Blog For Tricks

How to enable a mobile theme on your WordPress blog in one minute

Posted by Rahil Saturday, March 19, 2011 0 comments

Going from left to right in 1 minute

Accessing a standard website from a mobile phone is a pain. If the site does not support a mobile theme, it will cramp the pages, which normally barely fit on a laptop screen, onto a teeny-weeny mobile phone screen. Microscopic fonts, impossible to navigate, or to click links, etc. Bummer!

Nevertheless, the amount of visitors accessing your websites from mobile devices is rapidly increasing. Just for curiosity, I checked the statistics for mobile my personal blog.

It runs on Blogger, and as such is not mobile enabled. For 600,000 visits in the past four years:
2007: 0% mobile access
2008: 0% mobile access
2009: 1% mobile access
2010: 3% mobile access
A steady increase, which, of course, would have been higher if the site was mobile enabled! You might think 3% is not a lot, but according to web prophets, “the future is mobile”:

Mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common web-access devices worldwide by 2013. It‘s estimated that the combined installed base of smartphones and browser-equipped enhanced phones will surpass 1.82 billion units by 2013, eclipsing the total of 1.78 billion PCs by then. (Source)

So, it is about time to get your blog ready for mobile access!

But if you selfhost your blog, enabling mobile access for your blog, is a breeze. At least on WordPress it is. In five clicks and one minute, you can make your blog mobile ready. Literally! And that one minute will not only make your blog “ready for the future”, but might just as well attract a new “market”: Your “mobile” visitors…

I am right now switching over my blogs for mobile access one by one, using the WP Mobile Detector plugin. That’s right: one plug-in is all what’s required.

The plugin is for free, installs like any other WordPress plug-in (a breeze), and comes with seven mobile themes. So just enable the plug-in, choose one of the mobile themes, and you are done. Enable “Mobile Support”, if you use a cache plugin though!

If you don’t believe it only takes one minute to enable mobile support for your blog, check this short video I made, enabling mobile support for BlogTips (PS: there is no sound. Was just meant to show how fast the configuration goes)

It works pretty simple: as the visitor accesses your webpage, the plugin catches those using a mobile, and uses its mobile theme to “serve the blog”. “WP Mobile Detector” currently recognizes over 5,000 different mobile devices, differentiating between basic and advanced mobile devices. On the former advanced HTML and images are stripped.

Enable the plugin, choose your mobile theme and off you go...

The mobile themes reside in a subdirectory of the plugin, so they don’t interfere with the blog’s main theme. You can edit the .php and .css files of the mobile themes just as for any “standard” theme.

If the visitor does not use a mobile, “control” is routed as before, and your standard theme is displayed. While for “normal” visitors your usual cache plugin is used, the plugin uses its own cache for “mobile” visitors. You can’t configure the expiration date for that cache, though, which is a pity.

“WP Mobile Detector” also tracks basic mobile access statistics, and has a button to check of your site is “mobile ready”. This test also indicates how fast your home page will download on different mobile carriers (WiFi, GPRS and 3G), indicates the cost to download the homepage, and points out potential incompatibilities.

Testing your blog's mobile compatibility

I think this is nothing short of brilliant, and am now switching over my blogs one by one to support mobile access. As I go, I customize the themes according to the blog look-and-feel. BlogTips is already mobile enabled, so have a look on your PC, and compare it when you access it on your mobile!

Oh, before I forget: “WP Mobile Detector” also comes in paid version, which allows you to easily and interactively style your mobile theme, using a built-in menu.

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Use Facebook To Power Comments on Your Site

Posted by Rahil Thursday, March 17, 2011 2 comments

Facebook released a new social plugin that web publishers can use to power comments on their websites. Here are two benefits of using it, according to the official Facebook Comments page (which is where you can get the plugin as well).

Some large websites and blogs are already testing the plugin. In fact they started using it right after the official release, and today the have a post summarizing the results and feeling so far.

In the past couple of years we have seen at least half a dozen comment systems and plugins emerging on the web, but I don’t think any of them became the de facto standard. Facebook Comments might.

Why? Because the previous plugins and platforms only offered small benefits to the web publishers (e.g., easier logins, connection with Twitter, etc), while the Facebook plugin has two big advantages which might swing the pendulum in its favor: a) it reduces the number of trolls around because people need a real identity to comment and, most importantly, b) using it might actually increase your traffic because every time someone leaves a comment on your site that comment will also be published on the user’s Facebook stream.

Have you guys spotted the Facebook Comments plugin around? Are you considering to use it on your site?

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Five Unique Ways To Get Backlinks

Posted by Rahil Wednesday, March 16, 2011 0 comments

Getting a ton of quality backlinks can take forever and most people just don’t have the time or patience to wait that long.So Now Blogfortricks will explain you how to get backlinks. There are many great ways to get backlinks such as; blog commenting, forum posting, article submissions, social bookmarking and guest posting, but the problem with these backlink building methods is that you will end up spending too much time away from your site and more importantly your readers. Wouldn’t it be nice if getting backlinks could be set on autopilot?

Great news, there is a way you can set your link building on autopilot that only requires you to do a minimal amount of upfront work. Before I get into the methods that will put your link building on autopilot I want to make sure you understand that this entire method revolves around good quality content.

Remember, “Content is king”!

1. Utilize Yahoo Answers

If you have been building backlinks to your site then I bet you know that Yahoo Answers is really a No-Follow site, right? Well to tell you the truth, it is, but that isn’t the reason you want to post answers on Yahoo Answers. The reason you need to post on Yahoo Answers is because there is a piece of software out there called WP Robot that when placed on a blog has a tool that pulls Yahoo Answers off Yahoo and places it on their site.

Do you get why this is beneficial for you?

Getting links is not that tough. All you have to do is answer questions that have a descriptive title such as, “How do I make money online?” or “How can I lower my car insurance premiums?”. The reason you need to answer questions with a large niche in the title such as making money online, insurance, weight loss or whatever is so you have more people pulling Answers from Yahoo onto their site.

2. Create A Multiple Series List

There are a few reasons to create a multiple series list and all three reasons combined work very well to get backlinks and traffic. The first reason multiple series lists work is because readers can follow along better with a list, they are just easier to scan and make learning less complicated. The other reason why multiple series lists get more backlinks is because people love to link to lists and the more lists you have the more backlinks you will get.

Example: If you write a 3 part series titled, “15 ways to get more traffic through Facebook” I would be a fool to only link to one part on my blog, so instead I would need to link to all three. I don’t know about you but I would much rather have three links pointing to my site as opposed to just one.

3. Add Information To Wikipedia

This is something I tested a while back and it works beautifully. Wikipedia is the biggest online encyclopedia and has over 3 million articles just in the English language. This is why finding a page to edit is very easy to do.

Here is how it works, you first need to find a page that can use some editing (I recommend finding a page that doesn’t have a lot of content but has a decent foundation to go off of). Once you have found the page you want to edit and that relates to your site you need to make sure that you have an identical topic on your site so that you have a reason to link to your site.

Example of identical topics: If you had a site about blogging then I great page to edit would be the page of Problogger, Darren Rowse(considering you had something new to add). Now in order to make it every more closely related I would try to get an interview with Darren that way I could fill in some missing parts to his Wikipedia page. After I have done that I can edit the page, insert my website link and wait.

Something that you must know is that like Yahoo Answers Wikipedia is a No Follow site so the entire point of using Wikipedia to get people to see the article on your site and link to that instead of the actual Wikipedia page.

4, Exchange Site Links For Content

Something that I have done quite a bit for my niche websites is exchange site links for written content. This isn’t guest posting, this method involves a site owner placing a link back to your site in order for you to write a specified number of articles.

The reason this works is because site owners want to get more content whether it is to submit to article directories, sell or just put on their site. I know this may not make a lot of sense to you now but it will. If you spend enough time on forums then you will notice that not everyone wants to buy content for a decent price, so all you have to do is tell the person wanting to buy the article that you will write 1 article each month in exchange for 1 link on their site. Trust me, people like to do this.

5. Give Away A Gift

My favorite way to get backlinks is to actually put out some link bait(AKA give away a gift). The link bait I always put out is a $25 gift card for Amazon.com. Everybody wants to get the free gift card so I tell my readers that all they have to do is link to my site and they will be entered into the drawing for the $25 gift card.

How I set it up: Since I want to get traffic and not only links I make the requirement that in order to be entered into the drawing the linking site needs to send at least 5 visitors having all different IP addresses and anything over 5 will count as another entry into the drawing. Think about it, if you only get 3 links from quality sites it would probably cost you around $200 per month for those links, but instead you only pay $25 with the hopes that the site owner keeps your link up for the chance to win another gift in the coming months.

The biggest different between these 5 unique link building methods and the normal link building methods is the fact that these are a more set and forget type thing while the others have to be catered to constantly.

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10 Fast and Free PC Security Enhancements

Posted by Rahil Tuesday, March 15, 2011 2 comments

Before you spend a Time on security, there are many precautions you can take that will protect you against the most common threats.

1. Check Windows Update and Office Update regularly http://office.microsoft.com/productupdates; have your Office CD ready. Windows Me, 2000, and XP users can configure automatic updates. Click on the Automatic Updates tab in the System control panel and choose the appropriate options.

2. Install a personal firewall. Both SyGate http://www.sygate.com/ and ZoneAlarm http://www.zonelabs.com/ offer free versions.

3. Install a free spyware blocker. Our Editors' Choice ("Spyware," April 22) was SpyBot Search & Destroy http://security.kolla.de/. SpyBot is also paranoid and ruthless in hunting out tracking cookies.

4. Block pop-up spam messages in Windows NT, 2000, or XP by disabling the Windows Messenger service (this is unrelated to the instant messaging program). Open Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Services and you'll see Messenger. Right-click and go to Properties. Set Start-up Type to Disabled and press the Stop button. Bye-bye, spam pop-ups! Any good firewall will also stop them.

5. Use strong passwords and change them periodically. Passwords should have at least seven characters; use letters and numbers and have at least one symbol. A decent example would be f8izKro@l. This will make it much harder for anyone to gain access to your accounts.

6. If you're using Outlook or Outlook Express, use the current version or one with the Outlook Security Update installed. The update and current versions patch numerous vulnerabilities.

7. Buy antivirus software and keep it up to date. If you're not willing to pay, try Grisoft AVG Free Edition (Grisoft Inc., w*w.grisoft.com). And doublecheck your AV with the free, online-only scanners available at www.pandasoftware.com/activescan and http://housecall.trendmicro.com/.

8. If you have a wireless network, turn on the security features: Use MAC filtering, turn off SSID broadcast, and even use WEP with the biggest key you can get. For more, check out our wireless section or see the expanded coverage in Your Unwired World in our next issue.

9. Join a respectable e-mail security list, such as the one found at our own Security Supersite at http://security.ziffdavis.com/, so that you learn about emerging threats quickly and can take proper precautions.

10. Be skeptical of things on the Internet. Don't assume that e-mail "From:" a particular person is actually from that person until you have further reason to believe it's that person. Don't assume that an attachment is what it says it is. Don't give out your password to anyone, even if that person claims to be from "support."

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How To Import and Export Blog in BlogSpot Blog

Posted by Rahil Friday, February 25, 2011 2 comments

Now you can export all of your posts and comments into a single, Atom-formatted XML file for easy backup. You can then import the posts back into Blogger, either into an existing blog or into a new one.

It Helps Transfer ut Blog To another Platform Like Blogspot To Wordpress etc..

To export your blog, log in to http://draft.blogger.com/ and go to the Settings > Basic page. You’ll see the Blog Tools links at the top of the page for importing and exporting.

Once you click “Export blog” and press the “Export” button on the next page, your browser will prompt you to save the XML file for your blog. Keep it somewhere safe as a backup, or import it into a different blog. You can import one blog into another from the Blog Tools links, or when creating a new blog. Look for the “Advanced Options” at the bottom of the page.

When you import a blog, all of the posts will get saved in an “imported” state. From there you can publish just a few, or all of them at once. Here are some ideas for what you can do with importing and exporting:

Merge two or more blogs into one. Take the exported posts and comments from one blog and import them into another one.
Move individual posts from blog to blog. After importing, select just a set of posts to publish and publish them with one click.
Back up your blog to your own storage. You can keep your words safe and under your control in case anything happens to your blog, or us, or if you want to remove them from the Internet.
Move your blog somewhere else. Our export format is standard Atom XML. We hope to see other blogging providers extend their Atom support to include import and export. And, if you decide to come back to Blogger, importing your export file will get you back up and running in seconds.
The export format currently only covers blog posts and comments to those posts, not blog settings or templates. To back up a Classic template, copy and paste the template code from the editor. To back up a Layouts template, use the Backup / Restore template option to download a copy of your template.
Before importing a blog for the first time, we recommend that you create a new, throwaway blog to import into so you get a sense for how the process works. Once you’re comfortable, import into your public blog
At the moment there is a 1MB size limit on the blog you can import. This is a bug that we are correcting the issue.

Have you imported or exported your blog? Let us know about how it went in the comments.

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Pay Per Click Advertising - In Text Ads for Websites/Blog by Infolinks

Posted by Rahil Tuesday, February 22, 2011 0 comments

Infolinks presents the next generation of pay per click in Text Advertising, leading the industry with the most relevant contextual advertising links and the highest revenue share - guaranteed.

Quick and easy setup with no changes to your website
Ads are tightly integrated with your content - no additional space required
Free sign up with no commitments or risk

What is Pay Per Click In Text Advertising?

Pay Per Click In Text advertising inserts text link advertisements within the content of your website, usually in the form of double-underline hyperlinks. Upon a hover of the mouse, a floating informational bubble opens with content from an advertiser. If clicked, the visitor is directed to the advertiser’s landing page and you earn advertising revenue; otherwise, when the mouse is moved away from the hyperlink, the bubble disappears. Learn how to get started

The Highest Revenue Share In The Industry

What makes Infolinks stand out is they offer the highest revenue share in the industry. Other in-text ad providers give only 40% to 50% revenue share. Infolinks gives their publishers 70% and they give that even if you are a smaller blog. With Infolinks, you can get the same revenue share as a site getting over 10 million page views a month, which is what other in-text ad providers want in order to give that high a rev-share.

Easy Setup – There’s a Plugin for That

Getting Infolinks up and running takes only a minute. All you have to do is go sign up and then install a small piece of code onto your blog. If you’re running WordPress (or Blogger, Joomla or Drupal), Infolinks has a plugin that will do all the setup for you. You could literally be making money within a few minutes of signing up!

Completely Free To Join

Infolinks is completely free to join and there are no long term contracts to sign. Try Infolinks on your blog and if it doesn’t make more than your current in-text solution, then just switch back. However, I’m sure you’ll find that higher payout equals higher revenue for you. And by signing up via my partnership with Infolinks, you’ll gain access all those high paying premium ads that are normally reserved for big publishers.

So Friends Join Infolinks Today And Start Earning Money Online

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Five Ways To Drive Traffic To Your Blog

Posted by Rahil Monday, February 21, 2011 0 comments

When you blog for money you need to create your own content (and lots of it!), implement advertisement programs like Google AdSense and BidVertiser , and last but not least – you need traffic.

In our offline lives we dread it, but online we embrace it. I want to give you 5 ways to start driving traffic to your blog today. With a little time and patience, you will slowly start to increase your viewer ship.

So BlogForTricks Now Explain You Five Methods Of Increasing Traffic To Your Blog

1)Post comments on other blogs

Blogs are everywhere – there’s certainly not a shortage of them. You should have no problem finding other Bloggers in your niche that are popular and interesting. Bookmark those that you like, follow their topics daily, and if you find something that sparks your interest – comment.

Become a participating voice in the community. The more interesting your comments are, the more likely your peers will follow you to your blog. And who knows – you might stand out among the crowd and be recognized by the author, which can spin off into better opportunities.

2) Register with blog networks like: Technorati, BlogCatalog, and MyBlogLog

It’s important that you get your blog out there for others to see. You can start the process by Submit Your Website To Other Site , but that’s just the beginning. Technorati , BlogCatalog, and MyBlogLog are just a few of the high profile blog networks on the web. Register with them, network with other people in your releated area, and get your word out.

When you register with these services remember a couple of things:

1.) Create a detailed profile. Let people know a little bit about you and draw them in. Without that personal interaction people may flee quickly.

2.) Tag your blog properly. Tags are very important – they’re usually one or two word descriptions of your blog. So for example My Blog would fall under categories like: Money, Business, and Finance. Dig around the specific service and look for popular tags and try to use those for your blog. It allows people who are interested in these topics to easily find your site.

3.) Register with several forums.

Do a Google search for forums that are related to your niche and register. Try to be an active voice in the community. People will flock to you if you’re interesting. Not only that but it allows you to find out what others are doing and what makes them appealing.

When you register with a forum, make sure to fill out the profile, similar to the blogging services. And equally as important – make a signature that is a direct link to your blog. Your signature is shown in every post that you make – helping you gain visibility. This is all the more reason to create thought provoking discussions.

4) Social Bookmarking and Article Submission.

Social networking, bookmarking, and article submissions are all the rage today – don’t let it pass you by. Some of the major networks include delicious, Furl, and of course, Digg. These sites will allow you to tag, bookmark, and submit articles that you think are interesting. What’s more interesting than your own work? People should know about it so go spread the word.

5) StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon really falls into tip #2, but I decided to break it away from the pack because it provides quicker results. Like the rest of the social networking sites, you create a profile and network with others. But what makes StumbleUpon so darn unique, is that you can “stumble” thousands of sites that you’re interested in by the click of a button. So what does that mean for you? Well, you can stumble your own site. By doing this you get into the Stumble rotation, and any people that you network with can stumble across it as well.

In my experience StumbleUpon can bring great surges of traffic for short periods of time. Due to the nature of the service, you’re likely to get overlooked more than not; however, those that do stop – tend to stay. And if they like the site, they can rate it and review it for all the friends in their network to see. Are you getting the picture here? Your viewer ship has the potential to explode!

As with most things in life, there’s no silver bullet for getting traffic. It takes a lot of research, careful planning, networking, patience, and time. If you have what it takes and start using my recommendations, you will definitely start to see an increase. Hopefully that increase in traffic will help you blog for money.

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How To Enable Guest Blogging in BlogSpot Blogs

Posted by Rahil 0 comments

In one of my earlier blog posts, I had talked about the Various Benefits of Guest Blogging. BlogSpot/Blogger allows Guest Blogging on your blog. In fact, you can have as many as 100 Authors for your blog. Here are the steps on How To Enable Guest Blogging in BlogSpot Blogs.

Step 1. Login to your blogger account and click on Settings.

Step 2. On the Settings page, click on Permissions

Step 3. Now you’ll see your name along with your gmail address, listed as Blog Author

Step 4. Click on Add Authors and enter the email address(es) you wish to be guest author(s) on your blog and click on Invite. If you are entering multiple invites, you can specify a comma separated email addresses list.

Step 5. Now your invitees have to accept your invitation to be a guest-blogger.Till they accept, you will see them on your Invitee-List

Step 6. After your invitation is sent, your invitees will all be receiving a mail to be a Contributor on your blog. So After Getting that mail Click On the "To contribute to this blog"

Step 7. Once they click on the “To contribute to this blog” link provided in the email, they will be taken to Blogger home-page asking them to sign-in. If you are a google account (Read gmail) holder, you can straight-away enter your credentials and sign in. If you don’t have a google account, you will have to create one, which you can use to sign-in to Blogger.

Step 8. Once they click on “Accept Invitation“, they will automatically be added to your blog as Guest Authors and you will see as such in your Dashboard

By default, the Guest-Bloggers will be added as Authors, which means, they will only be able to edit their posts alone and won’t be able to edit blog’s settings or template or edit other members’ posts. So you don’t have to worry about your settings or things, your Guest Blogger may have access to. Have fun with your blogging and enjoy Guest-Posts being written by your Guest-Bloggers

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Enable Guest Blogging To Promote Your Blog And Increase Traffic and Google PageRank

Posted by Rahil Sunday, February 20, 2011 0 comments

Guest Blogging is defined as Accepting Posts from other Bloggers to publish for free on your blog, or writing posts for other Bloggers to publish on their blogs for free (If you are good enough, you can charge some money as well. But then, if you are already good enough to make money with your writing, you won’t be writing on others’ blogs.

Guest Blogging is a great way to build your Online Reputation and Drive Traffic to your blog and can be treated as a Traffic-Building and Networking-Tool. This will help in your Blog’s growth and also gives you an opportunity to market your writing skills in Bloggers’ Circuit. Usually, Guest Bloggers are allowed to have a small brief about them, which appears at the bottom of every Guest Post written by then and people allow Guest Bloggers to have one or two links of theirs.

So you can choose to mention your Blog URL, so that visitors who may have liked your Guest Post can go to your blog for more.

So by doing Guest-Blogging on a mature blog with decent traffic, a novice blogger can get more visibility by virtue of more Backlinks and Hits to his new blog. It also increases your Google PageRank as its pass the PR to your website from the hosting blog. Further, it brings freshness to your blog. All of us have a certain way of writing, and so have the Guest-Bloggers. So with their fresh content, your blog will be queried by search engines with more and more search terms, further boosting your traffic and PageRank.

Now a days, most of the bloggers, if not all, who are interested in Networking and Generating Traffic for their Blog, are into Guest Blogging

IF ur Intrested To Write For Us

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