This is a very short post about a Somali cat called “Chase”. He is an extremely handsome cat.
Sunday, 31 May 2009
Page Rank Toolbar
I use the PageRank™ toolbar all the time. I think that it is worth knowing what Google thinks of a website and the PageRank™ is in effect just that.
I use PageRank™ and Alexa ranking combined to assess the success of a site. These are not conclusive, though, far from it. A site can be excellent and have poor PageRank™ and Alexa rankings if, for example, it is new. It can take months and years in fact to get a decent PageRank™. Indeed it seems that some websites have acquired a good PageRank™ (above 3) through simply being around a long time. Just keeping a website going for a long time counts provided the content has some value.
The PageRank™ toolbar comes with the latest Google Toolbar, which, as far as I can tell, is Toolbar 5, at the date of this post. It requires Firefox 2 (the most recent version is, I believe, version 3). I would always recommend the Firefox browser over Internet Explorer. It is known to be better (however some people prefer other browsers – can’t see why though, probably habit). You can download Firefox from here (very easy):
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/personal.html
And download the Google Toolbar that contains the PageRank™ tool from this webpage:
http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/toolbar/FT5/intl/en-GB/index.html
In addition to seeing a webpage’s PageRank™ in the Toolbar (at the top of the page) Alexa provide some applications that show the PageRank™ as well as their own rankings. The Alexa toolbar is called “Sparky” and can be download from their website from this page:
It shows at the bottom right hand corner of the page as a Google Page Rank & Alexa traffic ranking combined. It also puts a tool in the header tool bar (related links, but I never use it, maybe I should). This I find very useful as it probably gives you all the information that you need to know about the site while visiting it. As far as I am aware, Sparky doesn’t work with Google Chrome at the date of this post. It works with IE though.
In addition to these tools, that show you the Page Rank of the page that you are visiting, Sparky puts the Page Rank underneath the Google search result listing of each website listed. It shows like this:
I have forgotten how I installed this so I am going to stick my neck out and say that when you install Sparky and use Firefox 2 you will get this to show up as well as the other indicators in the bottom right hand corner of the page.
Hope this help with a search for Page Rank Toolbar.
Saturday, 30 May 2009
Blogger Website Building Site Map
Please remember things change fast in the world of Blogger. These posts were written some time ago and some are therefore less useful now as Blogger constantly upgrades its software. They are still of use though. Look for the label "building a website" in the right hand column for more recent posts.
Some are timeless however: How to publicize your blog is one example.
Some are timeless however: How to publicize your blog is one example.
Html Table Background Image
Html Table Background Image.
This short post (as it is fairly straightforward) explains the html needed to place a background image in a table.
The results of the first block of code below can be seen on this page
| <table style="text-align: left; width: 75%;" background="http://lh4.ggpht.com/mjbmeister/SCFDguzwSJI/AAAAAAAAGoI/Elo-6KT8-vw/s288/greenhorn.gif" border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2"> |
The code for the table background image is highlighted in red. You can see that the code to be inserted is:
background=”URL of the image” (where URL = the location on a server of the saved image)
Here is another page where you can see the image in the header (the cat’s ears!): Maine Coon Cat ZAK
The code for the Maine Coon Cat header with the ears is (note that I am referring to the main table as there are several tables in the header):
| <table style="text-align: left; width: 100%; height: 80px;" background="http://www.pictures-of-cats.org/images/ears.jpg" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> |
The relevant part is highlighted in red and as can be seen the tag is “background” followed by the location (URL) of the image.
That means the image has to be stored (saved) on a server somewhere. In the first example it is saved on Google Picasa Web Albums. Anyone can sign up to Google Picasa Web Albums and share images there so that is good way for people who just have the Blogger blog to save images (it also produces the code for the image location). There is no reason why the background image couldn’t be saved to Blogger servers by uploading it using the compose window upload button and then getting the code from the Edit html window but you’ll need to remove the link as all uploaded images are by default linked to a separate image (click on the image and see what I mean). Although this can be removed easily.
In the second example, mentioned above, the image has been saved to a Site Sell SBI server that feeds my main website: Pictures of Cats org. Make sure that the image is not too heavy (file size should be reduced to the lowest level consistent with image quality) to ensure load times for the webpage is as fast as possible.
You should work with an image editor to do this such as Photoshop Elements or Paint.net
Further reading on tables:
- Html Table Codes (nice looking tables with a fine border)
- Creating Tables with Google Docs (easy peasy)
Friday, 29 May 2009
Google Blogger Guide for Dummies
I can’t resist having my say on the subject of Susan Gunelius and Google Blogger Guide for Dummies. I have not read the book. This is a review of the Amanda Fazani review of the Susan Gunelius Google Blogger Guide for Dummies or more accurately a review of the issues surrounding the hiring of the author. I make what may be considered slightly provocative remarks. This is deliberate but not intended to be personal or hurtful. People have a right to express their views provided they are presented politely and these are simply my views.
I have read Amanda’s review and the comments to the review. I have read what Enviroman (Blogger Tips and Tricks) has said about writing this book and I have read about Susan Gunelius from her website (which has moved). In short I have read everything surrounding the book except the book! I have not read the book because I know it will not be money well spent. This is because it will not be technical enough. And I am not a computer geek; far from it. This last comment of mine really says it all, in fact. And I have also read the Amazon product description for the book. Some people will say how can you review a book without reading it? Well first, I am not strictly reviewing the book. I am talking around the subject. Secondly, I have seen the contents of the book from the Amazon reviews so I know what is in it. Plus read the other stuff as mentioned.
This is my opinion on the subject for what it is worth. Why didn’t the publishers ask Amanda Fazani to write the book? Maybe they did and see turned them down, I don’t know. I know that “Enviroman” was asked but eventually it seems he was rejected. He complains on his website that he was treated rather poorly by the publishers. It would seem that the publishers decided to fall back on a writer rather than a person who knows Google Blogger inside out as Fazani and Enviroman do. In fact there is another person or persons who could and maybe were asked, the creators of Tips for New Bloggers.
Susan Gunelius has “20-years of marketing, branding and copywriting experience”. She is CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc.. This is a “full-service marketing communications and branding solutions provider.” Susan has a blog called “Women on Business”. But I have a clear sense that her considerable talents lie in the field of business, copyrighting, marketing and plain writing and not blogging at the level required to successfully write a really useful book on Google Blogger. What I mean is the person should know Blogger inside out to then write about it in a way that makes even the technical stuff understandable. However, perhaps the publishers decided on the content.
Because of what appears to be her lack of first hand knowledge of the nuts and bolts of working with Google Blogger blogs the book is written very much at the beginner level, it seems, addressing, mainly, people who have not started (or just started) rather than people who have and want to crank up the ante and make things sharper and better. And I would have thought the latter objective was the better one and one that would attract the wider audience. Or at least it is one that should be included. The publishers would say in defence that this is a Dummies Guide and is therefore targeted at beginners. I would disagree because you don’t need a book on how to get started because the Blogger team explain it beautifully. The whole process is intuitive and very easy. What is more tricky is customizing the blog and there are a lot of people who want to personalize their blog; make it their own. I know that from the success enjoyed by Fazani and Enviroman with their websites, which are, incidentally far more successful as sites than Gunelius’s blog, “Women on Business”. That on its own tells us something about the qualifications for writing the Google Blogger Guide for Dummies.
I am not even sure it was a good idea for Susan Gunelius to write the book never mind for the publishers as it is a little out of her field of specialization from what I can gather from the bio on internet. Actually, it seems like Susan Gunelius decided to do the book to heighten her profile vis-Ã -vis computer technology. People like Enviroman and Amanda Fazani, though, would have been better placed to write the book. Amanda writes very good English while Enviroman is less strong on the English language. But this could have been fixed in editing.
When you read the Amazon blurb it says the book covers such topics as , “What you should know about moderating comments”. The only thing people should know about that is how to get comments! Moderating them is the last of our worries. Another unrealistic topic is “Does making dollars make sense? — explore options for Google Adsense®”. Once again 99% of Blogger sites need not think about this until they have lots more visitors. You can make a few bucks on 30 visitors a day on Adsense but you’ll need thousands a day and an Alexa ranking in the order of 100,000 to make enough to have an impact on your life. Which conveniently brings me back to my original point, the book is written for beginners but the question of Adsense is for more advanced users i.e. bloggers with some real traffic.
You know, the truth is you can find all you want from the Blogger help web pages and the sites mentioned on this page.
In short the book looks (admittedly from the outside) to be a little unrealistic because it is written by someone who has not, it seems, worked with Google Blogger and made a success of it. The three people I mentioned above have done this and were therefore better choices for the job of author.
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