What are the essential items that you should have in the footer of your wordpress.com blog post?

IF you navigate through the blogosphere you will realize that the vast majority of the blogs lack a footer. Even when they have one you will just find a copyright message there.

Excerpt from dailyblogtips

So, what should you have in your blog post footer? The above link recommends two things. A link to the home page and a link to the RSS feed. Not bad. The commenters have supplied with other worthwhile ideas. For example, a replica of the header and an anchor tag that takes you to the “Top”.

Are you aware that footer text is important for SEO? In SEO, footer text carries some importance.As much as the link density on that page. [...] – Make sure that the last and the first thing a crawler sees is the most important thing to you. [...] what you should be bothered about are the following things.
- Is your keyword present in your footer text?
- Is there a link with your keyword?
- Is there the right keyword density within your footer text?
- Is it clear and evident to your human visitors?
- Does it look spammy?

From dailyseoblog

Skellie discussed what (not) to put in the footer of the blog post in order to remove clutter. Here are some of the suggestions that I liked:

- Put blog directory buttons and links in your footer. Blog directories are of much more use to bloggers than they are to readers.

- Remove as much non-link text as possible from your post-footer. The function of a post-footer is to display tags (if necessary), a comment link, a social bookmarking button or two, and the date and author (if not already displayed at the top of the post). There is no reason to write a long preamble to these elements — it only makes the important stuff harder to get to.

- Remove ‘Add to Technorati favorites’ buttons from posts. One link on the sidebar is enough. A link there also makes more sense because you are adding the blog as a whole, not the individual post.

- Cut down the number of social bookmarking buttons visible at once. With twenty buttons at the bottom of every post the important ones are likely to get lost in the clutter. Use a drop-down menu or a service like AddThis which takes you to a separate page with plenty of options.

From Skelliewag

What does Lorelle say about blog footers?

Really, it’s up to your imagination what you can include in your footer.

And this is what the footer of Lorelle’s post on blog footer looks like: Dissfunctional copies numerous Feedflare links. She also uses the Headline Animator as created by Feedburner – at the bottom of each post. Personally I think, it’s a great way to offer RSS subscriptions to readers in this way – animated, smart, compact and eye-catching.

↑ Grab this Headline Animator

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Two different types of blog post footer items

Okay, it seems to me that the blog post footer basically has two types of items.

1. Blog post specific

The items that belong to this category are Related Links, social bookmarking icons etc.

1. Blog specific

An RSS subscription button, your signature, etc.

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My favourite blog post footer items

1. Blog-post specific

-Related posts (it helps to lure readers to stay on your blog just a little longer).

-One social bookmarking button (that deals with multiple social bookmarking sites) – like, Addthis or Socialmarker.

-An “Email this” button

-A Sphere: Related Content link. It helps readers find related content specific to a blog post.

2. Blog specific

- A nice and attractive RSS Subscription button

- A “Get Email Updates” button

- A signature

- A “Rate my blog” button

- A “Vote for my blog” button

- Link to the “Contact the author” page

- Link to your home page

- Link to your Tag Cloud page

- A copyright notice, possibly linked to a Creative Commons lisence.

Looks like I have a lot of work to do. You see, blog post footers are a recent fascination of mine and I haven’t prepared one as yet. Why don’t you do me a favour? Please share with me your thoughts on must-have footer items for blog posts.

Sharing is Caring!

How to create a customizable Tag Cloud for wordpress.com blogs (non-geek version!)

CREATE your Tag Cloud for your wordpress.com blog and customize it almost instantly. No special skill is required. But you do need Firefox.

In order to have a customizable Tag Cloud, your first job is to complete all the first ten steps as explained in my previous post.

Now while you are still in MS Word customize the hierarchy and or colour of the tags as you please.

Here are some examples. Feel free to feel inspired by these or think up something on your own! I haven’t explored with different fonts. You might try different fonts if you like. But it is not advisable to change the font size, if you want to retain the relationship among the tags. Also you might want to edit out some tags if you are looking for a concise look and create a Top Tgas/Top Categories page instead!

Example no. 1
This is the default Tag Cloud as it appears without any change. How it will look in your blog depends on the theme of your blog.

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Example no. 2
Default Tag Cloud with added colour

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Example no. 3
Default Tag Cloud with added colour gradation

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Example no. 4
Hierarchical method

act online application art badges bangladesh blog code generator email email a firend email me! freebies image resource just for fun Link generator LINK sources media photography polls quiz Search situationist social bookmarking submission tips Submit subversive art Technorati test4blog web2.0 web generator webmasters’ tool Website review web tool widgets blogger’s handbook blogging blogging tips blog promotion blog traffic code content sharing HTML image interesting internet knowledge must-see Netty Gritty Sanjida’s internet wordpress wordpress tips

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Example no. 5
Hierarchical method with added colour

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Example no. 6
Hierarchical method with added colour gradation

act online application art badges bangladesh blog code generator email email a firend email me! freebies image resource just for fun Link generator LINK sources media photography polls quiz Search situationist social bookmarking submission tips Submit subversive art Technorati test4blog web2.0 web generator webmasters’ tool Website review web tool widgets blogger’s handbook blogging blogging tips blog promotion blog traffic code content sharing HTML image interesting internet knowledge must-see Netty Gritty Sanjida’s internet wordpress wordpress tips

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Done picking a suitable style? Good, now please finish the steps 11 to 16 as stated in my previous post.

Enjoy your shiny new Tag Cloud in all its customized glory!

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As mentioned in my previous post, this will work for Category Cloud also, please read that post for more information.

The default Tag Cloud widget does not allow you to customize the tags in any way. If you want to customize the look of your Tag Cloud in the side bar, simply paste the Tag Cloud created in the process mentioned in this post and paste the code in a text widget. Don’t forget to save changes!

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If this tutorial has been helpful, then please consider showing some link love.

Email a friend!

Bookmark and share! Please help others find out about this easy customizable Tag Cloud Generation technique.

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Read 4 more wordpress tips

Top 5 ways to promote your Tag Cloud

How to create an Archives page/post for a wordpress.com blog

How to offer a “Share on Facebook” option under (wordpress.com) blog posts

How to use Addinto to offer social bookmarking and email post options for wordpress.com blogs

How to create a Tag Cloud for wordpress.com blogs (non-geek version!)

YOU can now easily have a Tag Cloud in a page in your wordpress.com blog. It’s basically just a copy-and-paste system and very easy. You can view my tag cloud here.

This tutorial assumes that you have Firefox.

Step-by-step instructions:

1. Go to your widgets and place the “Tag Cloud” widget in your side bar. Remember to save changes.
2. View your blog (in Firefox).
3. Select all the tags from the sidebar with your cursor.
4. Right-click and choose “View Selection source”.
5. Copy the code.
6. Open a new Notepad file and paste the code.
7. Save the code as Tagcloud.html. Just enter Tagcloud.html in the “Save” dialogue box and the HTML file will be created.
8. Open Tagcloud.html in another window. Voila! Your Tag Cloud appears in the window!
9. Select and copy everything in the window.
10. Open a new MS Word file and paste the tag cloud.
11. Save the MS Word file as a webpage – give it the name TagcloudMSWord.
12. Open the file TagcloudMSWord in Firefox.
13. Select and copy everything in the window.
14. Come back to your blog and create a new page (or post) and name it Tag Cloud.
15. Simply paste your copied Tag Cloud in your post using the Visual Editor.
16. Save and view the page.

You will find the Tag Cloud sitting pretty in your newly created page!

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A suggestion

You might want to remove the “Tag Cloud” widget from the side bar if you have it in a page.

What about the Category cloud?

It is also possible to link to a Category Cloud page/post in the same fashion. But for that you initially have to choose the Category Cloud widget instead of the Tag Cloud widget.

Why MS Word ?

Although MS Word usually clashes with wordpress.com, here it is indispensable. MS Word conveniently changes the font size units from percentage to point – needed in order to retain the variation of size of the tags in a page or post.

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Another useful tip

The default Tag Cloud widget for wordpress.com blogs doesn’t allow for any customization. If you want to have a customizable Tag cloud in the side bar, you can create one in the process mentioned here and paste the Tag Cloud in a text widget!

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Some related issues

• The categories will show the post count (if you chose that when you configured the Category Cloud widget). But since it’s not a self-updating thing, the post count won’t change when you make a new post under a category. Not to worry, this doesn’t mean that your new post won’t show under the category.
• For the same reason no new tag/category that you create after the creation of your Tag/Category Cloud Page will show.
• It is recommended to update your Tag/Category Cloud page from time-to-time in the process mentioned above to keep up with your growing blog. How often you have to update your Tag Cloud depends largely on how up-to-date you want to stay and how often you update your blog.
• As it is known already, items pasted from MS Word has formatting issues in wordpress.com blogs. It is advisable to check if there is a space between each tag. If not, please insert the space using the “Code” mode and not the “Visual” mode. This is to ensure that the space is not inadvertently pasted in a wrong place. Whenever you need to insert a space do so between </a> and <a>.
• This is a very basic Tag/Category Cloud creation method that you can utilize without downloading any program. It is also limited in its features.
• If you are looking for customization of your Tag Cloud, then check out the customizable Tag Cloud generation technique for wordpress.com blogs.
• I also highly recommend Engtech’s ingenious Tag Cloud Generator. A must-see especially if you have CSS upgrade. You have to download it in order to start the process. (The Tag Cloud doesn’t dynamically change over time, though.)
• If you want to learn more about Tag Clouds, you can do so at coelomic.
• You might also want to learn about the difference between categories and tags in wordpress.com blogs.
• Check out what Lorelle says about which one to use (categories or tags) in your blog and why.

Was this post helpful? Do let me know!

How about some link love?!

Grab the suitable code – it will create a text link that will say “Create your own Tag Cloud” and “Create your own Category Cloud” respectively. If you use this tutorial to create a Tag Cloud page, then please paste the following code under the Tag Cloud.

<a title="Tag Cloud page creation for wordpess.com blogs!" href="http://shongjog.wordpress.com/2008/03/29/how-to-create-a-tag-cloud-for-wordpresscom-blogs-non-geek-version/">Create your own Tag Cloud page!</a>

If you use the tutorial to create a Category Cloud page, then paste this code instead.

<a title="Category Cloud page creation for wordpress.com blogs!" href="http://shongjog.wordpress.com/2008/03/29/how-to-create-a-tag-cloud-for-wordpresscom-blogs-non-geek-version/">Create your own Category Cloud page!</a>

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Email a friend!
Bookmark and share!

Why are social bookmarking sites important for blogs?

IF you are new to the concept of social bookmarking, then this post is you. Actually, there’s so much stuff available in the net on this topic that it might be overwhelming to novices. So I have gleaned sections of posts that deal with social bookmarking. Take a quick glance to prime yourself. Later you might also want to follow the links to learn more.

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What is social bookmarking?

There was a time, none too long ago, when your bookmarks were part of your private domain, hidden away in the browser and stored on your local hard drive. Consequently, what you deemed important – the sites you visited regularly – was no one’s business but your own. Like so many other things on the Internet, Web 2.0 has changed that.

The advent of social bookmarking and sharing sites like del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Ma.gnolia, Blue Dot, Furl, Digg and many others, has made it possible for what was once private to be made public. You can now publish your bookmarks to the open Web, making them available for all to see, use, share and comment upon.

Read more at about.com

Advantages of social bookmarking

In terms of creating a high-quality search engine, a social bookmarking system has several advantages over traditional automated resource location and classification software, such as search engine spiders. All tag-based classification of Internet resources (such as web sites) is done by human beings, who understand the content of the resource, as opposed to software, which algorithmically attempts to determine the meaning of a resource. People also tend to find and bookmark web pages that have not yet been noticed or indexed by web spiders. Additionally, a social bookmarking system can rank a resource based on how many times it has been bookmarked by users (who find it useful, or amusing, or otherwise worthy of remembering and sharing).

Read more at wikipedia
The importance of tagging for social bookmarking sites

Tags are specific keywords that you can use for classifying content (in this case, stories). Once you associate tags with a certain piece of information, this information can be organized accordingly, and made easily retrievable by using the same keyword or keywords.

Tags have become a staple of web 2.0 sites, and especially social bookmarking sites, as they allow a user to sift through large amounts of information and locate exactly what the user is looking for, very efficiently.

Read more at The Mu Life

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How to generate tags and social bookmarking links for your blog

Several sites are there to automatically generate tags and links to social bookmarking sites. Keotag and egmstrategy are a great help.

If you are a wordpress.com blogger, then check out the different ways in which you can create social bookmarking links using different sites.

Do you hate pornography? Please sign the No-Porn Pledge

DO YOU hate pornography? I do. Why do peple indulge in these things anyway. I guess I will never understand.

Nopornpledge was created in response to those who claim that “Everyone uses porn,” and to those who want to make you feel isolated and weird because you’re uncomfortable with pornography use. Often, the primary goal of pro-porners is to convince you that you’re uncool or you “hate sex” because you don’t like porn – as if you’re the one with the problem. As a result, far too many people – especially women – live their lives believing they’re the “only ones” who dislike porn, and dislike their partners using it.

(excerpt from Nopornpledge)

Please sign the No-Porn Pledge now!

There are actually thousands, if not millions of us. We just need to stand up and be counted. Our goal is to make you feel more comfortable about your discomfort with porn. As you can see by the number of people who have already signed the Pledge from all over the globe, you are hardly alone.

(excerpt from Nopornpledge)

Click the image below to view the list of people who have already signed the Nopornpledge.

 

Also read the Guestbook entries to learn about why different people have signed the pledge.  Here is an entry that I liked in particular.

I have never been in a relationship where the guy had not been at the time or at one time addicted to porn. It infuriates me that I had to suffer through unstable/abusive relationships brought on by their pornography use. To this day I am an insecure and jealous person because of indirect exposure to pornography. It is a poison that destroys everyone who touches it and everyone who touches them.

(An entry from the Nopornpledge guestbook)

Of course, you wouldn’t forget to sign the guestbook yourself, right?

Nopornpledge is a joint project of the AntiPorn Activist Network, Through The Flame, and one angry girl designs.