Category: Miscellaneous

Some personal updates, opinion pieces and miscellaneous content

  • How to fix blurry images on Blogger

    How to fix blurry images on Blogger

    I had a couple of questions last night about images on Blogger appearing blurry and more pixelated than normal. I then noticed tweets and comments on the Blogger forum saying the same thing. I don’t know if anything has changed or if it was just a glitch on Blogger this week but here’s how to…

  • How to set up a custom domain on Blogger using 1&1

    How to set up a custom domain on Blogger using 1&1

    I’ve had a couple of emails lately about how to set up a custom domain on Blogger using a domain name from 1&1. I don’t have much experience with 1&1 having never used them myself but the experience I do have is enough for me not to recommend them to clients. If you do a…

  • Changing from Blogger Subdomain to another Subdomain

    Changing from Blogger Subdomain to another Subdomain

    This post will explain the steps for changing your blog address/URL on Blogger from a subdomain (.blogspot.com) to a new subdomain (.blogspot.com). This can be quite a confusing and difficult change as Blogger don’t offer a way to automatically redirect your readers. To help you understand the instructions better I’m going to use the example…

  • Changing from a Blogger subdomain to a custom domain

    Changing from a Blogger subdomain to a custom domain

    This post will explain the steps if you are changing from a Blogger subdomain (blogname.blogspot.com) to a custom domain (customdomain.com). This is probably the easiest URL change to make in terms of steps as Blogger makes it as automatic as possible. 1. Read the first part of this post on how to smoothly change your…

  • How to smoothly change your domain without losing followers or SEO ranking

    How to smoothly change your domain without losing followers or SEO ranking

    how to smoothly change your URL – step 1 preparation, what do to before your change your blog name. It’s so important to think about this checklist before switching your blog address, so you don’t lose readers along the way!

  • Why I moved from Bloglovin’ to Feedly to follow my favourite blogs

    Why I moved from Bloglovin’ to Feedly to follow my favourite blogs

    For the past few years, I’ve used Bloglovin to keep up with all the blogs I follow. I loved that I could see recent posts from my favourite blogs and organise them, simply! With their focus shifting and new features, I feel like Bloglovin’ is moving away from being a simple RSS feed reader and…

  • Add an Instagram widget to your sites sidebar

    Add an Instagram widget to your sites sidebar

    Instagram, although limiting, can be a fantastic marketing tool. It’s visual, personal and it doesn’t really feel like you’re being sold something. It gives bloggers and business owners an opportunity to be creative, to show some personality, to showcase snippets of their work and give their audience a behind the scenes look at what they…

  • How to publish posts and pages on Blogger

    How to publish posts and pages on Blogger

    Way back when I started this blog I did a series called How to Start a Blog and one of the posts was A Beginners Guide to Blogger.com where I gave an overview of the dashboard and how to set up a blog on Blogger. In this post I’ll be discussing how to set up…

  • How to properly use labels as categories on Blogger

    How to properly use labels as categories on Blogger

    Blogger has made categorising posts pretty simple, however it’s something that is often overlooked or misused. Categorising your posts helps organise your blog letting your readers find what they are looking for. On Blogger, categories are called labels. Whenever you create a post, in the post editor on the right, you have the option of…

  • Comparing 3 main commenting systems for Blogger

    Comparing 3 main commenting systems for Blogger

    I’ve got a couple of requests lately to do a post about the different commenting systems for Blogger, more specifically to compare Google Plus and Disqus. This post is an overview of the features, advantages and disadvantages of the three main commenting systems for Blogger. BLOGGER COMMENTS Blogger’s default comment system seems to get mixed…

  • How to embed your latest youtube video on your blog

    How to embed your latest youtube video on your blog

    Surprisingly YouTube still don’t have a way to easily embed only your latest YouTube video onto your site so that every time you upload a new video it automatically updates on your site. WordPress users can download a plugin which allows this but Blogger users have the option of two gadgets (listed below), although neither…

  • Add a contact form to page on Blogger

    Add a contact form to page on Blogger

    Bloggers contact gadget is a really easy way to add a contact form to your blog, however since it’s a gadget you can only place it in your sidebar or footer which is kind of an awkward place for a contact form. This tutorial will show you how to move it to it’s own page…

  • Why you shouldn’t draft  blog posts using programs like Microsoft Word and Google Docs

    Why you shouldn’t draft blog posts using programs like Microsoft Word and Google Docs

    Do you draft your blog posts in Word or Google Docs and then copy them over to your blog? If so, do your blog posts have a different text style? Have you had any coding/layout issues on your blog? This post is just briefly to explain why you should avoid using programs like MS Word…

  • Add a “Scroll Back to Top” button to Blogger

    Add a “Scroll Back to Top” button to Blogger

    A “back to top” button can be really helpful for your readers, especially if you have a lot of posts appearing on your homepage and no sticky navigation. This post will show you how to add one that will only appear when the user begins to scroll down your blog. An example can be seen…

  • Make navigation bar + other blog elements partially transparent

    Make navigation bar + other blog elements partially transparent

    I’ve gotten quite a few questions recently about how to make the navigation bar and other elements slightly transparent so that’s what I’ll cover today. It’s really simple, just two lines of CSS that need to be applied to an element with a background. I’ll be using a navigation bar to demonstrate this tutorial but…

  • Using custom redirects on Blogger

    Using custom redirects on Blogger

    Occasionally with blogging you’ll feel you want a change, with this you’ll do a lot of editing – publishing new updated posts, deleting old or previous posts, moving them, renaming name, etc. This all leads to broken links and pages/posts that don’t exist. On Blogger you can set up custom redirects to keep the traffic…

  • Adding the alt text attribute to image tags for SEO

    Adding the alt text attribute to image tags for SEO

    I mentioned in a previous post about simple SEO steps for increasing traffic that you should add descriptive alt tags to your images and since I’ve had a few emails regarding how to do that in Blogger I’d thought I’d right a quick tutorial for future reference. What is the alt attribute An alt tag…

  • How to Correctly Center HTML Items using CSS and Avoid Non-Supported Methods – Basics of HTML #6

    How to Correctly Center HTML Items using CSS and Avoid Non-Supported Methods – Basics of HTML #6

    Today’s post is another in the The Basics of HTML for Beginners and Blogger Series, all about properly centering HTML items using CSS. There’s a number of ways to center items so here is an overview. I’ll try explain each methods as best I can, starting with the incorrect ways. The incorrect ways to center…

  • Text Formatting and Fonts in HTML – Basics of HTML #5

    Text Formatting and Fonts in HTML – Basics of HTML #5

    I briefly covered this in my Basics of HTML for Beginners post, however I wanted to come back to it in more detail and cover text formatting using HTML. We can add tags to our text content to give it more structure and style, helping readers follow along and letting web crawlers know what’s important…

  • Show post summary on search + label pages only

    Show post summary on search + label pages only

    I wrote a previous tutorial about adding post summaries with a thumbnail to your Blogger blog so that a short extract is shown along with a read more link instead of the full post. I was asked if it was possible to show full posts on the homepage and excerpts only on searches such as…

  • How to set up Twitter Cards for Blogger and WordPress

    How to set up Twitter Cards for Blogger and WordPress

    Twitter Cards allow you to add media to your tweets. It’s very well known that updates on social media platforms with images are what gets shared the most. A good way to add an extra element to your tweets without having to upload an image with every tweet is by using Twitter Cards to automatically…

  • Add social media icons to your navigation bar

    Add social media icons to your navigation bar

    Adding social media icons to your blogs navigation bar is just like adding links, but instead of text we’ll be using images / icons. I’ve updated this post to be less specific so it can be tweaked and applied to any navigation. 1. Add a class to your current navigation Go to Layout and click…

  • Add a search bar to your navigation menu

    Add a search bar to your navigation menu

    Another highly requested tutorial for you today on adding a search bar to your navigation menu on Blogger. It’s a good way to integrate a few things into one navigation bar to save on space and help your readers find what they are looking for. My next tutorial will show you how to add social…

  • Create a dropdown select box using subcategories

    Create a dropdown select box using subcategories

    Today’s post will be on adding a drop down menu to display post labels as categories and subcategories. The easiest way to explain is to show you the example below – clicking on the menu will display a list of categories and indented subcategories, by clicking on one of the options you’ll be brought to…