Have been noodling a post about spam & splogs, after reading that icerocket and others are considering not even indexing blogspot blogs because such a significant proportion of them are not legitimate.

I'll be less than happy, along with any number of others, I think, if my blog comes to be regarded as junk simply because of the domain name.

Anyway, on the up-side, blogger has a couple of new tools in the fight to keep their good name. First, you'll notice a "flag" button on the toolbar at the top of the page. This reports objectionable / questionable / tinned processed meat content to blogger & asks them to take a look at the blog for possible violent destruction. (I may be overstating the consequences just a little.....) Note, though, that the spam blogger who has colonised my previous blogger URL with poorly-written porn has managed to retain the toolbar without the buttons, which makes it tricky to report.

Second, there's now a "squirmy random word" image generated for each commenter to repeat. I have not had comment spam here, but have enabled the image in the hope of forestalling any...

For more, see Mark's series of posts tracking the anti-splog backlash at escape from obsession.

Darren at Problogger explores the cornering of information as a strategy for blog promotion and traffic.

The great thing is that because blogging is so global you don’t necessarily have to be a maven of some mega popular topic in order to be successful. Recently I’ve had contact with a number of bloggers that have come to dominate (in a nice way) the tiny niches that they write in and in doing so have become quite prominent.

His comments are open for folks to either "name a maven" or to toot their own horn about their special field of maven-ness.

and reading for a day to find some things to write about.....

One of the greatest gifts I think you can give your blog is a burned feed from
Feedburner. Here's the scoop, in the usual what / why / how format.

What is it?: A feed is a version of the material that you post on your blog that is publishable on other sites and readable in "feedreaders" like bloglines and kinja. These services let you keep current with multiple blogs at once.
Feedburner explains it all:

Consumers use RSS reader applications (or one of a growing number of online services) to collect and monitor their favorite feeds in one place (RSS content from a publisher, viewed in one of these readers, is often called a "feed"). RSS makes reviewing a large number of sites in a very short time possible. RSS [also] permits instant distribution of content updates to consumers.

There are 2 main kinds of feed - atom and RSS. Blogger automatically generates an atom feed for your blog.

Why change it?: A lot of feedreaders don't read atom, & although it is possible to have a second feed in RSS format, that's confusing for your readers & possible subscribers, & feedreaders that index the way a search engine would won't see the second feed anyway.

Blogger only offers an atom feed. Feedburner feeds are "smart" & can take an atom feed & turn it into RSS, meaning that you can offer one feed that can be read in multiple formats.

Feedburner "smartcast" will automatically add rss headers to any sound file that
you link to, turning it into a podcast.

The feedburner "chicklet" displays the number of subscribers that you have right
on your blog, giving possible subscribers some sense of how hot your content is, & helping them to join in!!

The feedburner feed is browser-friendly & doesn't look like code, so the nervous
subscriber is soothed & reassured as they sign up for your content.

Update: As Fritz points out in the comments, & I neglected to mention, the other reason to switch is for Feedburner's stats, which will let you see how your feed was accessed, how many people subscribe, and what the recent trends are, as well as which posts from your feed are attracting attention. Sign in to feedburner once you're all set up, & select "view stats"....

For other services & options, see the Feedburner's info for publishers.

How do I do it?: Ah, the tricky part.... It isn't impossible, but it's slightly involved. There are two main parts

Step 1: Sign up for the feedburner feed by following their "blogger quick start" instructions in the top right of the main page.

Enter the URL of your blog on the Feedburner main page, & click next.

Select the services you'd like with your feed.

Confirm the services & activate the feed.

Place a link to the feed on your blog.

Step 2: Edit your template so that readers will see your new feed and not the default atom feed. This is recommended but optional. Read it through all the way first!!

View the source for your web-page in a text editor (view -> page source or similar)

Copy out the Meta-tags. If you haven't messed with these before, they begin with <meta and end with a closing style tag </style>. Blogger inserts them all
with one tag, so you won't see them in your template, which is why you have to view source. Mine look like this:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
<meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="true" />
<meta name="generator" content="Blogger" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="blogname" href="http://blogURL.com/atom.xml" />
<link rel="service.post" type="application/atom+xml" title="blogname" href="https://www.blogger.com/atom/*********" />
<link rel="EditURI" type="application/rsd+xml" title="RSD" href="http://www.blogger.com/rsd.g?blogID=*********" />
<style type="text/css">
@import url("http://www.blogger.com/css/blog_controls.css");
@import url("http://www.blogger.com/dyn-css/authorization.css?blogID=*********");
</style>

Paste the meta tags that you copied from the text editor into the head of your
blog template, immediately before the existing blogmetadata tag. (no good reason
... just easy to remember....)

Delete or hide the blogmetadata tag. You just replaced the single automatic blogger tag with the complete text of each individual meta tag, so you don't need it any more.

Now, after all that, there's one and only one line that we're going to edit. Be careful not to edit neighboring lines because they control the "e-mail this post" and "edit this post if I'm logged in" icons, & we don't want to break those.

The only line we're messing with is the autodiscovery tag. It looks like this: <link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="blogname" href="http://blogURL.com/atom.xml" />

It currently points to the atom feed from blogger and we want it to point to your new feed. Simply change the URL at the end of the code from the blogger / atom URL to the URL of your new feedburner feed. And we're done. Now if any feedreaders come a-crawling they'll detect your new feed and not the old one. For more info, & to see the poor folks at Feedburner answer the same question eighty-three times over for everyone who ever tried this (including me...) check out the feedburner forums tech tips "track all your traffic" thread!!

For bloglines - If you have an established site & bloglines already tracks one or more of your feeds, they won't stop using the old one automatically. If you e-mail them, however, they'll find the new feed & offer it to your readers. They are fine and helpful people!!

Have fun with feedburner!! Please add to this how-to in the comments if there's clarification required.

See other posts in Blogger Hacks: The Series

Turning down the heat on the "what's this for?" rant from last week, here's a more rational explanation for Graywolf's bookmarklet. If you'd like to generate tags for your posts that link to all related tags on del.icio.us, rather than to the tags that you've posted, this is the way to go. You & your readers will then be able to track conversations and threads using del.icio.us. Pretty cool.

Have added a section to my blogger hacks post for reader's hacks. If you've written a post that belongs on the list of hacks, let me know, & I'll add it to the list. The first post on the new list is from BananaStew, and describes how to get some very cool scrolling lists in your template sidebar. Let me know if you've got a post to add to the list.

The pause / break continues, but I'll be back later this week w/ more....

but I don't quite see why.... Check out the post from Graywolf's Wolf-Howl, & hit the comments here to set me straight!! As I see it, the bookmarklet as-is, including the signon of an individual user, is useful to folks using del.icio.us as a category manager & tagging their own blog posts. After editing the bookmarklet to replace Ted's username with your own, it makes tags that point to the given tag in your del.icio.us account, and so to everything you've bookmarked on del.icio.us with that tag. I use this successfully to add categories to Freshblog.

If you take out the tags linking to your individual del.icio.us acct, is that helpful? Doesn't it "break" the tool? - or am I missing something?

Freshblog just made the big time. The categories method is now an option on Blogger's very own Blogger Hacks page. Thanks, Blogger!! Much appreciated.

Just as Freshblog is riding a wave of traffic, energy and interaction with readers, and just as I finally have something to say, 'tis time for a break. I'm not going far, and I won't be gone long, but there won't be too much new stuff here for a week or two, especially since blogger won't let me post-date & auto-publish. Please stick around & watch for a big return of the hacks series!!

Micropersuasion links to Ted Ernst's tag bookmarklet. For a detailed how-to, see my how-to for the bookmarklets method.

As previously promised, I have asked bloglines to turn off Freshblog's default atom feed & go forward with the feedburner feed as the only subscription option. Watch for an expanded blogger hacks: the series post about what, why, & how.

Been a while since I wrote a round-up of the folks who are making use of del.icio.us for categories. Here's the latest:

• Free Cash Space
• Strangely Warmed
• Random Thoughts from a Housewife
• Aletheia, who is in NZ & whose talk of wintery Saturdays I am currently unable to comprehend!!
• TuaBella, where there are 63 recently categorised posts and where Jen requests help authoring a tagline for her blog.
• SystemsBoy

In a related issue, (another technorati rant) I have dropped a half-dozen links & 6,000 in the rankings since I last checked. Are they cleaning house or is there something screwy going on? KB Cafe has the scoop.

Photo of your Fridge: No, I can't think of a good reason either, but hey, take the shot & e-mail it to these dudes for their survey of fridge-kind. Imagine what we can learn about each other from gazing intently at a fridge, frozen in time... The zen of the soy cheese... the karma of the carrots.

via Core77.

The Rocketeer has a gallery of very cool retro-looking Star Trek business cards on Flickr. There's cards for the key players and some incidental TOS characters. Excellent. They're cool coz they're old, and not coz they're trekky, which is interesting....

via BoingBoing

See other posts in Blogger Hacks: The Series

Alright. Blogger Hacks: The Series. If we're going to do this then I should make some effort to be systematic & cover topics in a sensible order. Let's imagine you've got a new blogger blog, & a default blogger template, but you haven't messed with the code in the template too much & you'd like your blog to be visually distinctive. A new template may be a big part of the solution.

Blogger offers default templates when you register for a blog, & some of them are pretty cool. You can dress them up pretty well too, by changing the colors of links etc. If you want to move beyond the defaults, though, here's some places to look:

• Updated 5/9/06: This blog uses a template generated by PsycHo. (Freshblog eval.) This is a great tool, and your template will validate straight off the site, at least until you paste in all your old code chunks!!
  

• Noipo.org has a selection of templates. Some of these have related images. See “images” below.

• Blogskins.com has over 17,000 “blogger main” templates. You have to dig a bit to find a good one.

• BloggerTemplates is a blogspot blog of different templates.

• Kubrick is a template by Michael Heilemann of Binary Bonsai, which has been modded to work with blogger.

Some things to know before you change your template:

1. Images - Although they'll let you add images to posts, blogger doesn't have a way of handling images for templates. The work-around here is to have web space somewhere else that you can upload the images to, & then modify the <img src="http://myotherwebspace.com/image.jpg"> tag to point to the location of the image. It will slow your template down a bit, but I think it's the only way to keep the images tied to the template.

Updated 5/9/06: You can host your template images on blogger if you upload the image in a draft post, then grab the image URL out of the draft & use it as normal in your template. This is probably quicker than hosting images on an external service, but I haven't tested it...

1. Existing Modifications – If you've already made some changes to your default template, they won't make the move with you unless you cut & paste. I recommend changing your template while your blog is young, before you've customised your sidebar too much!! I also recommend wrapping features that you add in begin & end comment tags to help you remember what all this stuff does, like this:
   <!-- begin statistics --> put sitemeter code here <!--end statistics-->
   
   

2. Posts – If the template you pick is already set up for blogger, & has <blogger></blogger> tags with post formatting information between them, your posts will make the move. I can't guarantee that the template you choose is really blogger ready, so backup your existing template and preview your new template before you save it.

Disclaimer: There may be other things that you should know.

Whichever template you pick, here's how to make the switch:

1. Log in to Blogger

2. Click on the “change settings” gear-wheel on the dashboard

3. Click the “template” tab at the top of the screen.

4. Select & Cut (ctrl-x) your existing template text. Paste it into word, an e-mail or a text editor so that you have it as a backup.

5. Paste in the new template text

6. Click “preview” to see how things will look.

7. If you like it, click on “save changes”

8. Republish your entire site

   And there's your new, cool, unique “no-one else has it but me, & it didn't cost me a dime” template.

   Disclaimer: None of these links are recommendations or endorsements. I haven't tested these templates

Other Resources for template mods:

• Blogger Help – Templates

• Blogger Help – Templates FAQ

• Noipo.org PDF “How to change your template” - with screen-caps from Blogger.
  

Good luck changing your template. Remember – backup & preview!!

See other posts in Blogger Hacks: The Series

A brief reminder: If you subscribe to Freshblog's atom feed in bloglines, please edit your subscription to point to the new feedburner feed. On Monday I'm completing the move to Feedburner by turning off atom in bloglines. I'm trying to offer a single feed & see all my subscribers... er... I mean both my subscribers!! ;-) Since the number of subscribers now passes my personal threshold for absolute embarrassment, I've also switched the feedburner icon to their stats chicklet... custom colored for Freshblog and displaying the number of subscribers.

I previously linked to BoingBoing on buying a pre-played & supremely experienced mmg character. Now here's more, on folks who make outfits for the characters, selling them for in-game currency and real-world greenbacks. Interesting, and somehow a little hard-to-get-your-head-'round in a Matrix kind of a way!!

Update July 2006: In order to better illustrate the subtle differences between some of these hacks, the contents of this list has been migrated to the BloggerHacks Wiki. To view all hacks in the wiki, visit the Category: Hacks page, where you'll see a list of all wiki content that has been categorised as a hack. New content submitted to Freshblog will be written up and added there. This list will not be updated going forward. Please visit the wiki to get a better handle on these hacks. For more information, read my post introducing the wiki.

Please continue to leave your comments here alerting me to your great hacks, and by all means add your hack or mod to the wiki. Thanks!!
_______
Original Post:

A master-list of all the blogger hacks that I'm aware of, updated frequently to reflect the latest in blogger hackology. If the instructions or implementation on a hack that appeals to you is unclear, please e-mail & I'll try to help.

If there's no credit next to the link, the hack is one that I wrote. If there's a credit, you'll be taken to the blog of the hack-author to enjoy their creative modifications to blogger.

If you have a hack to contribute, either leave a comment, send me a trackback, or e-mail me.

• Del.icio.us Categories & Supporting Technology:
  
1. Categories using Bookmarklets
2. Categories using BlogThis!
3. Categories using the Blogger "post template" option for tag entry - from Ayub.
4. Categories using the Blogger link field for tag entry - from Rahul Gupta
5. Categories highlighting the use of the Del.icio.us Firefox Plugin - from Blogger Tips & Tricks
   
6. Sidebar "Tagroll" feed of your categories from Del.icio.us

• FreshTags: Context Sensitive Category Menus for your Sidebar:
1. FreshTags: A context-sensitive sidebar display of your tagged content.
2. FreshTags for Wordpress, from Singpolyma Technical Blog.

• Del.icio.us Categories using Firefox & Greasemonkey:
1. Categories using Greasemonkey: Basic Script to add tags to your posts.
   
2. Greasemonkey Script v2. with added options for styling, and tags that return to the "tag entry" field when you open a post to edit it. By Browservulsel
3. Greasemonkey Script v3. Post to del.icio.us from inside your blogger account, and auto-populate the del.icio.us submission form with your tags. By Ecmanaut See also revised Freshblog How-to

• Categories using Javascript:
  
1. In-Blog Categories using .js - See Marc Morales, and later posts that describe the evolution of the system. In fact, hit up his October Archives and read back as far as the 23rd. All good stuff.
2. In-Blog Categories using .js, with integrated in-post search results. From Pappmaskin Diare Techblog, explored and explained further by Gretchen at YLCF
3. In-Blog Categories using .js. Take the feed for each del.icio.us tag, turn it into a script, & publish the script in a pre-dated post on your blog. From Naked Sex Monkey
4. Del.icio.us2Blogger In-Blog Categories using .js. In-post search results in a single dynamic post - from Phydeaux3. Original Version: Comprehensive 3-part how-to. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. See also the how-to for the Tag Cloud
   
5. Labelr, by Amit Upadhay. Integrated and easy categories using .js
6. Collapsible Sidebar display for categories - from 3Spots
7. Asynchronous Blogger Categories - by Aditya
   

• Categories using Google Blog Search:
  
1. Categories using Google Blog Search - from Orangewise
2. Categories using Google Blog Search & keywords in your post titles, from NetCF2.0
3. Categories using Google Blog Search & Technorati tags as your keywords, from Skeptic Rant
4. Categories using Google Blog Search, with a .js sidebar menu, by Taher.

• Categories using Technorati Tag Search:
  
1. Categories using Technorati Tags, and my Technorati Personal Bookmarklet
2. Sidebar Menu for the Technorati Category Method - from The Church at the Gate
3. Technorati for Categories Explored, by Improbulus
   

• Manual Categories:
  
1. Categories without bookmarking - from Virtual Scratchpad
2. Manual Categories - Manually add your permalinks to a master-list post for each category. From Theatre of Noise.
3. Manual Categories with slick expand & contract sidebar menus - from A Consuming Experience.
4. Manual Categories using a second blog - from Rangga
   

• Other Category Methods:
  
1. Categories using multiple blogs - from OldCola
2. Categories for self-hosted Blogger Blogs, using PHP - by Moshare

• Hacks to Show / Hide Post Content:
1. Blogger's Expandable Post Summaries Hack
2. Blogger's Show / Hide Hack (leaves post titles only on your blog)
3. Inline Post Expansion - from Aditya
4. Show whole post on post page, then link back to main page - from No Fancy Name
5. .js based method w/ multiple show / hides possible - from Blogger Categories
   

• Apply Stylesheets to your Blog:
1. Print View for your Content using CSS - from You've Been Haacked
   
2. Print View w/ possibilities for "stylesheet switcher" - from Aditya
   

• Search Visibility & SEO:
  
1. Notify your MSN contacts of new Blogger Posts - from Immeria
2. Optimise your Page Titles
3. Use wbloggar to optimise your post titles - from digital inspiration

• Search Your Blog:
1. Native Blog Search - Pull Google Blogsearch results into your sidebar - by Aditya
2. Ajaxified Google Blogsearch - by CJ Millisock
3. Search for Related Posts on the Create Post Page w/ Greasemonkey - by Aditya
   

• Recent Comment Hacks:
  
1. List of Recent Comments on whole blog - from Digital Inspiration
2. Customisable List of Recent Comments - from Theatre of Noise
3. Blogger Recent Comments - from Singpolyma
   

• Comment Submission Hacks:
  
1. In-post comment form, Cocomment Compatible - from Singpolyma
2. In-line comments with images / icons - from Ecmanaut
3. In-line comments with images, quicktags & live preview - from Basang Panagini
4. In-line comments (download zipped as RAR file) - from Azer Koculu
   

• Comment Feeds:
  
1. Set up a Comment Feed for your blog using mail to rss
2. Comment Feed using multiple blogs - from Digital Inspiration
3. Comment Feed using Google Groups - from Shantanuo
   
4. Blogger Recent Comments - from Singpolyma

• Comment Editing:
1. Add a comment-edit icon in blogger - from dunpanic
2. Edit Comments Greasemonkey Script - from Browservulsel
3. Edit Comments Admin Console Icon - from A Consuming Experience
4. Edit a Single Comment - from A Consuming Experience or Blogger Templates
   

• Comment Formatting Hacks:
1. Highlight Author / Owner Comments - from Aditya
2. Highlight Owner, w/ Profile Pics - from Singpolyma
3. Grammatically Correct Comment Count - by Aditya
   

• Clickable Post Titles:
1. Clickable Post Titles
2. Clickable Post Titles - from TitaniumGeek (same hack, different day!)

• Archive Menu Hacks:
1. Drop-Down Menu for Archives
2. Reverse archives in a drop-down menu - Roveberg hack.
3. Reverse archives display in a flat list - Witfits, about halfway down the page.
4. Reverse archives hack offered on the Blogger Hacks page.
5. Freshtags for Archives
   

• Other Site Navigation:
  
1. Calendar for Blogger, available in two versions from Ecmanaut. version1. version2.
   
2. Drop-Down Menu for Recent Posts
3. Alphabetical "Index" List of all posts on a page - From Never Too Old
4. In-blog searchlet using Google Blog Search - from Cycle.icio.us
5. Next & Previous "Date" Links - from Ecmanaut. Simulate next & previous post links for blogger.
6. Blog Navigator Next & Previous Post Links - by Greg Hill
   
7. Random Post Link - from Caso Pathologico
8. List of All Previous Posts - from Blogger University
   

• Blogger Interface Mods:
1. Keep the correct time when publishing drafts - from Browservulsel.
2. Auto-Post on a given date using e-mail - from A Consuming Experience
   

• Layout / Graphics:
1. Change your Template
2. Change your Header Graphic - from gtdwannabe
3. Randomise your Header Graphic with .js - from William Bontrager
4. FlickrFont - Header images of individual letters from Flickr - by Greg Hill
   
5. Scrolling lists in your sidebar - from BananaStew
6. Randomise Header Graphic or Tag Line with .js - From No Fancy Name
   
7. Clickable Post Titles
8. Drop-Down Menu for Recent Posts
9. Drop-Down Menu for Archives
10. Estimate the Reading Time for Posts - from Caso Pathologico
11. Icons to bookmark your posts on 6 social bookmarking services - Freshblog
    
12. Icons to bookmark your posts on 85+ social bookmarking services - from 3Spots
13. Markit post-footer bookmarking buttons, w/ notes - by Greg Hill
    
14. Reverse the order of posts on main & archive pages - from Caso Pathologico
15. Sidenotes and offset text-boxes
    

• Favicons:
1. Improve your graphics / add a favicon
2. Add a favicon as a .png - from TitaniumGeek

• Tagging & Folksonomy:
1. Tag posts from inside Blogger for Word - from gtdwannabe
2. Technorati Tag Generator - from Rhys Wynne
3. Tagalong Technorati Tag Generator - by Long Zheng
   
4. Tagging your Posts
5. Technorati Tags in BlogThis! - from Ken's Meme Deflector
6. One-Click Posting to Del.icio.us
7. Tag Overlay, by Greg Hill. See how someone's tags match up with a site.
   

• Syndication & Feeds:
1. Upgrade Your Feed - Feedburner. Better stats, & integrated customiseable pinging.
   
2. One-click add to Google Reader - From Cycle.icio.us
3. Set up a Comment Feed for your blog

• Hacks to backup your Blog:
1. Backup your last 100 posts using your feed - from Ecmanaut
   

• Blogger Backlinks:
1. Custom Blogger Backlinks (revised) by Jasper at Browservulsel.
2. Custom Blogger Backlinks (revised) by Singpolyma
3. Recursive Backlinks by Greg
   

• Nav-bar Hacks:

1. Use CSS to hide the Navbar - from Blogger Templates. I interpret this as a TOS violation & don't recommend it.
2. Comment out the navbar - from Tygar-blog. Ditto.
3. Customise the color of the navbar so that it works with your template - from blogkardesligi
4. Build the nav-bar into your template- From Saady (see his comments for how-to)
5. Show / Hide the Navbar with Hover-over - from Bloggeratto
   

• Other Hack Collections:
1. 3 consecutive posts w/ multiple hacks - from Witfits. 1,2,3
2. Spicing it Up from Saady (templates, tagboards, counters, & a cool nav-bar hack.)
3. List of hacks from Sushi-Delight.
4. Dave Goodman's List of Blogger Hacks
   

I'll take all the input I can get, so please dive in to the comments and trackback to link to other relevant material. Let's turn this post into a one-stop shop for blogger mods!!

Tor has broken out his rants into 3 columns courtesy of blogskins, and he's still categorising the Freshblog way!! Cool template.

I have never thought of spiders looking at outbounds... I have focussed on inbounds as a way to increase traffic & bring more people here from more places. ProBlogger thinks that quality outbounds probably reflect back on the blog from whence they come, which had never even crossed my mind, and makes me wonder whether wrapping all your outbounds in a blogroll & shrinking them to one line of code does you harm when the robots come....

The fine folks at blogger want to know what you think. Log in & let them know, by all means. Plenty of chance for some positive feedback too. As I hope we're proving here at Freshblog, it is very possible to blog for free on blogger & still have a blog that is "automatic, systematic and hydromatic, why it's greased lightening." (channeling Travolta.... sorry!!)

I completed the survey & made sure to ask for tags, since I am suspiciously suspicious that the tags have impacted my traffic for the better, & I think it would be great if they were easily available to all blogspot users. Zenyenta has asked for categories. Hit the comments when you're done with the survey & let me know what you asked for...

In response to a comment from GodsDragon, here's some thoughts on how, why & when to make your blogger post titles clickable.

Two sets of tags that we're messing with here. blogitemtitle and itempage / mainpage. To start with the last ones, blogger calls these conditional tags & they govern which parts of your template are displayed on main & post pages. You can wrap certain elements of your template in these tags to force them to display conditionally.

As for blogitemtitle, clickable blog post titles seem to be a feature of the newer default blogger templates that I've messed with, but if you're old-school, or using a special template from blogskins, for example, then your titles won't click. All these edits are for code between the blogger tags. Specifically we're going to replace the blogitemtitle tags, and add some extra stuff between them. Please back up your templates first!!

Here's 3 reasons to make your post title clickable, & 3 ways to do it if you'd like to add the feature:

1: Make the post title click back to your main page.

Why? I don't know really. Some sort of home link from in-post is useful, but I don't think a reader will expect your post title to be it. Anyway....

<BlogItemTitle><span class="PostTitle">
<a href="<$BlogURL$>">
<$BlogItemTitle$></a></span></BlogItemTitle>

If you want this to only work on the permalink post page, wrap both the opening link tag & the closing a-tag in itempage tags, like this:

<BlogItemTitle><span class="PostTitle">
<itempage><a href="<$BlogURL$>"></itempage>
<$BlogItemTitle$><itempage></a></itempage></span></BlogItemTitle>

2: Make the post title the permalink.

More useful, esp to jump off the main page to the post page. For this one...

<BlogItemTitle><span class="PostTitle">
<a href="<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>">
<$BlogItemTitle$></a></span></BlogItemTitle>


For clickable titles on every page, just replace the existing blogitemtitle code with the snippet above.

If you want this to only work on the main page, wrap both the entire opening link tag & the closing a-tag in mainpage tags. You need 2 seperate sets of these tags, because if you include <$BlogItemTitle$> in the wrap, your title won't show on the post page. The solution? Leave the existing non-clickable post title in your template, wrapped in itempage tags, & add the above code to your template wrapped in mainorarchivepage tags.


3: Make the post title link offsite to whatever link you put in your link field.

This makes use of the <BlogItemURL> tags. Podcast? Link to offsite media? If your post title is "Dave's Show #3: The Spielberg Interview" then you'll want to link to the MP-3 from your title field, I guess. First enable the link field in your blogger settings. [dashboard > settings > formatting]. If you want the link to appear in the body or footer of your post, you'll have to add blogitem code to your template:

<BlogItemURL>
<a href="<$BlogItemURL$>">Link</a>
</BlogItemURL>

If you want the link to appear as your post title, you can combine blogitemURL and blogitemtitle tags as follows:

<BlogItemTitle>
<span class="post-title">
<BlogItemUrl><a href="<$BlogItemUrl$>" title="external link"></BlogItemUrl>
<$BlogItemTitle$>
</a>
</span>
</BlogItemTitle>

making clickable titles that point to the link you specify in the link field.

A combination of 1 & 2 ought to be possible too, using item page and main page tags. Make the title the permalink off the main page, & the link back home from the post page. Try this:

<BlogItemTitle><span class="PostTitle">
<itempage><a href="<$BlogURL$>"><$BlogItemTitle$></a></itempage>
<mainpage><a href="<$BlogItemPermalinkUrl$>" title="permanent link"><$BlogItemTitle$></a></mainpage>
</span></BlogItemTitle>

Hope these are useful edits for you. I may even roll something out at Freshblog!! Code, of course, made visible by the fine people at Centricle.

See other posts in Blogger Hacks: The Series

If you read Freshblog in Bloglines, here's a heads up. In 7 days I'm going to ask Bloglines to delete the default atom feed & go forward with Feedburner, so that any new subscribers get the smartfeed. If you're one of the small band of atom subscribers, (holy cow there's 17 now...) & you're willing to do me a minor favor, please edit your subscription to point to the new feedburner feed. Thanks.

Zoli points out that the volume seems high & the service seems slow once again. For my 10c, I notice that even when the search shows my new inbounds, the summary still lists 43 from 35, or whatever, despite pings & tags & such.

Again with the internet technology forcing real-word interactions. This time a real goodie!! Where's George meets Geocaching, but with heavier and more interesting material. Tag your books then leave them places for folks to catch, read & re-release. What a great idea!!

Book sharing has never been more exciting, more serendipitous, than with BookCrossing. Our goal, simply, is to make the whole world a library. BookCrossing is a book exchange of infinite proportion, the first and only of its kind.

Let's get right down to it. You know the feeling you get after reading a book that speaks to you, that touches your life, a feeling that you want to share it with someone else? BookCrossing.com gives you a simple way to share books with the world, and follow their paths forever!
The "3 Rs" of BookCrossing...

1. Read a good book (you already know how to do that)
2. Register it, and label the book
3. Release it for someone else to read ...and get notified by email each time someone records journal entries for that book.

via Birmingham Metroblog

You have five seconds to doodle something, and then your doodle will be taken from you and morphed into the doodles of previous doodlers. Now that's interactive art!!

via Google Blogoscoped

"Who?"

"Exactly....."

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that I was interested in starting a podcast. let's say I can figure out the blogging part, the feeds part, & even (probably) the audio editing part. Everything from the computer onwards.

Here's my question. How, oh casters of pods, do you make your audio? Can you use a digital MP3 recorder / dictaphone, or does that get you a poor quality recording to work with? Do I need microphones and mixing desks and the like?

If you'd like to tell me what works for you, please leave the good word in the comments!! Much appreciated.

Great & succinct assessment of the shortcomings of various cosmos search services, and a thought about total links v. new links:

The RSS Blog: "More and more, I see people reporting how many total links Technorati, IceRocket, PubSub and BlogPulse have found that point to their blog. These numbers are utterly meaningless. The important number is how many new links you are finding with these tools....A new experiment is in order. I'm gonna write down how I find new links. So, please link to this article, so I can write them down..."

Consider the article linked (sneaky ploy for inbounds or sincere investigative effort? ;-) Let me know if / how you find the inbound.

I guess it's true that the principal use for these tools ought to be finding new links that enable a conversation to occur as close to real-time as possible, rather than rank-bragging or "top 500" membership.

Filed In: inbounds, search