Random WAHM Thoughts: seriously useful post

Showing posts with label seriously useful post. Show all posts

Top Commentator Widget For Blogger

Here is the code (original pipe and codes provided by BloggerSentral, date limit feature by Pehpot's husband, edited by moi, long-winded [but NOT boring!] story HERE) that you can use to display the top commentators of your Blogger blog and give some some love to people who love you the most. The features?

It ACCURATELY displays the top commentators from the last FIVE THOUSAND (5000) comments of your blog.
You are allowed to exclude THREE commentators of your choice (Anonymous is already excluded)
You can set the number of names to display on your sidebar and commentators' links are linked to URL provided.
You can set the date for inclusion and exclusion (i.e. you want the list to show ONLY the top commentators for the whole month of January).

HOW TO INSTALL THE TOP COMMENTATORS WIDGET ON YOUR BLOGGER BLOG:

Go to Layout and click Add a Gadget.
Choose HTML/JavaScript.
Copy and paste the below codes on the HTML/JavaScript gadget.

<script type="text/javascript">
function getYpipe(feed) {
 document.write('<ol>');
 var i;
 for (i = 0; i < feed.count ; i++)
 {
 var href = "'" + feed.value.items[i].link + "'";
 if(feed.value.items[i].link == "")
var item ="<li>" + feed.value.items[i].title + "</li>";
else
var item = "<li>" + "<a href="+ href + '" target="_blank">' + feed.value.items[i].title + "</a> </li>";
 document.write(item);
 }
 document.write('</ol>');
 }
 </script>
 <script src="http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?
 YourBlogUrl=http://YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com
 &ExcludedNick1=NAME1
 &ExcludedNick2=NAME2
 &ExcludedNick3=NAME3
 &ShowHowMany=10
 &ExcludeCommentsBefore=SET START DATE HERE (i.e. 01-01-2010)
 &IncludeCommentsBefore=SET END DATE HERE (i.e. 01-31-2010)
 &_callback=getYpipe
 &_id=932ec72eca30a5b8a83365f4eb4349cd
 &_render=json"
type="text/javascript"></script><br />
<center><a href="http://wahmaholic.com/2010/02/top-commentator-widget-for-blogger/">GET YOUR OWN TOP COMMENTATOR WIDGET!</a></center>

HOW TO COPY CODE: Click on the "view plain" text in the upper left corner of the code box (see screenshot below). A window will pop up. Just Hit Ctrl+A and Ctrl+C to copy the entirety of the codes.

Edit the following parts of the code above to reflect your own settings (ONLY the below settings, nothing more):

YOURBLOGNAME

1ST name to exclude

2ND name to exclude

3RD name to exclude

Number of people to show in the list, i.e. 10. Default is 10.

Start date

End date

Don't forget to type in an appropriate title in the gadget box, i.e. Top Commentators or They Love Me Most, whatever floats your boat.
Hit the delicious orange SAVE button.

That's it! Easy-peasy, huh? And yes, this widget IS as ACCURATE as it can get, all thanks to Greenlava and Pehpot's husband. I cannot thank you both enough! You're a love! I know I have just given you readers the biggest headache of all with my tutorial, so for any questions, feel free to comment below!

How To Use Pehpot's Adgitizer

There's been a lot of questions going about on how to properly use Pehpot's Adgitizer in order to gain your daily 100 points on Adgitize. Out of the goodness of my heart (or just so I can post my referral links, if you do not believe the former reason. LOL), I decided to make a how-to for the benefit of everyone. So here's how:

Sign in to your Adgitize account. This is the most important step! Otherwise, your clicks won't count.
Go here to start clicking on Utoy boxes. Clicking one will bring up five tabs on your current window.
On each of the opened tabs, look for the Adgitize widget and click on any of the advertiser buttons there.
Once on the landing page of the advertiser, you just need to let the page load for the point to be credited to your Adgitize account. Or you can be a dear and look around for a few minutes and help keep our bounce rates low.

Oh dear. I hope that's clear enough. If that was confusing in the slightest feel free to reprimand me in the comment section. Haha. Anyways, just a couple of tips:

You only get credit per unique advertiser button that you click. Meaning, if I see Fedhz' buttons on a couple of sites, I only need to click on one of them because the other click won't count anymore, even if it is seen on a different site.
You only need to click 51 sites if you're an advertiser. That'll still count as 100 points.
If you're in the Philippines, make sure to publish before 12:00 noon to make your article points count that day. Otherwise, the 100 points for publishing a new entry will count for the next day.
You only get credit for one click per site. That is, if you saw Niko's and Jade's button together in one site, you only get one credit even if you clicked both buttons. However, if you saw Niko's and Jade's on one but clicked only on Niko's, and then you saw both buttons again on another site and clicked Jade's button there, that will count as two points.

I can go on and on, ya know. But I'll stop here. Lest y'all hunt me down for muddling with things instead of making them clearer for everyone. LOL. Ta ta.

Adgitizing Made Easy!

I became a fan of Adgitize after I saw my own Alexa jump almost 200K up in a span of one week after advertising with the system. I was convinced by Pehpot's own results from the site, which made me took the jump to pay the $14 at Adgitize. I barely pay for anything online (contrary to popular belief, if you know what I mean. ha ha ha) which is why it took a lot of prodding from Fedhz before I actually started using it to advertise my site. I have no regrets now, looking back. I was informed I could get the $14 back if I was industrious enough to post everyday (I am NOT) and I blog hop to sites with Adgitize widgets in them. Other Adgitizers can achieve that.

Then came Pehpot's idea (she's always the one with ideas, trust me) of devising a way to make it easier to earn our daily Adgitize points that made me think, hey, maybe I can earn money from Adgitize as well! She calls the system Utoy (don't ask me why) and you can go here to access the boxes that she and her husband Cata have set up to make our blog hopping less painful in the butt. I won't bother to explain it here as she has laid it down in full detail there (and besides, I always sucked at giving directions).

You can read about the background of Utoy in a separate post that Pehpot made here. Be warned, though. By reading said post, your belief that Pehpot has multiple personality disorder will be reaffirmed. Niahaha. She asked me to do the buttons for Utoy. Wait no. Scratch that. She ORDERED me to do them. But nicely, so I obliged. LOL. So here they are, in all their glory. Look at how unadorned they are. Pehpot's hand, ladies and gentlemen. Plain and simple, just the way she likes it. If I had my way, it would of course be garish. Ha ha. But then, you wouldn't be half as convinced about it's effectiveness as it wouldn't look very professional, so I listened to Pehpot on this one. Hehe.

125x125 button

125x40 button

250x60 button

375x60 button

The spots in the boxes aren't filled to the brim yet so grab your space while it's hot and gain more visitors to your website! As the master instigator puts it, "Utoy wants attention. Blog about him, brag about him".

Your Wish Is My Command

Okay people. Your resident genie reporting. I magically came up with your requested signatures. I immediately made them because I'm afraid I'd be barraged with requests. LOL. Well, without further ado, here they are:

I know that all of you are either Blogger-hosted or your platform of choice is Blogger (wtf is the difference?, I ask), so it'd just be one tutorial for everyone. I originally wrote the following tutorial as one loooong sentence and I was confused myself when I read the draft and I thought, "You dumb woman. Why don't you put it in bullet form", which is what exactly what I will be doing, just about now:

You right click on your image above. I trust that you know your names from there, yeah? Hehe.
Copy image url or location or whatever (depending on your browser).
Go to your favorite photo-hosting site (I'm assuming photobucket).
Choose upload image from url, paste the copied image url onto the box and hit the upload button.
Get the direct link of the image (the one provided by photobucket).
Replace the particular section of the following code with the direct link of your image:

<img border="0" src="YOUR URL HERE" />

Go to your blogger account and navigate to Settings -> Formatting.
Scroll to the bottom of the page and where it says Post Template, paste the code I provided above with the direct link of your image that you just inserted.

The last two steps makes sure that every time you start a new post, your siggy code will always be there. From now on, when you go to create a new post, you will notice on your create a post box that the siggy code is there. Just start to type above it like you normally do and voila! Your signature will be appended at the end of your each and every posts. Have fun with your new signatures!

As you can see, I'm not the world's greatest writer of tutorial, so if you run into any trouble because of my step-by-step, you know where to find me. :)

Free Post Signatures!

I am having a bad time right now (see my previous post, if you care enough to know) and I need to feel better. This is selfish of me, I know, because I will be USING you to brighten up my mood. But this is the only way I can think of right now to feel good about myself. To give what little art in me that I can share. 'Nuff said.

These signatures you can append to your posts to give it a more personal feel. I made it yesterday, hoping to give it away at a later time but something crappy occurred and I can't hold these out if I was to stay sane. Here are the freebies. You can have them if you want. Just ask and I'll put your name on the design. I hope you like them.

All of them will look good in any background, as they are .png files. Interested? Leave me a comment below. Please help me feel better. Hehehe. Thanks!

Y! Mail or Gmail? That Is The Question.

With today's main vehicle of sending letters being electronic mail (e-mail), dozens of web-based e-mail programs have been sprouting left and right to vie for Internet users' attention. Each boasts of features which are not present in the others, and frankly, choosing among all of them has been difficult in the earlier years. As time passed and improvements were introduced, most of us became more comfortable in either one or two of these e-mail programs. Two of the web-based e-mail services which surfaced as being most utilized by individuals are Google's Gmail and Yahoo! Mail, both of which are free services (although Yahoo! Mail also offers a paid version in the form of Yahoo! Mail Plus).

There are good and bad points about Gmail and Yahoo! Mail, and this article's content stems from experience of shuttling back and forth the two applications depending on my need at the time I am sending an e-mail. The points of comparison that I would use would be general speed, storage space, attachment size and speed, spam management, user interface, mail forwarding feature and signature management, all of which are the most important facets of an e-mail service in my opinion.

First we start with general speed. I am on broadband connection which gives off a measly 512KB connection, so speed of loading is very important to me. Gmail, with its simpler interface, loads faster in my years of experience in using it. It used to be at par with Yahoo! Mail's speed when the latter was still in classic, but when they switched to the all new interface, it loaded a tad slower (and I blame the tons of page advertisements for that). Next is the storage space. Yahoo! Mail wins in this round, with unlimited storage allotted for each service user, as compared to Gmail, which offers only around 7287 MB at the time of writing (but the Gmail page says that it's increasing free storage by the minute).

Then there's attachment size and speed. Maximum size for Gmail attachment is 20MB for a single e-mail, while Yahoo! Mail offers only half of that. You can have 20MB with Yahoo! Mail, too, but you have to pay the fee of $19.99 (payment for Yahoo! Mail plus upgrade) in order to avail of that. Speed of attachment favors Gmail, as well, as it takes me twice the time to attach a file of the same size in Yahoo! Mail. Spam management has always been a weak side of Yahoo! Mail, as users have been known to complain of the tons of spam that manages to make their way through the Yahoo! Mail inbox even though the spam guard is on.

As for the user interface, I highly appreciate Yahoo! Mail's ability to drag and drop e-mails, work with multiple files, work in multiple tabs and other neat capabilities, features I seriously wish Gmail would have. Physical appearance-wise, Google added themes to their e-mail service a while back, and it did add color to the otherwise boring old interface, and is unique in terms of design, as compared to the colors only options available at Yahoo! Mail. However, Yahoo! Mail offers users several eye candy alternatives in place of the default white stationery that most web-based e-mail services like Gmail. So it spices up and adds a personal touch to users' sent e-mails. Mail forwarding is a feature only available for upgraded Yahoo! Mail users, but Gmail offers it for free, so that's a plus. This option is important for me because I need not open all my Gmail accounts to check incoming mails because I can simply set it to be sent to a single Gmail account with a few settings adjustments. I can even choose for my Gmail messages to arrive at one of my Yahoo! Mail accounts.

Now I know most users make use of a signature which can be found at the end of an e-mail. Yahoo has an easily editable option for affixing one's signature to every outgoing e-mail, although I must point out that the classic version of Yahoo! Mail is way easier to use than the new one. In fact, when I want to modify my signature, I switch back to the old version to fix it and then just go back to the new Yahoo! Mail when I'm done. Gmail, in this aspect, has no option for editing signatures. It is just recently that I found this nifty Firefox extension here (Blank Canvas Gmail Signature) which allowed me to do that.

So which is better? Yahoo! Mail or Google's Gmail? As already mentioned, there are pros and cons to each service, and since both are offered free, why not make use of the two so you can get the most out of each program? Use one or the other depending on your need at the moment. It will be a sweet day when either Yahoo! Mail or Gmail is finally able to incorporate all the features that users are looking for in their respective services. But I am not holding my breath for that day to come. Right now, let's just enjoy what each service has to offer for free.

Admit it. This is a useful post. *grins* And in case you're wondering why I'm acting all weird and what the hell was that post for, well, let me tell you. I wrote that for Helium. For which, they promptly decided to just shut all Filipinos off their site because of some optimal experience shit. Hell, I don't want no optimal experience. I just want my articles to have goddamn earnings every time it is viewed. Okay, I may not be the best writer in the site, but good enough not to get laughed at. I had a Creative Writing Bronze from you guys. *sniff* Could have gone gold if only you let me stay. But you didn't. So. Moving on.