My blog is a little over 3 months old and right now I have a total of 107 posts with 1,091 comments. I have tried a lot of things to attract comments on my blog, many which have worked out well and continue to help bring in a lot of comments. Most of these techniques do not require special settings or plugins on your blog, so they will work great for any blogger on any blogging platform.

Comment on blogs similar to mine

Since I am generally interested in webmaster and blogging subjects, commenting on blogs similar to this subject was just very natural and easy for me. I could easily read the articles, actually learn something, and have a useful comment to share. I typically try to only comment if I have something to add to the conversation and this hopefully will show that I am genueaily interested. Bloggers have a very unique radar that can track down people commenting just for commenting sake!

Comment on blogs that started when I started

I don’t know if I did this on purpose, but I defiatnly was very drawn to bloggers who started when I did and who had similar goals to me. Not only was I able to learn a lot by their own trial and errors they were posting about, but I could in exchange share my own knowledge with them. This helped create friendships in the blogsphere and mutual interest in each others new blogs. I still enjoy discovering new blogs and sharing information.

Starting friendships and creating a community

The blogsphere is not like any other community on the Internet. It is very unique in all aspects and you need to be a blogger (past or present) in order to understand what other bloggers are going through. By starting friendships with other bloggers, my blog starting to turn more into a community where other bloggers knew each other and commenting was just like a continued conversation from each others blogs.

Visiting and commenting on my commentors blogs

I enjoy visiting my commentors blogs and leaving comments. I have even subscribe to my commentors RSS feeds, infact 75% of the blogs I’m subscrirbed to happen to be from my commentors. I really do enjoy visiting other blogs where I know the blogger and that the blogger is also interested in what I have to say. I guess in exchange I attract other bloggers who are similar to me in this way. My biggest hurdle now is trying to keep up with visiting my commentors blogs because my comments have kept increasing making this a little more difficult to keep up with.

Answer my own commentors

When I started to get comments on my blog, I was estatic and I started to respond to my commentors on a regular basis. At first it seems a little dopey to say thanks, but once you get into it you will find you have a lot more to say and continue to share more information you may have not included in your post. This also will help continue the conversation and hopefully your commentors will provide their own knowledge too. There is a movement started by Baron Brown, Mark, and Mike called “You Comment, I Reply” which encourages bloggers to talk to their commentors.

List my top commentors on my sidebar

Along with listing my top 10 commentors on my sidebar, I also list the 5 most recent comments on my blog too. Both of these help commentors get a little link love and I often use it to see what conversations are going on in my own blog. A few of my commentors have mentioned getting quite a few visitors from being in the list, so I’m glad it is working out for some of you.

Feature my top commentors

Many of the blogs I visited would feature their top commentors weekly or monthly. I loved this idea because it gave me a chance to give back to my top commentors. I even further decided to start stumbling my top commentors too based off of Pure Blogging’s top commenter post too. This has been well received and my top commentors certainly have been loving my weekly Jar Full of Link posts.

Removing the No-follow tag on my commentors link

Once I discovered that there was a no-follow tag on my commentors link, I quickly removed it with a WordPress plugin. If you comment on my blog, why not get a linkback to your website for search engines too! A lot of people are worried about getting more spam by removing the no-follow tag, but honestly I haven’t had too much of a problem because I approve all first time commentors. Maintenance on my comments has been very minimal.

Comments attract more comments

Once I started to get regular comments on my blog, the comments just kept on coming. I am very appreciative to all my commentors and I thank each of you for taking the time out to comment on my blog. The one downside to attracting more and more comments is that I’m not able to get to know all of my commentors and visitors as well as I used to. But the knowledge that is shared through comments cannot be beat on any other platform!

This post is an entry for The Wrtiers Manifesto’s Tutorial Group Writing Project.

© 2007 bluejar.com | Permalink | 294 comments | Add to digg del.icio.us stumbleupon technorati reddit

The original thought for my blog was the webmasters guide to the galaxy, which is a play off the funny movie the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Now in this movie, they get lost quite often so I thought I’d throw in a quick guide on getting lost in cyberspace:

1. Lose all your passwords. Fastest way to get lost in cyberspace is to loose all your passwords. Whether your password program database gets deleted or note paper you’ve been jotting your passwords on gets eaten by the dog, your royally screwed without your passwords.

2. Forced to change your e-mail address. Your friends, family, and even your bank can’t find you! This is especially bad when you lose all your passwords, but can’t have them e-mailed to you because you can’t check your old e-mail.

3. Bookmarks getting deleted. If you’ve ever had the misfortune to have your bookmarks deleted, you will know what a nightmare it is.

4. Searching Google.com for the word ‘cyberspace’ Actually you could probably search for any word at Google and get lost quite quickly.

5. Getting your username banned. You could sign-up for a new username of course, but starting all over and getting recognized by a new username can be harder than you think.

6. Not checking your RSS reader for a few days. You will certainly get lost if you don’t check your feeds. It is mindblogging to have 100’s of unread posts.

7. Going to hotmale.com instead of hotmail.com There isn’t much more to say than just that.

The last one is a little tricky and I didn’t link to it on purpose. I can only suggest when you start to get lost in cyberspace, to return to your homepage as quickly as possible and try another route. Or just do regular backups of your passwords and bookmarks, and the rest will probably sort itself out!

© 2007 bluejar.com | Permalink | 33 comments | Add to digg del.icio.us stumbleupon technorati reddit

Blogger is a very popular free Blogging platform, but each free blogs comes with the same exact default favicon that Blogger is using. You can help set your blog apart by getting your very own unique favicon plus there are a lot of benefits with having your own favicon. This post is in response to menopauseprincess. She asked about Blogger blogs having their own favicon.

Creating or finding your favicon

If want to create your own favicon, you can follow my guide on creating your own favicon. You can also find a free favicon from the 20 free favicon resources I have collected. I’ve used both unique and free favicons, I just try to use a favicon that represents what my website is about or something that is rememberable.

Uploading your favicon

You will need to find an alternative host for your favicon because Blogger does not host custom favicons. A lot of free file hosting services will not host .ico file types, so these are not good options. If you don’t have your own web hosting account, there is a service called myFavatar that will host your favicon for free. Flickr will allow you to host .ico files also, so if you have an account there already that may be a good choice.

Linking to your favicon

You will need to do some updates to your templates in order to get your favicon to show up. This part might get tricky, so if you need any additional help please don’t be afraid to ask. To edit your Blogger templates, after you login go to “Layout” –> “Edit HTML”. Now you will need to add the following line of HTML between the start <head> and end </head> tag:

<link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/ico" href="http://example.myfavatar.com/favicon.ico" />

Make sure you update the location of your favicon to the exact web location where you uploaded your favicon. If you do use myFavatar to host your favicon, they will actually provide you with the exact code to paste into your templates.

Testing your new Favicon

Typically when you save your templates and reload you should be able to see the new favicon. But occasionally there may be settings in your browser that may prevent your favicon from showing up, so you may need to reload or clear your cache in order to see it right away.

© 2007 bluejar.com | Permalink | 54 comments | Add to digg del.icio.us stumbleupon technorati reddit

Position images to the left or right with inline CSS

This is a great way to quickly position your images to the left or right of your text. The following example will position your images to the left.

Code:

Result:

This is an example of how to position your images using CSS. You can use these tips on any website or blog. This is just example text so that we can see how the images will position using different techniques.

To position your images to the right, simply replace your CSS float value from left to the value right:

Code:

Result:

This is an example of how to position your images using CSS. You can use these tips on any website or blog. This is just example text so that we can see how the images will position using different techniques.

Position images to the left or right with external CSS

If you want to position images regularly to the left or right, you might want to consider adding classes to your external CSS file. This will allow you to add the class tag to every image you want to position without having to re-type your inline CSS. Add the following CSS class tags to your current CSS file:

External CSS:

Now add the the class tags to your images:

Code:

Result:

This is an example of how to position your images using CSS. You can use these tips on any website or blog. This is just example text so that we can see how the images will position using different techniques.

You can also add margins to your CSS tags to add extra spacing around your images:

External CSS:

Code:

Result:

This is an example of how to position your images using CSS. You can use these tips on any website or blog. This is just example text so that we can see how the images will position using different techniques.

Position images to the left or right with taglines

Sometimes you might want to add text under your images. This can be easily done with the use of a <div> tag.

External CSS:

Code:

Result:

Colorful Chester

This is an example of how to position your images using CSS. You can use these tips on any website or blog. This is just example text so that we can see how the images will position using different techniques.

Position images to the center with external CSS

There is no float tag for centering an image, so you will have to use a <div> tag to position your images to the center:

External CSS:

Code:

Result:

This is an example of how to position your images using CSS. You can use these tips on any website or blog. This is just example text so that we can see how the images will position using different techniques.

Special thanks to Cartoon Clipart for providing such colorful free cliparts!

© 2007 bluejar.com | Permalink | 64 comments | Add to digg del.icio.us stumbleupon technorati reddit

Once you get your visitors to your blog you naturally want them to browse your blog and ultimately come back later. Post and article series are a great way to encourage your visitors to browse around by providing them with many posts and articles on the same topic. Once you pull them in with one post, they will keep reading on to your other post to gain more information and come back for more information later.

So what is a post or article series? Basically it is a bunch of post that you create on the same topic, but cover different aspects of that topic. My favicon series is an example of a post or article series. Once a visitor views one post in that series, they click on other topics in that series to continue to learn about favicons. You can see at the bottom of the post I have links to the rest of the articles in the series.

You may already be creating post series on your blog and not even realize that just by simply linking them together you can encourage your visitors to browse your blog. Before getting started on linking your blog posts or creating a new post series, consider the following tips:

Do:

• Choose a topic that you can write a lot about. Pick a topic that will allow you to at least have 4-5 good posts.

• Plan out what each post in your series will be about. You can always add or remove, but having a general idea will help you know where your series is headed.

• Make each post in your series have an excellent title. Title your series post just as you do any other post, make them interesting and search engine friendly.

• Link to each post in the series. Within the post you should link to the other posts in the series. There is a great plugin called In-series that will do this for you automatically through your WordPress admin section.

• Provide something valuable in each post. Make sure that each post in the series offers something to your visitor.

Don’t:

• Cover everything in the first post. Try to spread out your information throughout your series so that visitors want to come back to get more information.

• Spread out your information to thin. Just as you shouldn’t cover it in one post, don’t give them so little information that they don’t think you have anything valuable to share.

• Create a series with only 2 posts. A series should contain at the very least 3 posts but I see a lot more visitor browsing and return visitors with the higher number series.

Post series can be created over a few weeks or even months and will still provide you with more page views and bring your visitors back to your blog for more valuable information. Series also will establish to your visitors that you are an expert on that topic and will come back to your blog when they have any questions or need help.

This post is part of blog writing project at Daily Blog Tips (there is a jar in this post, but it is not blue). Get your posts up, it ends on the same day as my writing project!

© 2007 bluejar.com | Permalink | 61 comments | Add to digg del.icio.us stumbleupon technorati reddit

Before buying web hosting you must do your research on the different web hosting companies you are considering. Once you have learned about customer service, server reliability, pricing you must verify that the information they have provided on their websites and through contacting them are true. Keep in mind while doing your research that it would be impossible for any web hosting company to satisfy every single customer, so even good web hosting companies will have negative reviews. If you find an overwhelming amount of complaints about the same issue, than you know that it is likely you will have a similar issue.

Forums

Forums are the best way to get user feedback on which hosting companies are delivering on what they promise. Members post daily keeping you up to date with the most accurate information on most web hosting companies. If there are no post on the company you are interested in, feel free to ask others on the forum if they have heard of them. You can also do a search on the forums to see any history that a web hosting company has had recently. I usually only trust the last 1-3 months of reviews as anything older is not relevant to what is happening at the company today. Also you should keep an eye out for any fraudulent activity as these will always be relevant no matter how aged the posts are. Another great thing about forums is that the hosting companies may also participate and provide further feedback on any reviews that may be left by the members.

Blog Posts

When reviewing blog posts verify if they are actually currently hosted with the hosting company they are reviewing or if they were at one time. If they are not even hosted with them you might want to consider their reason for doing the review in the first place. With affiliate programs bloggers might try to get commission giving good reviews for hosting companies they may not even be hosted with. I tend to only trust reviews when they say they are currently hosted with the company they are reviewing.

Search Engines

Search engines might be a great place to find out a lot of information on a web hosting, including ThisHostingCompanySucks.com websites. But overall I find it difficult to come up with legitimate reviews without knowing if they have based their review on getting an affiliate sale. Similar as blog posts, verify that they are actually hosted with that hosting company before trusting their review.

Friends, Family, and Acquaintances

Your friends, family, and even acquaintance are great sources to find out about hosting companies. Just ask them what their current hosting experiences are and if they have any recommendations. You might come up with at least a few leads and if it is a personal recommendations for hosting company you won’t have to worry about them giving you a bias review as they won’t receive commission for your referral.

Web Hosting Directories

Directories often times have a review and rating system so that current and past customers can give feedback on their hosting companies. I find the reviews from the larger directories to be overall legitimate if there is over 5-10 reviews. Sometimes the hosting company will have the option to respond to any feedback and this will also help you see how they handle customers. If a hosting directory is only listing banners without a feedback system, than it is possible they are just listing affiliate links or only selling banner ad listings.

Social Networks

I have not seen that many reviews on social networks, but the ones I do find are negative or a customer out to get the company that they really don’t like. I can’t say I recommend using social networking websites as a way to research for your new web hosting company.

Researching your web hosting company can sometimes be a long process. If you stick to researching customer service, server reliability, and pricing you will find a good web hosting company that can provide the services you need. I always start my research at the most popular web hosting forum, Web Hosting Talk. This is where the hosting worlds merge between customer and web hosting companies, and there is a clear communication to locate the companies and services that are working best for other webmasters.

© 2007 bluejar.com | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to digg del.icio.us stumbleupon technorati reddit

Sometimes when we build our websites we forget that not everybody has their browser configured exactly as ours. While they may have a different browser type and operating system, they may also have different settings in their browser. Here are the 13 forgotten browser compatibility issues you may need to test in order to insure that your websites will be viewable to your visitors.

JavaScript Dependent

There are a lot of different scripting languages that now depend on JavaScript to display properly. There are others but these are the core that will be affected when JavaScript is disabled. These can be solved easily with the <noscript> tag added to the end of your JavaScript code.

1. JavaScript

2. Ajax (more info on degradable Ajax)

3. DHTML

Plugins

Plugins will typically need to be installed and updated by your visitor. If you use any of these plugins in your website design, you will want to make sure at the very least there is an alternative that will be displayed. Most of the solutions include JavaScript to detect if the correct plugin is installed and display alternative content if needed.

4. Flash

5. Shockwave

6. Java

7. ActiveX

Media Players

Media players are another element that needs to be installed and updated by your visitor. You probably do not embed video directly into your website design or theme, but rather display videos in your content. What you want to consider is the errors that may be displayed to your users if they do not have them installed and how to offer them solutions and a way to understand what they need to do to get it to work correctly.

8. QuickTime

9. Real Player

10. Windows Media Player

Browser Settings

The following browser settings can be controlled by your visitors browser. With text size I am always mostly concerned when the text size gets really large as this pushes elements all over the page. Images and the page style usually do not affect your web page visibility, but it is a good idea to verify that your website is viewable with the elements disabled.

11. Text

12. Images

13. Page Style

© 2007 bluejar.com | Permalink | 21 comments | Add to digg del.icio.us stumbleupon technorati reddit

Find out what browser and operating system your visitors use

Check your web statistics to discover which browser your visitors are using the most. This is very important because each website will have different types of visitors and you will need to discover what browser they are using the most. Mostly webmasters and bloggers prefer FireFox and this is the most common browser type for BlueJar.com which can be seen in our stats:

Now that you know what browser type they use, you need to find out what operating system they are using. For BlueJar.com the most popular operating system is Windows, I thought for sure Linux would be my second, but I was quite surprised when Macintosh users were my second.:

In Google Analytics, go to Visitors > Browser Capabilities > Browsers or Operating Systems. There is also the option Browsers and OS, which can be a quick overview for both browsers and operating system types.

Why to check on different operating systems

What you see on your browser with your operating system may not be the same for your visitor who are using the same browser but a different operating system. My biggest feedback on design layout issues have been from Macintosh and Linux users. This is probably because I don’t use these operating systems and can’t test them locally.

Checking on different browsers and operating systems

I recommend installing the most popular browsers (no more than 3) your visitors are using to to test locally for the beginning stages of building your website. The general rule is that if it is working on a few web standard compliant browsers than it will probably be working in the rest of them with very little problems. This statement completely excludes IE6 as it does not comply with very many standards.

As you reach the end of your development, test your website on different operating systems and other browsers you don’t have installed. The following services will allow you to take screenshots of your website to show you what your website will look like on those different OS’s and browsers:

• BrowserShots is a free service that offers testing across 3 different operating systems and 8 browsers. Over the last year they have really improved on their website and brought in a lot of new features. Highly recommended and its free!

• Browsercam which offers a service that will take screenshots on over 7 operating systems and multiple versions of each browser type. They have also recently just released a service to check out smaller devices such as the Blackberry. It is a very comprehensive service, however it is a bit costly. At the end of the series I will let you know how to get Browsercam access for less than $50 a year!

© 2007 bluejar.com | Permalink | 25 comments | Add to digg del.icio.us stumbleupon technorati reddit

The problem:

This problem is occurring with other rss readers and a few other websites that are not familiar with placing favicons in different directories. Now days you can tell browsers where you find your favicon with the following header tag:

<link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/ico" href="/favicon.ico" />

The issue:

This only tells the browser where your favicon is when your visitor is viewing your website through a web browser or other browsing device. RSS feeds and the other uses for favicons do not require your website to load and they may not realize you have placed your favicon in a different directory. They continue to search for your favicon in the default location.

The quick fix:

If you already have your favicon uploaded and pointed to another location, don’t worry about changing anything. You simply need to upload your favicon to the public root of your website which is typically the following location:

/home/username/public_html

You will now have the same exact image uploaded in 2 different locations, but it will be worth it if your favicon now shows up every time it is called for. You could of course relocate your favicon to the root directory and update your header information also, but this is much quicker!

© 2007 bluejar.com | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to digg del.icio.us stumbleupon technorati reddit

Once you have found your websites passion, you need to stay persistent and motivated to create a successful website online. Here are the following secrets I have learned to help stay persistent and motivated for the long run.

Set smaller goals

You may have an ultimate goal to get a million visitors to your website, but how are you going to get there? You need to set smaller goals along the way to achieve your ultimate goal. Goals don’t just include milestones such as 5,000 unique visitors or 100 RSS subscribers, but how are you going to get those visitors and RSS subscribers.

Make lists

Write lists that outline the different task you need to complete in order to achieve your smaller goals. The Internet itself is addictive, if you sit at your computer with no set tasks you may find yourself all over the place! It has happened to me several times. Lists will help you stay on task in order to complete your short and long term goals. Your lists should also include any research that you need to get done.

Pace Yourself

Don’t be a work-o-holic putting in 20 hour days, but also don’t work too little! Balance out your workload so you are able to complete your tasks and not get burned out. Also if you do not work enough you may loose sight on your goals and loose your persistence from lack of reaching any of your goals. You need to find a happy middle ground where you are working enough to meet your goals overtime and still having time to have a little fun.

Keep Learning

Any time I feel like everything is just not working out, the one thing that will always bring me back to my senses is a good dose of knowledge. Read other websites, blogs, and forums to stay informed on your websites topic. It is a lot of fun to interact with others who are in the same boat as you. You may just find a new idea and inspiration to get you back on track.

Take pride in the small stuff

Creating a successful website is hard work! It is easy to loose track of what you are doing and loose your motivation. Each time you accomplish one of your goals, take pride in that accomplishment. It is a big deal and make it one too so that you can feel how great it is to meet your goals and to help you strive to meet more of your goals. Let somebody know what you’ve accomplished or if you are a shy one, treat yourself to something fun.

BlueJar.com requires me to be extremely persistent by posting daily and I need to be motivated in order to keep up with the pace. Though this blog has been my greatest challenge, it has also been the most rewarding. I use these secrets weekly to help me stay on task and keep up with the blogging world. What are some of the ways that you keep yourself persistent and motivated?

© 2007 bluejar.com | Permalink | 16 comments | Add to digg del.icio.us stumbleupon technorati reddit