How to Create a Static Home Page in Blogger

When it comes to home pages, most websites can be divided into two: static and non-static. As their name implies, static home pages stay permanent no matter how many times the website is updated, while non-static home pages reflect the changes that are made to the site and show the latest posts first.

The latter has become well-known nowadays due to the rising popularity of personal and even corporate blogs. However, there are still many people who prefer static home pages because it makes their websites look more organized and professional. It also gives them more control over the readers' experience on their site and helps them create stronger brand awareness through the uniform message that their home page presents.

Fortunately, if you own a Blogger site and want to make your home page static, you'll find that creating one isn't as difficult as it seems. You can create a static home page in Blogger by taking these steps:

1. Create your static home page

The first thing you should do is to create a new page for your blog. This will serve as your static home page but, for now, it will look and act like any other page in your site.

To make this page, you'll need to go to the main menu of the Blogger dashboard and click on the "Pages" option on the left side on the screen. Doing this will lead you to the "All Pages" menu window. Here, click on the "New Page" button and you'll enter an editor that looks similar to the Blogger Post editor that you use when publishing a new blog post.

At the top box, enter the title that you want for this page - in this case, let's call it the "Welcome" page. In the larger text box, type the content that you want to appear on your home page; this can be a paragraph, or two about yourself or your business and what your site is all about.

Once you're done, click "Publish". The window will return to the main "All Pages" menu, and you'll see the new "Welcome" page you've created. Copy the URL of the "Welcome" page since you'll need it later on. To do this, right click on the 'View' link and select 'Copy Link Location' from the menu.

2. Redirect the default home page to the static one

Once your "Welcome" page is up, the next thing you should do is to change Blogger's default homepage. This involves redirecting from your site's original home page to the static homepage that you've created so it would be the first thing that people see when they visit your website.

Related: How to Set Custom Redirects in Blogger

To do this, you'll need to go to main Blogger editor menu, click on "Settings" on the left side of the screen, and choose "Search Preferences". Under the "Errors and redirections" section, you'll see the "Custom Redirects" option with an "Edit" link beside it. Click on the "Edit" link to open another window, where you'll see two boxes named "From" (with your blog's URL beside it) and "To".

In the "From" box, enter only a forward slash symbol "/". In the "To" box, paste the URL that you copied earlier and add the latter part of the URL of the "Welcome" page. For instance, the page's URL of our demo blog is static-home-page.blogspot.com/welcome.html, so we'll remove the "http://static-home-page.blogspot.com" address and add only "/p/welcome.html" in the "To:" box. The "/p" signifies that it's a static page.

Next, check the little box beside "Permanent", click on the "Save" text link, and press the "Save changes" button. Doing these will redirect your site's main URL to its new static home page. Access your blog on a separate browser to see if it works.

3. Make tabs for your site

If you're not planning to make tabs visible in your blog, you can stop at Step #2. But, if you want your site to have tabs that indicate the home page, the main blog page, and other pages you may have (such as the FAQs and Contact Us pages), you'll need to take another step.

Why is this important? Basically, when visible tabs are enabled in your site, they will show that you have two existing pages: the default home page and the new "Welcome" page you've created - both of which redirect to the same static page. This can be confusing for your readers and may even affect your search engine rankings.

To fix this, you first need to enable tabs by going to the "Layout" menu item and click on the "Add a Gadget" link. You can choose to add it below your blog header or sidebar. In many cases, it's advisable to add it below blog's header since they're more visible and give your website a sleek, professional look.

Once the pop-up window opens, scroll down and click on the 'Pages' link:

This will open another window named "Configure Page List". Here, under the "Pages to show" section, you'll see the default home page and your new static homepage with small boxes beside them. Uncheck the box beside the default home page to hide it from view, check the pages that you want to display in the menu and then click on the "Save" button to save the changes.

You can stop at this point but, if you want, you can also create a specific tab that will lead to your main blog post page. To do this, edit the "Pages" gadget that you just saved and click "+ Add external link".

On the new window that would open, enter the title you'd like for the page (such as "Blog") along with /index.html web address, then hit "Save Link" and click the "Save" button on the "Configure Page List" window.

Now, view your site and you will see the pages menu containing the "Welcome" page and "Blog" tabs. To see how this works, you can also visit our demo blog. Enjoy!

Final Note

Having a static home page can be beneficial for your blog. Follow the steps above now to create a static home page in Blogger!

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How to Hide Posts from Blogger Homepage

The point of blogging is to make your blog posts visible to your target audience as well as to search engines. However, there are times when you need to hide certain blog posts from homepage. For instance, one post may contain outdated information, so you don't want it to be seen by your audience but you also want to keep it on your site for records purposes. Or perhaps you want a certain post to still be seen on your blog, but you don't want it to show in the home page.

Either way, you have to find ways to hide certain blog posts. Fortunately, if you're using Blogger, you can easily do so by taking a few simple steps. You can use this guide to get started.

Backdate Blogger Posts

Let's discuss this technique first since it's simple and doesn't require you to deal with any lines of code. Basically, the only thing you need to do is to change the publishing date of the post you want to hide; specifically, you need to backdate it to the oldest possible date. Doing this is effective if your Blogger site is configured to show the latest posts first (as most blogs are); once a post is backdated, it will no longer be shown in the home page.

How do you do this? If you're publishing a new post and want to hide it, look for the "Schedule" option on the right side of the post editor and click on "Set date and time". Choose a previous date on the calendar, click 'Done' and Save the post, then go back to your blog's home page to check if the post has disappeared.

The same process applies if you want to hide an older post; the only difference is that you need to click on the post's title in the dashboard to open it in the editor. Backdate the post using the steps above and save it, then open your blog to verify that the post is indeed hidden from view.

Please note that this process will only hide your posts from the homepage. People will still be able to see them if they'd take the time to go through your blog posts from the previous years. This is also the case for those who'd come across your hidden blog post through search engines.

Hide Blog Posts in Blogger Using Code

Another thing you can do to hide a blog post is to edit its code. This is a bit complicated since one small mistake can affect the post structure and make it unreadable. This, in turn, can affect your readers' experience as they browse through your site and even have a negative effect on your search engine optimization techniques. With this in mind, it's important to be careful when dealing with code.

Method 1: Hide Blogger Post Using the Post's label

There are two techniques to choose from, and one of them involves the label of the blog post you want to hide. If you're ready to go ahead with this method, you'll first need to make a backup of your template. Having a backup is important since it ensures you'll have a copy to fall back on in case something goes wrong.

Once you've backed up the template, go to "Templates", click on "Edit HTML" and then click anywhere inside the code area -> press CTRL + F keys and search for this line:

<b:include data='post' name='post'/>

Once you've found it, replace it with this code:

<b:if cond='data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl'>
<b:loop values='data:post.labels' var='label'>
        <b:if cond='data:label.isLast == "true"'>
            <b:if cond='data:label.name != "add label here"'>
                <b:include data='post' name='post' />
            </b:if>
        </b:if>
    </b:loop>
<b:else/>
    <b:include data='post' name='post' />
</b:if>

Note: replace the text "add label here" with the label (case sensitive) of the blog post that you want to hide in Blogger homepage. Keep in mind that above code won't work if you have multiple labels on that post, so please make sure the post has only 1 label.

Important: every post that you want to show on the homepage should have at least one label otherwise they will not be visible because the b:loop statement won't be executed for them.

Finally, Save the changes by pressing the 'Save template' button on the upper left side of the editor, then view your blog to check if the blog post has been hidden.

Method 2: Hide Blogger Post Using the Post's ID Number

Aside from the method above, you can use another technique that involves the post ID number of the blog post you'd like to hide. To know the ID number, you must go to the dashboard area, find the title of the post you want to hide, and click the "Edit" text link below it. Doing this will open the post in the Blogger editor.

Once you're in the editor, click on the address bar above and go to the end part of the URL. Here, you'll see a line of text that looks like this: postID==, followed by a long string of numbers. This is your post's ID number. The ID number usually contains 19 numbers, so it will look somehow like this: postID==1234567890123456789. Copy this ID since you'll need it for the next step.

When you have your blog post's ID, open the Blogger dashboard, go to Template, and click "Edit HTML". Search for this line:

<div class='post hentry uncustomized-post-template' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/BlogPosting'>

Replace it with this one:

<div class='post hentry uncustomized-post-template' expr:id='&quot;post-&quot; + data:post.id' itemprop='blogPost' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/BlogPosting'>

Note: if you found two occurrences of it, replace both of them.

Now search for this tag:

</head>

Once you find it, paste the following code above it:

<b:if cond='data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl'>
<style type='text/css'>
#post-1234567890123456789{display:none;}
</style>
</b:if>

Don't forget to replace "1234567890123456789" with the 19-digit ID number of the blog post you'd like to hide. Once you're done, make sure to save the template. You can open your blog in another tab or browser to check if the post has indeed been hidden.

That's it!

Whether you backdate your post or opt for the post ID method, you have to remember that the blog post you've hidden is still on your website. This means that it will still be indexed by search engines, show up on search engine results, and get found by people who are searching for the keywords that are present in the post. If you really want this blog post to be seen by no one, you'll need to use robots.txt (for Google) to remove it from search results. Better yet, completely delete the post from your Blogger dashboard and just keep a soft copy of it in your computer.

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Open Live Writer — Keyboard Shortcuts

Windows Live Writer is dead now for Blogger users and replaced with its Open Source alternative "Open Live Writer (OLW)" which is the perfect blogging toolkit for publishers using Wordpress, Blogger, TypePad and all other popular blogging CMS platforms. As an addicted user of this new blog editor I just figured out some useful keyboard shortcuts that you can use to save time updating your blog using Open Live Writer. I have compiled below the complete list of keyboard shortcuts supported by OLW. Indeed most of these shortcuts are inherited from OLW's parent - Microsoft's Windows Live Writer.

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

OLW Topic List

Following is a categorized list of the most common keyboard shortcuts used in Open Live Writer:

BLOG & POSTING Shortcuts

Shortcut	Function
Ctrl + N	Creates a new post
Ctrl + G	Creates a new page
Ctrl + O	Open recently posted
Ctrl + S	Save a post
Ctrl + Shift + P	Publish a post
Ctrl + Shift + D	Post draft to blog
Ctrl + K	Insert hyperlink
Ctrl + J	Add picture from computer
Ctrl + Shift + C	Set categories or Labels
Ctrl + Shift + J	Add picture from the web
Shift + F11	Switch to source view
Ctrl + F11	Update blog theme
F11	Switch to edit view
F12	Switch to preview view
F2	See post properties like keywords and post date

TEXT Formatting Shortcuts

Shortcut	Function
Ctrl + B	Bold
Ctrl + I	Italicize
Ctrl + H	Strikethrough
Ctrl + U	Underline
Ctrl + =	Subscript
Ctrl + Shift + =	Superscript
Ctrl + Shift + L	Bullets
Ctrl + Space	Clear formatting
Ctrl + E	Center text
Ctrl + L	Align text left
Ctrl + R	Align text Right
Ctrl + Shift + N	New paragraph
Ctrl + Left Alt + 1	Heading 1
Ctrl + Left Alt + 2	Heading 2
Ctrl + Left Alt + 3	Heading 3
Ctrl + Left Alt + 4	Heading 4
Ctrl + Left Alt + 5	Heading 5
Ctrl + Left Alt + 6	Heading 6
Ctrl + Left Shift	Set text direction from left to right (Only available in RTL mode)
Ctrl + Right Shift	Set text direction from right to left (Only available in RTL mode)

PHOTO Editing Shortcuts

Shortcut	Function
PrntScr + Ctrl + V	Takes screenshot from your desktop screen and then press Ctrl + V to paste it in OLW

GENERAL Shortcuts

Shortcut	Function
Ctrl + X	Cut
Ctrl + C	Copy
Ctrl + V	Paste
Ctrl + Left Alt + V	Ctrl+Left Alt+V
Ctrl + A	Select all
Ctrl + F	Find
Ctrl + Z	Undo
Ctrl + Y	Redo
Ctrl + P	Print
Ctrl + F1	Show or hide ribbon
F1	Get Help for OLW

Need Help?

This is so far the complete list of keyboard shortcuts which are supported by Open Live Writer's latest build. I will keep updating the list to add more useful shortcuts. I hope this makes your posting hobby even more worthwhile. Let me know if you needed any help. Peace and blessings buddies! =)

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Open Live Writer — Edit Blog Labels and Pages

Now when Windows Live Writer is dead and Open Live Writer has taken its place as its Open source clone, many blogger users have started complaining about errors and absence of features in OLW. We have already discussed how to fix these OLW errors and today we will share some exciting tweaks to help you organize blog labels and edit Blogger static Pages using the new Open Live Writer. Note that the official download copy of OLW has no option to set categories but do supports to add/create stand-alone pages but with this simple tweak you will be able to create new categories and assign multiple categories to a post. This tutorial is first time shared online to help you make the best possible use of OLW's unreleased features.

• READ: What exactly are labels or Categories in Blogger?

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

OLW Topics List

Category Option is available only in the Nightly Copy

Inside your OLW window, Click the tab "Blog Account" followed by "Blog options"

Then click the link "See blog capabilities" just below the password field.

 

You can clearly see that the following options are not supported:

• Categories
• Multiple Categories 
• New Categories

Which means neither can you apply a label or multiple labels nor can you create a new label for your blog posts.

To enable the Category box, you will need to download and install the "Nightly" setup copy.

Download OLW (Build 0.5.1.2) - Nightly

Difference between Nightly and Release

According to Scott hanselman (OLW co-developer) they have two builds of Open Live Writer, the NIGHTLY (they build it many times a day) and the RELEASE. They use the nightly for testing, but it means that Open Live Writer will be downloading 5 megabytes every day, a few times a day and updating itself with features they are testing. Release copy is updated a few times a year, maybe once a month but the Nightly copy is updated on daily basis to test new features. .

So if you want to get the most updated copy each time just like I did and had the benefit of getting an extra feature of "Category", you can surely uninstall your Release copy and replace it with a Nightly one.

No Category Option in Release

Category Option in Nightly

As you can see there exists a Category box just to the left of "Set post date" utility.

Organize Labels in Open Live Writer

(1) Setting a Label

Blogger labels are case sensitive but OLW has handled this problem quite smartly. You don't need to worry about letter casing while assigning labels to your posts in OLW. All you need to take care is to ensure you are not making any spelling mistakes.

For example if your blogger label is "Affiliate Marketing" , you can easily set this label to your post inside OLW by writing "affiliate marketing" or even "AffiLiatE markETING" , no matter what you write as long as the spelling is correct, OLW will apply the label correctly. Spelling mistakes would create new labels in your blog!

To set multiple labels to a blog post, comma separate labels inside the "Category box" . As shown below:

(2) Create a New Label

You can also create new labels inside Open Live Writer to tag your blog posts.

Simply write down your new Label inside the "Category Box" and publish your post to Blogger! That's it.

New Label will be created and added automatically to your blog post. Thus OLW helps better organization of your blog categories. You can easily create, remove or apply label to a specific post but if you wish to delete a label from your blog completely then you will need to do that through your blogger dashboard.

Creating and Editing a Static Page

This is an amazing new feature that OLW has which "Windows Live Writer" lacked. This option was only available for WordPress blogs but now thanks to "Open Live Writer" opensource courtesy, blogspot users can create static pages for their blog using OLW editor.

To create a new Page go to File Menu > New post > Choose "New page"

That's it! Give your page a title and hit publish.

To delete a Static Page in blogger, you will need to do that by going to Blogger > Pages

Need Help?

Let me know if you needed any assistance in better understanding the technical configurations of OLW. I would love to help. I hope this tutorial series may help most of you in better configuring the blogging tool. Peace and blessings buddies! =)

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Stop Blogger from Redirecting Blogspot to Country Specific URLs

Let's say you're from France and have set up - just for examples sake - a blog called frenchlitgeek.blogspot.com where you share your thoughts and insights on French literature. Now, with Google's country specific redirection in Blogger, you might be redirected to frenchlitgeek.blogspot.fr when you try to access your site. The thing is, you perfectly liked the .com and didn't sign up for the .fr but you find yourself being directed there. Sure, your blog works and all but you also wonder why.

Why Did Google Do This?

Google has always supported the expression of views, and they stated as much on their official blog. In the post Free expression and controversial content on the web, which was published in 2007, it said "Our world would be a very boring place if we all agreed all the time. So, while people may strongly disagree with what someone says, or think that a particular newspaper is total nonsense, we recognize that each of us have the right to an opinion."

The post continued, "We also know that letting people express their views freely has real practical benefits. Allowing individuals to voice unpopular, inconvenient or controversial opinions is important. Not only might they be right (think Galileo) but debating difficult issues in the open often helps people come to better decisions".

While the company is clearly on the side of people freely expressing their opinions, they also believe that a line has to be drawn somewhere. Then again, for a company providing services in over 100 countries around the world and each with their own national laws and cultural norms, it's surely difficult for a company like Google to decide where to draw boundaries.

However, there are cases like child pornography which is illegal in just about any country where decisions are clear cut.

For a company whose products are "specifically designed to help people create and communicate, to find and share information and opinions across the world", how does Google deal with this challenge?

One of the most challenging areas where Google deals with issues regarding free expression is in Blogger, their content generation platform. Since Google can't check what you've written before you publish, they rely on active vocal users who are diligent in alerting the proper if a post borders on offensive. Then again, that in itself is a tricky issue as well because what one person may view as offensive, another might not.

In other words, it's always a work in progress with Google.

Fast forward to January 9, 2012 when Google announced it was making changes to the Blogger platform with regards to censorship. That said change would make use of a country specific domain to the Blogger platform. Doing this would allow Google to censor and remove content specific to a certain country.

In their announcement, Google said: "Migrating to localized domains will allow us to continue promoting free expression and responsible publishing while providing greater flexibility in complying with valid removal requests pursuant to local law. By utilizing ccTLDs, content removals can be managed on a per country basis, which will limit their impact to the smallest number of readers."

The move by Google come after pressure from countries like India that are working on hunting down content on social media sites which are considered inappropriate. Also, the move followed closely on the heels of Twitter's new censorship policies.

Since Google aims to "help people create and communicate, to find and share information and opinions across the world", it would be strange to take down a post that was just banned in a certain area. In essence, with country specific redirection, a piece of content can still be accessible by the world save for the country where it was blocked.

How Would Country Specific Redirection Affect Your Site?

Of course, not all site owners greeted the country specific URL change with open arms. A few of the issues brought up in regard to the change include:

1. A reduction in social stats. These are your Facebook Likes, Google +1s and so on from your blog posts. They might be reduced because the URLs from one blog post will be different depending on where your readers are from.

2. A problem with external commenting platforms. If you use Disqus - for example - for your comments section, then you might run into trouble because blog URLs will be different even if essentially the page being accessed is just the same.

3. A slight problem with AdSense earnings. Some users have complained about seeing a dip in their earnings when their pages are served through country specific domains.

4. An issue with link juice. You want external sites to link to you and not your country specific URL. But the issue here is that you can't control how others link to your page. They might use the top level domain or they might use the country code top-level domain.

Stop Blogger from Redirecting to Country-Specific Domains

If country specific redirection affects important factors such as traffic and link juice, and you need those in order to rank well, what can you possibly do? Well, thankfully, Google has provided a way to get around this. All you have to do is add an ncr/ to the end of the URL - ncr here stands for No Country Redirect. So basically, it goes frenchlitgeek.blogspot.com/ncr/.

That solution is great but do you want your users to always have to do that every time they visit your blog? To eliminate that hassle, and for the good of your site statistics, a simple redirection script will do the trick. Here's how:

1. Log in to your Blogger account.

2. Click on Template → Edit HTML.

3. Find the <head> tag in the HTML editor by opening the search box using Ctrl + F.

4. Copy the redirection code seen below after the <head> tag.

<script type="text/javascript">
var blog = document.location.href.toLowerCase();
if (!blog.match(/\.blogspot\.com/)) {
blog = blog.replace(/\.blogspot\..*?\//, ".blogspot.com/ncr/");
window.location.replace(blog);
}
</script>

5. Click on "Save Template".

Credit: labnol.com

And that's it! Whenever someone accesses your Blogger, they'll be taken to the top level domain rather than the country specific one.

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7 Search Engine Optimization Tips for Bloggers

SEO, as you might have already know, is an acronym for search engine optimization. In the simplest of words, it's the way search engines like Google.com, Yahoo.com, Bing.com and others present your page in users' search results on their sites.

Cool, how do they that?

Well, they do that via sophisticated software tools, called spiders. Consider the whole internet as an empty room, with air particles as websites. Now sneak a spider into that room. Each tiny step that this spider would take now is essentially crawling a website (as the room is dark and full of websites). This is how search engines crawl through the web picking up site after site, studying them and ranking them. This ranking is important, really important. A higher ranked website by Google will always be on the first page of Google's search results for a related query compared to a lower ranked one.

So, in order to get ranked higher, you and I need SEO. SEO is like black pepper without which fried egg might not taste 'that' tastier. In simple words, in order for search engines to find your site and rank it higher than others in your field, you need to optimize it. Let's see how with these 7 simple tips.

Ways to SEO Optimize your Blog

Before starting with our 7 simple tips for a quality SEO, it's important to broadly classify those tips into two basic areas, on the basis of origin:

On-page Optimization

Refers to optimization of your actual web content including your HTML code, your text, as well as graphic content.

Off-page optimization

Off-page optimization, however, deals with things like backlinks (hyperlinks pointing to you site from other websites, apps and networks).

1. Create SEO Friendly Blog Post Titles

Post titles are important for SEO. They really are since they are deal makers or breakers. Whenever you write something, make sure you give proper attention to the post's title. Make your titles simple, intriguing, descriptive and gullible so that people may know what is this all about and what to expect. An even better approach is to wear searchers shoes while giving a title and think how would you Google it if you were looking for content like this.

Also, don't forget to include keywords in your title and keep it under 70 characters (or search engines would crop it before looking).

2. Improve the quality of your content

If you think 'content' isn't important for SEO, think again! Your content is the most important part of your site. While writing, don't copy-paste from elsewhere, don't stuff it with keywords alone, don't bombard it with images and multimedia files and don't write any lesser than 300 words. These all would affect your ratings quite poorly.

So, write original, use keywords in scenarios instead of straying them around (like I didn't use SEO here, SEO there in every next line), use images where they suffice and make sure you name them properly to appear in image search results, i.e. an image with the "img009.jpg" name would never appear in the image search results but "tips_to_success.jpg" would. The best would be to use text content and wrap them proper in HTML tags like <H2></H2> etc. (search engines likes content this way). Also, make sure your blog post's length is somewhere between 300-500 words - crossing over is fine but lesser isn't.

3. Keywords are keys

Keywords are terms that others may use to search for your content. While keywords are important for SEO, don't go on and stuff your site with keywords. This would make your content appear like a spam to spiders, who would neglect it henceforth.

Ideal is that once you have chosen your title (and included your keyword in it, as I have added keyword SEO in title above), use it in page URL, in your starting and ending paragraphs, as well as in article body where required without sounding awkward. Additionally, you may link it using anchor text to relevant resources in and out of site.

Adding keyword in the post URL using Custom Permalink

4. Meta-tags are important, but not 'that' much

If we had been living in early part of 21st century, meta tags might have done all the SEO for your site. Unluckily, we aren't. Google and other search engines have long left using meta-tags for finding site information. Hence, if someone tells you meta-tagging is all you need for your sites SEO, tell them it isn't.

Nevertheless, it's important that you use your keywords in your meta-data. Some themes already do that for you, if they don't (you can check that using page source or using view source code from browser), don't sweat. You can use 3rd party plugins like All in One SEO Pack and Scribe.

5. Socialize!

Make others talk about your site and share your content on social media sites or their blogs. It gets even better if somehow sites with high ratings link back to your site. This makes spiders think that you are someone important that everyone these days is talking about, resulting in enhancing your ratings dramatically.

Guest posting is another good approach for that. Comment on other sites, make friends with bloggers (best in business) and make them comment at yours. These tiny little things do matter a lot, resulting in enhanced SEO of your site.

6. Link in and Link-Out

Hyperlinks or Links are important from SEO perspective. You can use them to:

Link out to other sites, networks and posts, or even to your previous posts (also called inbound or backlinks) using anchor element with keyword.

Or even better, make others to link in to you, via sharing your content on their sites or social media networks.

As mentioned, an even outstanding strategy for building links is guest posting.

7. Write Often

Sites with new content every day, or twice thrice a week have still far better ratings than those who post every fortnight. A better incoming content frequency makes spider come to your site regularly, resulting in better ratings and enhanced SEO.

Are we done then? Well, trust me - your sites rating is in your hands, not in Google or Yahoo. SEO is just about doing things neatly and in a sophisticated manner. Walk your site these 7 steps for a quality SEO and you will witness the difference yourself at Google, if no place else.

Remember, code clean, write original, socialize... this is what SEO is all about!

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A Bulletproof Password: Is It Really Possible?

The recent Sony hack has everybody on edge, especially since it turns out that the files leaked also contained the passwords to a bunch of Sony emails, social media accounts and web server accounts. While, yes, it looks like so super powerful, pro-level hackers were hired to do the job, that doesn't negate the fact that Sony has some top notch security. And if Sony’s security can be breached to such a deep Wiki-leaks level, what does that mean for the rest of us whose security profiles are decidedly less intense?

Note: We found this peace of information extremely useful for all MBT readers and loyal customers. Since we have moved our hosting to Cloud therefore we would keep you updated with all latest software tools that we use so that you could be equally benefited and sustain a secure online business.

As someone who makes a living with music online, keeping your information and intellectual property safe is literally the key to your livelihood. Imagine what would happen if someone got access to your backing tracks or demos or somehow took your systems hostage. It’s scary, right? So what do you do? How do you keep your information and property safe?

Most of the time, as simplistic as it sounds, keeping your intellectual property and account information safe is a matter of choosing the right username and password combination. A lot of people, in spite of the multitude of warnings against this, stick with a single username and password combination for every login they have. This is the worst thing you can do! Yes, keeping track of literally a dozen (or more) different username and password combinations is difficult, but it is not impossible.

Stop Using One Login Code

Even the people who do create a variety of username and password combinations aren't keeping those combinations very safe. Most of them are still doing things like keeping usernames and passwords on post-its on their monitors or are writing them down in other very easy to find places. Worse still, people are creating text files in which all of their username and password combinations are kept. Talk about giving away the keys to the kingdom! 

If you are worried about keeping those details safe but aren't confident in your ability to remember them, spend some time hunting down the best password manager you can find to protect them against hackers and other threats. The security software company Trend Micro says a password management system secures your browser and uses keystroke encryption to protect your passwords.

Pass Phrases Are Better

Most companies, when you are creating your passwords, require you to use upper and lowercase letters, numbers, spaces, special symbols and the coordinates of your underground bunker. Believe it or not, that random assortment of letters, numbers and pound signs isn’t the super safe password that most believe it is. This is because most people still choose a single word and then “l33t speak” it to include the numbers, special characters, etc.  A single word, even “l33t”ed out, is still relatively easy to hack.

A much better approach, writes Null-Bytes, is to create a passphrase. This is where you string together a few words to create a really long password and then include all of the upper, lower, numbers, symbols, etc required by the server. The longer the password, the harder it is for a hacker to break and if you use a phrase, it’ll be easier for you to remember. 

Suspicion is Your Friend

Most people know, when that monthly email from PayPal turns up, screaming about account breaches, etc, that it’s a phishing scam. They know to go directly to PayPal using their web browser and not to click on anything within the email. Phishers, though, they’re getting more sophisticated. Phishers recently used text messaging to dupe Wells Fargo customers out of their social security numbers. GoDaddy account holders have also seen a spike in phishing attempts.

Remember the rule: never click on anything in an email or a text that references one of your accounts. Never give out information over the phone or through the mail. Whenever you are contacted regarding an account, the best thing to do is to then contact the account holding company directly and talk to someone there. 

You can be safe online. You can protect your information. You just have to be careful and smart. The most successful data breaches aren’t huge like Heartbleed. They’re small and seemingly innocuous. Always keep your guard up!

What are your views on creating a bulletproof password and ensuring 100% security of your online assets? Was your data ever compromised? Do share your precious views by posting your experiences. Peace and blessings! 

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Use Dropbox To Host Your WordPress Website Images

Dropbox is a great way to share content with the world easily. It offers hot-linking to images which is useful. Recently we talked about how hosting your media content on a faster third-party server can help you out in many ways. If you're a Dropbox user, you can use your Dropbox storage to host images from your small to medium-sized website. Today, we'll talk about using Dropbox as an external media storage for your WordPress site.

Some third-party platforms have the advantage of speed. Typical web servers might not be well suited to serve media content quickly, especially large files. So these third party platforms can take care of that.

But the biggest advantage of your own personal cloud storage is the peace of mind. You can never trust free third-party image storage websites. But Dropbox and other such cloud storages are another story. Secondly, exporting/migrating your blog is a huge hassle if there's a lot of media content as well. Third-party servers give you peace of mind during migration, because you only have to move the text content. It is faster, and much more convenient.

Hosting images on Dropbox

If you're running a WordPress blog, you can easily host your images on Dropbox.

• Log into your WordPress dashboard and go to Plugins >> Add New


• Search for the plugin named "Pressbox"  and install it.

• Go to Settings >> Pressbox


• You will see a set of instructions to get a Dropbox API. Both the “Key” and “Secret” codes are needed to connect your blog to Dropbox. This step is needed to prevent unauthorized access to your Dropbox account. Follow the instructions to the letter and you’ll be just fine.

• After acquiring the codes, press the “Connect your Blog to Dropbox” button and you can start using images in your Dropbox folder for your blog posts.

But why go through all that trouble if using images from the Dropbox public folder is as easy as copying and pasting the public URLs (as discussed in this article)? Well, first, Pressbox allows users to use images from any folder within your Dropbox account. Second, users don’t have to go back and forth between their blog and Dropbox account to fetch the image’s URL. Instead, you can easily add images using Pressbox’s code.

Pressbox also allows users to set their default path for a file list and favorite folders. You can use the “/Photos” folder as the default, but I’d suggest you go one folder deeper. Create another folder inside Photos and use it as the default.

If everything is set, you can easily put your blog images inside your chosen folder and add them using “[pressbox path=/Folder/imagename.extension]“. So if you want to add sunset.jpg inside the Pictures folder, you will write [pressbox path=/Pictures/sunset.jpg].

You can also browse and insert the pictures you want via the new “From Dropbox” menu in the “Add an Image” pop-up window.

The only thing you should consider if you choose to use Dropbox is the storage limit. With a 2GB storage limit for free accounts and an average 100KB image size, you can store up to 20,000 images. It’s a good idea to create a new Dropbox account specifically for this purpose.

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Should You Host Blog Images On An External Server?

For most blogs and websites out there, the bulk of their size comes from images. For videos, most bloggers resort to any of the video sharing websites such as YouTube, Vimeo and so on. But what about images and other media content? It only makes sense to host large images on a faster third-party server as well. Fortunately for bloggers, this isn't an alien concept. There are much faster servers out there known as CDNs (Content Delivery Networks). We'll talk about using third-party services for hosting your images.

A lot of professional blog networks and websites use CDNs for delivering images faster. These CDNs often do not come cheap. But there are inexpensive options, as well as some free ones.

Why go third-party at all?

The advantages of third-party servers are numerous. The most obvious one is speed. Typical web servers might not be well suited to serve media content quickly, especially large files. CDNs take care of that problem since they're built for media capabilities.

Secondly, exporting/migrating your blog is a huge hassle if there's a lot of media content as well. Third-party servers give you peace of mind during migration, because you only have to move the text content. It is faster, and much more efficient.

Hosting images on external servers

Hosting images on external servers is easy. There are many well-known image services that you can use. Many are free as well. We're always skeptical of 'free' services out there, be they email, web hosting or any other software service. So we probably wouldn't recommend trusting these services completely.

This is not to say that third-party networks are bad. Some of these are really well-known services, and many people trust them. However, I'd take a little pinch of salt when trusting them entirely with my blog images.

Well known image services

With that said, let's look at some of the most well known image services out there you can use for free.

1. Photobucket

Photobucket is by far our top pick, It is so easy to use and its free. You can upload a variety of image sizes and image files, you can even upload videos. The image url is SO easy to find. You simply upload your image add it to an album and hover over the image to grab the code - simple.

The site is very user friendly and easy to navigate. Now if you have a site that stores and hot links MASS amounts of images (very rare) then Photobucket is not for you, but if you have an ordinary blog and just need somewhere to store post images etc..... Photobucket gives you a ton of space and it's free.

2. Flickr

Perhaps not the easiest to work with, but this one is full of features. Yahoo gives you an insane amount of storage - 1 TB - absolutely for free! And Flickr has come a long way from the frustrating UI to the feature-rich offering that it today.

Conclusion

So the question remains, should you use these services? Is it SEO friendly? In my opinion, these services are very trustworthy, and have an excellent trust rating. So you need not worry about them 'running away' with your pictures. However, do be mindful of their terms and conditions, especially if you're acting as a business.

Also, there's no SEO disadvantage in using a third-party image hosting service. It's how you present your content that matters, not where it is hosted physically.

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How To Optimize Video Captions For Search Engines?‏

Transcripts and captions are a way to enhance the video-viewing experience for users. They supplement the audio to help viewers better understand what's being said. Similar to subtitles in a movie, you can add captions to a your YouTube videos which are not only played with the video, but can also be shown separately and made clickable. In this post, we'll talk about captioning your YouTube videos.

Why caption videos?

Captioning makes it easier for people to understand what's being said. This can be especially helpful for those with a hearing disability. But it doesn't just serve accessibility purposes. Non-native language speakers have a harder time understanding spoken words, and written text can increase comprehension.

Besides, captions make video text searchable by search engines, so you can increase your chances of getting found in search results.

How to caption a video?

Captions files are usually in Subtitle formats, such as .SUB or .SRT. They have time-stamps with the lines as well. A typical Captions file would look like this

0:00:03.490,0:00:07.430
This is the first line
0:00:07.430,0:00:11.600
This is another line
0:00:11.600,0:00:14.009
This is the last line
0:00:14.009,0:00:15.889
[pause]

You can manually add time-stamps for your video in a text file, and save it with a .SUB or .SRT extension.

You should have your captions ready before moving on. Log into your account on YouTube, and click on your username on the top-right corner of your screen. Then click on Video Manager to manage your uploads.

You can add transcripts to your existing videos, or you can upload new videos. Next your uploaded videos, you will see an Edit option, and an arrow next to it. Click on the arrow, and select the Captions and Subtitles options.

Next, you'll see the Add New Caption or Transcript option. You can now upload a transcript or caption file, which will automatically be integrated with your video once the initial processing is done. And that's it! You should now see a transcript button when you open your Videos' public link. Make sure before uploading the file whether you have selected the correct language, and whether it is a caption or transcript. Both work differently, so make sure you choose the appropriate option.

You can turn on captions for any Video (if provided). This could be a great help for non-native speakers of the video's language. So upload them now, and make your videos more accessible and get one step ahead in marketing your videos!

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Where To Find Free Blogger Backgrounds and Textures

Blogger is a fantastic tool for amateur and professional writers that have a passion for publishing online content. Unlike WordPress or hosting companies that require you to design your site before ever getting started, Blogger is a ready to go service right out of the box that will allow you to start writing for yourself or others on day one. The effort required to sign up for an account is minimal, and you can really get as creative as you want, whenever you want.

Even if you aren't familiar with web development or design, that's okay. Blogger is a place for everyone. Thanks to the overwhelming support of the Blogger and creative communities, there are plenty of free to use resources out there to make your site look great and keep you focused on what you love best. Here are some of the top sites for acquiring blogger backgrounds that won't cost you a dime and will look incredible.

Shabby Blogs

Shabby blogs offers some unique texture and graphic rendered Blogger backgrounds to choose from. All of the designs that they have are created to be standard width so you don't get a lot of flexibility to choose from; however, there are guides out there that can teach you how to extend the sidebars, header, and footer of your screen if you find one you love and this is something important to you. In addition to offering Blogger backgrounds Shabby blogs also has a section for cute little buttons that you can add to your site to give it an extra special touch.

Hot Bliggity Blog

Aside from having one of the coolest and creative names to say out loud, Hot Bliggity Blog has a wide selection of patterned-based blogs for your site. You can choose between different color schemes, and they also offer three different sizes to pick from, standard, widened, and full width. Best of all, they are really easy to install. All you have to do is click on the install link underneath the image. From there it will copy the code for you into your clipboard and give you instructions on where to paste it.

Dotty Dot Dot

Dotty Dot is the place to go if you like geometric type backgrounds that are heavy on squares, plaid, circles, and of course dots. The website is a little bit hard to navigate, but they have a sidebar with a bunch of tags to help you sort through all the available templates and find something you like. Just about every color you can imagine is available if you plan on matching your Blogger backgrounds to your favorite color or font style. The widths of the most of the templates vary so some have heavy padded sidebars, whereas some are very skinny.

LeeLou Blogs

Lee Lou Blogs offers Blogger backgrounds that look a lot like you would find in a scrapbook with a heavy dependency on small pictures and vector graphics. These free templates would go great with any home improvement blog or DIY arts and crafts writer. Most of the free backgrounds are standard size with the high padded sides, but like anything you can get access to more templates if you want to take advantage of any of his premium designs.

CgTextures

If you just want something basic real basic that won't distract customers from your content, you can head over to CgTextures. Their site is full of photos and textures that could be added as a background image with a reduced transparency. The blog would still look great and you wouldn't have to worry as much about trying to match your font style and color so that it fits in with the background. Instead you can draw more focus on what's important and less on the site's bells and whistles.

Every Stock Photo

Bloggers that want less of an 'artsy' look to their site and instead more of a serious appeal can get a picture from Every Stock Photo to use as the background image. You can also benefit by using some of the pictures offered through this site within your blog posts so that you aren't stuck buying things from premium image providers. There search bar and navigation panel makes it easy to find exactly what you are looking for to see a unique feel to every page.

Shizoo-Design

Shizoo-Design is a German based design firm with about 554 different patterns to choose from. You can find everything from conservative shapes to abstract rainbows and splashes of color. All of the textures are provided in a range of size, anywhere from 1000x700 pixels to 1300x600 pixels so that they will comfortably fit your entire site's background and work with most browsers and computer screen sizes. Brushes and custom icons are also available from the site, free of charge.

Patterns of Change

Patterns of Changes offers Blogger backgrounds that are cartoon oriented and that can best be tiled across the screen. The site is perhaps one of the easiest to use compared to all the others on the screen, providing a simple navigation bar where you can choose what color you'd like the pattern to be. When you select one of the colors provided, it will come up with a bunch of different patterns usually associated with that color. For instance, when the color brown is selected, one of the choices ia brown cake. Blogger backgrounds for this site might not be the best choice for business professionals, but they certainly are fun.

How to Add a Background Image using the Blogger Template Designer

If you have a background image that you want to upload, then follow these steps:

1. Log into your Blogger account and go to "Template", press the "Customize" button on the right side. Once the Blogger template designer has opened, you'll see the Background option on the left - click on it:

2. Now click on the box below the Background image title and it will open a window from where we can select a default background image. On the upper left side of this window, click Upload Image and select the image you would like to use from a location on your computer.

Note that you should use a JPG, GIF, or PNG image that is no more than 300k in size. If your image is too large, then you can use the Kraken.io image optimizer to make the image file smaller.

3. After you've uploaded your image, click 'Done' and you'll be taken back to the background menu. Here you will see additional options like: "Alignment", "Tile" and "Scroll with page":

• Alignment: change the position of the background image to start either horizontal (left, center, right) or vertical (top and bottom);
• Tile (Repeat): if you want a small background image to fill the page, choose to repeat (tile) horizontally and/or vertically.
• Scroll with page: the box is checked by default, this means that the background scroll along with the page contents. If you want the background picture to not move as the page is scrolled and stay exactly where it is, uncheck this box.

4. For a background image with plain color in the middle for content, you might want to remove the main and header background. Navigate to "Advanced" > "Backgrounds" and type the word "transparent" inside the "Main Background" and "Header Background" box:

5. If the background is smaller than the content area, we can fix this using CSS. Scroll down and click on the Add CSS option, then paste this CSS code inside the box:

body {
background-size: 200%;
}

.body-fauxcolumn-outer .cap-top {
background: none;
}

Note: to change the size of the background, modify the 200% value in red.

Once you're happy with the results, press the 'Apply to blog' button and enjoy the new background for your site.

How to Change Background in a Custom Blogger Template

Sometimes the above options might not appear in some custom Blogger templates if the body.background variable hasn't been defined. In this case, we will need to access the HTML of the template:

1. Go to "Template" and click the "Edit HTML" button, then click anywhere inside the code area. Press the CTRL + F keys to open the Blogger search box:

2. Paste or type the following tag inside the search box and hit Enter to find it:

]]></b:skin>

3. Immediately before the ]]></b:skin> tag, paste one of the following code snippets:

For a large background image:

body {
background-image: url(IMAGE-URL.png) !important;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-position: center top;
background-attachment: fixed;
background-size: 100%;
}

Note: the no-repeat value prevents the image from repeating either vertically or horizontally. Use background-repeat: repeat-y if you'd like the image to repeat vertically, or background-repeat: repeat-x if you want it to repeat only horizontally. To increase the size of the background, change the 100% value.

If using a repeating pattern, add this CSS code instead:

body {
background-image: url(IMAGE-URL.png) !important;
background-repeat: repeat;
background-position: center top;
background-attachment: fixed;
}

4. Open a new tab and upload your background image to Blogger or an image hosting site, and copy the URL of your hosted image to your clipboard. If you don't know how to do it, please take a look at this tutorial.

After you copied it, replace the text highlighted in blue from above with your image url.

5. Finally, Preview the template to ensure that the background image appears as you want, and press the "Save template" button to save your changes. That's it!

Using the 8 sites listed above, you have a wide range to choose from when creating a site that really represents you. Given the right tools, designing you blog can be a fun hobby to enjoy that can spark your creativity and improve the quality of your writing. With such a large selection, the hardest part of setting up your new theme will be finding which one you like best.

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