Preparing my Novel for Publication: February 2010

Wednesday, 24 February 2010

Stopping old #webpages from appearing in search engine #cache results

When we did a search in google and retrieved some results for my website we had the option to see older cached version of pages. One or two of my pages have time specific events on them or deadlines (i.e. the deadline for a writing competition) and it would be nice if we could prevent the older versions from being available when they are out of date as no one wants to find out information for a competition that has already closed.

On the webpages where we specifically don't want an old version to be available from the cache we've told the search engine not to keep the history by adding the following command into the webpage html source within the <head> and </head> area.

<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOARCHIVE">

Let us know if you try this too and how you get on.

My Related Postings

How to #twitter your blog updates and add twitter to #website
Include an option on your #webpage so it can be added to delicious.com #social #bookmarking
Adding a website icon for iphone and stopping page not found for mobiles
Adding free blog subscription options
Add blog to website
Starting an author's platform

Friday, 19 February 2010

Linking twitter to facebook and adding twitter to blog

You can link twitter to facebook so that all your tweets appear automatically as status updates on facebook. It is easy to do, and also pretty intuative once you know the option is there. However, this blog keeps details of how I'm setting up my author's platform, I'm including this here too (as much as a reminder of the step as for anything else).

Also below are details of adding options for a twitter button or the tweets so they are available in a blog.

Link twitter to facebook

You'll need a facebook and twitter account setup already.

Logon to twitter
select 'goodies' at the bottom of the screen in the navigation
select 'widgets'
select 'facebook'
select 'facebook application'
select 'allow'
either
select 'Install Twitter on facebook'
logon when twitter takes you to a new window for facebook (although this way didn't work when I tried it)
or
on another explorer window logon to facebook
then back in twitter
select 'Install Twitter on facebook'
logon again to twitter from the facebooks app so it will add a link back to twitter
select +allow twitter to update your facebook status
select 'allow status updates'
in facebook
select 'applications'
you should see twitter in there

Add a 'follow me' twitter button to a blog

You'll need a blogger and twitter account setup already.

logon to twitter
at the bottom of the page select 'goodies'
select 'buttons'
choose the button you like
and copy the code that appears in the popup
logon to blogger
select layout
add a gadget
select type html
and paste the code there
move the gadget to where required

Show the twitter entries on a new page on the blog
(see also How to #twitter your blog updates and add twitter to #website for adding twitter to a website
and How to add additional pages in #blogger for how to add new pages to blog)

logon to twitter
at the bottom of the page select 'goodies'
select 'widgets'
choose 'my website'
choose 'profile widget' type
and set the settings/preferences etc
copy code
logon to blogger
in 'postings'
in 'edit pages'
add 'new page'
add the title
select 'edit html'
and paste the code

Thursday, 11 February 2010

How to add additional pages in #blogger

We have just discovered options to add additional pages to my blogger blog. They appear at the top of the blog just under the blog description and are useful for static content, or a common Comments page, if you want one. Some blogs have used this for an 'About Me' page or something similar. We've added 4 new pages (so far) 'About My Blog' a description of the blog, 'My Blog Headings' as a history of previous postings, 'Index of Blogs by Subject' listing previous blog entries under topics, and 'Comments' to give a common place for comments (to replace the 'General Comments' blog we created earlier).

The instructions for adding a new page for 'My Blog Headings' are below. There are full instructions on how to do this in the normal blogger help (go to 'postings', 'edit pages' and follow the help information in there). Or follow the steps below if you want something that looks like mine and if you to are using blogger and feedburner.

To do this, in blogger.com

go to 'layout'
choose 'edit html'
take a backup of the template now in case it all goes wrong (there is an option at the top of the page to do this)
tick the 'show widget code'
look through the code until you find this

<div id='crosscol-wrapper' style='text-align:center'>
<b:section class='crosscol' id='crosscol' showaddelement='no'/>
</div>

change ='no' to ='yes'
go to 'postings'
select 'edit pages'
select 'new page'
set the name 'My Blog Headings'
if you have feedburner setup for your blog and you want the headings on the new blog page
save the page so far.

1. Logon to http://www.feedburner.com/.
4. Select 'Publicize' .
5. Select 'BuzzBooster'.
6. Set Number of items to display = All
Open Links in = Same window
Display feed title = unticked
Title = completed
Display favicon = unticked
Display item author name = unticked
Display item content = unticked
Display item publication date = unticked
Display link to feed = untick
Save
7. When the page redisplays, copy (Ctrl+C) the commands given at the top of the screen in the 'Your BuzzBoost is ready' area.
8. Go to the web page source, select html and paste (Ctrl+V) the code selected above.
9. Back in blogger, 'edit pages', on your new 'My Blog Headings' page, select 'edit html' and paste this code.
(see also my previous posting Add blog to website)
select how to display the pages, I chose 'as buttons'
and 'publish'
The 'About My Blog', 'Index of Blogs by Subject' and 'Comments' were done the same way with plain text entered instead of the html from feedburner. The 'Index of Blogs by Subject' will need amending every time a new blog is added as, unlike the 'My Blog Headings', it isn't updated automatically. And obviously, the settings on the 'Comments' page were changed to allow comments.
To change the order of the pages you need to be logged onto your blog. In 'Customise', select 'View Blog' and select the edit icon next to the page titles. This will give you a popup to let you drag and drop the pages to swap them around.

My Related Postings

Include options on #blog to add the posting to #social #bookmarking sites
Adding free blog subscription options
Blog reader
Additional blog setting
Add a comment policy
General Comments
New posting order
Add blog to website
Creating a Blog

How to #twitter your blog updates and add twitter to #website

I've been persuaded to open a twitter account as another step in building my #author's #platform. It should also be useful in providing a mechanism for sending blog updates and for adding latest information to my website without having to reload the website (or that is what I'm told it will do).

Apart from creating the twitter account I've had help with the following. Apparently this is how we did it. You'll need a website, a twitter account, a blogger account and a feedburner account for this approach to work. These are the settings we've used to start with, adjust them to give what you want.

Good luck if you try this. Let us know how you get on.

First create a twitter account

in http://www.twitter.com/

create a new account

on the top right navigation bar select 'profile'

then select '+' picture

and select a picture to be used next to your postings

on the top right navigation bar select 'settings'

select 'time zone'

and save settings

Publishing blog entries to twitter automatically with feedburner

in http://www.feedburner.com/

open your blog

go to Publicize

select Socialize

under Select an account, Select a twitter account

enter your logon/email and password

for post content - title and body

tick include link

tick leave room for retweets

for hash tags 'create hash tags from item categories'

tick 'Use inline hash tags'

additional text set to '#blog'

item selection, set item limit to 1

item order set to publish date

keywork filter leave blank

and Activate

Setup twitter so it can be added to website

logon to your http://www.twitter.com/ account

at the bottom navigation bar choose 'goodies'

then choose 'widgets'

choose widgets for 'my website'

choose 'profile widget'

on the left select 'preferences'

tick 'poll for new results'

tick 'include sidebar'

set 'behaviour' to 'load all tweets'

set 'number of tweets' to 10

tick 'show avitars'

tick 'show timestamps'

tick 'show hashtags'

on the left select 'appearance'

select the square box next to each item and select the colour wanted
move the arrow slider up and down to the palette you want then select a colour in the palette given on the left (or type the code of the colour)
eg
'shell background' - light blue - code 559ec2
'tweet background' - light blue - code 97cfed
'links' - dark blue - code 3507eb
'shell text' - blackish - code 0f0e0f
'tweet text' - blackish - code 0f0e0f

on the left select 'dimensions'

tick 'auto width'

then select 'test settings' and amend anything to get settings wanted

then select 'finish and grab code'

and copy the code that is given

Add twitter to website

go to website html source

and add the code copied above

Writing blogs that go to twitter

When writing the blogs only a very small amount goes into the twitter line, the heading plus, possibly, the first part of the posting. Add #'s in the title and start of the posting before any words you want twitter to tage so they can be included in the twitter search categories eg #blog, #author, #social , #SocialBookmarking
You can search in hashtags.org for tags to use.
Add them before you publish the post though as this twitter link doesn't recapture the blog if you amend it after it is first published.

My related postings

Include an option on your #webpage so it can be added to delicious.com #social #bookmarking
Include options on #blog to add the posting to #social #bookmarking sites
Adding a website icon for iphone and stopping page not found for mobiles
Adding free blog subscription options
Additional blog settings
Starting an author's platform
Add blog to website
Creating a blog

Note

You can also add twitter to facebook and to your blog, so check back on this blog for more information, or subscribe to the free blog updates, or follow @wilkiewrites on twitter to see when the details are added.

Wednesday, 10 February 2010

Include an option on your #webpage so it can be added to delicious.com #social #bookmarking

This is another step in building my #author's #platform to make adding useful links to my website in delicious.com easier. Delicious is a social bookmarking tool. it allows you to save links to website pages or blog pages that you like in one place, so that you can use them from different devices.

By adding a little bit of java script into the html code for some of my webpages we've been able to add the option to create a bookmark to that page in delicious directly from that webpage. You do still need an account in delicious to use the option but if you have one it makes it easy to link to my page.

I don't know how to do this, but I know someone who does and these are the instructions they used:

copy the code below (see delicious address below) to somewhere into the html code for your webpage where you want the option to appear

<img src="http://static.delicious.com/img/delicious.small.gif" height="10" width="10" alt="Delicious" />
<a href="http://delicious.com/save" onclick="window.open('http://delicious.com/save?v=5&noui&jump=close&url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title), 'delicious','toolbar=no,width=550,height=550'); return false;"> Bookmark this on Delicious</a>

Or see the offical delicious instructions on http://delicious.com/help/savebuttons .

Tuesday, 9 February 2010

Include options on #blog to add the posting to #social #bookmarking sites

Social bookmarking websites (for instance delicious.com) allow you to save links to website pages and blog pages (or any web page) that you like in one place, so that you can use them from a common list of your favourite sites when using different devices, and so you only have to save the links once.

You can add extra options to a blog so that it gives options to add that blog posting to a blog reader or blog bookmarking system. If your blog is registered on feedburner, as this one is, then the following can be used to put these options on the blog. Depending which bookmarkers you select, it will look something like this at the end of the posting:

Add to del.icio.us - Share on Facebook - Technorati Links - Email this - Discuss on Newsvine - Add to Mixx!

The steps to do this are as follows:

go to http://www.feedburner.com/

logon and select your blog

go to optimize

go to feedflare

tick the 'Site' options you want added

see the bottom of the screen for how this will appear

then select the 'Get HTML code toput feedflare on your site'

choose your blog

find the layout section and save the code given for this

go to http://www.blogger.com/

select to EDIT HTML

tick the option 'expand widget'

search in the code given for &lt:div class='post-footer'>

after that line add the code you save above

save the template

preview the template

The advantage is that is makes it simple to save a link to the blog entry on the social bookmarking sites that it lists. It is possible to do this anyway but it saves one step and so hopefully increases the number of people who save a link.

My Related Postings

Adding free blog subscription options
Blog reader
Additional blog settings
Add a comment policy
Add blog to website
Starting an author's platform
Creating a blog