This post was written to provide a step-by-step guide on how to install a new xml Blogger template for your blog. It is really easy, let’s start
Step 1.
Sign in to your Blogger dashboard then click on the layout link in the Manage section, next to your blog name
Step 2.
Select the “Edit HTML” tab at the top
Step 3.
Before installing the template, remember to backup your old template ! It is always the good practice, really! First, download the current template using the “Download Full Template” option
Step 4.
Next, upload the downloaded template using the Browse button
Step 5.
Save the changes and you are DONE.
If you are asked “Please confirm that the following widgets should be deleted. All the widgets’ configuration data will be lost“, just Click on CONFIRM & SAVE button (as shown in the screenshot below)
That’s it! Now you have sucessfully installed the xml blogger template in your blog. Start blogging
You know, there are lots of blogger templates using Timestamp format for posted day instead of DateTime format. We must change the TimeStamp as their format otherwise the date won’t show up properly on each of your posts! Actually the date will most likely be blank and you’ll think the template is broken.
Did you notice that Google has just published the SubscriptionLinks widget from Blogger in Draft to Blogger ?
The new SubscriptionLinks page element makes it easy for your readers to subscribe to your blog’s feeds. They have added one-click subscriptions to six popular feed readers included iGoogle, Google Reader, Bloglines, Netvibes, NewsGator, and My Yahoo!. Since you can now put your feedlinks in your sidebar instead of just at the bottom of your blog, more readers will see them and subscribe to your blog.
In addition to blog posts, your readers can subscribe to feeds of comments. The comments feed on your blog’s homepage contains all comments, while the feeds on post pages only have per-post comments.
Ok, let see them in action
Install Subscription Links blogger widget
Step 1.
Go to your dashboard, choose the Layout tab, choose Add a Page Element where you want this widget appeared.
Step 2.
Choose SubscriptionLinkselement then click Add to Blog. If you can find it, scroll up to the top of the pop-up windows and it looks like this.
Step 3.
You can name your element instead of the default text “Subscribe To”
Step 4.
Go to your homepage, it will look like the image below
Step 5.
Click on the Posts tab or the All Comments tab to see it in action
Look nice, heh ?
P/s: If you’re looking for more control over your feed, try redirecting it to FeedBurner
And the final, do not forget to Subscribe to my feed to get the lastest Blogger Templates and Blogger Tutorials. Thanks
As I said in the previous post, we should use Feedburner to manage our feeds because it give us lots of features that I will talk about through my posts. In this post, I will show you how to give your readers another way to stay up-to-date with your blog instead of RSS feed.
Introduce to Email Subscription
What is FeedBurner Email?
FeedBurner email is a service that allows publishers to deliver their feed content to subscribers via email.
What will it help bloggers do that they can’t do today?
Today, if subscribers want to read, view or watch syndicated online content, they typically have to go to where the content is hosted or know how to subscribe to the feed and consume the content within a reader (e.g. GoogleReader, iGoogle, Bloglines, MyYahoo!, FeedDemon, iTunes, etc.). With email subscription capability, subscribers can now receive this information in their inbox, similar to an e-newsletter. More convenience and more easier for readers !
How to active your Email Subscription service
We will go through a few steps and you will get what you want
Step 1. Login to your account and click on Feed you want to active Email Subscription service
Step 2. Click on the Publicize tab
Step 3. Choose Email Subscription on the left sidebar
Step 4. Choose your feed deliver
You can choose FeedBurner, FeedBlitz, or Rmail to be your feed-via-email service provider.
I choose Feedburner (we are using their service, heh ? ). Then click button Activate.
Step 5. Get your code
They offer us two ways to display the Email Subscription :
Subscription Form: Copy and paste the code into any web page. Your subscription form will be automatically inserted each time the page is loaded. From there, readers can subscribe to receive daily email with your newest content.
Subscription Link: You can also offer email subscriptions from a link rather than a form. Just copy the link code and insert to your blog. Users who click it will be prompted to enter their email address in the form that appears.
Hint : If your sidebar’s width is larger than 160px, you should use Subscription Form because a form will attract more readers than a link
Step 6. : Past the code to your blog and DONE.
If you get into any trouble, feel free to ask me here. Have a nice day
Are you curious to know what your readers think about your content without leaving a comment? By adding the outbrain rating widget you will get immediate feedback from your readers, and they will get easy and quick access to your best content.
The outbrain widget is free and is very simple. After adding the widget, it will automatically insert a beautiful 5-star rating widget to the bottom of every your post.
Here is a demo image
The outbrain widget is available in 4 popular blog platforms : Typepad, Wordpress, Blogger, Drupal and others.
Choose your blog platform. We are using blogger, right ? So, choose Blogger.
Step 3.
Get rating & recommendations widget for Blogger. In this step, you can choose register to track rating or not. If you register, you can get some benefits here.
Step 4.
Then choose your language. This widget support >25 languages
Step 5.
Click button “Get widget now”
Step 6.
A new tab (or new window in IE) will open. Choose Add to add this widget.
Some readers has emailed me asking how to re-show the Blogger Navbar on my released Blogger Templates. So I think I should write this post to figure it out.
Introduction
The Blogger Navbar is a navigation and search bar on top of all blogspot blogs. It is available in several colors, and is configured in the Template tab in Blogger’s interface. You can get more information about Navbar from Bloggerhere
The reason why I remove the Blogger navbar on EVERY Blogger Template is its mismatch color. Even though Blogger provide several useful features and different colours, it always not blend well with my templates. It’s an eye sore and makes my blog theme look less professional.
Show/Hide blogger navbar
Step 1. Log in to blogger account
Step 2. On your Dashboard, select Layout. This will take you to the Template tab. Click Edit HTML. Under the Edit Template section you will see you blog’s HTML. Step 3. Delete the code below to show the Navbar
Step 6. Choose a place where you want to put your widgets on, then click “Add a Page Element”. When a pop-up window is opened, choose a Feed element (its location is in the middle of the pop-up window) then click “Add to Blog”
Step 7. Press Ctrl+V to paste the link you put to clipboard at Step #2
Step 8. Change title, options if you want
Step 9. Click Save and DONE
That’s all. Easy, huh ?
If you encounter any problem, feel free to ask me here
This post was written to provide a basic guide about one of the most newest widgets of Blogger beta - Followers blogger widget. Please note that it is being under testing so if you don’t see it right away, don’t worry. It’s coming soon (Blogger.com enabled this feature for me yesterday)
What is Following?
Would you like to know who enjoys reading your blog? Or stay updated with your favorite blogs right from your Bloggerdashboard? Well now you can do that and more with the Blogger Following feature! You can even keep track of the blogs you follow via your Reading List on the Bloggerdashboard.
How do I become a Follower of a blog?
There are two ways to become a follower of a blog.
Option 1.Add a blog to your Reading List.
First, click on the “Blogs I’m Following” tab under “My Reading List” on your BloggerDashboard.
Then, click on the blue “Add” button in the bottom left corner of your Reading List.
Next, insert the URL of the blog you’d like to follow in the URL box. You can add as many blogs as you’d like by clicking on “Add another“. When you have added all of your favorite blogs, click the orange “Next” button.
You’ll then be given the option to either follow publicly or anonymously:
Then click the orange “Follow” button and that’s it! You’ve added all your favorite blogs to your Reading List! Now, every time one of the blogs are updated the latest post will be displayed in your reading list under the “Items” section.
Option 2.Visit a blog that has added the Following widget and click on the “Follow this Blog” link under the “Followers” widget then do several steps as above.
How to add the Following gadget to your blog
It’s really easy to add the Following widget to your blog. First go to the Layout -> Page Elements tab for your blog. Click the “Add a Gadget” link that appears in the sidebar of your layout. You’ll then see a popup window with all the different types of Gadgets you can add to your blog. Look for the one called “Followers” and click on the blue “+” icon
You can then enter your desired title for your Following widget. Once you have chosen a title, click the orange “Save” button. You have now added the following widget to your blog!
Although there may be a pretty defined set of winners in the fight to be crowned the best blogging system or platform, millions of people are still using the Blogger system, due to the fact that it is easy to use, has few limitations, and is completely free. Alternative services, such as hosted or self-hosted WordPress either come with limitations, have a high cost (learning curve and monetary), leaving many people sticking to what they started with, Blogger.
The Blogger commenting system is one section with severe limitations, as many of the popular plugins that can easily be installed within WordPress are not available for use with Blogger. However, there are a few proven methods, plugins, and workarounds that can address this problem, and in doing so, will lead to an increase in comments on your blog.
One of the first steps that you’ll want to do is make sure that everything in the backend of Blogger is setup. This step won’t take an enormous amount of time, but is something that should be done before you create each new blog or shortly there afterwards.
Make sure that you are logged into Blogger, then find the Settings » Comments page. You’ll notice quite a few options here for customizing the Blogger commenting system, many of which have just recently been added. While I cannot provide a solid method for enabling each option, due to your personal preferences, I will guide you through the process involved to receive the most comments on your blog.
The first option, found under Comments, is the ability to enable (Show) or disable (Hide) comments from appearing on your blog. This option should be set to Show, as other visitors to your blog will generally want to see reactions from other blog commentators.
Next, under Who Can Comment?, Anyone would be the best solution for bloggers who want to receive more comments, although spam comments would begin appearing, as anyone, even those not a member of your blog or with an OpenID/Google Account would be able to leave a comment.
A feature that many bloggers rejoiced over when introduced is the ability to change the Comment Form Placement. Ideally, much like in WordPress blogs, it should be placed beneath each post, with a link to leave a comment when on the main page, through the use of a permalink feature. The three options to choose from include: Full page (clicking on “leave a comment” will present you a new window to leave a comment in), Pop-up window, and Embedded below post (displaying comments beneath each post). The beneath-post feature is the best choice!
Further below, there is the option of displaying Comments (by default) For Posts. Simply put, this field just lets the Blogger system know to display the comments area when there aren’t any, until someone leaves a comment, at which point this area will be displayed anyway.
Backlinks, or links back to posts that you have written from other blogs, allow you to keep track of and “reward” people who have found your content interesting. Within this area, you can either show or hide backlinks depending on your personal preference, and the amount of “spam” sites linking to your content. A second option is whether new posts do/do not have backlinks. Similar to comments, this will place an empty filed on your blog if you enable new posts have backlinks.
The comments timestamp doesn’t relate to this post, so we’ll skip it for the time being.
Continuing on, the Comment Form Message may be the most beneficial addition to the Blogger system for quite some time. You can place nearly any type of HTML code here, either reminding visitors to subscribe or thanking them for the comment. It is a great addition to your blog, as you can provide a little incentive to readers for sharing their thoughts.
Comment Moderation is another huge issue within this particular system. When set to “Always,” people sometimes become frustrated that their comment did not appear, forcing them to leave a duplicate in some cases. In this case, you’ll want to either select Never or Only on posts older than __ days; unless of course, you receive hundreds of spam comments per day/week.
Word Verification, sometimes referred to as CAPTCHA, requires commentators to input a selection of scrambled letters or numbers in order to leave a comment. It does add an additional step to the comment process, forcing some people to leave your blog, as they completely despise them. However, it can be left as enabled (yes) without any major problems.
Finally, Profile Images help enhance the comment area, displaying what WordPress users call Gravatars. I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t enable this feature – it adds a personal touch to each comment.
Comment Notification does not pertain to this article, it simply emails you a notification when new comments are written on your blog.
Conclusion
Making sure that all these features are set to the correct preferences when you begin your blog is one of the most important measures that you do when trying to build your name online as a blogger. Skipping one of these steps may leave your comments marked as “moderated” for a long time before you finally get around to approving them, resulting in a “dead”-appearing blog
I’ve just read a good news from Blogger Buzz - the embeddedcomment form is brought out of Blogger In Draft and now is available to everyone. This is probably the most requested feature for Blogger, and I’m sure many of you will want to use this straight away! This feature puts the comment form at the bottom of each post page, below the comments, instead of on the separate, Blogger-styled page.
The embeddedcomment form is more convenient for your readers because they can use it to post a comment immediately, without clicking over to a different page.
Features of the embedded comment form
“Comment as”: Choose your profile when commenting. You can use your Google account, OpenID, Name/URL and all of the settings previously available when using a pop-up or full page comment form (depending on the settings you have chosen).
“Preview” button: Preview your comment before it is published
“Subscribe” link: If you’re logged in to Blogger with your Google Account, you can also subscribe to comments via email by clicking the “Subscribe” link. You don’t need to post a comment to subscribe
How to enable the embedded comment form
To enable the embeddedcomment form for your blog, go to the Settings -> Comments page and look for the Comment Form Placement setting. Change it to Embedded below post, save your settings, and go check out a post to see the new form in action.
That’s it. If you are using one of my customized Blogger Templates, you will need to do NOTHING more to your template code for this comment form to display
Try it and let me know what you think of this new feature by leaving your comments below.
As I said in 
A feature that many bloggers rejoiced over when introduced is the ability to change the 
Continuing on, the 
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