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Blogging on custom domains using Blogger and Wordpress with and without sel
2009-01-11 21:32:00
‘lo, In this 2 part article I will explain how you can: 1. Blog on a custom domain (eg. www.<yourname>.com) while not having to buy any hosting space on the web (Will cover both Blogger and Wordpress ) 2. Blog on a custom domain while also having custom hosting (Will cover only wordpress and explain how to migrate blogger blogs to custom/self-hosted wordpress) I understand that many readers may question the need for this article when there are plenty or articles on the web. However I will try to make it very simple and easy to follow with judicious use of screenshots to make life simple. Before proceeding, let’s note that one can always start of a free blog on popular blogging platforms like Google’s Blogger or Wordpress. The URL of a blog on these free services will be like: <example>.blogspot.com <example>.wordpress.com If you are new to blogging, I recommend that you first try out hosting via these free platforms and see if you are able to mai...
More About: Blogging , Domains , Custom

Welcome to the new location of Stubborn Fanatic
2008-12-28 21:15:00
Hello All, I have successfully redirected stubborn-fanatic.blogspot.com to techblog.viveksanghi.com. The new home for this blog. Those of you who were looking at my blogspot template for design ideas will be unable to do so any more. However I can send you my blogspot template’s full code for a nominal payment of $2 via paypal only. If you are interested, please contact me at stubb [dot] fanatic [at] gmail [dot] com for further instructions.
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Time to move on
2008-12-21 08:13:00
Hello readers. I have decided to move to custom hosting for this blog. Many of you might have noticed that yesterday stubborn-fanatic.blogspot.com was redirecting to techblog.viveksanghi.com. This was to test whether things were working fine. Once my tests are completed, I have decided to move ahead with custom hosting.Once I move to custom hosting, my blogspot blog will no longer be accessible to visitors. At techblog.viveksanghi.com I use a wordpress template and its all based on the wordpress platform. However, all my posts from this blog will be available there are well. Those of you who were looking at my blogspot template for design ideas will be unable to do so any more. However I can send you this entire template code for a nominal payment of $2 via paypal only. If you are interested, please contact me at stubb [dot] fanatic [at] gmail [dot] com(Please leave a comment if you do not want me to redirect this blog to the new address)In addition, I would also like to inform ever...
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Contest Suggestion: 31 Days of the Dragon
2008-05-14 21:31:00
‘lo. After a long time I am posting some thing here for you guys. I hope until now you have enjoyed the existing set of Blogger mods that I had published. While this is not related to blogger mods, I am sure those of you who were unaware, will definitely love it. The other day I came across a big contest while browsing some of sites I read regularly, and simply could not resist sharing it with you.HP (in association with Buzz Corps)is promoting its latest 20.1″ notebook i.e. The HP HDX Entertainment Notebook using a contest called “The 31 Days of Dragon ”. Before I proceed further note that this contest is open to everyone from any part of the world. Contest Info: There are 31 participating web sites, with the sponsorship of HP where HP is working with them to offer 31 prize packages - one a day for 31 days during a period from 09 May through 08 June 2008. Here are the details of the price package (which btw is worth well over USD 5000 in retail value): Disp...
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Contest Suggestion: 31 Days of the Dragon
2008-05-14 21:01:00
'lo. After a long time I am posting some thing here for you guys. I hope until now you have enjoyed the existing set of Blogger mods that I had published. While this is not related to blogger mods, I am sure those of you who were unaware, will definitely love it. The other day I came across a big contest while browsing some of sites I read regularly, and simply could not resist sharing it with you.HP (in association with Buzz Corps)is promoting its latest 20.1" notebook i.e. The HP HDX Entertainment Notebook using a contest called "The 31 Days of Dragon ". Before I proceed further note that this contest is open to everyone from any part of the world.Contest Info: There are 31 participating web sites, with the sponsorship of HP where HP is working with them to offer 31 prize packages - one a day for 31 days during a period from 09 May through 08 June 2008. Here are the details of the price package (which btw is worth well over USD 5000 in retail value):Display: 20.1? diagonal WUXGA ...
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Poll result
2007-01-03 21:46:00
I had conducted the following poll a couple of months ago on my blog, but forgot to post the poll results after ending the poll. Better late than never:
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Poll result
2007-01-03 21:16:00
I had conducted the following poll a couple of months ago on my blog, but forgot to post the poll results after ending the poll. Better late than never:
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Translate your posts into 14 languages (Updates added)
2007-01-01 09:05:00
Dear Friends, This is my first add-on goody for the year 2007. Hope you will like it. Brainiac came up with a suggestion to add more languages to my Google translate for posts hack. As the number of languages provided by Google is limited, I decided to use the BabelFish code, offered in a language translation widget by Amit Agarwal of Digital Inspiration. I have been using this hack in the “Translate ” section of my navigational bar (at the top of the page). - This code offers 14 languages, to which your readers will be able to translate your posts.- There is also some translation code that Spanish Bloggers can use to allow their readers to read their blogs in English, French, Russian, German and Italian.(See comments for credits)I have modified that code so that you can use it in your post footers and allow your readers to translate individual posts (if they like). To learn how to add some thing to your template’s post footers, visit this page. Update: Added code f...
More About: Updates , Languages , Posts

Translate your posts into 14 languages (Updates added)
2007-01-01 08:35:00
Dear Friends,This is my first add-on goody for the year 2007. Hope you will like it. Brainiac came up with a suggestion to add more languages to my Google translate for posts hack. As the number of languages provided by Google is limited, I decided to use the BabelFish code, offered in a language translation widget by Amit Agarwal of Digital Inspiration. I have been using this hack in the "Translate" section of my navigational bar (at the top of the page).- This code offers 14 languages, to which your readers will be able to translate your posts.- There is also some translation code that Spanish Bloggers can use to allow their readers to read their blogs in English, French, Russian, German and Italian.(See comments for credits)I have modified that code so that you can use it in your post footers and allow your readers to translate individual posts (if they like). To learn how to add some thing to your template's post footers, visit this page.Update: Added code for English to Trukis...
More About: Dates , Post , Updates , Languages , Your

More hackers now on the ‘new blogger’ hacking scene
2006-12-31 15:47:00
Hello Readers, Life has been very busy for me in the last couple of weeks and therefore I have not been posting any new hacks or code. However, the the hacking scene has not gone cold. Lots of stuff has been happening in the blogger hacking space. 1. You might have looked at Ramani’s lightining fast Neo template. If not check it out here. 2. Classic Blogger’s favorite hacker, Aditya of last word has moved to the new blogger and is now making hack for the new platform. Check out his page here (looks great!). 3. Deepak of Blogger Hacked is spinning out quality Ajax based hacks also displaying strong coding skills. I highly recommend checking out his hacks. That’s what I have noticed recently. Hope this keeps you busy for sometime! Happy hacking and a very happy 2007.
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More hackers now on the 'new blogger' hacking scene
2006-12-31 15:17:00
Hello Readers,Life has been very busy for me in the last couple of weeks and therefore I have not been posting any new hacks or code. However, the the hacking scene has not gone cold. Lots of stuff has been happening in the blogger hacking space.1. You might have looked at Ramani's lightining fast Neo template. If not check it out here.2. Classic Blog ger 's favorite hacker, Aditya of last word has moved to the new blogger and is now making hack for the new platform. Check out his page here (looks great!).3. Deepak of Blogger Hack ed is spinning out quality Ajax based hacks also displaying strong coding skills. I highly recommend checking out his hacks.That's what I have noticed recently. Hope this keeps you busy for sometime! Happy hacking and a very happy 2007.
More About: Hacker , Hackers

Tamed rounders template now hacked and downloadable
2006-12-24 08:18:00
Hello all, Deniz of imessengr has taken the three column rounders template and hacked it to include most of the popular hacks currently available for the new Blogger. He has done this for all the variants of rounders that are available on Blogger. Visit here to download this template and install it in your blog.
More About: Template , Hacked , Rounders

Tamed rounders template now hacked and downloadable
2006-12-24 07:48:00
Hello all,Deniz of imessengr has taken the three column rounders template and hacked it to include most of the popular hacks currently available for the new Blogger. He has done this for all the variants of rounders that are available on Blogger.Visit here to download this template and install it in your blog.
More About: Download , Hack , Rounder , Plat , Template

Blogger Feature or Bug: Edit link disappears and Blog unable to recognize i
2006-12-20 20:44:00
For quite a while now I have been facing problems with my Blog ger blogs and layout editor. Every time I edit a widget and save the changes the edit link for that widget disappears from the layout. To understand what I am referring to have a look at the two images below. Once I update the “Subscribe | Syndicate | Bookmark” widget the edit link disappears. I actually have to click on the page elements link to reload the layout editor which is very irritating. I have not heard anyone else complain about this so I wonder if only I am facing this problem or if this is some cool new Blogger feature that I don’t understand Not just this, for some strange reason, my blogs don’t identify me as the administrator even if I am logged into blogger. There is a possibility that the widget quickedit links are not shown as I might have messed up some code in the template. But that’s not the case as I don’t get to see those links even in any new blogs (where the ...
More About: Feature , Link , Edit

Blogger Feature or Bug: Edit link disappears and Blog unable to recognize i
2006-12-20 20:14:00
For quite a while now I have been facing problems with my Blog ger blogs and layout editor. Every time I edit a widget and save the changes the edit link for that widget disappears from the layout. To understand what I am referring to have a look at the two images below.Once I update the "Subscribe | Syndicate | Bookmark" widget the edit link disappears. I actually have to click on the page elements link to reload the layout editor which is very irritating. I have not heard anyone else complain about this so I wonder if only I am facing this problem or if this is some cool new Blogger feature that I don't understand :)Not just this, for some strange reason, my blogs don't identify me as the administrator even if I am logged into blogger. There is a possibility that the widget quickedit links are not shown as I might have messed up some code in the template. But that's not the case as I don't get to see those links even in any new blogs (where the HTML has not been touched) create...
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Blogger News: Welcome the "New Blogger"
2006-12-20 03:29:00
Hello Readers, Just a quick update here. Blogger has announced that they are now out of beta. This is shown by the change of URLs. The sign-in link on beta blog navbars no longer points to the beta.blogger.com link. It now points to www2.blogger.com. Classic Blogger users can learn more about Blogger Beta the New Blogger here.
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Blogger News: Welcome the "New Blogger"
2006-12-20 02:59:00
Hello Readers,Just a quick update here. Blog ger has announced that they are now out of beta. This is shown by the change of URLs. The sign-in link on beta blog navbars no longer points to the beta.blogger.com link. It now points to www2.blogger.com.Classic Blogger users can learn more about Blogger Beta the New Blogger here.
More About: News , Welcome , R News

Adsense inside your posts and only on post (item) pages
2006-12-16 10:09:00
Loui$$ from Blogging Secret just asked me how I was displaying adsense ads only on post (item) pages and inside the post i.e. in the beginning and the end of each post. For this I use the same if statements from my hack Display widgets only on pages you prefer but widget are not involved in this one as widgets cannot go inside a post.First let me acknowledge the sources from which I learnt some essential adsense tricks for Blogger Beta: 1. Using adsense code in beta template by Loui$$.2. Using adsense in posts by Deniz. I recommend checking those out before proceeding with this hack. As always, please back-up your template before proceeding with this hack as you will be modifying some important portions of your template. Now for the hack. Simply look for: <p><data:post.body/></p> ; in your template’s <div([Your Adsense ] in the each of codes given below must be replaced with the adsense code of your choice) 1. This code: (if you are not usi...
More About: Post , Item , Inside , Posts

Adsense inside your posts and only on post (item) pages
2006-12-16 09:39:00
Loui$$ from Blogging Secret just asked me how I was displaying adsense ads only on post (item) pages and inside the post i.e. in the beginning and the end of each post. For this I use the same if statements from my hack Display widgets only on pages you prefer but widget are not involved in this one as widgets cannot go inside a post.First let me acknowledge the sources from which I learnt some essential adsense tricks for Blogger Beta:1. Using adsense code in beta template by Loui$$.2. Using adsense in posts by Deniz.I recommend checking those out before proceeding with this hack. As always, please back-up your template before proceeding with this hack as you will be modifying some important portions of your template. Now for the hack. Simply look for: <p><data:post.body/></p> ;in your template's <div> section and replace it with the code given in code boxes below: ([Your Adsense ] in the each of codes given below must be replaced with the ad...
More About: Sense , Post , Page

Add background colors to comments
2006-12-15 04:11:00
Hi all,This is a quick & dirty or a simple hack (if you want to call it that) that allows one to add a background color to the comments. I have this set in my blog and you can simply check the post page for one of my posts that has comments to see what I am talking about. Here is an image for your convenience:Interested? Please backup your template before proceeding with this hack.In this hack you can assign a different background color (and text color) for the blog author’s comments (see the image above) and to do this you must have this Hack (Author comment highlighting) from Hackosphere installed.Once you install the author comment highlighting hack from Hackosphere, your comment code will look similar to this:/* Comments --------------------------------- -------------- */#comments { margin:0; }#comments h4 { margin:0 0 10px; border-top:1px dotted $borderColor ; padding-top:.5em; line-height: 1.4em; font: bold 110% Georgia,Serif; color:#333; }#comments-block { line-height:1.6e...
More About: Men , Ground , Colors

Google page creator: headache
2006-12-14 19:07:00
Google's Page Creator software is seriously pissing me off:I hope I don't end up breaking my monitor, keyboard or mouse the next time I see this:BTW Google should hire someone who has written error messages for Microsoft :)) Coz: "oops! I don't like your error messages". Better still don't give me the donuts, just get the page working. Just a thought (pun intended)Update: Page creator behaves much better after I turned off the experimental features.
More About: Google , Head , Googl

Hack Round-up
2006-12-10 21:12:00
Hello Readers,Well, I had no new ideas (except for a few which require CSS knowledge) so I have no new hacks of my own as of now. However, this post points to some good hacks/add-ons/template mods that I have seen in the neighborhood recently:1. Hack ed Son of Moto template by Deniz of imessengr.2. Adsense beside your posts in blogger beta by Deniz of imessengr.3. Adsense between the posts (adding adsense directly to the beta template) by Loui$$ of Blogging No Secret.4. Template theme switcher (and tutorial to host Blogger Beta CSS externally) and hacked Blogger templates with this functionality (inbuilt) by PurpleMoggy.In addition, I have found my interaction with Deniz and posts from "Blogging Secret" very informative with reference to Adsense related tips (especially for Blogger Beta).BTW this post is done directly from a nice but nifty Firefox extension called Performancing. I really like their idea/design and concept, especially because I am yet to see my first post from Google ...
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Control your Layout editor’s layout
2006-12-05 15:53:00
Hello Readers,I was going through the stock dots dark template when I came across a section labeled “Page structure tweaks for layout editor wireframe” just before the closing skin tag in the template head. Soon I realized that I can use this section to modify the looks of my layout editor in the following section: Template > Page Elements > Add and Arrange Page ElementsFor those of you who couldn't follow me, here is a visual of what I am referring to:After converting to a three-column layout in my dots dark template, for many months my layout editor was in a mess. This happened because I changed my template’s outer-wrapper width such that there is no wastage of space on a typical 1024x768 resolution screen or in other words I stretched the template to fit snugly :) I did not bother my self with the layout editor and learnt to live with it.Here’s how my layout editor looked after switching to three columns and then the widebar layout. Call it an example of a bad layout in ...
More About: Your , Edit , Control , Editor , Layout

Rake in feeds with blogger beta and OPML (updated)...
2006-12-01 01:12:05
I am not sure about classic blogger, but I can definitely tell about blogger beta, that it has a number of options to choose from as far as feeds are concerned. If you have the right idea, you can use all of these feeds to offer your readers the flexibility to choose what they wish to read and how.Full posts feed of your blog:http://[your blog].blogspot.com/feeds/posts/full (updated as per blogger buzz)Summary posts feed of your blog:http://[your blog].blogspot.com/feeds/posts/summary (updated as per blogger buzz)Full post feed for a label (topic):http://beta.blogger.com/feeds/[bl og id]/posts/full/-/[label name]Summary feed for a label (topic):http://beta.blogger.com/feeds/[bl og id]/posts/summary/-/[label name](or)http://[Your Blog ].blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/ [label name] (updated as per Phydeaus3)Full comments feed:http://beta.blogger.com/feeds/[blog id]/comments/full(or)http://[your blog].blogspot.com/feeds/comments/full (added as per blogger buzz)Summary of Comments fe...
More About: Blogger , Beta , With , Update

Feed, Social Bookmark Drop-down and a Recent refer...
2006-12-01 01:12:05
Hello Readers,In this post, I have presented the following add-on for Blogger-Beta:1. Subscribe drop-down (on-hover) for presenting feed subscription options.2. Soci al Book mark drop-down for Blogger-beta post footers.3. Extreme Socializer ? A Social Bookmarking alternative.4. Recent Referrers hack by web-messenger.1. Feed Subscribe Drop-down (on-hover)You might have noticed the Javascript-based subscribe drop-down (activates on mouse hover) in my blog?s widebar. I had got this one from here. Just go to this link, follow the instructions there in, incorporate the code in a widget and say good-bye to that long list of chicklets occupying your sidebar and also present your reader with a large number of subscription options.2. Social Bookmark Drop-downFrom the same site I also found a tool to create a Social Bookmark drop-down menu (regular type). As this tool cannot create the links for Blogger beta post footers, I have modified their code and put it up for ready use (Thanks to Ramani ...
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Get socially bookmarked! (blogger beta)
2006-12-01 01:12:05
See the image links to the social book marking sites under each of my post footers?Working on Ramani?s original post regarding adding hotlinks to Del.icio.us and digit!. I learnt how to rearrange the stuff that appears under each post using the widget code in the template and also added images instead of plain text links for hot linking purpose. Thanks to one Cal Evans I was able to get all the images in one place from the plug-in file on this page. All I had to do was some coding. I must tell you that I am not a programmer or some thing and know very little about coding. But ever since Ramani modified beta blogger templates into 3-column templates I think I have moved from knowledge to knowledge while exploring its code. Thanks to him for that.While the tags for Del.icio.us and diggit! were with me from Ramani?s blog, I was lucky to stumble upon this site. It has additional hotlinks and I got the ?submit? URL from there. Here is how the code goes:http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=.. .
More About: Social , Blogger , Bookmark , Beta , Blog

New hacked template for Blogger beta and return of...
2006-12-01 01:12:05
Dears readers,The topics covered in this post are:1. A hacked sand-dollar template (with widebar) for blogger beta by imessengr.com2. "Flag blog" option now available for Blog ger beta blogs.1. Hack ed Sand Dollar TemplateDeniz from imessengr.com (the one who presented the recent referrers hack for blogger beta) has released a hacked sand dollar template for blogger beta. This template contains a variety of hacks and is based on the widebar design I had discussed earlier in my posts. You can preview this template from here and view this post to learn more and download the template.2. "Flag Blog" option now available for Blogger beta blogs.I just noticed that the "flag blog" or "flag this" button on the navbar which was available only for the classic Blogger blogs in now available for Blogger Beta blogs as well. With this, blogger has brought yet another feature of Blogger v2.0 into beta i.e. v3.0.
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Host HTML pages for Frames in a blogspot address
2006-12-01 01:12:05
Dear readers,If you were a regular visitor to my blog, you might have noticed that I was using frames to display all the link-exchange chicklets until some time ago. I discontinued the use of frames, because they don?t display by default in Internet Explorer or IE (which still seems fairly popular).I was hosting my frame HTML document at Google pages (as Blog ger does not allow HTML file uploads) and it made my blog loading very slow for two reasons:1. There were a large number of chicklets and some javascript snippets in the frame.2. Every time my blog was accessed, stuff had to be loaded from google pages as well which is a completely different server/domain.All I wanted was to use a blogspot domain to host this frame HTML and I found out that it can be easily done.See these images to know what I am referring to: One simply needs to create new blog and strip it of its entire template code except for a few necessary sections. See image to note what needs to be retained:Basically, ev...
More About: Blogs , Page , Dress , Spot

Adding a wider-sidebar to your blog
2006-12-01 01:12:05
Impressed by Wordpress?s Andreas04 template, I wondered if we can have some thing similar for Blog ger beta. The answer is yes. Please view the image to understand the layout I am referring to:It is much easier to play around with the template in Blogger beta because of its easy to understand template script language and the flexibility to view the template in collapsed and expanded widgets view (about which I will discuss a little later).Co-incidentally this layout is same as Ramani?s blog design (where he calls the third sidebar a widebar and for simplicity sake I shall also do the same). Click here to preview the implementation of this hack in Blogger beta.Before we proceed and learn how to implement this layout, I would like to discuss some nitty-gritty of the beta template. I do not want to give a detailed walk-through of the template here. You can find that here.Wrappers are an important part of the Blogger beta template and in simple terms they are used to allocate/fix some th...
More About: Your , Wide , Sidebar , Side

Google Docs & Spreadsheets (updated)
2006-12-01 01:12:05
You might have come to know by now that Google has released a service called Google Docs & Spreadsheets . In this service, one can use an online text editor (similar to Microsoft Word and others) to create posts and publish it to their blog.With this service, you can:- Have your documents published online (as a webpage) to share it with others (dedicated URL to each document, as in Google pages)- Export your online documents in word, openoffice, HTML and PDF file formats to store it on your hard drive.- Import various document (.htm, .doc, .txt, .rtf, .odt, .sxw) and spreadsheet (.csv, .xls, .ods) file formats into this service and publish them online instantly or save it to your hard drive in a different format. So if you want to convert a Microsoft Word file into Adobe PDF format, you can do it easily using this service.- Collaborate and work with others on projects and set access permissions to files.- Post to other blogging tools (other than Blogger) like wordpress, LiveJournal...
More About: Read , Sheet , Update