Operating an online business means a lot, and needs true effort. One of the prime concern is your overall website, thus an elegant and fascinating template is important. Definitely you should look for a design of your website to astonish your visitors. Make it remarkable and distinctive so that they will come and return regularly in your site.

Putting a template comes in many ways either you hire a professional web designer or you can purchase a web template for your site. But working with a web designer may be costly.

A template, as you must know, is a pre-designed layout. It is compost of a theme, a color scheme and an outline. When buying a template you cannot change the design rather you can personalize your template by editing the banner, content or adding pictures and logos that may show your personality. But we cannot deny the fact that sometimes, putting a template can cause you trouble, so the need of a programmer is a requirement.

To help you decide whether purchasing a template is better than hiring a professional web designer, here’s a look at some of the pros and con.

Templates greatly help in exposing a professional-looking designs that can invite the eyes of the visitors. They are user friendly, less time consuming and cost-effective. We all know that we cannot edit the design of our chosen template. It’s an advantage for the beginners, so they can avoid messing up with their website.

One inconvenience in using a template is that it cannot be original. There’s a possibility that your chosen template will be used by other bloggers many templates are not recognized by search engines, having been created before the time when search engine optimization techniques were discovered. Moreover, quite a lot of templates have many un-editable sections. While this can be a benefit for the beginners it can be annoying to the experts and webmasters because they don’t have the chance to edit the site according to their preference. When buying a template, technical support or advice is often not available.

These are only circumstances and possibilities in order to show effectively the pros and cons of buying a template or not.

This is a simple widget that you could implement on your own blog to help increase the number of people dropping their card by offering them a way promote their own website at the same time. This simple technique use RSS feed from your Entrecard dashboard to show the link of those Entrecard droppers in your sidebar.

Step 1. Log-in to your EntreCard dashboard

Step 2. Click on “More Stats” link, you will be taken to a page contains lots of useful information such as number of cards that were dropped on your blog each day, number of clicks through to your site from Entrecard, number of cards that you dropped on other peoples sites, … Scroll down a bit to the middle of page then you will see a RSS feed for “Top Card Droppers”, right click on it and choose option “Copy Link Location” to copy the link to clipboard.

Step 3. Login to your Blogger account

Step 4. Click on the “Layout” link

Step 5. Make sure you are in tab “Page Elements”

Step 6. Choose a place where you want to put your widgets on, then click “Add a Gadget”. When a pop-up window is opened, choose a Feed gadget (its location is in the middle of the pop-up window)

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

Conclusion

This widget give a much more long-term benefit to those that are featured. They will remain featured for as long as they drop their card every day while those that miss a day or more will slowly find themselves moving further down the list. This encourages everyone to drop as often as possible to get themselves featured on your site or to keep their current position.

I think this widget is better than Recent Entrecard Droppers widget because those that are visiting your website regularly are receiving the greatest benefits for doing so while those that only drop occasional will not featured as much.

Another excellent Blogger feature has been added to Blogger blog for everyone recently after the release of Blogger embedded comment form: Reactions. This widget acts like a mini-poll beneath each of your blog posts and offers the ability for readers to leave feedback quickly.

How to add “Reactions” to your Blogger template

To add this new function to your Blogger layout, you will need to do some simple steps to activate it. Once logged in to your Blogger dashboard, go to Layout -> Page Elements and click the “Edit” link for the “Blog Posts” widget. In the pop-up window, you will see the option to add “Reactions” to your posts:

Tick the check box and edit the labels for your buttons by clicking on the link “Edit” nearby if you want. Then finally save this setting.

Adding the code to your template

Unfortunately, setting up this feature doesn’t simple as Blogger comment form, you need to add some lines of code to your template.

If you are using a default Blogger template with no modifications to widgets or the post layout, nothing more to do because the code is added.

If you are using a customized Blogger template, you will need to add the required code to your template manually. In this case, go to Layout -> Edit HTML in your Blogger dashboard. Make sure the check box “Expand widget templates” is checked. Next, search for the following line of code:

<data:post.body/>

Immediately after this line, add the following section of code:

<span class='reaction-buttons'>
<b:if cond='data:top.showReactions'>
<table border='0' cellpadding='0' width='100%'><tr>
<td valign='center'><span class='reactions-label'>
<data:top.reactionsLabel/></span>
</td>
<td><iframe allowtransparency='true' class='reactions-iframe' expr:src='data:post.reactionsUrl' frameborder='0' name='reactions' scrolling='no'/></td>
</tr></table>
</b:if>
</span>

Preview your template to see the “Reactions” add-on appear beneath each of your blog posts, and finally, save this new addition to your template.

That’s it If you want a demo page for this feature, head over to ThemeLib demo page and test it by voting on the post.

Please let me know if there’s any problems with you when adding this feature by leaving your comments below.

Btw, have a nice weekend, folks

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 Blogger dashboard? 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 Blogger dashboard.

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 Blogger Dashboard.

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!

Hope you enjoy this post and do not forget to subscribe to ThemeLib

The logic of this widget is the same as Recent Posts and Recent Comments widgets

Step 1. Log-in to your EntreCard dashboard

Step 2. Right click on the RSS button on the top right window and choose option “Copy Link Location” to copy your link to clipboard.

Step 3. Login to your Blogger account

Step 4. Click on the link “Layout”

Step 5. Make sure you are in tab “Page Elements”

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

Introduction

Technorati is a search engine focused on tracking blogs. According to their about page, they currently tracking 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media.

Technorati Authority is the number of blogs joined Technorati linking to a website. The higher the number, the more Technorati Authority the blog has. It is important to note that they measure the number of blogs, rather than the number of links. So, if a blog links to your blog many times, it still only count as +1 toward your authority.

How to add

The result after adding the code is something like the one on the right

Both Blogger and WordPress users can add this button easily by using HTML widget. Yes, use HTML widget whenever you want to add some html code to your blog.

Paste the code below to your widget and you are done. Ah, remember change to text in blue to your link (do not use mine, it is a small number lol )

<script src='http://widgets.technorati.com/t.js' type='text/javascript'></script>
<a class='tr_authority_t_js' href='http://technorati.com/blogs/themelib.com?sub=tr_authority_t_ns' style='color:#4261DF'>View blog authority</a>

Hint: you should not add it when your authority is too low . I show my number to write this tutorial only hahaha

Bonus

It is better when we also put a button to get readers add your blog to their favourites.

The code is below (in case you want to add). Remember to change my link to yours.

<a href="http://technorati.com/faves?sub=addfavbtn&add=http://themelib.com"><img src="http://static.technorati.com/pix/fave/tech-fav-1.png" alt="Add to Technorati Favorites" /></a>

That’s it

This post was written to provide a step-by-step guide on how to create Recent Posts and Recent Comments widgets for Blogger beta.

I know, these widgets was posted so many times on so many blogs, but I still want to re-write them with more details to make it easier for beginers, also for supporting my blogger templates which use these widgets.

Let’s go.

Step 1. Login to your Blogger account

Step 2. Click on the link “Layout”

Step 3. Make sure you are in tab “Page Elements”

Step 4. 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 5. Fill in your Feed address

If your blog’s address is http://XYZ.blogspot.com, it means

• Your posts’ feed : http://XYZ.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
• Your comments’ feed : http://XYZ.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default

Step 6. Change the title, options if needed then click Save.

Here are the explanation for the screenshot above.

• Title : title of your widget. You can name it Recent Posts, Recent Comments or anything you like.
• Show :
  - Combobox “5 items” : number of your items you want to be displayed (1 to 5 items)
  - Checkbox “Item dates” : check it if you want to show date of your posts/ comments
  - Checkbox “Item sources/authors” : check it if you want to show sources/ authors of your posts/ comments
• Preview : preview your widget before it is published

Step 7. DONE

If you get into any trouble, feel free to ask me here. I’m willing to help you.

Did you notice that Google has just published the Subscription Links widget from Blogger in Draft to Blogger ?

The new Subscription Links 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 feed links 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 Subscription Links element 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