following URL structure:

http://img.youtube.com/vi/VIDEO ID/IMAGE NUMBER.jpg

• There are a total of 4 thumbnails available through YouTube API for each video. Each image is numbered in this sequence: 0, 1, 2, 3. Represented by IMAGE NUMBER
• Each video has its unique ID represented by VIDEO ID.

I once uploaded a Facebook Timeline video to my YouTube channel. This video is located at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcw10SeE_VQ

Where  tcw10SeE_VQ is the video ID. This is the exact same URL structure for all videos on YouTube.

YouTube Data API stores around 4 thumbnails for each video. 3 small and one large. The thumbnails stored for the above video are located at:

http://img.youtube.com/vi/tcw10SeE_VQ/0.jpg

1st largest Full size Default thumbnail Image with dimensions 480 x 360 (pixels)

http://img.youtube.com/vi/tcw10SeE_VQ/1.jpg

2nd Small thumbnail Image with dimensions 120 x 90 (pixels)

 

http://img.youtube.com/vi/tcw10SeE_VQ/2.jpg

3rd Small Default thumbnail Image with dimensions 120 x 90 (pixels)

http://img.youtube.com/vi/tcw10SeE_VQ/3.jpg

4rth Small thumbnail Image with dimensions 120 x 90 (pixels)

Embedding YouTube Thumbnails in Blog posts

Now lets suppose you want to publish a video post and you want to display the thumbnail Image of your YouTube video as the featured Image of your blog post in a SEO friendly manner. For this all you need to do is to use the following image code:

<img src=http://img.youtube.com/vi/VIDEO ID/0.jpg  width="400px" alt="Image Description"/>

• You just need to replace VIDEO ID with the ID of your YouTube video URL
• Note that I have selected the 1st Thumbnail image (i.e. 0.jpg) to display the largest thumbnail.
• You can customize the width of your image by simply editing 400px. Note that the 1st thumbnail has a width of 480px.
• Replace "Image Description" with Image Title

Display Thumbnails Dynamically

For simplicity we have only discussed the static method of embedding thumbnail images in blog posts but in our next tutorial we will discuss a JavaScript technique to extract YouTube Video Images dynamically from the blogger JSON feed and will display Video thumbnails automatically next to each post containing a video Iframe.

At present we are only sharing the technique for YouTube videos but if you guys would love to know how to extract Dailymotion or Vimeo video Thumbnails thumbnails also then let me know so that I may share those scripts with all of you.

Stay tuned for the next part which involves some interesting yet easy JavaScript programming. Peace and blessing buddies! :)

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How To Earn Money With Revenue Hits In Blogger

Revenue hits is a newly introduced ad network and it is best alternative of Google Adsense after Infolinks. It is not better as Adsense but it is not less in any way. If you have only 100 views per day you can earn good with Revenue Hits. It has all types of banners and mobile ads too. CPM as well as CPC rates are also high. Apart from it you have opportunity to refer people using your link. Revenue hits says that you can earn upto $100 per referral. It have all types of referral banners too. After personally reviewing it I recommend it for publishers. This post is a review of revenue hits and a tutorial about how to use revenue hits to earn money via blogger blogs.

Features(Review):

1. High CPM rates.
2. All size banners are available.
3. High CPC rates.
4. Pop-up and bounce ads.
5. Earn $10 to $100 for referrals.
6. Slide out and shadow ads available.
7. No minimum traffic required.
8. Perfect traffic and click tracking analytics.
9. Worldwide coverage.
10. Fast account activation.
11. Easy to setup ads.

Payment Methods And Minimum Payout Threshold:

You can payout with Paypal, Payoneer and Wire. Minimum payout threshold is $20 for Payoneer and Paypal while $100 for wire transfer.

How To Sign Up?

Step 1: Go to Revenue Hits.

Step 2(Site/App Information):

Type your site name, url, description, select type as website and select category of your site.

After filling up all the info click on Continue.

Step 3(Partner Information): 

On the second page type your username, first and last name, your email and password. You can also enter your skype name but it is not required.

You can also type a referral name, as I told you about revenue hits type fahimraza001. It won't affect your blog's revenue and I will get a bonus from revenue hits.

Step 4: Set your Payment type as decide later or if you want to set your paypal account or payoneer account select it and fill out details.

Step 5: Scroll down and click on "I agree to these terms and conditions".

Step 6: Finally confirm your account by going to your Email > Inbox > Revenuehits Team. Click on the link in the email you just received and open it to activate your account.

How to add revenue hits ads in blogger?

Step 1: Go to Revenue hits and login to your account.

Step 2: Click on "New Placement" on the right side of the page and choose the "Desktop Placement".

Step 3: Select your placement type from the given options e.g banner, shadow ad, slider, top bar, pop-under etc.

Step 4: Customize your ad and click on save.

Step 5: Preview your ad by clicking on an eye's icon to see your ad. Just beside it click on </> to get your ad's code.

Step 6: Copy the code and go to blogger dashboard.

Step 7: Navigate to "Layout" and click on "add a gadget".

Step 8: Click on Html/Javascript and paste your ad code.

Step 9: Click on save and you are done. Open your blog to see your ads.

You can also create ad campaigns for your mobile site. Just choose mobile placemen in the step 2 and follow other steps as they are.

Also Read: How To Show A Widget In Mobile View In Blogger

How To Disable Revenuehits POP-UP & Bounce Ads?

As you know that pop-up ads affect your site performance and user experience so most of publishers prefer to disable pop-up ads. In revenue hits there are two types of extra ads which boosts your revenue but affect the user experience too. One of these ads are pop-up ads and everybody knows what is a pop-up ad but the second one is bounce ads which is a new thing. Bounce ads are the ads which show up you go back to a page. It also affects users experience to some extent but not as much as pop-up ads. So here I'll show you how to disable pop-up and bounce ads in revenue hits.

Note: Disabling pop-up and bounce ads may reduce your revenue but it improves user experience!

Step 1: Go to Revenue hits and log-in to your account.

Step 2: Navigate to Account > Preference > Extra tag.

Step 3: Uncheck the ads which you want to disable

I hope this post helped you and you have setup your ads successfully. If you found this post helpful please let me know by leaving a comment below and also share it with others. If you have any suggestion you can tell me by contacting me. Thanks for visiting 101Helper.

Search Tags: How to add ads in blogger,how to place ads in blogspot,how to earn money online from home by blogging,create a free website to earn money,how to use revenuue hits,boost your blog's earnings

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STCnetwork's New Letterheads and Business Cards

By the time we developed our mini software firm STCnetwork and started recruiting more and more developers, it came a point where giving attention to every single office stationary became mandatory. We first started the trend of Business cards for bloggers back in 2012, we are next promoting the new trend of Letterheads for small online businesses to better portray themselves to local clients. Presentations count for 30%-50% of your business deals and contracts. The more professional you act and sound the better the rate of return on investment (ROI).

Business Card Design Changes

Company designs should be kept identical at all times without any major changes because after all keeping your identity same at all times is the whole concept behind a business logo. We have made slight changes to the web domain and email domain address. We simply replaced the blog domain address with company website URL inside the new design. We also changed NETWORK to lowercase and made the blue color a little brighter rest all things are kept the same. 

The cards are printed at both sides, matt laminated and match the size of a credit card 310g². Went through 3 + 2 color printing with dye cutting. Its designed by keeping MBT's parent design in mind, utilizing the same blue and black color combination.  The front of the card contains details about the network administration, logo and some contact details whilst the back contains my favorite quote i.e. "I blog for living"

We printed a total of 1000 copies this time:

Our previous design:

Letterhead Design Specifications

As a business, every single time you reach out a customer,  whether through an invoice, contract or offer – you’re saying something about who you are. Letterheads leave your trademark on all documentations and business correspondence that takes place. Thus a unique form of marketing that further boosts your authenticity and credibility in the eyes of customers.

Letterheads can be used for both offline and online correspondences. You can print anything inside them using a inkjet or laser printers just like you do on any A4 size paper.

We have kept the design both comprehensive and yet simple in concept. The header consists of the company logo and office address while the footer contains the company web address. We have also inserted a large faded logo inside the center-left of the paper to make things more eye catching.

These letterheads will also be used as certificates in our coming workshops and conferences. The paper consists of a thick layer of 150 g² matt paper with tri color printing

Your views?

How important do you think are letterheads for a business and have you planned designing VC and letterheads for your blog? If yes then do share the design with us by using the following shortcode inside comments:

[img src="Insert your Image Link here" width="50%" /]

Our Cards and Letterheads are designed and printed by Waqas Haider from Al - Rehman Enterprises. Waqas is a great friend and an excellent designer without doubts. I would recommend his services to anyone home or abroad. 

Do give us your feedback on this latest development and let us know what could be done to make the cards even more better. Peace and blessings buddies! =>

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Resize the Default Resolution of Thumbnails in Blogger

As promised in part9 we are sharing today the trick to resize Blogspot thumbnails. Blogger stores media thumbnails in dimensions of 72 x 72 pixels in size. All pictures that you upload inside your blog posts are stored inside JSON feed and XML feed with 72px width and 72px height. The thumbnail images are saved originally in small square sized snapshots which if stretched out using CSS distorts the original resolution of the pictures and as a result they are displayed in poor quality resolution. In this tutorial we will fix this problem by changing the original dimensions of the picture in its URL using simple JavaScript technique and using the Recent Posts widget code that we have been using so far. It is just a one liner code and quite easy to implement.

Note: Click the Button below to see full list of topics under discussion.

Topics List

Fact

The default resolution of Blogger thumbnails can never be changed using just CSS. It requires JavaScript to modify the actual URL structure.

URL structure of Thumbnails in JSON feed

You clearly know now that thumbnails are stored inside the media$thumbnail node and have the following URL structure:

If you observer the URL closely you will notice that each URL is assigned a parameter /s72-c/. Because of this parameter each thumbnail is assigned a default size of 72px by 72px i.e. Square image and cropped due to the parameter -c. The thumbnail thus gets a smaller size which when stretched using CSS gives a low quality image as shown below:

Our task is to replace this parameter with a custom variable so that the image size can be resized dynamically to any resolution we want by maintaining the aspect ratio. This will auto create a HQ thumbnail with clean and clear resolution.

The thumbnail will then appear in its original dimension with no forced width or height sizes.

The images are cropped due to the parameter  ( -c ), we will remove this to make sure the blogger thumbnails are not cropped and shown in full width.

Lets now get straight to interesting but simple coding!

Resizing Blogger Thumbnails

We will use the exact same code for recent posts widget that we shared in Part#9. All the modifications made are highlighted in pink.

<!-- ######### Writing Callback Function ############# -->
<script type="text/javascript">
//----------------------------Defaults
var ListBlogLink = window.location.hostname;
var ListCount = 5;
var TitleCount = 70;
var ListLabel =" ";
var ChrCount = 80;

var ImageSize = 100;

//----------------------------Function Start
function mbtlist(json) {
document.write('<ul class="mbtlist">');
for (var i = 0; i < ListCount; i++)
{

//-----------------------------Variables Declared
var listing= ListUrl = ListTitle = ListConten = ListContent =ListImage =thumbUrl =sk = "";
//----------------------------- Title URL
for (var j = 0; j < json.feed.entry[i].link.length; j++) {
if (json.feed.entry[i].link[j].rel == 'alternate') {
break;
}
}
ListUrl= "'" + json.feed.entry[i].link[j].href + "'";
//----------------------------------- Title Stirng
if (json.feed.entry[i].title!= null)
{
ListTitle= json.feed.entry[i].title.$t.substr(0, TitleCount);
}

//----------------------------------- Content Check

ListConten = json.feed.entry[i].content.$t;
ListContent= ListConten.replace(/(<([^>]+)>)/ig,"").substr(0, ChrCount);

//------------------------------------ Thumbnail Check

if (json.feed.entry[i].media$thumbnail)
{
thumbUrl = json.feed.entry[i].media$thumbnail.url;

sk= thumbUrl.replace("/s72-c/","/s"+ImageSize+"/");
ListImage= "'" + sk.replace("?imgmax=800","") + "'";
}

// Support For 3rd Party Images
else if (json.feed.entry[i].content.$t.match(/src=(.+?[\.jpg|\.gif|\.png]")/) != null)
{
ListImage =  json.feed.entry[i].content.$t.match(/src=(.+?[\.jpg|\.gif|\.png]")/)[1];
}

else
{
ListImage= "'https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpRQIe1EQg0y15xByop7yj0G0FRV1ctes1TTk2cgtzWHtMpNMtIe74r4DO388l3wwTHR9q6ha8KLHidnfRt8Slh2FPJz5-1yVVVPnFK8MsCkChTQl7dgSLRhAey53meqSTuMzG3RKjUTY/s200/Icon.png'";
}

//----------------------------------- Printing List
var listing = "<li><a href="
+ ListUrl+
  "><img src="
+ListImage+
"/></a><a class='mbttitle' href="
+ListUrl+
"target='_blank'>"
+ListTitle+
"</a><span class='icontent'>"
+ListContent+
" ...  <a href="
+ListUrl+
" class='imore'>»</a></span></li>";
document.write(listing);
}
document.write("</ul>");
}
</script>
<!-- ######### Invoking the Callback Function ############# -->
<script>
ListBlogLink = "http://www.mybloggertricks.com";
ListCount = 4;
TitleCount = 70;
ListLabel = "Announcement";
ChrCount = 150;

document.write("<script src='"+ListBlogLink+"/feeds/posts/default/-/"+ListLabel+"?alt=json-in-script&callback=mbtlist'></"+"script>");
</script>
<!-- ######### Styles for Look ############# -->
<link href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Oswald' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'/>
<style>
.mbtlist {list-style-type:none;overflow:hidden}
.mbtlist li {margin:0px auto 20px auto; clear:both; color:#666; font-family:Helvetica; font-size:12px; border-bottom:1px dotted #ddd;padding-bottom:10px;}
.mbtlist .mbttitle {font-family:oswald; font-size:16px; color:#0080ff; font-weight:normal; text-decoration:none;}
.mbtlist .mbttitle:hover {color:#00A5FF;}
font-family:georgia; font-size:15px; font-weight:bold}
.mbtlist div span{margin:0 10px 0 0; display:inline-block;}
.mbtlist span {display:block; margin:5px 0px 0px; padding-right:5px;}
.mbtlist .imore {font-size:16px; font-weight:bold; text-decoration:none; color:#666; line-height: 0.7em;}
.mbtlist img {float:left; margin:0px 10px 10px 0px; border:6px solid #fff; padding:0px; width:80px; height:65px; box-shadow:-1px -1px 4px #777; }
.mbtlist .icontent {text-align:justify;}

</style>

How it works?

1.  We first declared a variable ImageSize  to dynamically adjust the image size parameter from /s72-c/  to /s100-c/. 100px here means /s100-c/ i.e. 100px X 100px.

Note that image size can easily be changed using CSS as well like we have done (i.e. width:80px; height:65px). The CSS image size must always be less than or equal to ImageSize but not greater than it else the resolution will collapse. Normally thumbnails are displayed in size of 100px by 100px, if you want much larger thumbnails you can surely increase the value for ImageSize. and then customize the width and height using CSS like we did.

2. We then declared another variable sk and set it to null.

3. The third most important step is:

sk= thumbUrl.replace("/s72-c/","/s"+ImageSize+"/");

Here we first used the JavaScript replace () method to replace s72-c with ImageSize. We then saved this new Image URL inside sk. We also removed the parameter -c to prevent images from getting cropped.

4. Finally we removed the parameter ?imgmax=800 from the Image URL inside sk using the replace method and saved the new clean URL inside ListImage. 

Normal Size

 

Custom Size

I made these changes:

• set ImageSize to 150px
• set width to 130px and height to 90px

See no loss in image quality even if you stretch it to 500px!

Update: Prevent Cropping of Images

To make sure images are not cropped we removed the parameter -c from /s72-c/. The thumbnails will now look like this:

Need Help?

Let me know if you need any assistance till this part of the tutorial series. Do post your questions and let us know if you found any part confusing. In our coming tutorials we will cover Dynamic sliders, carousels and all sorts of animated widgets and much more. This is just the trailer! =>

Peace and blessings buddies! :)

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