Unoblogger, Tips and Tricks for Blogs

Is it the end of YAHOO?

Amarnath Prabhakar — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 18:45:42 +0000

This is an update at 0000hrs 11th January 2011

Is this the end of Yahoo.com as we know.

We knew that Yahoo has been under tremendous pressure to perform. It just could not compete with the giants and underwent major headcount reduction and rejig.

This seems like it was waiting to happen anytime.

The entire Yahoo website is down, type in the URL and this is the page you see.

Is this end of Yahoo? what happens to the people who’ve had their mails and other stuff served by Yahoo.com.

Share your views here.

Yahoo and Bing ink deal on search engine results

Add Google Plus Badge on your Blog or Website

Amarnath Prabhakar — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 15:10:00 +0000

Creating a Google+ Page is important and we’ve covered the same in the previous post. Once a page is created it is essential to marry the website to the Google+ brand page that is created, this is a way to confirm your website and Google+ page are related. This is to ensure that your website is given enough credit on Google search pages and Google+ Direct Connect. Google+ Direct Connect is something Google is testing now, this is where your website would be served to people searching to search terms related to your website’s subject.

Now, Google has allowed publishing of badges on the website, these badges help your website visitors to add your website’s Google+ brand page to the circle of their choice, visitors can like your website with a +1 right from the badge.

Once a page is created, you can click on “Get Started” link on your left sidebar. On the page, under Connect your website, click on “Get the badge”

On the next page that appears, copy your Google Plus Page ID, this is a 22 digit number which you will find in your Google+ Brand page URL. Paste the Page ID in the box provided and choose standard badge.

Once you’ve chosen the standard badge you will find the code as below to be incorporated in your website.

The first part of the code is to be included in the Header section of your website between the and code. The second part of the code is to be included where you want the badge to appear on your website.

Now you have gone one step further to encourage your website visitors to interact with your website and with other website visitors with common interests.

How to Create a Google+ Page

Amarnath Prabhakar — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 18:04:48 +0000

A Google Plus page can be created easily and without much hassle, indeed you don’t break a sweat provided you know where and what. A Google Plus business page creation can be accessed through two ways

Through a Link - https://plus.google.com/pages/create

Through other pages – All you have to do is access any of the pages that have been recently created and click on Create a Page on the left sidebar. You can find UnoBlogger’s Page in Google Plus and see the image below to understand where you can find the “Create a Page” button.

Creating A Google+ Page

There is a simple and short page creation form that you can fill to create your own page of your business or a brand. The page looks like this image below

There are certain aspirations among the users of Google Plus Business pages. These are seen as the negatives that Google Plus needs to work on to ensure there are crazy following of Google Plus Pages.

Single Administrator

Now, whoever creates a google plus business page will be the page administrator. No one else can administer the page than the person who first created it. Unfortunately for the time being the page cannot even be transferred to anyone else, there would sure be some development on this. Multiple administrator support for one is a big necessity considering there are big corporates who need multiple access to their business page.

No Vanity URLs

There are no Vanity URLs like with the Facebook, where you can have www.facebook.com/unoblogger. Google Plus Pages are addressed with a 21 digit pageID. This too is important and before anybody takes over your page we better have access.

No Auto Post

Currently you cannot auto post your blog updates to your Google Plus Pages. This means you cannot access your pages through native or third party applications. Here people are at an advantage and this stunts the flexibility of Google Plus Pages in comparison to Twitter or Facebook.

Pages Cannot Follow Individuals

At least not until someone has followed the Google Business Page. This is a conscious decision from Google to discourage Businesses following people in hopes of getting an follow back. This could have been used as a tactic in Twitter but, not in Google Plus.

All the negatives aside, there is a very strong notion among the industry experts that Google Plus will be another giant in the Social Network space. This is reason enough for you to create your own Google Plus Business Page.

Google+ Pages – How to ensure you secure your page on Google Plus?

Amarnath Prabhakar — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 16:00:28 +0000

Google Plus is now out with Google Business Pages for businesses to list themselves on Google Plus. This news has still not reached the whole internet community and since this is the case there are chances your page is already created by some mischief monger.

This is of course the initial stages of Google Plus pages and very soon Google would begin cross verification of the pages and their link with the business websites. When this happens all problems of identity snatching will be eradicated. Google has a simple solution to ensure the clean up process is as smooth as possible both for Google and the business owners.

To confirm ownership of a site, Google looks for two things:

A rel=”publisher” link on the website

This is a link that has to feature on your website, this is a cross referencing check that Google has formulated where you will have a link with rel=”publisher”. This can be published on to the website by various methods and they are listed as below

Google+ Icon

To add the icon, just grab a snippet of code. Paste it into your HTML code, and you’re done: Your Google+ page and your site are now linked. This can be chosen based on size and the snippet to be copied and pasted on your business website.

Adding a Link

Google strongly recommends using the Google+ icon since it is recognizable by users. If for some reason you are unable to add the google plus icon to you site, you can manually add a link like the one below

Find us on Google+

Invisible Link Tag

If you don’t want your link to be visible on the page, use a link tag, like this:

Link to your website from your Google+ Pages profile

Publish your business website link on your Google Plus page.

For example, if you’ve created a page for a product, you can add the product description page to your page’s profile. It’s best to link to your home page or most significant page.

Once you’ve added the publisher link and the reciprocal link on your Google Plus page, you can check if Google recognizes the Publisher markup. You can check for the same from this link – Rich Snippets Testing Tool. The result will be published as below and look out for the “Verified: Publisher markup is correct for this page” message.

Share your Google Plus Pages link in the comment box below. Unoblogger Google Page is - https://plus.google.com/112442935372272209510

Google+ is now open for businesses with Google+ Pages

Amarnath Prabhakar — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 11:41:01 +0000

Google+ is now open for businesses with Google Plus Pages. They are now out with a video of Business Pages on Google Plus. A few businesses that have already taken up Google Plus Pages are below

We will talk more about Google Plus Pages in the articles to come.

WordPress Admin – wp-admin page is blank, unable to access dashboard

Amarnath Prabhakar — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 16:23:33 +0000

Recently we migrated UnoBlogger to Godaddy servers from Yahoo servers and from then on there has been quite a few issues. These issues are getting solved as and then they appear and these become subjects of UnoBlogger articles. Such is this article too.

After the migration there were many plugins that had to be installed, the CSS realigned, even the theme for UnoBlogger was changed. One fine day when I tried to login to UnoBlogger admin, the url /wp-admin was blank. Further I checked the blog and was able to access www.unoblogger.com and when I tried the same url without the www prefix like http://unoblogger.com it returned a blank error. Usually the URL will automatically redirect to www.unoblogger.com but, did not happen this time.

Another check was conducted, which was tried logging in to the blog through the /wp-login.php URL. With this the login page was published but, when logged in, it returned a blank page.

This was a definite panic situation, imagine not having access to your blog’s backed dashboard. Eventually solution was found with removal of a blank space in functions.php file. There can be a few reasons why you will encounter a blank page trying to login and we will find the different situations and solutions you can try

Blank Space in functions.php

There are three places where functions.php is present

wp-admin/functions.php
wp-content/themes/[mytheme]/functions.php
wp-includes/functions.php

There is a possibility of blank space before or after your content in functions.php. Try finding this blank page and remove it from the theme. This should solve the problem of blank page while accessing wordpress admin.

Recently installed Plugins

Try remembering if you had recently installed a plugin, if there has been a recent plugin install on your wordpress blog it should ideally be the culprit causing the blank admin page error.

There are a lot of plugins that have been coded and many of them have certain coding issues in them. Not just that there are also compatibility issues when there is a wordpress plugin that is not updated for the current wordpress version. These conflicts can definitely cause your wordpress not functioning the way it should.

For a solution, try renaming the plugins folders under wp-content/plugins directory. Once this is done try revisiting the wp-admin page. If the problem still persists download the plugins directory to your desktop, delete the contents of the plugins directory completely. This should provide access to your admin page, once you have access try reinstalling the plugins one after other eliminating the plugin that is causing the error.

WordPress Theme

At times even a wrongly coded theme can cause errors in the backend. We need to understand that blank pages are caused only with erroneous codes in the files that form the theme or plugin.

Try deleting all the themes and then access the admin page. This should provide access to your admin page. By deleting your themes your blog will be published with the default theme. You can then change the theme as per your requirement. Beware of badly coded themes.

Google “No Input File Specified” Error with index.php in URL

Amarnath Prabhakar — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 06:56:00 +0000

Recently I migrated from Yahoo servers to Godaddy servers owing to many problems with Yahoo hosting servers, the primary being cost. This migration spelt doom to my blog, I lost all my traffic from google. Upon some going back to my site URLs indexed on google I zeroed in on the issue. The Yahoo servers required me to include “index.php” as a prefix to my permalink structure for it to function effectively.

This prefix was added for SEO purposed after understanding that the pretty permalinks were liked by Google and it was important to have our permalinks with keywords. So, the permalink structure was updated as “index.php/%category%/%postname%” and this was how all the URLs were indexed in google search engine.

Then came the migration to Godaddy Servers, this change was good considering the amount of money I would save with shared hosting. The indexed URLs on google still had index.php in them and clicking on search results would result in “No input file specified.” error. This was it, no traffic cam from the search engines to the website and thus I lost all the traffic and of course all the money I could have earned through this period. Check the image below

This was it, I panicked and was there for almost a week. I then realized that this is one problem I should not ignore and I started analyzing the problem. After much research I wondered if the redirection wordpress plugin can be used to redirect all the URLs which have an index.php to URLs which don’t have one. Tried the same but there was no change in the situation, why? because the URLs from Google search results pages did not even hit UnoBlogger server. The redirection plugin can only work on traffic that comes to the server to be redirected. I was still in this situation and panic mode.

A little while later I came to terms with the fact that the URLs were being redirected at the root level and a .htaccess file should hold the solution. I was right, after searching on Google I cam across this article “Removing index.php from ExpressionEngine URLs“. In this article they provided a solution to include

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?/$1 [L]

in our .htaccess file and have the rewrite engine on. This provided the desired result, it forwarded all the indexed URL link to the new URL schema without the index.php. I was very happy and this happiness was shortlived. Although the URLs were getting redirected as I expected I could not access my blog’s back end. Even www.unoblogger.com/wp-admin threw a 404 page not found. I was now losing patience and was getting irritated.

After some time, I went back to Google and searched for further tips on troubleshooting for this index.php problem on wordpress. Then I finally, after weeks of panic period found this article “COMPLETELY REMOVE INDEX.PHP FROM EXPRESSIONENGINE URLS“

Here, the solution given was to include two lines of rules to .htaccess file and is below

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[^/]*/index\.php [NC]

RewriteRule ^index\.php(.+) $1 [R=301,L]

This was it, it solved the issue of index.php in the URLs that were indexed on the search engines and at the same time did not break the backend. I had access to the admin pages, the dashboard and the entire backend.

Coming to think of the situation I was in, it was not such a problem. Our understanding of certain issues become the culprit to fretting on problems we face day on day.

WordPress Media Files Upload Error

Amarnath Prabhakar — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 07:11:02 +0000

Recently I migrated my Blog to godaddy hosting servers from Yahoo hosting and this became some task. There were many issues that emerged from this migration, one among them were the media files upload error.

Everytime I tried to upload a media file I received an error as below

This error had me in tenterhooks for some time and with help of Google found solution for this issue.

There can be two reasons why this problem of “error while uploading media” can happen

CHMOD Permission – Accessing your wp-content/uploads folder through your ftp and right click on the folder to choose the file properties. This will show a window as below, this has to be with the numeric value 777 as shown in the pic. The idea is to provide permissions to read, write and execute

Admin Settings – Go to your admin dashboard, settings and media. Under Media Settings you should see the field under “Uploading Files”

Ensure there aren’t any forward slash(/) before the wp-content/uploads. Like you see in the image I had two forward slash as a prefix to wp-content/uploads.

With these corrected you should be able to upload media files without further issues.

Google Plus – Why would it Succeed?

Amarnath Prabhakar — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 17:29:19 +0000

As we have seen from launch a week back Google Plus has been one social network that has been creating a buzz among internet users and internet marketers alike. There isn’t a Daily or a magazine that is interested in covering the Facebook and Twitter Killer. We have seen and read articles in the past one week about how Google Plus will be a rage. So all that exaggeration aside, we would want to see what can be the reasons why Google+ can be a Facebook Killer or why Google+ will die the eventual death as we saw with Google Buzz and Google Wave.

The Pros of Google+:

Google Plus is Simple to Use – We all remember how lost we felt when we were introduced to Facebook. Facebook was and is cluttered, if you feel it isn’t cluttered, you have just gotten used to the look, feel and navigation through Facebook. In comparison Google+ seems to have taken cue from the users of Facebook. Google Plus has just four tabs namely, Home, Pictures, Profile and Circles. This is as simple as it can get and the User Interface cannot be any much de-cluttered.
Google is now learned – There has been a few major blunders from the Google Family. We saw Google Buzz, Google Wave and Google Health which saw the light of internet but soon perished. There sure would have been a lot more projects that could have been shelved by Google. Since there has been many failures Google has seen, we should only say that Google is now smarter and stronger and knows what is required for the internet people. This being the case, the features that are released on Google Plus are pro social network enthusiasts. This is very evident from the User Interface of Google Plus.
Google Follows Facebook – Facebook has been there done that, they have seen the ups and downs of forming the biggest social network. Facebook founder has brick by brick built Facebook and incorporated what is required for the masses. The research has already been done by Facebook and for Google the learning curve is more or less absent. This means that Google was capable of getting their project Google Plus from shop floor to the market in less than a year. All the needs have been addressed on Google Plus.
The Privacy Issues are taken care of – Whether it was Facebook or Twitter the updates that were published was visible to the entire friends circle and the friends of your friends. How many times have we heard of issues rising because a boss looked at a status update of an employee, parents looked at status update of their children, Girlfriend who has looked at an update of boys nightout, etc. The same was the case with Twitter updates, Twitter updates was available to the entire world. Google has been smart enough to take cue from this issue and they have created a feature called Google Plus Circles. Simply put you can create circles for friends, family, colleagues, school mates, etc and each update of yours can be defined to reach the right audience. This is a wonderful feature and Google Plus has provided it to the people.
The Google Integration – Google has provided many services to the people which includes, Mails, chats, picassa albums, Google buzz, Google Android. All these services are incorporated into the Google Plus and it is bigger, better, meaner than the other Social Networks. Google Plus is a game changer for Google, similar to what Gmail and Android were for Google.
Google Plus is Native Application on Android – Most of you reading this article would also have read and realized that Google Android phones are capturing imaginations of people and the market share of the mobile world. With the flurry of mobile phone that enter the market and among these many being Android phones gaining momentum for Google Plus would become very easy. Thanks to the Google Plus Application that is native to Google Android Phones. This means Google Plus comes incorporated with every phone anyone buys. So people who buy Google Android phone buy a Google Plus account along with it irrespective of whether they need it or not.
Get Into a Huddle with Google+ – Google has created a feature called Huddle, this is where you literally get into a huddle with friends and peers. It is a group chat which allows you to chat with 10 friends of yours simultaneously. This is something when we are headed to an era of online meets and talks. This need not necessarily be an advantage considering that Facebook has entered into a pact with Skype to provide Video Chat platform for Facebook users.

Take advantage of Google+ for your blog’s mileage – Improve Traffic

Amarnath Prabhakar — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 17:30:36 +0000

Google+ is now a revelation among the people who spend most of their time online and on social networks. Why is this a revelation? you may ask. Google+ is a revelation and is fast becoming a rage with people seeking Google+ invites from friends, family and even willing to spend some money for an invite.

Ebay a popular online marketplace had this listed, Google+ invite being sold for Rs.1999. What more proof we need to understand it becoming a rage.

Google+ is even touted as a Facebook Killer and this being the case, as bloggers, we ought to take advantage of Google+ for our blog promotion activities.

We will in this article see how to take advantage of Google+ to promote a website or a blog. See below the pages that are there in a person’s profile page and you will find +1 and Buzz. Lets see how to use +1 and buzz to promote your blog.

Google +1 Button – This is a page on a person’s profile that gets listed with the +1′s he has given to articles and websites that the person has visited. This list is visible to all who look at his profile and so the people looking at this list would be inquisitive to know what it is about and when they click the link will be lead to your blog. It is important that our blogs feature Google +1 Button for people visiting the page to like your blog or article. Check here to incorporate Google +1 Button on your blog – How to add Google +1 Button to your website
Google Buzz – Google Buzz is to Start conversations about the things you find interesting. Share updates, photos, videos and more with your friends. It is a Twitter clone we might say, similar to twitter and a better and wider net with a backing of Google Network.Since Google Buzz is similar to Twitter and since it gets prominence on the profile page of a social network person, it makes good sense to publish your article or website on Google Buzz and inturn get published on Google+ profile page which is accessed by friends and family. Check how to add Google Buzz to your website

These two changes to your blog or website will give enough mileage in itself. We will in the coming posts talk in detail about the various other possible additions you can do to your website or blog to improve traffic through Google+.

Google is taking on the Social Networking fight head on with Google+

Amarnath Prabhakar — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 11:38:52 +0000

Google has tried many ventures to take some market share in the Social Networking pie in vain. There was Google Wave and Google Buzz which were primarily created to tackle Facebook and Twitter but they quite did not do what was intended for them.

From the word go Google+ has been capturing imaginations of people on the internet. There is no frenzy among the Facebook and Twitter users alike apart from the many others who do not feature on these platforms.

The tactic that Google has used is similar to the one used while introducing GMail. People can become users of Google+ only with an invite, this means that there are lot many people out there who are now longing for an invite from someone whom they know online. “Send me an Invite” and “Who wants an Invite” are the buzz phrases on the internet social networks.

Google+ is still under testing and Google would not hold responsible for privacy issues during this phase. One killer feature that Google+ covers is the privacy issues on Facebook and Twitter and many other social networks.

You can now send updates and ensure only the people who should see that update are seeing it

This is made possible by this feature called Circles, this is where you will segregate your friends, family, colleagues, etc. By this segregation you can define each of your update as to whom it is designated to. You can choose the circle or circles you want this update visible to. It is just a start, the first set Google+ invitations were sent about 72 hours and there already is frenzy around the Google+.

We will look into the many features and benefits of Google+ in comparison to the other social networks already available for the masses.

Make money online with twitter – Sponsored Tweets

Amarnath Prabhakar — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:57:53 +0000

Blogging to many is just a way to post to people an update of their lives and for many it is dream to achieve an additional recurring income online. Let’s face it not many bloggers who’ve wanted to make money online have achieved their want. There is just a handful of bloggers on the internet who make upwards of a thousand dollars a month.

There is a lot to blogging than just writing posts and articles. There are these all important factors like SEO, SMO, quality of the articles, etc, which determine if you ever will make money blogging.

A few times I have read articles that mentioned the possibilities of making money through social networks and social media websites. Yeah you read it right, people making money from social media websites. For example, there are some power diggers taking advantage of DIGG, so it is with StumbleUpon and I came across this article from Shoemoney about the possibility of earning good money from Twitter.

Having reached the 3500 followers figure on twitter I wanted to know if there were any possibilities of monetizing the fan following. This brought me to Sponsored Tweets

The only condition for your to sign up for your sponsored tweets account is that your Twitter account must be at least 4 months old and have at least 200 followers to be visible to advertisers and receive offers.

My account being more than a year and me having more than 3500 followers, I wanted to sign up to see the options available. So I signed up for sponsored tweets and have illustrated how you can sign up too.

Step 1:

Visit the website SponsoredTweets.com

Step 2:

Once you’ve opened that website you will see a sign up or login sign on the left of the window. Click on Signup using Twitter.

Step 3:

Once you have clicked on signup using twitter, provide your twitter username and password and click on Allow. This will take a moment to return to the sponsoredtweets website.

Step 4:

Once on the website, you will have to fill details necessary to create an account. There is charge per tweet, which need not be changed. Choose category – General, ad unit type – either and provide the tags

The suggested price based on your Twitter stats and hence need not be changed. Also, click on payout guarantee which means that your tweet does not reach a $1.50 CPC, it will be re-tweeted 48 hours later. You will be paid for this tweet as soon as it reaches a $1.50 CPC, or 2 hours after it is tweeted 3 times.

The fact is that you will still be paid the initial offer amount for all offers, but with this option enabled, you will be much more attractive to advertisers.

Once the details filled you would have successfully signed up.

This website also has a list of Featured tweeters who user sponsored tweets and the list is sure attractive.

Once all this is done all we got to do is wait for offers from the advertisers, which you can choose to get intimated through DM or mail.

I am waiting to receive any opportunities from the advertisers. Meanwhile if you have signed up for sponsored tweets do mention your monthly earning from them in the comments below. If you haven’t signed up yet, you can do so from here, SponsoredTweets sign up.

Twitter rolls out twitter list beta for many, what is twitter list?

Amarnath Prabhakar — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:00:17 +0000

This morning as usual I pick up my newspaper, a cup of coffee, switch on the computer, open my twitter account and was in for a pleasant surprise.

A new feature that has been offered to a select few and I wondered why would I be one among the selected few. There it was, a surprising note on my twitter account mentioning about something new and I being privileged to receive the note.

Well, the surprise is where I find a small note in my twitter account which read

New! Lists. A great way to organize the people you follow and discover new and interesting accounts. (BETA)

This was an interesting note and this fueled my inquisitiveness. I wanted to know what it was and I started scouting the internet for answer and this is what I found, Twitter begins List beta

The understanding that I got was that the twitter list was a tool provided to the tweeple to organize their favourite tweeps into a group. This is a great feature considering there are a lot of people in your following list and you need to track tweets of a specific few. So this day began with knowledge gathering and executing tasks. I understood a lot about the new twitter feature for lists and though would be right to impart my knowledge to the mass.

The note that I mentioned about was as below, please note the sentence which says “You’re part of a small group receiving this feature, so don’t tweet about it yet!”. So I am not tweeting about it as yet, there was not mention of blog posts though.

The illustrations that follow are the ones which teach you about twitter lists, creating lists and adding users to these lists.

Create a new list

Click on the create new list on your twitter home page, provide a list name, choose whether this list will be public or private and then click on create list.

Adding users to the list

There are three ways you can add people to your list

1. Find people to add to your list

Once your find the person you want to add in your list you add the person by choosing the list in the drop down.

2. Add people from your Following page to your list

3. Add people from their profile page to your list

Follow other twitter lists

There are many other twitter lists that have now been created by many. You can follow these twitter lists as well. I chose to follow a twitter list by TechCrunch of their team

My twitter list on Bloggers

I created my first list named bloggers, with six bloggers added to that list. You can choose to follow my list which is http://twitter.com/unoblogger/bloggers

Twitter Lists Page

I have now created my own list named bloggers and I followed a list from Techcruch. These two lists can be found in the twitter lists page.

There it is my quest for greater knowledge fulfilled on twitter lists and the day begun well.

Please let me know if you’ve been offered to create lists and share your lists in the comments below.

Things to do when a blogger gets a writer’s block

Amarnath Prabhakar — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 06:13:06 +0000

A writer’s block or a blogger’s block is a condition affecting the creativity of a person. A blogger is a writer and he/she needs the creative inclination to deliver the best works.

There are a fair number of times I’ve been hit by a writer’s block and I can understand the pain involved. The pain of being unable to do the daily task (writing) effectively. A writer’s block has many causes and this has been written in the past titled Writers block, worst enemy of a blogger.

In this post, we will see the various tasks that helped me through the writers block. These are tasks that I did day on day through the days I was experiencing a block. Most often it is the symptoms that go unnoticed and many don’t even realize that they are having a blogger’s block. It has been sometime since a post was rolled out on this blog and was until now wondering what should be written. It was a sudden and unexpected realization that an article on the very same condition that disallowed me to write an article is the best bet.

So, here it is the list of tasks that can be taken up to beat the mental block causing trouble. These are the tasks that I have been doing and can stand by these to overcome your writers block.

Outside your blog:

Read articles and blog posts – There are a number of blogs and article websites on the internet on varied subjects. Choose blog posts and articles on your niche and read them. This not only helps you beat the time but also act as an inspiration for the blog posts you want to write.
Write down ideas – The time when under a writer’s block is when you will not want to step near your computer. At these times it isn’t necessary that you will not have any ideas. These ideas should be written down in a journal for future reference. These ideas will sure help to write articles.
Collect pictures – Pictures are important to a blog post to reduce the monotony of looking at words and to increase eye appeal. This being the case, there cannot be a better time for you to collect pictures for your blog posts.
Be active on Social Media – As a blogger we know how important it is to start a network around your blog. This helps in branding and fan following. Take the time available and increase your foot print on the social networks.
Write guest posts – It is true that we would want the best for ourselves and that is the case for articles as well. The best works come through at the peak of creativity. During a writers block although you are able to write articles, these are not even close to your best works. Use this time as an opportunity to write articles to submit as guests posts in other blogs.

Within your blog:

Reply to Comments and Mails – It is important for bloggers to reply to comments and mails that are sent across. The reason for this is to ensure that every fan of your blog is made to feel important and this will induce them to write more comments and mails.
Build links on old posts – Internal links are an important factor for increasing page views. There could have been many follow up posts and posts on a same topic. Look at ways to links these posts with good anchor texts.
Follow-up posts – Now is when you also can write follow up posts for your old posts. Follow up posts are nothing but articles that are written in continuation to a previous posts which can have recent developments, newer trends, etc.
Improve your blog – There are a lot of blog improvement that can be taken up during a writer’s block. These tasks include SEO strategies, Monetization, navigation, changing themes if needed, tweaking the look and feel of the blog and many more.

These are the various tasks that can be taken up when having a blogger’s block. These tasks helps us to do something useful and not be rusted.

Please leave your tried and tested methodologies on handling writers block in the comments below.

A year gone by for UnoBlogger.com

Amarnath Prabhakar — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:36:28 +0000

It was 17th September 2008, when this blog was published for the first time and today this blog marks one year completion online.

It has been a wonderful journey with a lot of ups and downs. There has been a lot since this blog inception which has not gone well and there have been learning through this.

The Journey!!

After a whole year of blogging on UnoBlogger.com (there had been a few off months). There were a lot of mistakes committed and learnings had through the mistake. Blogging to me started as an experiment with World Cuisines, where I just wanted to have a blog for me to learn internet. This blog was started on Nov 2007. This blog on recipes of the world, allowed me to learn lots and as every day passed I was learning something new.

I never knew HTML or CSS or PHP or MySql or any of the technicalities that were needed to self host your own blog. Day by day I was wanting to have my own self hosted blog and day by day I was getting restless for this want. And finally on 15th September 2008, I registered for Domain and Hosting and the next two days set up the blog. Initially I just set the blog up which was more crude and then over time I tweaked the blog to give better appeal and usability.

On 27th July 2009, there came change in the look and feel of UnoBlogger.com. This change was very important in terms of the blogs development. This changed marked the whole new UnoBlogger.com with better eye appeal and a better navigation. This date also saw many other changes in terms of the plugins used, the templates. etc.

The best of UnoBlogger.com

Although the best of this blog is yet to be delivered, there have been many articles that have been important. Here is the list of articles that were the best in the first year of this blog.

- How to add Retweet Digg Reddit Stumbleupon buttons to blog post

- Importance of twitter landing page and the content to write for a good landing page

- Step by step guide to sign up for google adsense

- Step by step guide to Contesting a twitter account suspension

- Reasons why I stumble a website in Stumbleupon

- Are you ready to blog? Questions to prospective bloggers

- Choosing a topic for your blog

These are just a few articles that portrays the best on UnoBlogger.com, you can find the whole archive here – Sitemap of UnoBlogger.com

How was the feeling?

The journey has been wonderful teaching me many important aspects of blogging, promoting a blog, designing and what not. There is a sense of satisfaction of having achieved something that I never thought possible.

The journey has been tough and has been with a lot of learnings. There is more there is to learn and more to achieve. These 365 days has taught me an important lesson, “There is no shortcut to anything and it takes a lot of hardwork to get anywhere”

What next?

The journey so far has been tremendous and it sure is going to become even better. There is a hunch that there are going to be better blog posts, better content and most importantly better tips on blogging.

The hunch is something, but there sure is determination from my end that there is going be better everything. Be sure to be around to catch the best of things to come on Unoblogger.com.

How to add Retweet Digg Reddit Stumbleupon buttons to blog post

Amarnath Prabhakar — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 22:00:52 +0000

As a blogger we would have understood that social media and social networking is a great tool to drive traffic to your blog. There are counters and buttons that you include in your blog posts like the twit this button, tweetmeme button, digg counter, stumbleupon buttons, reddit counter, etc.

On your right on this blog post you will see a box that has four major traffic drivers’ buttons and they are

Tweetmeme button – This is a button that helps to retweet your blog post on twitter. This has proven to be a viral method considering there are over 25 million twitter users. This button helps you submit your blog post to twitter and the same will be retweeted by your followers on twitter.

Digg Counter – Digg is a social bookmarking and social news website, where people share news and events across the website. The Digg button helps visitors to your blog submit the blog post to Digg with ease.

Reddit Counter – Reddit is also a social news website for the people sharing news and events on the internet. This button too helps the visitors in making the submission of your blog post easy.

Stumbleupon Button – StumbleUpon is an internet community that allows users to discover and rate websites, articles, images and videos. This button too helps simplify the process of submitting your blog post to StumbleUpon.

All the buttons except StumbleUpon’s are counters too, which means that you can have a count of the number of times your blog post or article is Dugg, Retweeted, Reddit submitted.

Twitter is undoubtedly the best in terms of traffic driving capabilities. Social bookmarking also is a great driver of traffic. There are three major social bookmarking sites that take the cake and they are Digg, Reddit and Stumbleupon. This is not to underestimate the other websites, but this is a fact that isn’t contested.

This sort of a counter is absolutely necessary considering that you want traffic to your blog and you want your blog post to go viral. These counters or buttons helps the visitors do just that, increase traffic.

To add these buttons to your blog posts you need to follow these two steps.

Step 1

Add the below CSS to your Stylesheet page, it will be name style.css. Once you open the stylesheet go to the end of the sheet and paste the below code as is.