Your Favorite White Boy

A little off topic, but I wanted to speak on this. As someone who started blogging about five years ago, when things were a lot less user-friendly (any improvements to basic templates had to be made by dropping in HTML code your damn self), I’ve learned a lot. In fact, maybe I should have named this post “Why didn’t I learn this 4 years ago?”

While things are a hell of a lot easier for the non-programmer set, there are still a few quick ways to make your blog look professional and more than just a free template. I look at a lot of hip-hop blogs and websites in my travels. From what I can see, there are a lot of bloggers who can’t or won’t take steps to take their blog from a personal journal to a real site.

That’s a shame. First impressions are real important. Now, experts will tell you that design will only take you so far – folks aren’t going to check out your blog just because it looks impressive. And that’s true: content is still king. If your posts are garbage, your traffic will be too. So design is secondary.

However, it is important that people know you’re serious. Everyone and their grandmother has a blog these days and before people commit to your site, they want to know you’ll be around after next week. The best way to do that is demonstrate that you’re serious. Here’s a few ways to step up your blog and take it to that next level. This will help when you’re trying to get interviews, serve as a guest blogger, write a column or network with other bloggers and websites. Not to mention more traffic.

The majority of the blogs I hit up are powered by Blogger or WordPress. I will focus my comments on Blogger sites, as that’s where I have the most experience. I have done my best to hide the fact that this site is just a simple blogspot blog. And its really helped me, but I had to learn the hard way. Why should you have to go through that? Let’s get to it.

1. Lose The Blogspot Name
I know most bloggers aren’t looking to spend a lot of money on their blog, especially in the early stages. But if there is one small investment I recommend, its to buy a unique URL you can use later on. This is the one thing that puts your blog on a higher level than the millions of other blogger-hosted sites.

Even if that doesn’t really mean anything to you, creating your own URL also given you an excellent opportunity to brand you and your content, which not only speaks for you, but also helps you stand out in a crowd – which makes it easier for potential readers to notice you. That means more traffic, more comments and eventually more ad revenue (if that’s where you’re eventually headed). And its cheap.

First, when you come up with a great name for your site, do a WHOIS search and check and see if the name is taken. If its not, you’re good to go. If it is, you’ll need to come up with a new name – unless you want to buy that name from the owner.

If you’re thinking about setting up a blog, when you initially sign-up with Blogger, they will give you the option to set up your own URL for about $10, rather than use a .blogspot.com address. All you need is a credit card. That’s the easiest way.

If you’re like me and your blog is already hosted at a blogspot.com address before you came up with a great name for your site, there are a ton of sites that will administer and host your URL address. Transferring your blogspot URL to a new one is trickier, but most hosts will walk you through it. Blogger also has a help group that deals with transferring it over as well. I recommend name.com; they have great customer service and they work with Google Apps, which I will cover in the next point.

2. Get Yourself Some Google Apps
There’s not a lot of point of getting a cool URL if you’re not going to use it often – and I mean everywhere. In all your blogging activities, you want people to remember who you are and the name of your site (the latter being the most important). The URL is a good start, but why stop there?

Google Apps is a free application that will expand the capabilities of your site. Primarily, you can set up various e-mail accounts which are connected to your site. My e-mail is actually hosted by GMail, but the address shown is bdub@yourfavoritewhiteboy.com. Everytime I e-mail someone, I remind them of my site. It also helps to give the appearance that this is a much larger, robust operation. If you write for a group blog, each person can have a e-mail account.

Google Apps also has a number of other features including Google Docs and Google Sites to host various documents, files, pictures and videos. This is in addition to Google Talk and other features included in the Google universe. I have found this an incredibly useful add-on for my blog. And because Blogger is owned by Google, everything is basically seamless.

3. Get A Real Template
This is something that is often overlooked and is best to do right at the beginning. Blogger (and WordPress) have some decent basic templates, but many, many other bloggers already use them. Why look the same as everyone else? There are some fantastic sites that host all kinds of templates. And they are extremely easy to import into your blog.

Once again go into the “Layout” area in the Blogger dashboard. Once you click on “Edit HTML”, there is an option right at the top of the template code to upload a new template, which will be a .XML file that you downloaded from one of the sites above.

A few important points. First, if you already have a working template, SAVE IT. The new template may look fantastic in the screenshot on the website you got it from, but it doesn’t always translate. This way, if you save your template, you can go back without losing a whole bunch of stuff (again, learned the hard way). Second, there is a good chance that you will lose a lot of applications when you transfer over to a new template. Make sure you save the code from your HTML template and/or note where you got the application from (Feedburner, Photobucket, etc) so you can go back and get the HTML code again.

Lastly, you may want to decide ahead of time what kind of a template you want, functionally. Do you want two columns (standard type) or three columns, like this site? Do you want a navbar that allows a reader to go to multiple pages? Do you want a layout that makes it easy to place ads? These are all questions you should have an answer to before you embark on getting a new template.

4. Ditch The Blogger Navbar

The easiest way to spot a Blogger blog is that you’ll find this at the top of the site:
If you’ve ever wanted to get rid of this ugly and fairly useless app, its a quick and easy fix. Go into the “Layout” area of your dashboard. HTML area of your blogger dashboard and add the code found right here under “Technique One.” Once you put that into your template code (between the “style” tags), republish your blog and refresh it. The navbar should be history.

5. Lose the Blogger Logo In Your Internet Browser Address Bar
That big , which is called a favicon, in your Internet browser follows you everywhere. Not only is it beside your URL address, its in every tab on Firefox, on most blogroll listings (just look at my blogroll on the right and you’ll see how many Blogger and WordPress blogs there are), bookmarks and in many other places.

Some readers may not care, but I did. Why promote Blogger when I should be promoting myself? This is a great opportunity to extend your brand. If you’re able to create a cool logo or even a picture, you can use put it in your address bar. Here’s how.

First, you need to create a favicon. The good news is that you don’t have to do it yourself. Sites like this one make it easy to create the 16×16 image from pretty much any .jpg you have. If you want more choices, just Google “Favicon Generator” and there are a bunch of sites that will create a .ico (favicon) file for you.

Once you’ve created the file, you need to host it in order to put it on your site. You may have a server that allows you to host images and specific types of files. If so, use that. If you don’t, you can use a few free hosting site. Again, just Google “Favicon Hosting” and you’ll find a bunch of them. I personally use IconJ, which walks you through how to upload a .ico file and step-by-step instructions on how put the proper HTML code into your template to delete the Big Blogger B forever.

And that’s it. These simple tricks will make your blog that much better. I have found a real difference in the way people approach me and how they respond to me when I reach out. As well, I have also found that it is much easier to create a cohesive theme to my blog. I hope these five tips do the same for you.

Good luck! Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Tags: Blogger, Blogger Navbar, Blogger Tips, Favicon, How To, HTML Code, Improve Your Blog