The navbar was originally made to help enhance the readers experience by allowing them to search through millions of blogs of their interest. Intentions are worthy of admiration, but a blogger set on representing professionality might find it disturbing or even turned off by the diversion of traffic this feature causes.

Bloggers were able to disable the navbar found in the previous version of blogger using a simple CSS code. However, if you have switched to the new version of blogger, you might of noticed that the CSS code seems to stop functioning. This is due to the fact that google now uses a different CSS tag to control the navbar in Blogger Beta.

If you want to hide the display of navbar in the new Blogger, then simply copy and paste these lines into your blogger template.

<style type=”text/css”>
#navbar-iframe {
height: 0px;
visibility: hidden;
display: none;
}
</style>

Note:If you are using a classic template in the new version of blogger, then simply search and replace the #b-navbar with #navbar-iframe, which will successfully hide the navbar.

Now, you might be wondering if this method is violating any google blogger TOS or any type of licensing. There is no mention of anything relating to the removal of navbar in the google policy. Also, many have been using methods such as this, since the early days of blogger in itself.

[via:Digital Inspiration] 

Techmeme is by far one of the most popular news aggregators out there,    especially with almost 30,000 unique visitors a month. Getting a post at the front page of Techmeme would certainly give you the traffic boost you need and the much needed visibility from high profile bloggers.

During a recent interview with Gabe Rivera, founder of Techmeme, revealed some insights into how you could possibly get your blog post in the front page.

»Create posts that will interest other bloggers to link to your post which will allow your items to rise in importance. The more inbound links you can get, the more it appeals to the Techmeme bot.

»Linking to an item on Techmeme will not get you listed as a source. Techmeme has a list of preset sources that are increasing as the blogosphere expands. You should always aim to get blogs that you know are already listed as a source such as GigaOM by Om Malik to link to your entry.

»If a post on your site includes a Techmeme permalink, as opposed to linking to an article that Techmeme links to, with the addition of a moderate amount of traffic through that link would get you a better chance at being listed under the Techmeme Discussion section of an article. Also the Techmeme system must first determine that your site is not spammy and the referral is real.

»Write content that is original and meaningful to new visitors as well as returning visitors of your site.This is a great tip because its important to write original content to increase your blog readership not just to get your blog listed on Techmeme. Just remember that originality is the key to increasing popularity in the blogosphere. Put yourself in the shoes of your readers, would you want to read content that is a repeat of what all of the news sites are writing about?

»Enable others to find your content easily through emails, links, trackbacks, IMs,social networks etc. This will in fact increase the appeal your blog has on potential readers, while increasing traffic to your site. Traffic has a great impact on Techmeme’s ability to find your content and evaluate it’s worth.

Source:Tech Memeorandum |Image Credit:Digital Inspiration

Just when I thought PayPerPost had made a smart move to gain some positive feedback from the blogging community,they decide to leave behind the deal with Performancing.

Metrics was simply a free blog statistics service that was too costly for an organization of their size to maintain.

According to Nick Wilson,their Metrics service will become open source, allowing the community to further develop it. Permancing blog advertising network will remain intact with full support from the developers. As for their Firefox blog editor,it will get its own domain and be rebranded in the near future as ScribeFire.

There is some good news for blogspot users who have been long awaiting for an option to switch from those long domain names such as mysite.blogspot.com to a friendlier one like www.mysite.com. New version of blogger gives publishers an option to migrate their blogspot blog to any other domain name of choice.

The best part about this move would be the ability to keep all the google stats such as rankings,incoming links,etc. Direct traffic coming into your blog is redirected to your new domain automatically.

You wouldn’t even need to actually buy server space but just own the domain name by itself. Blogger will provide the space and uploading capabilities you will need to get your blog up and running. Of course, FTP publishing is still available if you’d like to do your own hosting.

To a rather negative note,this option is only available for the new version of blogger. You can continue hosting pictures on Blogger Images or Picasa web albums. You can use this feature with domains (e.g. mysite.com) or subdomains (e.g. name.mysite.com). However, you cannot specify subdirectories (e.g. mysite.com/blog/).

Additional Details: How do I use custom domain name on my blog? 

[via: Amit,Buzz]

Adbrite has been around for a while alongside it’s giant competitor which is the google adsense program.Google Adsense allows publishers to display advertisements according to content provided by the author,while Adbrite goes about it in a different approach,as to allow publishers to sell ad space for a value according to their site statistics and placement. 

The recent release of google video ads have fueled the competition for smaller competitors such as adbrite to play catch up,as if it is even possible.Currently smaller advertising companies are promoting their own versions of video ad programs which has proven to be somewhat profitable.

Today,Adbrite released their own version of a video ad program for webmasters and bloggers called InVideo Player.This new release has some features that might be interest to video bloggers or even bloggers who may enjoy uploading videos on occasion.

Adbrite provides the video player along with the advertisements that will be placed inside of them.Here are some features of InVideo that will make you think twice about how you choose to monetize your videos:

»Fully customizable video player, easy-to-use, and 100% free
»Brand your videos with your own custom logo “watermark”
»“Split-screen” ads engage users without interrupting viewing experience
»Sharing features promote your site when your videos get “viral”
»Earn money from your videos, even when they’re embedded into other peoples’ Web sites

[Sign Up For InVideo]  [via:Darren]

This goes to show you that even large corporations are not immune to mishaps when it comes to blogging. You wouldn’t think google of all the companies out there make a mistake with their blogs, especially since they own blogger. 

Well the google blogger team has made history this year with some shameful acts. To start of, an employee accidentally deleted the company’s official blog last March. To add a twist to the whole situation was that a 19 year old student named Trey Phillips claimed googleblog.blogspot.com for himself (imagine the traffic) but to google’s luck gave it back peacefully.

In October, an attacker exploited a bug inside Blogger to post a message claiming Google had discontinued a joint advertising project with eBay. That same month, a Google employee posted two messages to its Blogger Buzz site that were meant for her personal blog. Thankfully, those posts did not reveal any intimate secrets or anything of that matter but did put blogger team to shame.

Who knows whats to come in the year 2007, but I am sure it will reveal some exciting suprises.I hope that google will atleast pay more attention to their blogging habbits.

The latest version of google blogger certainly focuses on security more than ever before.One of the biggest changes you might come across is a feature to restrict readership to a predetermined audience.There are several other features to maximize the security of your blog.

Users are now free to determine wether they want a mass readership or maybe just a diary in which they can only access.One of the more advanced features include the ability to allow access to readers you choose by adding their email address to your blogger account.

Those readers you feel comfortable allowing access must be using a google account that contains a gmail address.If in any case they are not using a address associated with google email service, a invitation to join gmail will be presented in their inbox.

Blogger has always been known for its ease of use, even those without any knowledge in HTML or CSS can publish and maintain a blog.With this new release, the blogger team has made editing your template a breeze. You can easily add feeds,pictures,lists and even edit the navbar without even knowing a bit of CSS or HTML knowledge.

Google has also added a labeling function in which users can place keywords relating to their post topic.Your readers can then read posts by topic,much like the catagory function found in blogging platforms such as wordpress.Another bonus for new bloggers would be the ability to sign into blogger using your google account.Previously you had to sign up for a completley separate blogger account.

Sources:Google Blog | Yahoo News