"HOW" - "HOW TO" - "HOW DO"

This article looks at the numbers that are in web-page addresses created by Blogger, what they mean and how you can influence them. When you first publish a post, Blogger assigns a permanent web-address (aka an URL or a permalink) to the post.  I've previously explained how you can control the words used in this hyperlink . A common question from people who are researching SEO for their blog is "how do I get rid of the numbers in the post-URL?". Unfortunately the answer is not as straighforward as most people hope for. Numbers near the start of Blogger URLS As described in setting the content of your post's permalink , the URL given to posts published in Blogger shows the year and month of the original publication date for the post. I think this is because Blogger was originally set up as an on-line diary, with a lot of the features organised around the post-date. Today, there are ways of giving your blog a home page , showing your posts in pages , and c hanging th...

This article explains how to use Labels to categorise the Posts in your Blog, and how you can get around some of the limitations in Blogger's categorising tools. Why categorise your Posts Grouping your blog's contents makes it easier for people who have reached your blog via Search to find other posts that they may be interested in - provided you add tools to your blog that let them navigate using labels. It's essential if you want to make it look like you have put your Posts into Pages . And it helps you to find posts yourself. Blogger's tools for working with categories The only tool that Blogger provides for categorising or grouping Posts is Labels . In short, Labels are tags that you apply to posts . Each post can have as many Labels as you want (there is an upper limit of 5000 labels-per-blog, but most people don't get near it). And you can use labels for different purposes.  For example, a post titled "Photographing Long-haired Black Cats" could hav...

This article shows how to use the Permalink options to control the URL used for a post in your blog. URLs and Blog Posts When you first publish a post in blogger, an URL (called a permalink in blogger) is automatically generated for that post. It looks like: www.yourDomain/yyyy/mm/WORDS-ABOUT-MY-POST In this URL: yourDomain is either your custom domain (eg fred-fish.com) or your blogspot domain if you aren't using a custom domain at the time (eg www.blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com) yyyy/mm is the year and month of the post's original publication date. Years ago, Blogger chose the WORDS-ABOUT-YOUR-MY based on the title, or the first words in the post if the title was blank. They used some rules eg leaving out "the" and other common words, and putting numbers on the end so that every post has a unique URL (called a "permalink" in Blogger). However Blogger have now provided a tool that lets you choose the WORDS-ABOUT-YOUR-POST separately from the post...

This article explains how to hide or change the format of the "Older Posts" and "Newer Post" and "Home" links that are shown at the b ottom of Blogger blogs with Layout or Designer templates. Why are the older and newer posts links used Most designer and layout templates have links at the bottom of your page of blog posts which let readers navigate back and forward among the list of posts. This is basic to how a blog is intended to work:  you post regularly, and give people a way to get back to previous posts. The pager-links are particularly important on pages that are reached using the Label or Archive gadgets, which may show more posts than you normally have on your home page, or displaying in your blog. But some people want to remove them - and this is fine provided readers have other ways of navigating around the blog. How to remove "Newer Posts" and "Older Posts" from your blog To totally remove these items, you just add some new...

This article shows how to get and then centre-align the row of sharing items that you can get from AddThis (and it's likely that a similar technique applies to sharing buttons from other services like ShareThis, too). If you think that Blogger's own social sharing buttons a just a bit too small and difficult position, then you may decide to use a service like AddThis to generate buttons that are more elegant all round. Signing up with AddThis is easy: just log in to your Blogger account, and in a separate tab open up AddThis.com. Choose Create Account, and then Continue with Google. This links your Google account and your AddThis account, and is the easiest approach - but there are other options too, like creating your account with your Facebook or Twitter accounts, or even just signing up the old fashioned way with your email address. Once you have signed up and chosen a plan (personally I just the free "Basic" plan), you need to actually install the AddThis...

This article explains how to put a picture that is one shape (a "square peg") inside an image of another shape (a "round hole" - or star, elipse, octagon, etc) - using Microsoft PowerPoint. Original title:   How to put a square peg into a round hole - in pictures Recently, I've been using PowerPoint to make the thumbnail image  for my posts. This means that I own the copyright of the pictures, so can share them without worrying about copyright issues . One approach I've used is to find an interesting copyright-free picture that is related to the theme of the post, and then put it inside a shape that adds some visual interest or has some words along side it.  Another thing that I'm going to try is using multiple pictures in this way to make a more-interesting-than-usual collage. How to put a picture inside a shape NB PowerPoint commands are based on Office 2007 and 2010 - but the same principles most-likely apply in other versions where the commands may...

This article describes how to get the URL or internet address of a picture in Google Photos, and the difference between Google's shareable links and URLs. Google Photos is a tool that help bloggers (and everyone else) to manage their picture collections. It replaces Google+ Photos, and works alongside Picasa-web-albums.   You can read more about it here . In Google Photos, there are two different types of web-address for a photo. One is the URL , and this can be used to refer to pictures from Blogger, or from other tools that want a link that just shows the photo, eg Twitter, Google Maps.  This is the traditional style of internet-address for a photo. The other is the shareable link.   This is what Google Photos provides from the Share function.   Shareable links can be used in Facebook, and other places where the photo that is being shared is displayed within a web-display, rather than just as a picture.   (Ref:   How to make and manage shareab...