Blogger Buster: free blog templates, tutorials and tools

Blogger Buster News (and opinions needed!)

This week a few things have happened around this blog which I'm very happy to announce:

Now in the Top 3000 blogs on Technorati!

I was thrilled to notice that Blogger Buster is currently ranked 2910 in the list of popular blogs! It doesn't seem that long ago when this site was in the top 4000. Thank you to everyone who has linked to Blogger Buster in their blogs! I hope this site continues to grow and would love to eventually announce that we've broken into the top 1000...

Blogger Buster featured in...

This week, the Blogger Buster design has been featured in several web design galleries this week including CSS Hive, CSS Mania and CSS Design Yorkshire. I am rather fond of this new design, and it's great to see this showcased among the wonderful web designs which are featured in these galleries.

In the near future, Blogger Buster may also feature in a magazine. I'll post the details of this when the issue is confirmed...

Your Opinions Needed

I would love to have your opinions and input for some projects I'm currently working on.

Firstly, I'd love some suggestions about the style of templates you would most like to download.

I do have a magazine style template in progress, which will be released later this week, though I would prefer to develop a range of different templates to suit your varying tastes. If you have any suggestions, or would like me to consider creating a particular design, please leave a comment to let me know or send me an email if you prefer. I will try to design templates around the most popular suggestions, and will try to offer new templates much more regularly from now on!

Blogger News

Blogger wins the Best Application for Weblogs Award!

The Bloggies award for "Best application for Weblogs" saw some stiff competition for Blogger, including Flickr, Wordpress and YouTube. But needless to say, Blogger pulled through to win best in category for this award!

The Blogger Help YouTube Channel

Blogger have created a channel on YouTube specifically for those seeking help configuring their Blogger blogs! So far, there are only three videos available to watch, though I was rather intrigued to see this one, which shows how to set up your Blogger Custom domain.

To see more of these useful videos, pop on over to the Blogger Help Channel on YouTube.

This Week's Links

Here are some of the most interesting sites I've found this week:

• Feed Analysis Tool (by Blog Perfume): I really love this tool, which offers detailed statistics about your Feedburner feed. Including page views, estimates for future performance and even approximate values for your blog, this really is worth checking out!
• Skellie's Free eBook - The Simple Web: If you've read Skellie's posts before, you'll already understand what a great writer she is, and this eBook really is worth taking the time to read!
• Blogger and Podcaster Magazine: This is the first magazine I've come across which specializes in blogs (and podcasting). You can subscribe to the digital edition for free, and can also advertise in the classifieds section to offer better visibility for your blog.
• 7 Ways to make your blog stickier (Matt Harzewski guest posting for Problogger): This insightful post offers tips to help keep readers on your site for longer, and ensure they come back for more!

I hope you have enjoyed this week's review! Please do let me know if you come across any important news about Blogger, or if you find a useful site which you would like me to post about in next week's review.

Also, I would love to know your opinions about future template designs; don't forget to leave me a comment if there's anything particular you'd like to see designed in the near future!

Blogger Buster News

Of course, the big news for the site this week is the new template design. If you're reading this post via RSS I would really recommend for you to visit the site to take a look at how much Blogger Buster has changed!

There were a few glitches in the template, though hopefully these are all now fixed.

I've added a couple of new features in the past few days including:

• A tour of the site for new visitors, which gives an overview of Blogger Buster and explains some of the major features of the new template. You can find a link to this in the navigation bar beneath the search box, and also on item pages.
• The Home Page has changed a little to ensure there isn't such a great gap between the bottom of the page and the footer sections (thanks for the suggestion Dr Wiz!)

The "links" page is still inactive as I'm still in the process of writing this up. Eventually, this will be a resource page full of useful links related to Blogger, blogging and template design which should be available midweek.

As you may have noticed, all templates and tools are now accessible through the home page and are contained within this area of the site. The original sections for templates (http://designs.bloggerbuster.com) and tools (http://tools.bloggerbuster.com) are still available if you wish to use them, but will no longer be updated and will eventually be depreciated as everyone updates their bookmarks to the new locations for these features.

SEO for Blogger Templates series

Over at Blogging Tips I've been writing about search engine optimization techniques for Blogger templates. The first and second posts are available for you to read right now, while the third in this series will be available tomorrow.

I'm happy to say that I'm now a regular writer for Blogging Tips, and will be posting about Blogger and blog template design each Monday from now on.

Blogging Tips is full of useful articles and ideas for bloggers and has a great writing team, so please pop over sometime to read what this site has to offer the blogging community.

Upcoming Articles

Those of you who have kept up with me on Twitter may be wondering about the tool I've been using to backup, restore and import Wordpress posts to Blogger... This post is currently in the pipeline and will be posted in the next day or two.

Also, I will continue to write tutorial posts explaining how to install and use the new features included in this template.

I do apologize for not having written anything for the Blogger Template Design series recently. I'm sure you all understand how busy I've been with the redesign and other projects, and can assure you that this series will continue with at least two posts over the coming week.

Blogger News and Issues

Did anyone else notice the bug with all Blogger powered blogs yesterday? For a while, all blogs hosted by Blogger seemed to load extremely slowly, or wouldn't load at all! Thankfully, the Blogger team were on the case within minutes and had soon sorted out the problem for us all, and by now everyone's blog should load just fine.

The problems people were experiencing with custom domains earlier this week have also been resolved. If you were experiencing problems establishing your custom domain, you can try again now as everything seems to be working just fine.

This Week's Links

Here's a selection of the sites and articles I've been reading this past week:

• Vote for Blogger! Blogger has been nominated for "Best Publishing and Photography" site in the 2008 Webware awards.
  
  Voting is open until the 31st of March and winners will be announced in April 21st.
• ShareThis Plugin for Blogger: The popular service, ShareThis has now created a widget style plugin for Blogger users. This will add a ShareThis icon to your posts which allows readers to easily add your posts to their favorite social bookmarking service or email complete posts to their friends.
  
  You can also use this widget to receive detailed statistics about the performance of both the widget and your blog in general.
• Smashing Blog Headers: Smashing Magazine has some truly awesome blog headers available for free download, which have been offered by creative readers of this site. There are some real beauties here, so if you need a new header image for your blog, be sure to check out this selection.
• Building a Page for First Timers: This excellent post by ProBlogDesign is what inspired me to write the "Tour" page for Blogger Buster. In this article, Michael Martin explains how to write a page specifically for new visitors and why such a tactic can be effective for your blog. This is really worth a read and may even inspire you to create your own!

I hope you have enjoyed this week's review. Be sure to let me know if you have any suggestions for next week, and feel free to leave your comments and opinions below.

Blogger Buster news

Guest posting at BloggingTips.com

Regular readers of BloggingTips.com may have noticed my guest post: 40+ Essential Tools for Google Blogger, which was published late last Sunday. This post is a resource list for Blogger users which features some of the best tools and resources available to help you build a better blog.

As the name suggests, Blogging Tips is a resource for bloggers in general, featuring articles about blog development, design, SEO, marketing and so much more!

Please do pop by to take a look at my resource list for Google Blogger, and also the other great posts written by the more regular members of the Blogging Tips team.

I do hope to become a regular writer on Blogging Tips where I'll be writing about Google Blogger and general blog design. My next post is (probably) due in the next couple of days, and once I have clarification, I'll be sure to let you all know about my posting slot!

Blogger Buster redesign

I'm in the process of giving Blogger Buster a whole new makeover. Not simply a new design, this is intended to make more positive changes to the way this site can be used, including:

• Easier navigation for access to posts, resources and templates
• Search engine optimization and better overall ranking for the site
• Better organization for labeling, searching and archives to ensure readers are easily able to locate the content they need.

I will post about the changes more fully before the new changes take full effect, and I would greatly appreciate any suggestions you may have about how this site could be improved!

Blogger News

As I hinted in the introduction to this post, Google have developed a really great new tool which can be used for free in our Blogger blogs!

Grandcentral is a free new service from Google which allows you to receive calls and post voice mails directly on your blog!

For me, this is a revolutionary method for blog authors to interact with their readers, and foresee this will be a highly useful tool for many blog authors to implement.

At present, Grandcentral is in beta testing mode, though Blogger users are able to sign up to begin using this free service right away.

I will post about this more fully once I've had the time to research and test this new product, and will let you know more about it then (though for many reasons, I doubt I will implement this into Blogger Buster).

This week's links

Here's a handful of my favorite posts and links related to blogging for this week. I'm sure you'll understand why this one is a little short when you see the new site design ;)

• 40+ Top blogs which will teach you to blog like a pro! ProBloggersMatrix has created a truly inspirational list of must read blogs for aspiring bloggers.
• A comprehensive guide to keyword research for bloggers : this is a great, though somewhat lengthy article which has been published for free by CopyBlogger. Find out how keyword research affects your blog's status in search engines, and learn how to improve this by reading your free comprehensive guide.
• Prioritize your blog into 5 distinct groups: This article by ProBlogDesign has been invaluable to me whilst working on the makeover for Blogger Buster. If you're interested in the design and layout of your blog, this really is a "must read" which will provide much food for thought.
• 9 Things that drive a blogger crazy! Skelliewag has become a must read blog for me, and as always, this is an excellent post which delivers the best advice about blogging. In this post, Skellie tackles nine blogging events which can drive us crazy if not approached in the right way. (Number 2 was particularly relevant for me when I noticed my subscribers had dropped to almost half! Temporarily though, thank goodness!)

I hope you've enjoyed this somewhat shorter Weekly Review. Please do subscribe to the feed to ensure you're kept up to date with the developments here over the next few days. I promise you'll be in for a very pleasant surprise...

Blogger Buster News

Epiblogger Interview

I was thrilled to receive an email from Lee Robertson of Epiblogger asking for an interview about my blog! While Epiblogger is still a fairly new blog, it's fast gaining popularity due to the great quality of blogging-related articles. So if you haven't already discovered Epiblogger, I would really recommend you stop by for a read, and perhaps take a look at the my interview...

Apologies for the "downtime"

Those of you who visited the site midweek may well have noticed many flaws in the site, and also missing images in many of the templates. This happened because my hosting provider was having some mysterious fault which was preventing access to any of my files (not because I had exceeded my bandwidth allowance!).

Fortunately, the problem now seems to be solved, though I am still none the wiser about what had caused this in the first place!

This problem has happened before with a different site hosted by the same company, so as you can imagine I am now rather nervous of this happening again. While I am very tempted to change my hosting provider to a more stable company, my concern is that this site and all the services provided would be unavailable for a couple of days while the new settings take effect.

Hopefully this will be unnecessary, though if we start to see problems again, I will be sure to make the switch to a host which is recommended by some of the best names in blogging!

A new look for Blogger Buster (and perhaps a little competition?)

In recent weeks while writing the Blogger Template Design series, I've been doing some rather enjoyable research about blog design trends, and have also experimented with various techniques of customization which really push the boundaries of what Blogger is capable of displaying.

However, this has also made me consider new styles which I'd love to apply to this blog, in particular, the "magazine style" front page which is now becoming very popular in Wordpress driven blogs.

So... I'm considering a makeover for Blogger Buster.

In writing this, I know many of you will be wondering why: this template works well for me (at least, in most respects), it seems to have become a recognizable "image" for my blog, and is probably among the most original templates on Blogger driven sites. Unfortunately I can't help feeling a sense of discontent when I see my content isn't organized as effectively (or stylishly) as it could be. So last night, I took a deep breath and begun to design how the new template will look!

The good news is that this will also be useful for readers of this site.

As create my new template, I will document any customizations which have not already been posted here for the benefit of the Blogger community in general. Furthermore, I may well offer a slightly modified version of this existing template as a prize in a future competition!

In the next couple of days, I will write a full post about my proposed changes to the site, so be sure to come back soon to read more about this.

Blogger News

I was really happy to notice that the Blogger team have made some updates to the way Blogger operates, and have also fixed some annoying bugs!

The identity options for the comment forms are now much better defined, which for me is an important update as readers can clearly see which would be the best option to use. Furthermore, posts with more than 200 comments now have them split across pages, so as not to clutter a single page with too much content.

Layouts blogs (new Blogger) now have a tab which says "Layout" instead of "Templates", to ensure there is no confusion between the two template types.

Also, new transliteration options have been added for Kannada, Malayam, Hindu, Tamil and Telugu, allowing even more options for bloggers using different language systems to post their thoughts online.

The Blogger Team have now fixed the following bugs:

• Better Persian translations and other BiDi layout fixes
• A fix to the long-standing incorrect label counts bug
• Safari 3 support for the Layouts template editor pages
• Faster loading times for the post editor
• Improved international support in the post editor’s date and time fields
• Compatibility fixes for Picasa’s BlogThis! button

This week's links

Here are some useful articles and sites which I have discovered during this week of blogging:

• MyBlogLog have released a shiny new Recent Readers widget! This is a much more stylish version than the previous block-effect one, as you can see in this example. I'm sure many of you will now want to upgrade, which you can do by logging into your MyBlogLog control panel and choosing to create a new widget.
• PlaceMyProduct: over at SuperBlogging, Tay has written about a new service which may be useful for bloggers who monetize their sites with ads and other paid content. This is a great review of a new service which explains which focuses on the benefits for bloggers.
• Feed Analysis for your Feedburner Feeds: This is such a useful tool from BlogPerfume! I was thrilled to see statistics of my feed subscribers, plus loads of other useful information relevant to my site. Do take a look at this if you have the time!
• The Blogger Code: Now this is quite an old meme now, but it's still a rather interesting find. By answering a series of questions related to blogging, you can generate your own "Blogging Code". Check it out for yourself to see what the fuss is all about. Here is my own Blogger Code for those who are interested. You'll have to visit the Blogging Code site to decode it though ;)
  B9 D+++ T K+ S+ F I O++ X- E+ L C Y4 R+ W+ P+ M1 N H

I hope you've enjoyed this week's review! To receive updates of new posts, please subscribe to the feed or consider registering for email updates.

As always, your comments and opinions are always welcomed, so please leave your messages below.

Blogger Buster news

Many of you will have noticed that I haven't posted much about the Blogger Template Design series this week. These posts really do take ages to write, so I apologize to all of you that I just haven't had the time to write one this week. You can be assured that two posts will arrive in Tuesday and Thursday to make up for my lack of posting, in which I'll guide you through the process of making a great, interactive header section for your blogs!

Blog template resources

My major (and most popular) post of the week was 101 excellent Blogger XML templates, in which I showcased some of the best templates I have discovered for free download.

In a way, this is tied in with the theme of Blogger template design, as I always look to other designs for inspiration, and encourage others to do the same.

Some of these templates really push the boundaries of what can be reproduced in a Blogger design, so if you haven't already read this, please do take a look and be inspired by what others have created. This is also an excellent resource list for those seeking a new image for their Blogger blog, since these templates require little (if any) intervention from the user to make them work!

Another new feature you will soon see here on Blogger Buster is a round-up of the week's Blogger templates. In researching the 101 templates post, I came across some great template designers, and feel it would benefit the Blogger community to post about any new templates as they become available, with a screenshot and links to their download pages.

So if you are a template designer, or know of some great Blogger templates which have been released recently, please drop me a line to tell me about this, and I will be sure to include your template releases in my regular round ups!

Amanda is getting social!

Although I'm quite active with MyBlogLog, I haven't explored other social networking sites that much. However, there seems to be a recent trend among bloggers in using services such as Stumbleupon, Digg and Twitter, both to assist in publicizing their blogs, and also to interact much more with blogging communities.

So this week, I've made a point of becoming more involved myself too! And I have to say, I've really been enjoying myself with this: not only have I discovered some great sites which I may otherwise have overlooked, I've also met some great people and discovered loads about blogging in general which I hadn't learned before.

I tend to bookmark and network about the subjects which interest me most (blogging, social media and web design), so if any of these subjects also interest you, take a look at my bookmarks or feel free to just drop me a line. Here are my usernames for the networks I'm most active in at the moment:

• Stumbleupon
• Digg
• Twitter
• MyBlogLog
• Entrecard

Blogger News

New widgets available to Blogger in Draft

There are some new widgets available when you use Blogger in Draft (this version of your Blogger dashboard allows you to test new features before they become mainstream). These widgets are:

• Gadget: add a Google gadget to your blog (choose from any available gadget you like!)
• Subscription Links: help readers subscribe to your feed by adding subscription buttons to your favorite feed readers
• Search: for me this will be the most useful widget of the new features added. You can now easily add a search box which readers can use to search your blog, blogs you have linked to, or the whole web in general (you choose the search options within the widget itself).

To use any of these new widgets, simply log in to Blogger in Draft, and click to add a new page element in the Template>Page Elements section of your dashboard.

This week's links

Here are links to some of the best posts ans sites I've discovered during the course of the week:

• Dealing with negative criticisms of your blog: this is a really great read about Matthew's experience of a negative review of his blog, and is a great read for anyone considering paying for a review.
• The Cool Bloggers: over at Epiblogger, Rhett writes that we don't need to be popular to be a "cool" blogger!
• Spring clean your blog: over at Blogging Tips, Deborah explores methods you could try to give your blog a spring makeover.
• What does your design say about you? Ben Barden explores the nature of blog branding with this well-written post.
• Use these ten tips to write your most popular post ever: This is a truly great read by Skellie guest posting over at Daily Blog Tips. And as usual, the standard of her content lives up to the expectations of the title. Well worth a long read!
• The Blog Readability Test: just for fun, this service gives your blog a rating of how educated a reader should be to understand your posts. Blogger Buster has a "High School" reading level. What does your blog rate as?

I hope you have enjoyed this week's review. Please feel free to let me know if you find any great posts which you'd like me to link to in next week's review, and especially if you have any great Blogger template releases as I will soon be publishing the first round-up of free Blogger templates!

As always, your comments and opinions are always appreciated.

Blogger Buster news

Ebook unleashed!

Earlier this week, I released my first eBook: the Cheats' Guide to Customizing Blogger Templates. I'm really happy with the response about this eBook so far, and am so glad that I plucked up the courage to actually write this!

If you haven't already downloaded this, you should check out the download page where you can read more about this eBook and get a free copy for yourself.

I did put a lot of effort into writing this eBook, so I'd be really grateful to all who help me spread the word by telling your blogging friends or bookmarking the eBook on any social sites.

Now Blogger Buster has a Twitter feed

I finally decided to start using Twitter, so you can all find out what I'm up to on the blogging front by following my feed or simply looking in the sidebar where my latest tweets will be posted.

Other site changes

I think it's about time I made some changes to the site to ensure it's easier to navigate and find the stuff you're all most interested in. You may have noticed a few minor changes in the sidebar, such as the popular posts banners and the Twitter feed. But I'm not quite finished yet!

Over the course of the week, I'll make a few more minor changes. And of course of there's anything particular you think I should improve (or perhaps you don't like) feel free to drop me a line or leave a comment to tell me about this.

Also, I know the contact form is behaving quite badly, so if anyone can recommend a better free service to use, I would be very grateful for this.

New templates in the pipeline

After doing some hefty research on Blogger templates, I've discovered a few new tricks to make these templates even more advanced and functional than previous designs, but at the same time, I hope to make these more "user friendly".

Blogger news

Background image problems

I know many of you have had problems making your background images display in your templates. It seems that this past week, something has changed in Blogger's interface which means the shorthand statement to display a background image no longer works. So if you try to display your background image like this:

background: url(http://www.yourhost.com/yourimage.jpg) top left no-repeat;

Unfortunately, I don't know the reason, but I do have a solution for you!

To ensure your background images display properly, you may need to use long-hand statements instead.

This means you would need to use something like the following format:

background-color: #ff0000;
background-image: url('http://www.yourhost.com/yourimage.jpg');
background-repeat: repeat;
Background position: top left;

This week's links

I have a great selection of articles bookmarked which will provide you with blogging inspiration and advice to help build up your blog's readership. There's also a site which I had to include here because I found it so fun to use! Read on to find out more:

• Ten articles all bloggers should read: Here's a great resource list from Performancing.com. I really do recommend reading the articles on this list of you have the time. What I've read so far has been of excellent quality and hugely inspiring!
• The Blog Experiment: this is a forum and community resource for bloggers, which seems really helpful. You can get advice about all aspects of blogging from friendly, like-minded members (and will probably find me hanging around there from now on!).
• Top bloggers reveal their traffic secrets: Here's a great article by Jonathan Fields in which he features interviews with top bloggers discussing the ways they build traffic "off-blog" without spending a dime!
• From 0 to 2000+ Subscribers in 90 days: here's a guest post by Tina of Think Simple Now at Problogger discussing how she acquired over 2000 subscribers in less than three months of blogging!
  
  I love Tina's honesty and genuine enthusiasm as she discusses her blog and would strongly recommend this post to anyone interested in promoting their blog.
• 101 great posting ideas which will make your blog sizzle: A great post from ihelpyoublog featuring 101 post ideas for inspirational content. Well worth a read on those days when you just can't think what to write about!
• Typeorganism: I just love this site! While not strictly related to blogging, this free service is loads of fun! By uploading any 60x50px image, you can create a "typed" version like the one you see on the right. Can you guess who this is...?

I hope you've enjoyed this week's review. Feel free to email me if you have any suggestions for next week.

Blogger Buster news

The Cheats' Guide eBook

Sorry guys, I know this has been a long wait. Thankfully the eBook is now complete, with even more added features and also an accompanying folder with new templates and images used as examples in the eBook.

Members of the Blogger Buster MyBlogLog community will be able to have a sneak preview of the Cheats' Guide eBook (for evaluation and feedback) before the public release later this week. So if you'd like to get your hands on the eBook before anyone else, join our community or send me an email and I'll forward on the link.

More from the Blogger Template Design series

For those following the progress of the Blogger Template Design series, we've now taken the template a step further by adding margins and padding tp the template in construction. In the next few installments, we'll tidy up other elements of the template and begin working on one of the most important aspects of any blog template: an enticing and interesting header.

Some small changes to the Blogger Buster site

I'm planning to make some changes to the layout and functionality of this site over the next week or so. These will not be so drastic as last year's complete redesign, but rather a shuffle of the navigation links and sidebar content which I hope will make this blog easier to use and navigate, as well as highlighting the more popular sections of the site.

Blogging news

Bloggies Finalists

The finalists for the 2008 Bloggies have been announced, and we are now able to vote for our favorites in each category.

There are many familiar faces in the list, including Dooce, PostSecret and Lifehacker, plus some new faces in the list. You can also vote for Blogger as the best application for Bloggers if you choose (though Twitter and Flickr look set for many votes too!).

This week's links

I've begun to get into the habit of bookmarking useful links as I find them, so this week I have quite a selection of sites to share, including some which were emailed to be by readers.

I hope you find these useful, and please do send me your own suggestions which I will post here next week.

• Ximmy: get paid to bookmark your favorite sites
  
  This new social bookmarking site offers rewards to those most active in the community by rewarding members with credits which can be exchanged for cash. Thanks to Clyde for recommending this.
• Entrecard
  
  I'll soon post a full article about this excellent free service as I am very impressed with how well this is working for me. Basically, this allows you to earn and spend credits through advertising your blog, and allowing others to advertise on your site. You can see my own Entrecard widget in the sidebar.
  
  Already I've noticed an increase in the number of visitors to my site, and I'm really enjoying finding new blogs to read in the process. Check it out for yourself and let me know what you think about Entrecard by leaving your comments below.
• Tiny URLs: make your long links tiny!
  
  If you're in the habit of posting long URLs in your blogs or publications, do try TinyURL.com, which can transform your long links into tiny URLS. I've used this extensively in the forthcoming eBook (as my PDF software doesn't support embedded URLs), and have found this free service to be extremely helpful.
• LetterMeLater: send scheduled emails
  
  This free service would be ideal for anyone who wants to schedule their blog posts to a later date.
• Social networking in plain English
  
  This video post explains how social networking works in a way which is easy for anyone to understand.
• Larabie Fonts: free fonts for your blog designs
  
  I found this site while searching for some great free fonts to use in blog designs. There are loads of really great fonts to use here, including Coolvetica (a free variant of Helvetica) which you may recognize from the Blogger Buster logo.
• Iconspedia: free icon packs
  
  Here's another great site for those looking for free icons for their blog designs, featuring a wide range of high quality icons for free download. I'll be using some of these in later installments of the Blogger Template Design series, so be sure to check this site out if you need to find great icons for your own blogs.

If you've enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing to the Blogger Buster feed.

As always, your comments and suggestions are always welcome.

Blogger Buster news

Although my on-site activity has been a little low this week, I assure you there are good reasons for this. Firstly, I've been taking my time to prepare the posts for the Blogger Template Design series. And secondly I've been preparing my first e-book for release!

Blogger Buster's first ebook

The Blogger Template design series is becoming quite popular, and I decided early on that I would publish each installment as an e-book for easy reference, with a final release of the complete series once the posts are all complete.

Now the first e-book of the series, A Cheats' Guide to Blogger Template Design is almost complete. But unlike the original article, I've enhanced the e-book version with loads of extra information, tutorials for those using stretch templates, and even example templates which you can download and experiment with in your own blogs!

I'm much happier with this version of the "Cheats' Guide" as the format allows me to write more on this subject than could easily be absorbed through the reading of a blog post.

The Cheats' Guide to Blogger Template Design e-book will be available in PDF format, with an optional zip file containing the templates and images used in the demonstration blogs described in the tutorials. Currently the e-book is 35 pages long, and uses different examples from the original post. Upon the final release, this will also contain a table of contents (and possibly an index) for your ease of use.

And before you ask: of course it will be free!

After the final tweaks, this should be available for download in the next couple of days, so be sure to check back and download the e-book soon!

Blogging news

Blogger now available in Hebrew, Persian and Arabic!

This is great news for international bloggers and is almost certain to attract a whole new range of bloggers (and new blog readers too!).

Besides localizing the Blogger interface into these three languages, we have right-to-left templates and have added new toolbar buttons for bi-directional text editing in the post editor. (from the Blogger Buzz blog)

So if anyone else has been wondering about the small changes in alignment code in their default templates, now you know the reason why!

Technorati "gamed" by a Pharmacy blog!

In theory, Technorati should offer us an honest perspective of what's hot in the world of blogging. So as you can imagine, I was rather shocked to see a pharmacy blog had suddenly become the third favorite blog in the popular list!

Somehow, this blog with it's hidden links to various other pharmacy sites has managed to acquire 2378 fans on Technorati, gaming the system to acquire great visibility and a ranking higher than even Engadget! I won't mention the site's URL here, but if you really are interested, you can check it out on Technorati's 'popular' page.

Changes to Google AdSense referrals (and then back again!)

Earlier this week, Google announced changes to their referrals program, effectively prohibiting publishers outside North America, Latin America and Japan from earning anything for their referrals. Thankfully, Google then realized what a mistake it would be to prevent hugely popular sites outside these areas from making referrals. Now publishers outside these areas can still earn some compensation, depending on the location of the referral, rather than the country in which they live.

For full details of these changes, please refer to the Google AdSense blog, or keep an eye on your inbox as no doubt we will all receive confirmation of this change soon enough!

This week's links

Here are some of the best posts and services I've found this week to assist you in your blogging ventures:

• Fighting scrapers with your left jab! This post is the perfect read for anyone who's suffered at the hands of scrapers: those unwelcome bloggers who can't write for themselves and instead steal others' content to fill out their posts!
• Peekaboo Blogger Navbar: if you'd prefer to hide your nav-bar from your visitors, but still appreciate the functionality for yourself, then this is the Blogger hack for you! Annie of BlogU shows us exactly how this can be achieved - with ease!
• Tools for web designers: here's a great list of online generators, optimizers, validators and FireFox extensions for designers. A truly great resource which certainly deserves a bookmark!
• Tiny URLs: this free service enables you to create a super short, working URL from an extremely long one! So if you're in the habit of posting URLs in your posts, this would be a great asset for you. I've used this for the forthcoming e-book since long URLs would be rather unpleasant in a PDF publication (whereas they work great online!)
• Dear AdSense, you broke my heart! Yes, I know this post has probably done the rounds by now, but if you haven't read it yet, I assure you the chuckles will be worth it!

If you have any suggestions for blogging news or great links which you would like to see published in next week's review, be sure to leave a comment or send me an email.

As always, your comments and opinions are appreciated, so please feel free to leave me a message below.

Blogger Buster news

A cheats' guide to customizing Blogger templates

This installment of the Blogger Template design series seems to have been the most popular post this week. In the next few days, I'll release this as a PDF download with a few extra features which you can print as a reference when you're editing your own templates.

Invitation for Readers' Questions

As I mentioned in a previous post, another new feature I'm introducing here is the "Readers' Questions", where I'll answer your blogging related questions as a fully detailed post. This week I already have a great question to answer, but I would welcome future suggestions either by email or by leaving a comment beneath this post.

Join the Blogger Buster Community on MyBlogLog

You may have noticed the new Recent Readers widget I introduced in the sidebar. This displays the MyBlogLog avatars of Blogger Buster readers who have recently visited the site.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be making better use of MyBlogLog, so if you'd like to get involved, please join my reader community and soon enough you'll see your own avatar in place!

Also, those who are members of MyBlogLog can display their avatar beside comments. Simply choose to comment as "Other" then enter your nickname and URL. MyBlogLog will do the rest for you :)

Blogging News

PageRank changes

There seems to be a PageRank update in progress at the moment, as I explained in this previous post. This doesn't seem to be as major as the November update, though many sites are reporting changes in their rank. If you're concerned, you can check your current rank using the tool on this page.

Nominations closed for the 2008 Bloggies

The time for nominating your favorite blogs for the 2008 Bloggies has now passed. Next weekend, we should see the finalists in each category released, and will then be able to vote for the winners.

This week's links

Here's a selection of what I've been looking at this week on the web:

• Requires Flash (if you can read this, you have not enabled flash in your browser settings!)
  Badgr: This is such a great tool! You can embed a flash slideshow of your Flickr photostream as a badge (see right for an example). This is by far the prettiest Flickr photos tool I've seen to date.
• Ziki: Another fine way of creating your own online presence. This site aims to gather all of your web resources in one easily accessible place, to create a complete profile which can be used for for a resume or web reference. Currently Ziki guarantee top search results for Google, Yahoo! and MSN! This service is currently free, so be sure to sign up before a premium fee is added!
• Creating a custom MySpace layout: On my Techiboo blog, I wrote a detailed article about creating your own customized MySpace profile. You can take a look at my own profile to get a better idea of the concepts I covered. Eventually I will post a matching Blogger and MySpace theme pack to download, so be sure to keep updated for news if this interests you.

I hope you have enjoyed this weekly review. Next week I promise to have a better selection of news and links for you to enjoy. In the meantime, be sure to subscribe to the feed and be updated of new posts as they are published.

News on the Blogger Buster front

New features added

To get the New Year off to a great start, I've introduced three new features to the site: the Blogger Template Design series began on Friday and will continue over the next few weeks with a step-by-step guide to creating your own unique Blogger template for your blog. Today, you are reading the "Weekly Review" where I will be posting blogging highlights from the past week, and on Tuesday, I will post the first of the "Reader's Questions" series, where I will answer questions from my inbox about Blogger and blogging in general.

Blogger Buster enters the Technorati Top 5000

I was thrilled to discover that Blogger Buster is now in the Top 5000 blogs in Technorati's ranking. At the time of writing, this blog ranked at 4286, so we're gradually creeping up in the ranks. Thanks to everyone who linked back to Blogger Buster, and also to those who have made this site a favorite in their Technorati profile. I hope that this time next year, we may even be creeping up towards the top 1000...

Guest posting for Blog Bloke

On Wednesday, I made my first guest posting over at BlogBloke.com: Become a more productive blogger with a ten minute workout. This post seems to have attracted much interest over on Blog Bloke's site, so check it out if you haven't already done so and let me know what you think. I hope to make guest posting a regular feature over at BlogBloke.com, so it's likely you'll see more of this in forthcoming weeks.

And finally...

I released my new blog, Techiboo.com on New Year's Day, which features more general articles about blogging, social media, web design and internet lifestyle. Please do check it out if you haven't already, and let me know what you think to my new site.

Blogging News

"Weblogs" are ten years old!

I was perhaps a little late in realizing that weblogs celebrated their tenth birthday late last year. The term "weblogs" was apparently coined on Decenber 23rd, 1997 when Robert Wisdom decided to start his own web page, logging the best links and sites he found on the internet on a daily basis. And so the blog was born!

You can read more about the tenth anniversary of blogs over at The Guardian, which lists some of the highlights in the past decade of blogs.

Technorati Top 100 suffers link spam

We all know and hate link spam, usually suffered through comments pointing to undesirable sites. Unfortunately, the Technorati Top 100 blogs became victims of this unwanted attention over the weekend, when spammers decided to overrun the Top 100 bloggers by favoriting them, including links back to their own unwanted blogs. More details over at MixedMarketArts.com who discussed this trend in detail. I do hope Technorati can put a stop to this spam soon, or we will all end up with spammers promoting their unwanted services through our blog profiles!

The Bloggies are open for votes!

The annual Bloggies are back for the 2008 showcase of the best blogs as voted by the public. You can vote your favorite blogs for a variety of awards, including Best Entertainment Weblog, Best Blog about Politics and Best New Weblog. Voting is open until Friday, and unlike other blogging awards, you don't need to register to make your votes. Be sure to get your nominations in while there is still time!

This Week's Links

Here are links to some of the best sites and posts I've come across this week in the field of blogging:

• BlogBloke.com: Previously hosted at Instabloke.com, Blog Blokes popular blog has moved over to a new domain. Be sure to update your feeds and bookmarks for Blog Bloke, and check out the new look for this site.
• The best of Skelliwag in 2007: Skelliwag.com is a veritable treasure trove of articles and resources for bloggers, especially in regard to blog promotion and blogging habits. This post highlights the best of Skellie's posts over the past few months the blog has been online, which I would really recommend as an introduction to this highly interesting blog.
• Captions for images in blog posts: Peter discusses methods of adding captions to your images in Blogger posts, a highly useful feature to assist your readers in the understanding of your blog content.
• Disqus.com (for Inline Comment Forms): Angel tipped me off about Disqus.com which offers a commenting service you could use to add inline comments to your Blogger posts. In action, these comments look much neater than the version I blogged about previously. As yet, I haven't extensively tested this service myself, though I will be sure to post about this when I do.
• EarthFrisk.org: This is a new and rather wonderful search engine, which collects the search results from over a dozen different search engines and filters the results to find the best matches to your queries. So far, I've been really impressed by this service, which soon hopes to become a rival for Google searches (though of course we have yet to see how popular EarthFrisk becomes).
  
  A novel feature is that you can add your own profile for anyone searching for your specific name, including links to your sites and a profile image. Furthermore, you can choose to search social media sites like Technorati and Flickr in order to find the best results for your queries.
• Free Business cards for your Blog (from OoPrint): OoPrint are offering a selection of free business cards specifically tailored to bloggers. You will only need to pay for postage costs for these free cards, and unlike those offered by Vistaprint, you can expect to receive your cards in a matter of days (not weeks). There are 32 designs to choose from, many of which are graphically tailored to bloggers, and all of which seem to be of good quality. These would certainly be a useful tool for promoting your blog offline!

I hope you have enjoyed this first Weekly Review. For next week's feature, I would welcome any of your own suggestions, so do send me an email if you find any interesting sites or articles you would like featured in the next review.