Posts
by Shelly Blake-Plock
Just caught myself commenting on a student's blog to make sure to cite sources at the end of the post in APA format.
Which is fine. If it's APA format that I want the kid to learn.
But this is a blog post I'm grading. And so, I realize: oh, yeah... I'm using the internets!
And thus I amended my comment to read: "Please remember to link to your sources within your post".
Links make the Internet, well... the Internet. Links are the only thing that gives the Internet the right to be capitalized (well, that's my rationale; and, on a side note, the history of the capitalization of Internet is actually fairly interesting.)
And while as a history teacher, I'll continue to teach and expect the use of APA format and in-text citations in essays and research papers, when it comes to blog posts -- whether in the less formal ones or in totally straight-laced academic-tone posts -- I'm going to remember to teach linking as a fundamental part of writing.
Because you teach good networked writing by teaching the value of links... and the style that goes with it.
Read More...
Showing posts with label Blogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blogging. Show all posts
In all my spare time...
Well, since I don't have enough to do now I decided that I better add more work to my plate.
I have started a new blog...It's kind of an activist blog...you know...the kind where people get all fired up and want to hurl you through a window? Well, maybe not that bad, but its a father's rights blog. It's geared toward men who are actively pursuing a place in their child(ren)'s life and are being stopped either by the family courts or by their ex-wife or both.
Hot topic, eh?
First, I need to say that I know a lot of single moms with custody of their children. This is not meant to be anti-mom nor is it anti-mom having custody. What it is supposed to do is raise awareness at how unfair the division of time is between custodial parents and non-custodial parents when the non-custodial parent is an active positive influence in the child's life.
Those are the key words there... I get all fired up when I hear about custodial mothers who use their children as pawns to force their exes to do their bidding...holding them as leverage to get what they want. And, unfortunately, in more cases than not, the family courts uphold this manipulation.
And, I hope it helps dads with the guilt and anxiety and sadness that comes with being a non-custodial parent.
So, if you want to take a peek you can find this new blog at http://fathersfightforrights.blogspot.com/
Thank you...this soapbox is now closed. Read More...
I have started a new blog...It's kind of an activist blog...you know...the kind where people get all fired up and want to hurl you through a window? Well, maybe not that bad, but its a father's rights blog. It's geared toward men who are actively pursuing a place in their child(ren)'s life and are being stopped either by the family courts or by their ex-wife or both.
Hot topic, eh?
First, I need to say that I know a lot of single moms with custody of their children. This is not meant to be anti-mom nor is it anti-mom having custody. What it is supposed to do is raise awareness at how unfair the division of time is between custodial parents and non-custodial parents when the non-custodial parent is an active positive influence in the child's life.
Those are the key words there... I get all fired up when I hear about custodial mothers who use their children as pawns to force their exes to do their bidding...holding them as leverage to get what they want. And, unfortunately, in more cases than not, the family courts uphold this manipulation.
And, I hope it helps dads with the guilt and anxiety and sadness that comes with being a non-custodial parent.
So, if you want to take a peek you can find this new blog at http://fathersfightforrights.blogspot.com/
Thank you...this soapbox is now closed. Read More...
Then and now...
I had a funny thought today. I was thinking back to the year 2000...Actually, the year 1999 when it was going to become the year 2000 and there was all that speculation about what would happen with the change of the century... There was widespread panic about computers crashing, missiles spontaneously ejecting themselves toward Russia/China/Middle East, bank accounts looted, stockmarkets crashing, and packs of wild dogs roaming the streets of Orem, Utah.
Yes...thats right...my mother was absolutely certain that there would be packs of wild dogs roaming the streets...And no...we have NEVER let her live that one down.
But, the reality is that we all got to live through something that is pretty cool...the change in a century! And, if you are at least my age...the 80's...which is almost as cool as a change in the century.
Thinking back...I never ever would have guessed that today I would be sitting in Germany with a soldier for a husband, two kids under my roof, driving a subaru. I even eat brocolli these days...which is a big deal for me. I was absolutely certain that brocolli was the vegetable of Satan.
Oh how wrong we can be...kind of like those packs of maurading dogs...right mom?
I also never thought I (my life, my hopes, my dreams, my past) would be so transparently available to anyone and everyone via a written blog... Of course...I also was alive and mostly grown up before Al Gore invented the internet...so its not like I was able to dream of being a blogger one day.
Which brings me to my blog...
Remember a while back when I mentioned that I wanted to upgrade my blog...make it a little fancier...try and get it noticed just a little more. Well, I've slowly been researching and attempting to discover exactly what it is that will push me from the intimate circle of readers I now enjoy...out into the vast blogosphere...
In particular, perhaps you've noticed my OCD/ADD changes in my blog backgrounds. I cannot find one that fits ME. I think I've tried about 50 different backgrounds over the past week...and I've ended up with black and white because black goes with everything...right?
I'm just alerting you to the fact that you'll be seeing quite a few changes happening over the next few weeks... Don't worry - I'm trying to make it easy to navigate. No fancy things you HAVE to click, although if you happened to love me enough to click them or rate me or vote for me I'd surely appreciate it.
Plus, if you haven't noticed I've added "pages" to the top...I'll be adding a few more so keep an eye out.
And...if you have any suggestions or comments they would be greatly appreciated. Even the ones that are considered "constructive feedback"...I promise not to pout or send you hate mail. Not even anonymously.
And I promise not to sic any packs of wild dogs on you either. Read More...
Yes...thats right...my mother was absolutely certain that there would be packs of wild dogs roaming the streets...And no...we have NEVER let her live that one down.
But, the reality is that we all got to live through something that is pretty cool...the change in a century! And, if you are at least my age...the 80's...which is almost as cool as a change in the century.
Thinking back...I never ever would have guessed that today I would be sitting in Germany with a soldier for a husband, two kids under my roof, driving a subaru. I even eat brocolli these days...which is a big deal for me. I was absolutely certain that brocolli was the vegetable of Satan.
Oh how wrong we can be...kind of like those packs of maurading dogs...right mom?
I also never thought I (my life, my hopes, my dreams, my past) would be so transparently available to anyone and everyone via a written blog... Of course...I also was alive and mostly grown up before Al Gore invented the internet...so its not like I was able to dream of being a blogger one day.
Which brings me to my blog...
Remember a while back when I mentioned that I wanted to upgrade my blog...make it a little fancier...try and get it noticed just a little more. Well, I've slowly been researching and attempting to discover exactly what it is that will push me from the intimate circle of readers I now enjoy...out into the vast blogosphere...
In particular, perhaps you've noticed my OCD/ADD changes in my blog backgrounds. I cannot find one that fits ME. I think I've tried about 50 different backgrounds over the past week...and I've ended up with black and white because black goes with everything...right?
I'm just alerting you to the fact that you'll be seeing quite a few changes happening over the next few weeks... Don't worry - I'm trying to make it easy to navigate. No fancy things you HAVE to click, although if you happened to love me enough to click them or rate me or vote for me I'd surely appreciate it.
Plus, if you haven't noticed I've added "pages" to the top...I'll be adding a few more so keep an eye out.
And...if you have any suggestions or comments they would be greatly appreciated. Even the ones that are considered "constructive feedback"...I promise not to pout or send you hate mail. Not even anonymously.
And I promise not to sic any packs of wild dogs on you either. Read More...
I know you are but what am I...
Remember when you were like 26 8 years old and would taunt your brothers and sisters mercilessly with snappy comebacks like, "I know you are but what am I?", or "If you love it, marry it..." And my personal favorite from some joke book my sister brought home one day...
"A jerk is a tug, a tug is a boat, a boat goes in water, water is nature and nature is beautiful so thank you for the compliment."
Yeah - memorize THAT one for the next time someone calls you a jerk...
Along with those taunts (at least in my childhood dwelling) came the numerous face twisting grimaces with tongues askew and eyes crossed and fingers stretching your cheeks to appear the most hideous you possibly could be just to Drive. In. Your. Point.
Because at 8- getting the point across was very important.
And what did you mother say to you?
"If you keep making that face...(say it with me now...) your face is going to freeze that way."
I never really believed my mom that face could do that...and then I grew up and became an actual adult. (shudder...)
And I started reading blogs and one in particular caught my eye and has been a favorite read ever since.
Attack of the Redneck Mommy is funny and serious and very real and sometimes a little crass and she's made me laugh outloud and cry buckets of tears. And in my little world thats the makings of a good blog.
Today she wrote about her third-born who didn't live very long in this world and was born with a frozen face. Just like my mama told me... Only her little guy didn't get it from making faces. He was simply born into the world that way.
Its called Moebius Syndrome...and her blog today is very much worth sharing...so I'm passing along the fact that today is National Awareness for Moebius Syndrome...and if you take a gander - go read about Shale who, "never blinked, never smiled, never frowned."
And then make it a point to smile today. Read More...
"A jerk is a tug, a tug is a boat, a boat goes in water, water is nature and nature is beautiful so thank you for the compliment."
Yeah - memorize THAT one for the next time someone calls you a jerk...
Along with those taunts (at least in my childhood dwelling) came the numerous face twisting grimaces with tongues askew and eyes crossed and fingers stretching your cheeks to appear the most hideous you possibly could be just to Drive. In. Your. Point.
Because at 8- getting the point across was very important.
And what did you mother say to you?
"If you keep making that face...(say it with me now...) your face is going to freeze that way."
I never really believed my mom that face could do that...and then I grew up and became an actual adult. (shudder...)
And I started reading blogs and one in particular caught my eye and has been a favorite read ever since.
Attack of the Redneck Mommy is funny and serious and very real and sometimes a little crass and she's made me laugh outloud and cry buckets of tears. And in my little world thats the makings of a good blog.
Today she wrote about her third-born who didn't live very long in this world and was born with a frozen face. Just like my mama told me... Only her little guy didn't get it from making faces. He was simply born into the world that way.
Its called Moebius Syndrome...and her blog today is very much worth sharing...so I'm passing along the fact that today is National Awareness for Moebius Syndrome...and if you take a gander - go read about Shale who, "never blinked, never smiled, never frowned."
And then make it a point to smile today. Read More...
Open all anchor links in new window
I believe this post is going to be very interesting to many people who read this post. Because the first question is what is the need to open links in new window? Is it a big deal to open links in new window? What are the advantages? Why we need to implement this in our sites or blogs?
Take my blog for example. I have write big posts some times and place more links. I want the user to see the links to be opened in new windows as they are still reading my pages. If the link opened in the same page, then it will be a problem to go and come back and start reading from the position they were. That won't give good experience. I want them to be stayed on my blog page and open all the links in new window. So that user is always on my blog page and if they wants then they can move across pages. It's not bad at all.
How many ways are there to implement this?
1. Make all links in web page open in new window.
2. Only some part of the web page links will be opened in new window.
I have two options: Number 1,
Open all links on the web page in new window: Default HTML supports this.
Work around:
Add this line in the <head> tag of your HTML: <base target='_blank' />
If I make all links needs to be opened in new window then home link, navigation links, search everything will opened in new window and it will frustrate user that whatever you click on the link it will open in new window. Dozens of windows in user system if you click 10-12 links. Not a good idea.
Option 2: Only specific region anchor links open in new window. This looks promising and good. But, how to. For example, in my blog, I like to open the content links only in new window.
I have a parent for all content inside a div with id='content'. Now, my goal is to add some logic to open all links in new window which are under content only.
Work around:
Add the below javascript to the <head> tag of the HTML.
This small function will do the trick. So, on window load, we are finding all the links in the particular division then adding the target='_blank' attribute to it. So, I found this is the only best solution to achieve this.
Once you add this to your page, then you will see all links inside content will open in new window and all others in the same window. This working perfectly to me. Try it on my blog by clicking on some link in the content.
If you are Jquery lover, then this is JQuery version,
$('#content a[href^="http://"]').attr("target", "_blank");
Great advantage is for blogs. All blogs needs this as there are lot of external links and other links in content. This will be the best and suitable solution. Read More...
Take my blog for example. I have write big posts some times and place more links. I want the user to see the links to be opened in new windows as they are still reading my pages. If the link opened in the same page, then it will be a problem to go and come back and start reading from the position they were. That won't give good experience. I want them to be stayed on my blog page and open all the links in new window. So that user is always on my blog page and if they wants then they can move across pages. It's not bad at all.
How many ways are there to implement this?
1. Make all links in web page open in new window.
2. Only some part of the web page links will be opened in new window.
I have two options: Number 1,
Open all links on the web page in new window: Default HTML supports this.
Work around:
Add this line in the <head> tag of your HTML: <base target='_blank' />
If I make all links needs to be opened in new window then home link, navigation links, search everything will opened in new window and it will frustrate user that whatever you click on the link it will open in new window. Dozens of windows in user system if you click 10-12 links. Not a good idea.
Option 2: Only specific region anchor links open in new window. This looks promising and good. But, how to. For example, in my blog, I like to open the content links only in new window.
I have a parent for all content inside a div with id='content'. Now, my goal is to add some logic to open all links in new window which are under content only.
Work around:
Add the below javascript to the <head> tag of the HTML.
<script type='text/javascript'>
//<![CDATA[
window.onload = function () {
var links = document.getElementById('content').getElementsByTagName('a');
for (var i = 0; i < links.length; i++) {
links[i].setAttribute('target', '_blank');
}
}
//]]>
</script>
This small function will do the trick. So, on window load, we are finding all the links in the particular division then adding the target='_blank' attribute to it. So, I found this is the only best solution to achieve this.
Once you add this to your page, then you will see all links inside content will open in new window and all others in the same window. This working perfectly to me. Try it on my blog by clicking on some link in the content.
If you are Jquery lover, then this is JQuery version,
$('#content a[href^="http://"]').attr("target", "_blank");
Great advantage is for blogs. All blogs needs this as there are lot of external links and other links in content. This will be the best and suitable solution. Read More...
Read More link to blogger posts without HTML changes
This is really a very helpful post I believe. Most of the times I write long posts and explain each and every part in the solution I found. So, I really need to show only specific length of each post and add a link called Read More at the end of the post on the blog home page. So, that users get chance to see more posts and look more posts. And the loading of the main page will be faster as the content is less. So, there are lot of advantages by placing the read more link on the home page for each post.
I have tried so many solutions and didn't impress by any of them. Some of them are disturbing my HTML as after specific characters add the read more link. Another option is, strip the HTML from the post and add the read more link after specific characters, but that also removes the blog styles for P tag, div Tag or any other custom styles we have applied. Sp, to get this working either we need to change the Blog HTML or add bunch of Javascript code to do that. This is not very easy to maintain and useful. So, what to do, can't I do it? So, after a very long research and read so much I want to give better user experience to my users to read what they want on my blog. Finally came up with a nice and simple solution which do not need much HTML changes or customization.
What is Jump Break and what it will do?
This is the option which is available in blogger by default and not known to most of the people. Lot of people are doing lot of customization to add read more links to their blogs. With this feature we don't need to do anything as it provides everything for us.
Solution:
Now, save your template and just go to your home page for testing the functionality.
The great advantage is very simple. People like it to use it or maintain it. Very simple and easy right? The only thing you need to do is, just follow the same for each post where you want to place the read more. Don't think like, if your blog already had 100's of posts then the first question in mind will be "Do I need to apply the same for all those posts?". Not needed. Read more is only useful most of the times for only home page posts. So, add to the current home page posts and to new upcoming posts.
Hope this gives you good idea on how to add read more link for your blog posts. Like it? then please share it. Read More...
I have tried so many solutions and didn't impress by any of them. Some of them are disturbing my HTML as after specific characters add the read more link. Another option is, strip the HTML from the post and add the read more link after specific characters, but that also removes the blog styles for P tag, div Tag or any other custom styles we have applied. Sp, to get this working either we need to change the Blog HTML or add bunch of Javascript code to do that. This is not very easy to maintain and useful. So, what to do, can't I do it? So, after a very long research and read so much I want to give better user experience to my users to read what they want on my blog. Finally came up with a nice and simple solution which do not need much HTML changes or customization.
What is Jump Break and what it will do?
This is the option which is available in blogger by default and not known to most of the people. Lot of people are doing lot of customization to add read more links to their blogs. With this feature we don't need to do anything as it provides everything for us.
Solution:
- Go to create post or edit post and place the cursor in the content where you need to add the read more link. Once set the mouse cursor, from the editor toolbar find the option "Insert Jump Break" as shown below, this option will be visible in new blogger template editors and in editor Compose mode only. In "Edit HTML" mode all these option will go off. So, make sure you are in "Compose" mode to insert jump break.
Note: If you did not find the jump break as shown below then add the text <--more--> in the Edit HTML mode of the editor wherever you want. 
- Now, it will insert a bar which represents the Jump Break [see below image how it looks like]. This can be dragged to the place wherever you need it. First set the position of it. You are half done by doing this.
- Now, publish the post and go to Edit HTML option from the blog navigation links Layout or Design[Tab name changed recently].
- Take the backup of the full template before do any changes.
- Now, check the option "Expand Widget Templates".
- Search for the tag in your HTML <data:post.body />.
- Add this simple HTML text, just below the above tag.
<b:if cond='data:post.hasJumpLink'>
<div class='jump-link'>
<a expr:href='data:post.url + "#more"'><data:post.jumpText/></a>
</div>
</b:if >
Here, it just finds whether the data in the post has the jump link set, if yes, then it will insert the anchor text for read more, otherwise it skips the line. You can place whatever text or image or any other HTML tag instead of anchor tag in the above example code for read more.Now, save your template and just go to your home page for testing the functionality.
The great advantage is very simple. People like it to use it or maintain it. Very simple and easy right? The only thing you need to do is, just follow the same for each post where you want to place the read more. Don't think like, if your blog already had 100's of posts then the first question in mind will be "Do I need to apply the same for all those posts?". Not needed. Read more is only useful most of the times for only home page posts. So, add to the current home page posts and to new upcoming posts.
Hope this gives you good idea on how to add read more link for your blog posts. Like it? then please share it. Read More...
Add Dotnetshoutout button in all blog posts blogger blogs
This is another blog tip I want to tell you as I just added it recently to my blog. I think, you have seen my post on "how to add dotnetkicks kick it icon to all posts in blogger blog". So, by taking that as initiative created this code for DotnetShoutout and working great.
How to add it?
- Go to edit html option of your blog, by login into your blogger blog and under layout and then Edit HTML.
- Download full template before start editing the html code.
- Now check the option "Expand Widget Templates".
- Search in your browser for the keyword "data:post.body".
- I think you found one instance as "<data:post.body/>".
- Please add the below code exactly below the line you just found.
<a expr:href='"http://dotnetshoutout.com/Submit?url=" + data:post.url + "&title=" + data:post.title' expr:id='data:widget.instanceId + "_kickit"' rel='nofollow' rev='vote-for'> <img alt='Shout it' expr:src='"http://dotnetshoutout.com/image.axd?url=" + data:post.url' style='border:0px'/></a>
- Save the template and just view your blog now.
- I think, you will see the Shout it icon under each blog post body. Now you can add any formatting code to make it more stylish by adding p tags, css to look good on your page and positioning.
Hope it helps!!! Do you like this post?
Read More...Dotnetkicks.com kick it for blogger blogspot blogs
I know most of bloggers are searching for this…. If you are writing ASP.NET related posts in your blog then you should need it to publish your posts to dotnetkicks.com. So, here is a nice tip to add kick it for your blogspot blogs.
Note: expr: is the syntax for expression and it will execute by blogger code and replace the correct values before send response to browser.
- Go to your blog. After you sign in, in admin section you have a tab named "layout".
- Under layout tab select "Edit HTML".
- Before you do any changes, please download full template.
- Then tick the checkbox "Expand Widget Templates."
- In your browser, press Control+F and find the keyword "data:post.body".
- Go to that line [<data:post.body/>] and hit enter and add the below code as is.
Note: expr: is the syntax for expression and it will execute by blogger code and replace the correct values before send response to browser.
- Now, save the template and view blog for the changes.
- I think, you are smiling now by seeing kick it icon on your blog for each post.
- Enjoy!!!
How to submit all posts to Google webmasters for better indexing all the posts in my blog?
You all know that the Blogger’s atom.xml file will burn only the top 25 results in the feed. This is the file usually we will submit to the Google webmaster tool to index our blog posts. But because it only returns top 25, Google crawler indexes only these 25 and it don’t care about the posts which are older than 25. So, there you are loosing your visitors to see those posts because they won’t be show up in the search results because of not crawled well. So how to solve this issue? and how to submit all posts to Google webmasters?
Solution:
Before you proceed, please check the below posts once for the better understanding.
- How to submit your blogger blog site feed to Google webmasters if you enable the option Post Feed redirection url. View here.
- How to see all posts in the atom.xml feed instead of getting only top 25? View here.
Once you read above posts you will get complete idea of how to solve the problem.
- Open Google webmaster site and submit the below url
- For submitting the top 50 blog feed results then use
atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=50
- For submitting from 50 to 100 results then use
atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=50&max-results=100
So you can submit all the posts to Google webmasters to crawl all the posts instead of only top 25. How good it is?
Read More...Bloggers feed is showing only 25 posts, how to get all?
This is the question in my mind from long time that why feed is not showing all the posts when I open atom.xml. It always get me the top 25 posts in the feed. So how to get all the posts?
Solution:
- We need to use certain querystring parameters to solve the issue to get all the posts.
- start-index : Which tells to the blogger feed generator that starts from this post.
- max-results : Which tells to the blogger feed generator that the number of maximum results count from the start index.
- redirect : Which is not actually needed. If you enabled post feed redirection then only we need this. But, better to keep this always in the feed url. You can find the more information about it here.
How to use:
After the atom.xml feed url, append the below querystrng url.
?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=50
For testing you can browse my feed http://praveenbattula.blogspot.com/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=50
Which will burn you the top 50 posts in the feed. Actually we get top 25 only by default, but from the solution I told you, which will return how many posts you want.
For getting top 100 results use this querystring url
?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=100
For getting the results between 50 to 100, use this
?redirect=false&start-index=50&max-results=100
You can give any value to the parameters start-index and max-results to get that many results…
Happy Blogging.
Read More...How to submit blogspot feed to Google webmaster where feedburner feed is enabled in blogspot blog
I enabled the option Post Feed redirection url in my blog settings. From the time I did that Google webmaster tool is started giving the error "URL not allowed". But I need to enable the post feed redirection to Feedburner instead of general atom.xml feed. So how to solve this problem? After read the Google blog documentation found some attributes how to solve this issue.
For my blog the atom/feed url is http://praveenbattula.blogspot.com/atom.xml. When I type this, it will redirect to my feedburner url http://feeds2.feedburner.com/praveenbattula. So when I submit the atom.xml in the Google webmaster it’s not taking this and gives me the error "URL not allowed" because of the redirection. So finally I understood that redirection is the problem.
If you want to use custom redirected feed like FeedBurner then you need to use the "redirect" querystring parameter to the url of your feed, which stops the redirection.
atom.xml?redirect=false
So, when I use the url http://praveenbattula.blogspot.com/atom.xml?redirect=false i always see the message "successfully crawled" in Google webmaster tool.
So except in Google webmaster tool I don’t use the redirect querystring. So, all users will see my customized feedburner feed, only webmaster crawler see my atom.xml feed. How nice it is….
Nice tip!!!!
Read More...
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