Spiga

Note: Best Use Firefox for Editing

If you are using the templates here at OBT, it is best to edit the posts, layout, and page elements in Firefox. They have been designed in Firefox. But they can be viewed in all new-version browsers.


Read More... [Source: Our Blogger Templates - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

Blogger Templates: Simple n' Sweet

OBT User Review:

You have the best templates! I've been downloading and dressing them up like dolls! :)

I'm not a designer nor am I coder. I'm just your average person who wants a unique but nice looking blog. You've designed these amazing templates so that changing the colors, fonts, backgrounds is sooooo easy!

Your site is just what I was looking for because Blogger templates -- well they're so cookie cutter. But with yours -- well it feels like the possibilities are endless!

Thank you so much for all your hard work!
- Tanya Barnes

Simple n' Sweet is a minimalist and extremely flexible template with flexible multiple columns (2, 4, 5, 6, or 7 columns). You can change the columns, all background and font colors, and font types without doing any coding.


The wide sidebar is 300 px wide, perfect for square Adsense boxes. The two narrow sidebars are 132 px wide. All the 3 lowerbar columns are 250 px wide.

Comment Box
To have your comment box function properly, go to Settings > Comments, look for the Comment Form Placement and click on the 'Embedded below post' button. That's all you have to do if you use this template. The codes have already been modified for you. See this post for more detail.

Features
Important: Change your template without loosing any sidebar widgets.
Help links: template installation guides and instructions.

Header Image

To put the header image in your blog, click on the image below to open up a larger size and save it into your computer. Then, upload the image using the Layout > Page Elements > Header Edit tab. If you want to use your own image for the header, the image width has to be 980 pixels (with any height).

Terms of Use
This new XML Blogger template is free but please value our hours of design work by leaving the credit at the bottom of the screen to Ourblogtemplates.com intact. But you can label whatever you want at the blog footer.

Read More... [Source: Our Blogger Templates - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

Blogger Templates: Werd

OBT User Review:

This is a beautiful thing! I've looked at hundreds of really nice templates many of them have some things I'm looking for but missing others, some are not developed enough for the Blogger editing tool. This one has everything and makes it very flexible and easy to use in Blogger. I'm familiar enough with coding that I can tweak most layouts but sometimes it's nice to be able to use Blogger's editing tool. Thank you so much for taking the time to REALLY make a template that is ACTUALLY for Blogger!
- Lisa

Werd
is an extremely flexible template with flexible multiple columns (2, 4, 5, 6, or 7 columns). You can change the columns, all background and font colors, and font types without doing any coding.


The wide sidebar is 300 px wide, perfect for square Adsense boxes. The two narrow sidebars are 132 px wide. All the 3 lowerbar columns are 265 px wide.

Comment Box
To have your comment box function properly, go to Settings > Comments, look for the Comment Form Placement and click on the 'Embedded below post' button. That's all you have to do if you use this template. The codes have already been modified for you. See this post for more detail.

Features
Important: Change your template without loosing any sidebar widgets.
Help links: template installation guides and instructions.

Header Image

To put the header image in your blog, click on the image below to open up a larger size and save it into your computer. Then, upload the image using the Layout > Page Elements > Header Edit tab. If you want to use your own image for the header, the image width has to be 980 pixels (with any height).


Terms of Use
This new XML Blogger template is free but please value our hours of design work by leaving the credit at the bottom of the screen to Ourblogtemplates.com intact. But you can label whatever you want at the blog footer.

Read More... [Source: Our Blogger Templates - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

Blogger Templates: Werd

Werd is an extremely flexible template with flexible multiple columns (2, 4, 5, 6, or 7 columns). You can change the columns, all background and font colors, and font types without doing any coding.


The wide sidebar is 300 px wide, perfect for square Adsense boxes. The two narrow sidebars are 132 px wide. All the 3 lowerbar columns are 265 px wide.

Comment Box
To have your comment box function properly, go to Settings > Comments, look for the Comment Form Placement and click on the 'Embedded below post' button. That's all you have to do if you use this template. The codes have already been modified for you. See this post for more detail.

Features
Important: Change your template without loosing any sidebar widgets.
Help links: template installation guides and instructions.

Header Image

To put the header image in your blog, click on the image below to open up a larger size and save it into your computer. Then, upload the image using the Layout > Page Elements > Header Edit tab. If you want to use your own image for the header, the image width has to be 980 pixels (with any height).


Terms of Use
This new XML Blogger template is free but please value our hours of design work by leaving the credit at the bottom of the screen to Ourblogtemplates.com intact. But you can label whatever you want at the blog footer.

Read More... [Source: Our Blogger Templates - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

Blogger Templates: On The Road

On The Road is an extremely flexible template with flexible multiple columns (2, 4, 5, or 7 columns). You can change the columns, all background and font colors, and font types without doing any coding.


The wide sidebar is 300 px wide, perfect for square Adsense boxes. The two narrow sidebars are 132 px wide. All the 3 lowerbar columns are 272 px wide.

Comment Box
To have your comment box function properly, go to Settings > Comments, look for the Comment Form Placement and click on the 'Embedded below post' button. That's all you have to do if you use this template. The codes have already been modified for you. See this post for more detail.

Features
Important: Change your template without loosing any sidebar widgets.
Help links: template installation guides and instructions.

Header Image

To put the header image in your blog, click on the image below to open up a larger size and save it into your computer. Then, upload the image using the Layout > Page Elements > Header Edit tab. If you want to use your own image for the header, the image width has to be 970 pixels (with any height).

Image Credit: ewallpapers.

Terms of Use
This new XML Blogger template is free but please value our hours of design work by leaving the credit at the bottom of the screen to Ourblogtemplates.com intact. But you can label whatever you want at the blog footer.

Read More... [Source: Our Blogger Templates - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

Blogger Templates: The Beach

The Beach is an extremely flexible template based on The Professional Template. It has multiple columns that are flexible - it can either be a 3, 5, 6, or 8 column template without you having to do any coding. You can easily change all the colors and fonts without doing any coding. And you can change the header image to anything you want without any coding too.


This free Blogger template is based on a professional template theme. It can be either a 3, 5, 6, or 8 column template. If you want a 3 or 5 column template, simply don't fill in the smaller sidebars on the right and the lowerbar widgets; then make its colors blend with the post column.

The right narrow sidebar is 120 px wide, and the main left sidebar is 300 px wide, perfect for vertical and square Adsense boxes. The two smaller left-sidebars are 132 px wide. All the 3 lowerbar columns are 278 px wide.

Comment Box
To have your comment box function properly, go to Settings > Comments, look for the Comment Form Placement and click on the 'Embedded below post' button. That's all you have to do if you use this template. The codes have already been modified for you. See this post for more detail.

Features
Important: Change your template without loosing any sidebar widgets.
Help links: template installation guides and instructions.

Header Image

To put the header image in your blog, click on the image below to open up a larger size and save it into your computer. Then, upload the image using the Layout > Page Elements > Header Edit tab. If you want to use your own image for the header, the image width has to be 970 pixels (with any height).

Image Credit: ewallpapers.

Terms of Use
This new XML Blogger template is free but please value our hours of design work by leaving the credit at the bottom of the screen to Ourblogtemplates.com intact. But you can label whatever you want at the blog footer.

Read More... [Source: Our Blogger Templates - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

Related Posts with Thumbnails for Blogger - New Version by BloggerWidgets

Aneesh of Blogger Widgets has developed a new "Related Posts" script for Blogger which displays thumbnails of images in addition to linked post titles:



In appearance, this Blogger "add-on" is similar to the LinkWithin script. Each section is highlighted in a complementary colour when the mouse hovers over it, and the entire section is clickable, leading to the URL of the "related post" displayed.


Unlike the LinkWithin script, this add-on links directly to the post page it references, and relies on Blogger's label feeds to display posts of true relevance to the post on which it appears.

Aneesh's script seems relatively easy to install. Furthermore, almost all aspects of this add-on may be customized including the style (by editing the CSS), the number of related posts to be displayed and the title of the section in which it is contained.

The image thumbnails displayed for each related post are generated from the thumbnail associated with the relevant post page. Therefore, only images which you have uploaded to each blog post (rather than referencing by URL) will be displayed. In instances where no image appears in the related post, a generic "No-Image" replacement will be be displayed instead.

Overall, I am very impressed by Aneesh's related posts script - it is neat, easily customizable and as the JavaScript is hosted by Google Code this loads very quickly..

Be sure to visit this page on the Blogger Widgets site for full instructions of installation and customization methods to add this useful script to your own Blogger blogs.

Read More... [Source: Blogger Buster - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

Build a Better Online Business with WordPress

If you read any popular blogging tips online (like on this site), WordPress is often the software behind the site. There’s a good reason for it too. WordPress is the best software to easily build a site and a blog without much technical know how. An increasing number of marketers are finding that it’s an [...]
Read More... [Source: eBlog Templates - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

Improve Your Blog in 31 Days � Guaranteed

If you haven’t heard the name Darren Rowse before then now is the time to listen. He’s a very popular blogger who makes 6-figures a year on his Problogger site and definitely knows his stuff. A while back he put together a month long series called “31 Days to Build a Better Blog” and it [...]
Read More... [Source: eBlog Templates - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

Profile Avatars for Blogger Comments - Updated

Displaying avatars beside comments in our blogs has been a long anticipated feature. Today, the Blogger Team announced that this feature is now enabled for Blogger blogs, allowing us to see the profile image or avatar of those leaving comments on our posts:

Today we have extended embedded comments to display profile images next to the comments that your visitors write. Though profile images have been available with the other commenting options, we are happy to bring them to embedded comments as part of the Blogger Birthday feature series (via Blogger Buzz)
However, this feature currently seems available only to those using Blogger's default templates.

Update:  Soufiane of LeBlogger.com has kindly emailed me with a quick and simple solution for us to add the required code to customized Blogger templates! Details below.

For those of you using a standard Blogger template, you should easily be able to add comment avatars to your comment section with just a few clicks.

Here is what you should do:
  1. Go to Settings>Comments in your Blogger dashboard, and ensure the "Show profile images on comments" setting is set to "Yes" (this appears near the bottom of this page).
  2. Check a post page on your blog which has some comments to see if any comment avatars appear.
  3. If no comment avatars are visible in your layout, go to Layout>Edit HTML in your Blogger Dashboard and click the "Revert widget templates to default" link near the bottom of the page. Warning - only do this if using a standard, uncustomized Blogger template!
  4. After completing these necessary steps, comment avatars should now display to the left of comments on your posts.

How to add comment avatars to customized/non-standard Blogger templates

Soufiane of Le Blogger kindly emailed me details of the code we can add to customized Blogger templates in order to make comment avatars appear beside our posts (take a look at this post for the original details, in French).

It seems the method for us to use is far simpler than my initial impressions - we need only add two small sections of code to our templates in order for the comment avatars to function.

Here's what to do:

1. Go to Layout>Edit HTML in your Blogger dashboard, and ensure you check the "Expand widget templates" box.

2. Using your browser's search function, locate the following line of code (or similar):
<dl id='comments-block'>
Depending on your particular template, you may discover this is <div id='comments-block'> instead.

3. Replace this line of code with the following:
<dl expr:class='data:post.avatarIndentClass' id='comments-block'>
Note: if your template included div instead of dl, leave this intact and replace all other elements of the line instead.

4. Now, locate this line of code (usually a few lines further down, depending on your particular template):
<a expr:name='data:comment.anchorName'/>
Immediately before this line, paste the following section of code:

<b:if cond='data:comment.favicon'>
<img expr:src='data:comment.favicon' height='35px' style='margin-bottom:-2px;' width='35px'/>
</b:if>
<a expr:name='data:comment.anchorName'/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.enabledCommentProfileImages'>
<data:comment.authorAvatarImage/>
</b:if>


If you use an "author comment highlighting" hack in your template, you will need to search for a second instance of <a expr:name='data:comment.anchorName'/> and paste the code a second time.


5. Finally, save your template.


Now when you view a post page for which comments are enabled, you should see avatars beside the names of respective commenters!


How to upload an image for your commenting profile


If you choose to comment using your Blogger profile and do not currently have a profile photo uploaded, you can quickly add a photo while posting a comment.


To do this, write your comment as normal and click the "Preview" button. In this preview section, you will be able to upload a profile image which will be displayed instead of the default Blogger favicon:

To edit an existing profile image, go to your Blogger dashboard and click the "Edit Photo" link beside your current profile image. This is the image which will be displayed beside comments posted on Blogger blogs for which this feature has been enabled.



Notes on Blogger's Comment Avatars so far...


Here's a few observations about the new comment avatar function, which may offer some insight into how this currently works:


Whose avatars will be displayed?



At present, comment avatars are only enabled for those using their Blogger/Google profile for their identity. Those who use the "Anonymous", "Name/URL" or other options when commenting cannot yet have a profile image displayed.


When using OpenID, Wordpress, LiveJournal, Typepad or AIM, the OpenID favicon will be displayed instead. Those commenting anonymously or using the "Name/URL" option will have no image displayed.


Of course, there is every possibility that the Blogger Team may soon, enabling those using other methods of identifying themselves when commenting to upload a profile image for display.


Can these profile images be styled differently?


It is certainly possible to style the way comment avatars appear in our blogs. Style may appear inline, as can be seen in the default implementation of this upgrade:
<img expr:src='data:comment.favicon' height='35px' style='margin-bottom:-2px;' width='35px'/>
It is also possible to style these images by adding declarations to the <b:skin> section of our templates using the following classes:
  • .avatar-image-container - the overall container in which the profile images are housed
  • .avatar-image-container img - to style the actual image, using borders, padding, background-color, etc.
I'll experiment with this in more detail over the weekend, particularly with reference to comment identities for whom avatars cannot be displayed (yet), and will post full details as soon as possible.


Avatars load after other content on the page

The script used to display the avatars on post pages is set to load after other content on the page. This may mean a few seconds' delay between the initial page load, and the avatars appearing beside comments.


What do you think of this new feature?

I am very happy that we are now able to display avatars beside our comments, but still feel there is room for improvement, particularly as those who do not have a Google account are unable to display their profile photo. I hope that in the future, the ability for anyone to upload their photo will become possible (or that at least a generic image could be displayed instead).

After I'd mentioned this on Twitter, I discovered some rather mixed reactions to the news - many complained that this feature should have been implemented far sooner, or expressed their preference for using Disqus comments instead.

So what's your opinion? Will you use this new function in your own Blogger blog(s)?

Please feel free to tell us your thoughts by leaving your comments below.

Read More... [Source: Blogger Buster - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

How to add Blogger's Read More function to customized templates


As announced yesterday, Blogger have now enabled selective post summaries for our blogs. This means we can add a "jump break" in our posts, after which any content will only be visible on item pages.

Those of us using customized templates will probably need to add the code required for this function to work. In this article, I'll explain how easy this is to implement, as well as some helpful hints for customizing the "Read More" link.

Will the "Read More" feature work for my customized template?

For most Blogger users, adding the code required for Blogger's post summaries will enable selective summaries without error, even if you've already added the code to summarize your posts using the <span class="readmore"> hack.

The only templates this method will not work with is those which have added an automatic post summaries hack, which summarizes the posts based on the number of characters or words. This is because such customizations ignore any code added to the body of our blog posts and don't register Blogger's Jump Links.

If you'd prefer to use Blogger's Read More function than your current automatic post summaries, the simplest way to adapt your template is to remove references to the post summaries script - anything between the <script> and </script> tags used for your particular method.

If in doubt, refer to the author of the particular version of this script you are using.

How to add the code required for Blogger-powered post summaries

In order to add the "Read More" function to a customized template, we only need to add a few lines of code to our template's HTML.

If you're adding this code to your blog template, it is best to first add a new (or test) post in which a Jump Link is added. This ensures we can check our template customization to ensure everything works well beore saving.

To add a blog post with a Jump Link...

Simply create a blog post using Blogger's new post editor. This can be done either through Blogger in Draft, or by enabling the new post editor in the Settings>Basic tab of your Blogger dashboard.

Alternatively, you can edit your post in Edit HTML mode, and type <!-- more --> where you'd like the jump link to appear.

Ensure you have some content both above and below the Jump Link. Then publish your blog post.

If Jump Links have not already been enabled in your template, the post will appear in full. In this case, continue reading to learn how to add the code for Jump Links to your Blogger template code.

To add the code for Jump Links functionality to your Blogger template...

Go to Layout>Edit HTML in your Blogger dashboard and ensure you have checked the "Expand widget templates" box.

Then using your browser's search function, locate the following line of code:
<data:post.body/>
Depending on your individual template, you may find this enclosed between <p&gt or <div> tags. We need to leave these tags intact.

If you've added any other "Read more" hacks to your template (or have added other conditional statements to the Blog Posts section), you may discover more than one instance of <data:post.body/>. If this is the case, you need to edit the section which has <b:if cond='data.blog.url != data:blog.homepageUrl> a line or two above this.

Immediately after the <data:post.body/> line, add the following few lines of code:
<b:if cond='data:post.hasJumpLink'>
<div class='jump-link'>
<a expr:href='data:post.url + "#more"'><data:post.jumpText/></a>
</div>
</b:if >
Then preview your changes. If this has worked properly, your test post should display only the content added before the Jump Link. If you receive errors, or this technique did not enable the summaries, clear your edits, check the code you've added and begin again.

Styling the "Jump Link" and other interesting ideas

Now that we have "jump links" enabled by default in our Blogger templates, there are some useful and interesting tricks we may do to style the actual link and other properties of summarized posts.

Here's a few ideas to get you started.

Change the "Read More �" text

This is the simplest customization we can make. Simply go to Layout>Page Elements and click the "Edit" button for your Blog Posts gadget.

On this pop-up page, you can alter the text to something more suitable if desired.

Styling the "Read More � text

The "read more" text (or whatever phrase you may have changed this to) is enclosed in a <div> with the class of "jump-link". This enables us to add CSS to our <b:skin> section to affect the style of this particular link.

For example, the following CSS will give the Jump Link a red background, with white text and 3px of padding, thus overriding any other style statements for any instance of this particular link:
.jump-link a {
background: #ffff00;
padding: 3px;
color: #fff;
}
We could also add a :hover property with different colors for the background and text to create a different effect when a reader hovers over the "read more" text:
.jump-link a:hover {
background: #000000;
padding: 3px;
color: #ccc;
}
If you're fairly confident with CSS, you could easily adapt these examples to include background images, rounded corners, and indeed any property which would work with a link in the post.

Replace "Read More &raquo" with an image

Those who would prefer to use a linked image instead of a plain text link can replace <data:post.jumpText/>  with image tags, like this:

<b:if cond='data:post.hasJumpLink'>
<div class='jump-link'>
<a expr:href='data:post.url + "#more"'><img src="url_of_image" border="0" alt="Alternative text" /></a>
</div>
</b:if >

Where "url_of_image" is the true URL of your image as hosted by your image provider (Picasa Web Albums is my current preferred option, and free to boot!).

Display image "thumbnails" on non-item pages

I rather like the hacks which enable automatic post summaries with image thumbnails, so was very interested to see if a similar solution can be used along with our Blogger Jump Links.

Unfortunately, our summarized posts do not (yet) offer an extra class to which we can add attributes for images displayed within them. Instead, we can use some conditional CSS to alter the size (and alignment) of images on non-item pages.

Here's the work-around I've successfully used so far:

Go to Layout>Edit HTML and locate the closing ]]</b:skin> tag using your browser's search function.

Immediately after this line, add the following code - adapted to your personal preferences of course:

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != &quot;item&quot;'>
<style>
.post-body img {
img {
max-width: 100px;
width: expression(this.width > 100 ? 100: true);

float: right;
}

<style>

</b:if>


Change 100 to a different dimension if you prefer your images to be wider or narrower than 100px.

If you prefer images to be aligned to the left, you can alter float: right to float: left instead. Delete this line altogether if you'd prefer the image to appear in the same alignment as specified in your post.

This technique is a variant of Blogger Tricks' Larger HQ Images hack, but instead of enabling wider images, we're using this to create thumbnails. By using the max-width property and omitting any references to height, we ensure images smaller than the specified width will not appear distorted.

To use this technique, ensure you add an image close to the top of your post, before the Jump Link. On non-item pages, this image will appear no wider than your specified width.

Issues with the sidebar shifting beneath blog posts after adding Jump Links to posts

Many people have reported that their blog's layout appears distorted after adding Jump Links to their blog posts. For some layouts, the Jump Link causes the sidebar to shift beneath the blog post, as though the link is outstretching the boundaries of the post section.

In the comments of my announcement post, N@k$h@tr@! explained that this is because the Jump Link is somehow inserted between the opening and closing DIV tags in the HTML of a blog post.

N@k$h@tr@! recommends to view any posts to which Jump Links have been added in Edit HTML mode and delete any <div> and </div> tags you find (full details may be found on this blog post).

The Blogger Team are aware of this situation, and I assume this glitch will be resolved soon.


What do you think of this new function, and possible customization techniques?

I hope this article fully explains how to add functionality for Jump Links to customized Blogger templates, and offers some insights as to how we can further customize the appearance.

Please feel free to let us know your opinions and any ideas for further customization of the Jump Link and summarized posts by leaving your comments below.

Image credit: clspeace

Read More... [Source: Blogger Buster - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

Nexus 5 - A New Blogger Template for Free Download

It's been a while since I've designed a Blogger template for free release. But after reading this excellent tutorial on Smashing Magazine, I was inspired to create something different: an ultra-customizable, HTML5 based template for Blogger.

Nexus 5 is a one column template, with widgetized sections in the footer for any gadgets you may like to include. A wider, two column version will be available shortly for those who prefer gadgets in a sidebar section.

This template uses many HTML 5 and CSS3 elements to create a more innovative design without the use of excessive background images. It does gracefully degrade in browsers which do not support CSS3 elements to ensure the greatest percentage of visitors will appreciate the full scope of the design.


Here is a full screenshot of Nexus 5 as seen in Firefox 3.5 (my current preferred browser):


Click the image for a full page preview, or simply visit the demonstration blog..

I've also tested in Internet Explorer (6-8), Opera and Safari. While the rounded corners and text-shadow effects do not function in browsers which don't support CSS3, the overall functions and general design of the site work well.


Main features of Nexus 5

I've tried not to overload this design with features, as I wanted to offer a clean design which loads fairly quickly and can easily be customized to your own particular tastes.

Instead, I have focused on only a handful of features which I hope will be suitable for everyone, and enhance the clean design of this template.


Ultra customizable!

One of Blogger's greatest features is the ability to customize our templates to suit our tastes, both through the Page Elements section (moving the location of gadgets, and customizing aspects of our post-footer section), and the Fonts and Colors menu.

While I love to see beautifully designed Blogger templates available for download, many cannot be altered so easily and require the user to edit the HTML of their template in order to make any change to the design.

For Nexus 5, I wanted almost every aspect of the design to be customized with ease. This means that:
  • ALL colors may be changed through the Fonts and Colors menu
  • Fonts for text and headings may be altered through the menu
  • All footer gadgets may be moved around, added, deleted, and so on.
The ONLY aspect of this design which requires editing of the HTML is the "About" section in the footer. I was unable to create a workable integrated gadget for this section without excessive editing of the gadget tags. This would have rendered the section unstable; while a simple text/HTML widget could not have included the HTML5 elements I wanted to retain.


Integrated Navigation Menu


This design includes a navigation menu as a Link List gadget. You can add links to your Home, About and other important pages simply by editing the Link List gadget in your Page Elements menu.

The "Subscribe" button is pre-installed and will point to your blog's posts feed automatically.

A cool feature of this menu is the button highlighting. The background changes when your cursor hovers over the link; furthermore, when the page URL is the same as the link URL, the button remains highlighted.

For example, if you link to your blog's "About" page, the "About" button will remain highlighted when a visitor reads this page.


Integrated "Featured Posts" section - no template editing required!

I love the "recent posts with thumbnails" gadget, and decided to integrate this functionality into the template as a "Featured Posts" section, which can be seen above the post content on non-item pages:
This section will display the title, snippet and thumbnail of the most recent post from the Featured category.

No editing of the template is required to make this function work - simply add the label "Featured" (with a capital "F") to any posts you prefer to appear in this section.


Hover Effect on Summarized Posts

Another feature I wanted to include for this template was Post Summaries. This adds only the summary of posts on non-item pages, including a smaller version of the first image from each post. This is based on the Automatic Read More Hack by Anshul Dudeja (which integrates the required javascript into our templates).

Rather than specify exact dimensions for images which appear in the summaries, I have only specified a width. This ensures images are not distorted, and that a specified ratio of height to width is not required.

Also, when you hover over a post on a non-item page, that post is highlighted by a different background and link-text effect:


The colors for the background, link and paragraph text used in this effect can all be customized through the Fonts and Colors menu in your Blogger dashboard.

Posts on Item pages do not include this effect: post text and images will appear in full.


Stylized "Social" Section

The "social" gadget in the footer section is a simple Link List gadget where you can add links to any of your social media profiles.

The icons which appear beside each link do not need to be manually added to your gadget. Instead, these links are coded into the CSS to appear beside targeted links.

Profile links which are supported by Nexus 5 include:
  • Blogger
  • Flickr
  • Del.icio.us
  • Digg
  • Facebook
  • Last.fm
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • MySpace
  • Picasa
  • Technorati
Any links added to the links list widget in this section will automatically have the appropriate icon appear beside it where available.

If I've missed any popular social networks which you'd like to see included, please let me know and I'll update the CSS.


How to install Nexus 5

Nexus 5 is rather easy to install. Since it requires very little editing of the template code, you should be able to get this template up and running within a few minutes.

Please note: these instructions are for the basic installation of this template. If you want to transfer widgets from your existing template over to use with Nexus 5, take a look at this tutorial instead.

First of all, download this template to your hard drive. This is an XML template, compressed in a Zip folder for easy download.

Once you've downloaded, open up the Zip folder and extract the Nexus5.xml file. You may need to use Winzip or WinRar if your OS cannot open compressed folders by itself.

Now that you've decompressed the zip folder, go to Layout>Edit HTML on your Blogger dashboard.

Near the top of this page you will notice the Backup/Restore Template section. Here you can choose to upload a new template by clicking the "Browse" button to locate the Nexus5.xml file on your hard drive. Select this file, then click the "Upload" button.

It's likely that you'll be prompted to delete any existing widgets that are in your existing template. If you need to retain any of these widgets/gadgets, cancel the operation and refer to this tutorial instead. Otherwise, confirm the deletion and continue.

Within a moment or two, your existing template will be replaced with your new Nexus 5 design, which you can customize according to your needs.


Configuring the Labels Gadget

The Labels (categories) gadget which appears in the footer section of Nexus 5 looks far better when the post count for each label is not selected. To change this option, go to Layout>Page Elements in your Blogger dashboard and click the "Edit" link for this gadget. You can also click the wrench icon beside this gadget while viewing your blog).

Uncheck the box for "Show number of posts per label" and save this change.

Note: while the "Cloud" option for labels will work in this template, when this option is used, the label cloud may not appear as desired. I have added support for the Cloud variant in the two column version of this design which will be available for download shortly.


Configure the Blogroll Gadget

This gadget is simply a Links List gadget for you to add links to your favourite sites.

Simply edit this gadget in the Page Elements page of your dashboard (or by clicking the wrench icon beside the gadget when viewing your blog) to add or manage links in this section.


Configure the Social Gadget

Again, this gadget is a simple Link List which can be edited with ease. The intention of this section is to provide links to your social media profiles, each of which will be highlighted with the appropriate icon.

For each link, copy and paste the URL of your social media profile and add appropriate explanatory text. The most popular social media sites are supported, so you can add as many or as few profile links as yu like in this gadget.


Display content in the Featured Post section

The Featured Post section is built into the template and requires no editing of the HTML code to work.

To make a post appear in this section, simply add the label "Featured" (with a capital F) to any of your posts. The latest post from this category will appear in this section on non-item pages of your blog.


If you prefer to display posts from a different label...
In order to display posts from a different label than Featured, you will need to edit your Blogger template.

Go to Layout>Edit HTML and search for the following line:
<script expr:src='data:blog.homepageUrl + "feeds/posts/default/-/Featured?orderby=published&alt=json-in-script&callback=showrecentpostswiththumbs"'/>
Replace Featured with the name of the label you wish to use instead. This is case sensitive, so be sure to type the label name exactly the way it is used. Furthermore, all spaces should be replaced with %20 (the "escaped" code for a space in this URL structure).

Preview your template to ensure the correct post is being displayed, then save your template to complete the change.


Edit the "About" section in the footer

As explained earlier, the "About" section is the only aspect of this template which requires you to edit the HTML code in order to retain the HTML5 style structure.

Go to Layout>Edit HTML and locate the following section of code:

       <address class='vcard body' id='about'>
            <span class='primary'>
                <strong><a class='fn url' expr:href='data:blog.homepageUrl'><data:blog.title/></a></strong>
                <span class='role'>One Line Description</span>
            </span><!-- /.primary -->
       
            <img alt='Avatar Logo' class='photo' src='http://lh5.ggpht.com/_xn2gmPb9TfM/SqTYIFh4mQI/AAAAAAAAFXI/MjMhfBmc9To/s800/blogger-logo.jpg' width='50'/>
       
            <span class='bio'>Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged.</span>
       
        </address><!-- /#about -->
The section highlighted in bold red is where you can add a brief (one line) description of your site. Simply change the text to a short description of your liking.

The code highlighted in blue is the URL for your avatar/photograph. This image needs to be 50px wide, though the section should accommodate any height. Upload your replacement icon to an image hosting site and replace the URL with that of your hosted avatar image.

The orange section of code should be replaced by a longer description of your site. Just use plain text or links here (<a href="url_here">link text</a>), as other CSS properties may cause the section's appearance to be misaligned.

Once you've made any appropriate changes, preview to ensure all looks well then proceed to save your template.


Change the Fonts and Colors to Create your Unique Design!

As mentioned earlier, all of the colors and fonts for the headings/body text may be changed very easily in the Fonts and Colors section of your Blogger dashboard:


Simply go to Layout>Fonts and Colors in your dashboard, and click around to edit each property of your design.


Images, CSS and JavaScripts

All of the images, CSS files and JavaScripts used in this template are hosted on secure and reliable servers. You do not need to upload these to your own host.

Most of the CSS used in this design is included in the b:skin section of this template and may be edited as desired. In order to appear correctly in all browsers, a few imported CSS files are also referenced in the design. These files do not require alteration to affect any visual aspect of the design.

For anyone wishing to make changes to the images, CSS and scripts used in Nexus 5, feel free to download the following file:

Download Image, CSS and Scripts pack for Nexus 5


Credits and Licensing

This template is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License. If you use this template or offer this for download from your own site, please include a link back to www.BloggerBuster.com as attribution for this design and retain the author information within the template code.

In all other respects, feel free to customize and use this template for any of your blogging projects.

Nexus 5 was inspired by this tutorial by Enrique Ramirez which appears on Smashing Magazine and was coded for use as a Blogger template by myself.

The script for post summaries is based on this tutorial from Anshuldudeja.com, while the Featured Posts section is based on this script by BloggerTricks.com.

Icons used to highlight blog feeds and links in the "social" gadget are designed by Quake9 and are published under the Creative Commons Attribution License.


Your thoughts?

I hope you enjoy using Nexus 5 in your blogging projects! Please let me know your opinions of this template by leaving your comments below.

Read More... [Source: Blogger Buster - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

How to Create a Sitemap with Google Feed Control


One question I am asked often is how to create a sitemap, where posts are organized by category (label) and link directly to blog posts.

There are several ways this could be achieved, such as manually coding a sitemap, or using a service to generate the feeds for each individual label.

In this article, I'll explain my favourite method for creating a sitemap/table of contents for Blogger blogs: using a modification of Google "Feed Control" to generate a sitemap automatically using the minimal amount of code.



Overview

Creating a sitemap using Google's Feed Control is a relatively simple task. You need not know anything about JavaScript or HTML code in order to use this tutorial: so long as you're able to copy and paste, this should be fairly easy to install!

The sitemap we will create will list all post titles from your blog, organized by their category/label on a post page. We can then link to this post page from elsewhere in the Blogger template, such as a link menu beneath the header, or a link list in the sidebar which details links to other important pages of your site.

Once complete, your sitemap will appear something like this, featuring the title of your label, followed by links to each post filed under this category:





You may also like to take a look at the sitemap I've created for Blogger Buster to see how this works in more detail.



Update - Easy install TOC/Sitemap Script for Blogger by Abu Farhan

Abu Farhan has created a very simple Table of Contents/Sitemap script for Blogger users which can be installed very quickly and easily.

This alternative script uses only two lines of code, and can easily be pasted into a post page (or even a sidebar widget if preferred). All we need to do is change the URL of our blog.

Once installed, this script automatically parses and displays each post under label headings and displays in alphabetical order. What's more, the latest 10 posts from each category are highlighted with "New" so readers can easily notice the most recent posts.

Unlike my Google Feed Control script, this installation is not limited to 100 posts per category.

Be sure to take a look at this excellent script and installation instructions on Abu's site as this is much easier to install and generated a very clean, organized sitemap with little effort.

Thank you for sharing your script, Abu!

How to create your sitemap with Google Feed Control

There are four main steps to creating a dynamic sitemap with Google Feed Control:

  1. Generate an API key from Google
  2. Add the template for your sitemap to a post page
  3. Paste in your API key
  4. Paste in the URLs for your label feeds
Let's look at each step in detail.


Generate your API key

In order to use Google's Feed Control, you'll need to generate a unique API key for your blog.

This key will be unique to your particular blog, and may only be used on the domain you specify during sign-up. If you have multiple blogs and would like to install a sitemap on each blog, you'll need to generate a new API key each time.

Your API key is provided free of charge, and enables you to utilize scripts which are hosted on Google servers (so we don't need to upload and host these scripts elsewhere!).

So, first things first! Generate a Google AJAX API key for your site, and copy this long string to your clipboard (or your favourite text editor) for later use.


Paste the template for your sitemap into a post page

The next step to installing a sitemap is to paste the "template" on which your sitemap will be based into a post page.

Simply go to your Blogger dashboard and create a new post. Using the tabs at the top, switch over to the "Edit HTML" section of the post editor (if you do not usually use this function), then paste the following section of code into the content section:

<style type="text/css">
  /**
   * Suppress everything except for title
   */
  #feedControl .gf-snippet,
  #feedControl .gf-author,
  #feedControl .gf-spacer,
  #feedControl .gf-relativePublishedDate {
    display : none;
  }
</style>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/jsapi?key=YOUR_API_KEY"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
    /*
    *  How to use the Feed Control to grab, parse and display feeds.
    */
   
    google.load("feeds", "1");
   
    function OnLoad() {
      // Create a feed control
      var feedControl = new google.feeds.FeedControl();
   
      // Add blogger label feeds.
      feedControl.addFeed("http://URL-OF-YOUR-LABEL-FEED?max-results=100", "TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://URL-OF-YOUR-LABEL-FEED?max-results=100", "TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://URL-OF-YOUR-LABEL-FEED?max-results=100", "TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://URL-OF-YOUR-LABEL-FEED?max-results=100", "TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://URL-OF-YOUR-LABEL-FEED?max-results=100", "TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://URL-OF-YOUR-LABEL-FEED?max-results=100", "TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://URL-OF-YOUR-LABEL-FEED?max-results=100", "TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://URL-OF-YOUR-LABEL-FEED?max-results=100", "TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://URL-OF-YOUR-LABEL-FEED?max-results=100", "TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://URL-OF-YOUR-LABEL-FEED?max-results=100", "TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL");
     
      feedControl.setNumEntries(-1);
   
      // Draw it.
      feedControl.draw(document.getElementById("content"));
    }
   
    google.setOnLoadCallback(OnLoad);
    </script>
<div id="content">
Loading, please wait...</div>
The <style> section at the head of this code prevents the summary (usually printed by the Feed Control script) being displayed, so that only the linked title is displayed on the sitemap page.

You may notice I've also highlighted other sections in bold coloured text. These are the sections we need to edit for your particular blog, as outlined below.


Paste in your unique API key

In the code you have pasted in your post page, you need to replace "YOUR-API-KEY" with the unique API key you generated at the beginning of this tutorial.

It is easiest to have your API key copied to your clipboard; then highlight YOUR-API-KEY and key CTRL+V (or CMD+V) to paste the key instead of the phrase.


Paste in the URLs and titles for your Label Feed URLS

This step of the tutorial is a little more complex.

We need to paste the URLs of the label feeds we would like to use for the sitemap in place of YOUR-LABEL-FEED-URL, and replace TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL with an explanatory title for each relevant line of the Feed Control script.

Each line we need to edit looks like this in the script we have pasted into the post editor:

      feedControl.addFeed("http://URL-OF-YOUR-LABEL-FEED?max-results=100", "TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL");
In total, I have used 10 lines (for 10 different labels) in the template script. If you require more, simply duplicate this line and add your label feed urls and titles as appropriate.

Similarly, lines may be deleted if you need to use less than 10 labels for your sitemap.

Your label feed URLs will be something like this:

http://your-blog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/-/LABEL-NAME
or
http://www.yourblog.com/feeds/posts/-/LABEL-NAME
where LABEL-NAME is the name of the label you are using in your blog.

We also need to include the variable "?max-results=100" at the end of the label feed URL to ensure the maximum 100 posts from each label will be displayed. Otherwise, only the first 25 posts will display in our sitemap.

For example, the URL I use to display all posts filed under the Gadgets label is

http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/-/Gadgets?max-results=100
If any of your labels include spaces, you must replace the spaces with %20 instead.

Here's another example, using my Customize your Blogger Template label:

http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/-/Customize%20your%20Blogger%20Template
Finally, the URLs of your label feeds are case sensitive. If you use any capital letters in the names of your Blogger labels, you will need to match these in the label feed URLS.

The LABEL-NAME element of each line is where you need to type the name/title of the label feed. This aspect is not case sensitive, since it is not generated by your label feeds. If you like, you can use a title which is not the same as the label feed to offer a more explanatory title for your readers.

Here is how I have coded the sitemap for Blogger Buster:

<style type="text/css">
  /**
   * Suppress everything except for title
   */
  #feedControl .gf-snippet,.gf-author,.gf-spacer,.gf-relativePublishedDate {
    display : none;
  }
</style>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/jsapi?key=MY-API-KEY"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
    /*
    *  How to use the Feed Control to grab, parse and display feeds.
    */
   
    google.load("feeds", "1");
   
    function OnLoad() {
      // Create a feed control
      var feedControl = new google.feeds.FeedControl();
   
      // Add blogger label feeds.
      feedControl.addFeed("http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Customize%20your%20Blogger%20Template?max-results=100", "Customize your Blogger Template");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Customize%20your%20Blogger%20Template?start-index=101&max-results=100", "Customize your Blogger Template (Part 2)");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Blogger%20News%20and%20Issues?max-results=100", "Blogger News and Issues");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Gadgets?max-results=100", "Gadgets");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Free%20Blogger%20Templates?max-results=100", "Free Blogger Templates");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Resources?max-results=100", "Resources");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Custom%20Domains?max-results=100", "Custom Domains");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Images%20Icons%20and%20Badges?max-results=100", "Images and Icons");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Labels%20Categories%20and%20Tags?max-results=100", "Labels, Categories and Tags");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Monetize%20Your%20Blog?max-results=100", "Monetize Your Blog");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/RSS%20Feeds%20and%20Syndication?max-results=100", "RSS Feeds and Syndication");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/SEO%20and%20Blog%20Traffic?max-results=100", "SEO and Blog Traffic");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Blogger%20Template%20Resources?max-results=100", "Template Resources");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Announcements?max-results=100", "Blogger Buster Announcements");
      feedControl.setNumEntries(-1);
   
      // Draw it.
      feedControl.draw(document.getElementById("content"));
    }
   
    google.setOnLoadCallback(OnLoad);
    </script>
<div id="content">
Loading, please wait...</div>
Once you have finished adding the Label feed URLs and titles to your Sitemap post, you can publish your post and enjoy using your new Blogger sitemap!


Troubleshooting your FeedControl Sitemap

Here are a few issues which you may encounter when installing your sitemap:

The sitemap takes ages to load!
This may happen if you use a large number of labels in your sitemap. Few label feeds will load quickly, while many will take a long time to load.

If this is of particular issue, try to reduce the number of labels/feeds in your sitemap.

The sitemap does not display!
If the sitemap does not load at all, this may be due to an error when pasting the initial template code, your API key or a label feed.

The best advice would be to begin the installation again, making sure you use the Edit HTML mode of your post editor and are careful not to accidentally delete any other elements of the code.

You should also take care not to switch to "Compose" mode while editing your sitemap as this sometimes makes involuntary changes to HTML code which could corrupt the sitemap script.

Certain Labels do not display any posts
This may happen in cases where the URL of your label feed is not quite correct, for example, the title is not capitalized, or spaces are not replaced with %20.

In this case, edit your template and check the URL of the offending label feed carefully for any involuntary errors. Make changes as appropriate, and save your template.

I have more than 100 posts filed under a particular label. How can I display all posts?
Google's Feed Control can only be used to display up to 100 posts from a particular feed. In order to display more results, we need to add a new feed variable, in which the start index is 101.

In the Blogger Buster sitemap, for example, I need to display more than 100 posts for the Customize your Blogger Template category. In the line after the first 100 results for this category, I paste a new line where the start index of the feed is the 101st post, like this:


      feedControl.addFeed("http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Customize%20your%20Blogger%20Template?max-results=100", "Customize your Blogger Template");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Customize%20your%20Blogger%20Template?start-index=101&max-results=100", "Customize your Blogger Template (Part 2)");
If your label includes more than 200 posts, you can add a third variable where the start index is 201, and so on.


Adding extra content, and styling your sitemap

It is possible to add extra content to your sitemap page, for example, a explanatory paragraph or links to other important pages of your template.

Ideally, you should add this content while editing your sitemap in Edit HTML mode. Be sure to add this content above or below your sitemap script to prevent any errors which would prevent the sitemap displaying properly.

If you would like to style elements of the sitemap, you can achieve this using CSS (either by adding to the <style> section in the Sitemap script, or within the <b:skin> section of your Blogger template.

Here are the classes you can use for styling your sitemap:

  • #feedControl - the ID for the overall sitemap
  • .gf-title - the title of each label
  • .gf-author - the author of each post
  • .gf-relativePublishedDate - the published date displayed beneath each title


Final Thoughts

I hope this tutorial offers a comprehensive guide to using Google's Feed Control to create a dynamic updating sitemap for your Blogger blog! I understand this is not a simple "one click install" sitemap, though as this sitemap updates automatically each time we create a new post, I find this is the easiest, most flexible option to use.

I would love to know of any simpler installations for this sitemap, so if you have written one (or have discovered a tutorial), please feel free to let us know in the comments.


Read More... [Source: Blogger Buster - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

How to Create a Sitemap with Google Feed Control


One question I am asked often is how to create a sitemap, where posts are organized by category (label) and link directly to blog posts.

There are several ways this could be achieved, such as manually coding a sitemap, or using a service to generate the feeds for each individual label.

In this article, I'll explain my favourite method for creating a sitemap/table of contents for Blogger blogs: using a modification of Google "Feed Control" to generate a sitemap automatically using the minimal amount of code.



Overview

Creating a sitemap using Google's Feed Control is a relatively simple task. You need not know anything about JavaScript or HTML code in order to use this tutorial: so long as you're able to copy and paste, this should be fairly easy to install!

The sitemap we will create will list all post titles from your blog, organized by their category/label on a post page. We can then link to this post page from elsewhere in the Blogger template, such as a link menu beneath the header, or a link list in the sidebar which details links to other important pages of your site.

Once complete, your sitemap will appear something like this, featuring the title of your label, followed by links to each post filed under this category:





You may also like to take a look at the sitemap I've created for Blogger Buster to see how this works in more detail.



How to create your sitemap with Google Feed Control

There are four main steps to creating a dynamic sitemap with Google Feed Control:

  1. Generate an API key from Google
  2. Add the template for your sitemap to a post page
  3. Paste in your API key
  4. Paste in the URLs for your label feeds
Let's look at each step in detail.


Generate your API key

In order to use Google's Feed Control, you'll need to generate a unique API key for your blog.

This key will be unique to your particular blog, and may only be used on the domain you specify during sign-up. If you have multiple blogs and would like to install a sitemap on each blog, you'll need to generate a new API key each time.

Your API key is provided free of charge, and enables you to utilize scripts which are hosted on Google servers (so we don't need to upload and host these scripts elsewhere!).

So, first things first! Generate a Google AJAX API key for your site, and copy this long string to your clipboard (or your favourite text editor) for later use.


Paste the template for your sitemap into a post page

The next step to installing a sitemap is to paste the "template" on which your sitemap will be based into a post page.

Simply go to your Blogger dashboard and create a new post. Using the tabs at the top, switch over to the "Edit HTML" section of the post editor (if you do not usually use this function), then paste the following section of code into the content section:

<style type="text/css">
  /**
   * Suppress everything except for title
   */
  #feedControl .gf-snippet,
  #feedControl .gf-author,
  #feedControl .gf-spacer,
  #feedControl .gf-relativePublishedDate {
    display : none;
  }
</style>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/jsapi?key=YOUR_API_KEY"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
    /*
    *  How to use the Feed Control to grab, parse and display feeds.
    */
   
    google.load("feeds", "1");
   
    function OnLoad() {
      // Create a feed control
      var feedControl = new google.feeds.FeedControl();
   
      // Add blogger label feeds.
      feedControl.addFeed("http://URL-OF-YOUR-LABEL-FEED?max-results=100", "TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://URL-OF-YOUR-LABEL-FEED?max-results=100", "TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://URL-OF-YOUR-LABEL-FEED?max-results=100", "TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://URL-OF-YOUR-LABEL-FEED?max-results=100", "TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://URL-OF-YOUR-LABEL-FEED?max-results=100", "TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://URL-OF-YOUR-LABEL-FEED?max-results=100", "TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://URL-OF-YOUR-LABEL-FEED?max-results=100", "TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://URL-OF-YOUR-LABEL-FEED?max-results=100", "TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://URL-OF-YOUR-LABEL-FEED?max-results=100", "TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://URL-OF-YOUR-LABEL-FEED?max-results=100", "TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL");
     
      feedControl.setNumEntries(-1);
   
      // Draw it.
      feedControl.draw(document.getElementById("content"));
    }
   
    google.setOnLoadCallback(OnLoad);
    </script>
<div id="content">
Loading, please wait...</div>
The <style> section at the head of this code prevents the summary (usually printed by the Feed Control script) being displayed, so that only the linked title is displayed on the sitemap page.

You may notice I've also highlighted other sections in bold coloured text. These are the sections we need to edit for your particular blog, as outlined below.


Paste in your unique API key

In the code you have pasted in your post page, you need to replace "YOUR-API-KEY" with the unique API key you generated at the beginning of this tutorial.

It is easiest to have your API key copied to your clipboard; then highlight YOUR-API-KEY and key CTRL+V (or CMD+V) to paste the key instead of the phrase.


Paste in the URLs and titles for your Label Feed URLS

This step of the tutorial is a little more complex.

We need to paste the URLs of the label feeds we would like to use for the sitemap in place of YOUR-LABEL-FEED-URL, and replace TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL with an explanatory title for each relevant line of the Feed Control script.

Each line we need to edit looks like this in the script we have pasted into the post editor:

      feedControl.addFeed("http://URL-OF-YOUR-LABEL-FEED?max-results=100", "TITLE-OF-YOUR-LABEL");
In total, I have used 10 lines (for 10 different labels) in the template script. If you require more, simply duplicate this line and add your label feed urls and titles as appropriate.

Similarly, lines may be deleted if you need to use less than 10 labels for your sitemap.

Your label feed URLs will be something like this:

http://your-blog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/-/LABEL-NAME
or
http://www.yourblog.com/feeds/posts/-/LABEL-NAME
where LABEL-NAME is the name of the label you are using in your blog.

We also need to include the variable "?max-results=100" at the end of the label feed URL to ensure the maximum 100 posts from each label will be displayed. Otherwise, only the first 25 posts will display in our sitemap.

For example, the URL I use to display all posts filed under the Gadgets label is

http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/-/Gadgets?max-results=100
If any of your labels include spaces, you must replace the spaces with %20 instead.

Here's another example, using my Customize your Blogger Template label:

http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/-/Customize%20your%20Blogger%20Template
Finally, the URLs of your label feeds are case sensitive. If you use any capital letters in the names of your Blogger labels, you will need to match these in the label feed URLS.

The LABEL-NAME element of each line is where you need to type the name/title of the label feed. This aspect is not case sensitive, since it is not generated by your label feeds. If you like, you can use a title which is not the same as the label feed to offer a more explanatory title for your readers.

Here is how I have coded the sitemap for Blogger Buster:

<style type="text/css">
  /**
   * Suppress everything except for title
   */
  #feedControl .gf-snippet,.gf-author,.gf-spacer,.gf-relativePublishedDate {
    display : none;
  }
</style>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/jsapi?key=MY-API-KEY"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
    /*
    *  How to use the Feed Control to grab, parse and display feeds.
    */
   
    google.load("feeds", "1");
   
    function OnLoad() {
      // Create a feed control
      var feedControl = new google.feeds.FeedControl();
   
      // Add blogger label feeds.
      feedControl.addFeed("http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Customize%20your%20Blogger%20Template?max-results=100", "Customize your Blogger Template");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Customize%20your%20Blogger%20Template?start-index=101&max-results=100", "Customize your Blogger Template (Part 2)");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Blogger%20News%20and%20Issues?max-results=100", "Blogger News and Issues");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Gadgets?max-results=100", "Gadgets");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Free%20Blogger%20Templates?max-results=100", "Free Blogger Templates");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Resources?max-results=100", "Resources");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Custom%20Domains?max-results=100", "Custom Domains");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Images%20Icons%20and%20Badges?max-results=100", "Images and Icons");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Labels%20Categories%20and%20Tags?max-results=100", "Labels, Categories and Tags");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Monetize%20Your%20Blog?max-results=100", "Monetize Your Blog");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/RSS%20Feeds%20and%20Syndication?max-results=100", "RSS Feeds and Syndication");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/SEO%20and%20Blog%20Traffic?max-results=100", "SEO and Blog Traffic");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Blogger%20Template%20Resources?max-results=100", "Template Resources");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Announcements?max-results=100", "Blogger Buster Announcements");
      feedControl.setNumEntries(-1);
   
      // Draw it.
      feedControl.draw(document.getElementById("content"));
    }
   
    google.setOnLoadCallback(OnLoad);
    </script>
<div id="content">
Loading, please wait...</div>
Once you have finished adding the Label feed URLs and titles to your Sitemap post, you can publish your post and enjoy using your new Blogger sitemap!


Troubleshooting your FeedControl Sitemap

Here are a few issues which you may encounter when installing your sitemap:

The sitemap takes ages to load!
This may happen if you use a large number of labels in your sitemap. Few label feeds will load quickly, while many will take a long time to load.

If this is of particular issue, try to reduce the number of labels/feeds in your sitemap.

The sitemap does not display!
If the sitemap does not load at all, this may be due to an error when pasting the initial template code, your API key or a label feed.

The best advice would be to begin the installation again, making sure you use the Edit HTML mode of your post editor and are careful not to accidentally delete any other elements of the code.

You should also take care not to switch to "Compose" mode while editing your sitemap as this sometimes makes involuntary changes to HTML code which could corrupt the sitemap script.

Certain Labels do not display any posts
This may happen in cases where the URL of your label feed is not quite correct, for example, the title is not capitalized, or spaces are not replaced with %20.

In this case, edit your template and check the URL of the offending label feed carefully for any involuntary errors. Make changes as appropriate, and save your template.

I have more than 100 posts filed under a particular label. How can I display all posts?
Google's Feed Control can only be used to display up to 100 posts from a particular feed. In order to display more results, we need to add a new feed variable, in which the start index is 101.

In the Blogger Buster sitemap, for example, I need to display more than 100 posts for the Customize your Blogger Template category. In the line after the first 100 results for this category, I paste a new line where the start index of the feed is the 101st post, like this:


      feedControl.addFeed("http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Customize%20your%20Blogger%20Template?max-results=100", "Customize your Blogger Template");
      feedControl.addFeed("http://www.bloggerbuster.com/feeds/posts/default/-/Customize%20your%20Blogger%20Template?start-index=101&max-results=100", "Customize your Blogger Template (Part 2)");
If your label includes more than 200 posts, you can add a third variable where the start index is 201, and so on.


Adding extra content, and styling your sitemap

It is possible to add extra content to your sitemap page, for example, a explanatory paragraph or links to other important pages of your template.

Ideally, you should add this content while editing your sitemap in Edit HTML mode. Be sure to add this content above or below your sitemap script to prevent any errors which would prevent the sitemap displaying properly.

If you would like to style elements of the sitemap, you can achieve this using CSS (either by adding to the <style> section in the Sitemap script, or within the <b:skin> section of your Blogger template.

Here are the classes you can use for styling your sitemap:

  • #feedControl - the ID for the overall sitemap
  • .gf-title - the title of each label
  • .gf-author - the author of each post
  • .gf-relativePublishedDate - the published date displayed beneath each title


Final Thoughts

I hope this tutorial offers a comprehensive guide to using Google's Feed Control to create a dynamic updating sitemap for your Blogger blog! I understand this is not a simple "one click install" sitemap, though as this sitemap updates automatically each time we create a new post, I find this is the easiest, most flexible option to use.

I would love to know of any simpler installations for this sitemap, so if you have written one (or have discovered a tutorial), please feel free to let us know in the comments.


Read More... [Source: Blogger Buster - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]

A Popular Posts Gadget from Google Friend Connect

While browsing around looking for more Blogger gadgets to add to the directory, I discovered an awesome feature offered by Google Friend Connect: the Recommended (Popular) Posts Gadget.

This is a feature which I'm sure we've all been waiting for! While we have seen various implementations of popular posts gadgets in the past, I've found these are not as useful or easy to configure as I'd prefer.

In contrast, the Friend Connect Recommended Gadget stable, reliable and quickly updates. Being developed and hosted by Google ensures this is unlikely to suffer issues, and once installed it's very easy for your blog readers to recommend their favourite posts.


Want to see how it works? Take a look in the sidebar to see a list of posts recommended by Blogger Buster readers, and scroll down to the bottom of this post for the button you can use to vote (this appears on every page of Blogger Buster, so feel free to recommend any other posts you may like!).

Those of you reading this in a feed reader may like to pop over to the site to see this gadget in action.

How to install your Friend Connect Popular Posts Gadget

Unfortunately, this Friend Connect gadget is not (yet) installable in one click. There are two elements required for complete installation, and these are relatively easy.

Firstly, log into Friend Connect. You will need to use the same credentials (username and password) as you do when logging in to Blogger.

Once you've logged in, you'll see a page which appears similar to this one:

Any blogs which you have created with your Google account will appear in the list on the left-hand side of the page.

Click on the blog you would like to work with (if this is not already selected). This will open a sub-menu beneath the title of your blog.

Click the "Social Gadgets" link in this sub-menu:




On the following page, scroll down to the "Recommendation" widget - this is the gadget we will be using to display our blog's most popular posts, as voted by blog members:


Click through to create and style the Recommendation gadget for your blog.


Style the Recommendation List

In the first area of this page, you can choose how your recommendation list will be styled when added to your Blogger layout.


If you'd prefer any of the color elements (such as the background and border) to be transparent, simply delete the hex value.

You'll be able to preview the changes made to the style and settings of your recommendation list in the top right corner of the page.

Configure the Voting Buttons

The second area of this page enables you to configure the appearance of the voting button. This is what will appear on the post pages of your blog, and is what your readers will click to recommend posts they enjoy.

There are two distinct types of voting buttons you could choose from:

A "compact" button appears like this
A "modular" button appears like this:
For either style of button, you can choose between the heart or tick icons. When choosing the "modular" button, the colours of the text, border and background may also be altered:

Generate and add the JavaScript for your Gadget

Once you've configured the appearance you prefer for the recommendation list and voting button, you can generate the codes required to add these to your template by clicking the button in the third section of the page:
This will generate two different sets of code - one for the recommendation list, and another for the voting button.


Add the code for the Recommendation List

The easiest way to include the Recommendation List (the list of your most popular posts) in your blog is to paste the code into an HTML/JavaScript widget in your Blogger sidebar.

Simply highlight all of the code in the "aggregation gadget" section, and copy to your clipboard. Then go to Layout>Page Elements in your Blogger dashboard, create a new HTML/JavaScript widget in the area of your choice and paste the code from your clipboard into the content section of your gadget.

Add the code for your voting button on post pages

Ideally, we should add the voting button to appear only on item pages. This ensures there is no conflict when posting multiple buttons on the same page (for example, the blog home page which displays more than one post); it also makes for simpler installation.

To add the voting button to our item pages, we need to edit our Blogger template code.

Go to Layout>Edit HTML in your Blogger dashboard, and ensure you have checked the "Expand widget templates" box.

Then using your browser's search function, locate the line which contains <data:post.body/&gt;

This section of code may be wrapped in <div> or <p> tags depending on the template you are using.

Immediately after this line, paste the following section of code:
<b:if cond = 'data:blog.pageType == &quot;item&quot;'>
<!-- Here is where to paste the JavaScript for the button -->
</b:if>
Next, copy the second section of code generated for your Friend Connect Recommendation widget:
And paste this between the &ltb:if cond...> and </b:if> tags which we previously added in the template code.

Here is how the completed installation should appear:
<b:if cond = 'data:blog.pageType == &quot;item&quot;'>
<!-- Include the Google Friend Connect javascript library. -->
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/friendconnect/script/friendconnect.js"></script>
<!-- Define the div tag where the gadget will be inserted. -->
<div id="div-1020104213976883876" style="width:100%;"></div>
<!-- Render the gadget into a div. -->
<script type="text/javascript">
var skin = {};
skin['HEIGHT'] = '21';
skin['BUTTON_STYLE'] = 'compact';
skin['BUTTON_TEXT'] = 'Recommend it!';
skin['BUTTON_ICON'] = 'heart';
google.friendconnect.container.setParentUrl('/' /* location of rpc_relay.html and canvas.html */);
google.friendconnect.container.renderOpenSocialGadget(
 { id: 'div-1020104213976883876',
   url:'http://www.google.com/friendconnect/gadgets/recommended_pages.xml',
   height: 21,
   site: '06135972569882299778',
   'view-params':{"pageUrl":location.href,"pageTitle":(document.title ? document.title : location.href),"docId":"recommendedPages"}
 },
  skin);
</script>

</b:if>
Once you've pasted the script, preview the changes you have made to ensure the button does not appear on your blog's home page. If all looks well and no errors are reported, continue to save your template and complete the installation.


Using your Recommendation Gadget

At first, your recommendation list will not display any posts. This is because no posts have yet been voted for using the voting button.

You could vote for a few posts yourself by clicking on the voting button on post pages, or you could simply wait for readers to vote by themselves.

When using the voting link, a pop-up page will appear prompting the user to log into Friend Connect (if they are not already logged in) and afterwards will be able to recommend the post. Votes are counted almost immediately, and are listed beneath each item in the Recommendation List:


What do you think?

I sincerely prefer the Friend Connect Recommendation Gadget to other "popular posts" widgets I have tried as the results are based on reder engagement and genuine recommendations which offer a greater sense of community than "page views" alone.

My only reservation is that this gadget cannot be added in a few simple clicks. Having to edit our Blogger templates to add the voting buttons id a dissuading factor for many when considering whether or not to install it.

That said, I have a good feeling that this gadget may soon be integrated into the Blogger system, as so many Friend Connect gadgets and features already have!

What do you think of the Friend Connect Recommendation gadget? Is installation too complex, or are you happy to use this gadget for readers to recommend their favourite posts?

Please let us know your opinions by leaving your comments below.

Image credit: RichKidsUnite, via Flickr Creative Commons

Read More... [Source: Blogger Buster - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]