Mousetrap or gourmet cheeseboard - how are you treating your readers?

This article is pure self-indulgence and doesn't tell you how to do anything in Blogger or any other tool.

But maybe it's a good day to ask whether your blog is a murderous mouse-trap, a grotty greasy-spoon, or a luscious gourmet cheeseboard.

Confluent: very cool Blogger-users

I have a lot of time for David Kutcher, who has a very useful blog-about-blogger (Blog-Xpertise) and offers more general blogging and web-consultancy from his company, Confluent forms.

They do some very cool things with Blogger.

They understand that for people who aren't either super-techs or large scale publishers using Wordpress just isn't realistic.

And they've proved that while Blogger is a great tool for getting started, it can be configured to do just about anything that needs to be done.

But they think your readers are mice!

But today I think they got it wrong.

"You need to think of your website as a digital mousetrap ... you need to get the mice to your site, encourage them to take the bait, snare them in your trap".

Initially, this sounds cute.

But stop and think about it for a moment.

How do people react when they're trapped: they panic, develop very negative emotional reactions to the place they're in, hold on to their valuables, and fight to escape. If they do escape, they tell their family and friends to stay well away.

And what's the end-game for a mouse that get's caught in a trap?  Best case, it's released somewhere in between the park down the road and the depths of Connemara - a long way from friends, family and familiar surroundings. Most likely, it meets an untimely death from eating poisoned cheese, or a blow to the head.

Is that really what you want for your customers  / visitors / readers / subscribers ?

If you want the "mice" to stick around, offer great cheese

Personally, I think of my website as an elegant cheeseboard - designed strictly for human visitors.

It offers a range of flavours and textures - the ones my visitors want, and some that stretch their palette a little.  It includes some pieces especially for visitors who are just getting started.

It's restocked regularly, with style and giving individual "cheeses" enough space, so visitors can find what they're looking for, and also notice other interesting tidbits while they're there.

It's open and accessible:   mice - and web-crawling-spiders - can visit any time they like.  More importantly, they can leave. And when they do leave, there's a nice taste in their mouth, and healthy cheese in their bellies (don't mention the cholesterol!). So they can go elsewhere, and tell their friends about the great selection over at my place. They're likely to visit again, too, because I made sure that they felt good when they left - the cheese was tasty and the environment pleasant.

There are a range of tools available - and I cut some of the the cheese into very accessible slices for those visitors who are just getting started, and leave some more robust chunks out for the mouse-about-the-town who's looking for more.

I have a warehouse of interesting ideas (in my pre-publication blog) just waiting to be finished and added to the platter.

No one dies at the end of a visit.

And I'm confident that, one day, I will be able to offer my own gourmet cheese in an exclusive section, that the mice will pay to get in to based on the trust that we've developed in the free-cheese paradise.

What sort of blog are you building, a mouse-trap or a cheeseboard?

Google Blogger / Apps access to country-specific domains

Today, Google Apps announced that we can now purchase a wider range of global and country-specific domains through them - previously they only offered a more limited set of the global domains. And now they're cheaper, too: domains registration is $8/year instead if $10.

To do this, they've partnered with a new-to-them domain registrar http://www.domaindiscount24.com - instead of eNom and GoDaddy, who they used before

If you buy a domain via Google Apps, and DomainDiscount24.com is the registrar, then

• It comes pre-set up to work with Google's tools (mail, apps, sites, etc)
• You need to use DomainDiscount24.com's administration tools if you want to make any changes to the domain set-up
• You continue to use Google Apps domain management tools to manage the Google Services that are available to users in the domain (eg enabling/disabling Blogger)

Can we use one of these domains for Blogger?

I'd guess so: I'm pretty sure that Sites, like Blogger, requires that the domain-registrar provide DNS-hosting and the ability to edit CNAME and ANAME records.  You simply have to go through the same process that you need to use if you purchase a domain directly from any registrar.

(I'm going to test this very soon, there's a .co.nz domain that I've been thinking about for a while>

Will they work automatically with Blogger?

Not always: domain setup is a complex thing, and it's hard to predict if you will get the dreaded "Another blog is already hosted as this address" message:  I've purchased a domain via Google Apps before and and it work perfectly with Blogger - and I've had just the opposite experience, too.

If you get stuck, try either

• Use the information in this recent article from Chuck at Nitecruzr (he's one of the best for resolving custom domain issues)
• Going to the Blogger Product Forum: explain your problem and URL and ask the experts there to take a look.

Can we use this new registrar to buy country-specific domains inside Blogger?

Not at the moment, and - there's been no announcement from Blogger about it.

(Sideline:   I just tested it, and found that eNom is no longer offered as an option for domain-purchase under Blogger's switch-to-custom-domain track.   This means that GoDaddy, who not have a tool to make custom domain purchases easier, are now the only option inside Blogger - so I can see why Google might be looking to bring another registrar-partner on board.)

What domains are now available to purchase via Google Apps:

Global
.com    .info   .org    .net     .mobi     .biz     .name     .cc    .tv


Asia-Pacific
India: .in .co.in .org.in .net.in
New Zealand: .co.nz
Taiwan: .com.tw
Japan: .jp

Latin America
Colombia .co .com.co
Mexico:   .com.mx .mx

Europe
Belgium: .be
Switzerland: .ch
Czech Republic: .cz
Germany / Deutchland .de
Spain / Espana .es and .com.es
Republic of Montenegro: .me (though it has obvious wider appeal to English speakers!)
The Netherlands .nl
Poland .pl

Are domains for all countries available - why not?

There are still far more countries not on the list than on it.

I'm not surprised that there is no sign of Ireland (.ie) on the list -  these domains are hard to get.  I do manage one .ie site with Blogger:  the domain was obtained for a community group that doesn't have a company registration number, but which does have letterhead, a constitution and a well-connected chairman.   For it, I've found that LetsHost.ie provides the necessary domain management tools and their support people were helpful and didn't turn up their noses when I told them I was using it for a Blogger site.

Disappointing ommissions: Australia (.com.au) and England/Britain (.co.uk) - I'm not sure what the story is with these, or which registrars provide the tools needed to let you use a domain purchased from them with blogger.

Tools for applying copyright protection to your blog

This article is about the steps you can take to apply copyright protection to your blog.

Overview:

Previously, I've described how copyright applies to blogs in very general terms.

This is a more detailed look at the things to consider if you want to protect your "stuff" (ie words, pictures, tunes, blog-design, code, etc) from being used by other people without permission.  It covers:

• Deciding what restrictions you want to apply
• Telling readers what the policies are
• Physically stopping people from making copies of your work
• Making it obvious when your work is copied

Decide on your copyright policy

The first step in applying copyright to your blog is deciding whether people are allowed to make copies of your work, and under what conditions.

Many people initially say "it's mine, no one else can make any copies".

But some people want to share their materials and aren't looking for anything in return - hence the open copyright and Creative Commons approaches.   Other people are willing to share provided they get some of the credit for doing the work and/or some money.  Both the Wall Street Journal (Curse of the Greedy Copyright Holders and Their Fee-Seeking Lawyers) and YouTube's Head of User Experience (Margaret Gould Stewart: How YouTube thinks about copyright - as presented at TED) have some pretty good arguments about how sharing can make more revenue in the long run.  And thinking about what you might, realistically, do when someone breaks the law and makes a copy of your material may make a policy that allows copies-provided-credit-is-given more appealing.

Ultimately the decision about what policies to apply is yours - but you need to decide what policies you're going to follow before you can do anything about them.

Telling people what they can (or cannot) do

Once you've decided what copyright rules apply to your blog, it's good to tell your blog-readers what permissions you are willing to give for use of your material:

• If you don't want to give any general permissions, you might put a text gadget with the phrase "© YOUR-BLOG-NAME" in a prominent position.
  (If you have a designer template, then the Attributes gadget already has a field where you can put copyright, provided you haven't removed it.)

• If you are willing to give permission, but only on a case-by-case basis - say so.  And tell people how they can get in touch to discuss using your work.

• If you are happy to give some general permissions (eg people can copy your material so long as they attribute it to you), you might investigate the Creative Commons options, and put a statement from them on your site.  Their site has a automated tool for adding a gadget, or you may like to add the HTML to your blog yourself.

• To protect photographs or artworks, you could put a copyright statement right inside the image, either very obviously or as a faded-yet-visible watermark.  That way, anyone who sees a copy that someone has made will know that they photos are really yours.

Stopping people from copying your work

Physically stopping people from being about to make copies of  work is another approach.

There are scripts that you can add to your blog that disable the right-click option for anyone who is viewing the page: this makes it harder to copy-and-paste text or to save pictures.  However I don't recommend this approach: it's easy for tech-savvy people to disable the scripts or to work around them (eg to look at your page source code and copy the picture location from it), and because it stops your viewers from doing other things (eg opening links in a new window) that they should be able to do.

Another option is to stop people from copying text from your blog. As with disabling right-click, I don't much like this approach, and don't use it: as with disabling right-clicks, it doesn't apply to RSS-feed or email subscribers, and a determined copycat can either disable Javascript, or take a screen shot and OCR it, or even just re-type the content.  But it might be suitable for some blogs.   To do it, add this CSS rule to your template:

.post-body {
-webkit-touch-callout: none;
-khtml-user-select: none;
-moz-user-select: -moz-none;
-ms-user-select: none;
user-select: none;
}

One way to protect photographs is to save them as a fairly low resolution before you upload them:  this means they look ok web-pages (yours and anyone else's), but have very low quality if people try to print them or use them in places like a newspaper.   If you don't want to reduce the resolution, you can remove the ability to click on them, so that they don't open in a new window:  this won't stop people who can read the source HTML behind your page, but it will deter your average photo-copier.

If you want to protect music you have composed or videos you've made, you might investigate registering your content with YouTube's Audio ID and Video ID system.   This won't stop other people from making copies of your work in other places, but it will stop them from uploading copies (or derived works, eg their own video with some of your music) back to YouTube - or at least give you some options for saying what should happen if someone tries to do so.

Make copies obvious

Rather than trying to stop people from making copies, an other approach is to simply make the original source obvious to anyone who looks at the copy.

Watermarks:

Adding a some partially-transparent text to photos or videos deters people who might copy your work (because it will be obvious that they've copied it), and makes the original source clear to anyone who sees a copy.  Most photo-manipulation tools now have tools for adding text to photos.  Make sure you keep a safe high-quality, un-watermarked copy of any  photos that you care about, as well as showing the altered one on your blog.

Cross-linking:

Long-term Blogger-HAT readers will have noticed that I'm putting more and more links to related articles into each post. I started doing this to be helpful (eg did you know you can add a Facebook "like" or "send button" button to individual posts as well as to your whole blog?)), and to stop repeating myself. But it's also a good tools for discouraging determined copy-cats:  they don't really want to link to me, so if they use my material they'll have to edit lots of links). And the casual or automated ones (who don't bother editing the links) just end up sending traffic to me.

Use features that are built into other file types:

If you use your blog to distribute other items (eg templates, eBooks, diagrams), you might like to consider more subtle ways of either is telling people about the copyright provisions, or just giving yourself the credit for work you've done.

Example:  one of my sites gives away planning templates that are made with MS Word and PowerPoint.  I'm happy for them to be copied and changed, provided the copyright attribution is left intact.  Microsoft's File / Properties feature has a link to my website in each template, and often in Windows Explorer these values are shown when someone hovers their mouse of the files.  Over time I expect it to be a good tool for building the recognition of my blog.

"Signing" your RSS feed

If you put  a statement, crediting your blog as the source into your RSS feed, then every single item that is posted has your blog-name attached: copycats either need to edit it out manually, or leave it in and show the world where they got their content from.


For example the line I have added to the feed of the blog you are reading right now is:

This article is © Copyright – All rights reserved - Blogger-Hints-and-Tips.
You may publish translated versions of this article on non-English language blogs provided you acknowledge Blogger-Hints-and-Tips as the original source.

Blogger has a feature for setting this up:

1. Go to Settings > Other > Site Feed 
2. Add the words you want to use to the Post feed footer box, 
3. Click Save Settings.

(Something I'm not sure about - will be checking and updating this soon - is the footer added to the message sent to email subscribers?)

Registering your work with a copyright-service

There are a number of services around that let you "register" the copyright for an item.  This might give you peace-of-mind, or evidence to use in certain legal situations.

But it won't make any difference to whether people make unauthorised copies of your blog-contents, so I'm not going into details about it here.

The next article in this series, Dealing with people who have copied your work, has more detail about how these services work and what they're actually useful for - and suggestions about some other, possibly more useful, steps you can take.

---

Related Articles:

Copyright, Blogs and Bloggers, an Introduction

Taking action when someone has made an unauthorised copy of material from your blog

Putting 3rd party HTML (eg a Creative Commons licence) into your Blog

Stopping the pictures in your blog from being "clickable"

Finding a Picture's location (URL) in Picasa-web-albums

Removing the Attribution Gadget from your Blog

Types of blogger template.

Blogger and valid HTML code

This article explains the issues faced by Blogger users who try to see if the HTML in their blog is valid - and why this doesn't matter in most cases.

What is "valid" HTML

If you read SEO advice or webmaster guidelines or web-best-practises, you should be told to make sure that the HTML in your website is valid.

Valid HTML is simply website code that totally meets the rules defined by W3C, the non-profit organisation that ultimately makes the rules about HTML and the other scripting languages that are used on the internet.

You can tell if the code on a site is valid by using a validator tool, like http://validator.w3.org/   - this is the best one, since it's from W3C:  if anyone knows whether something follows the rules, then they do.

But really, what is valid HTML/XHTML, and why does it matter?   Basically, it's code that meets all the rules and standards that have been decided for the current version of HTML, as at today.   It matters because web-browsers are written so that they correctly show information on screen if the code that is used to describe it follows the HTML rules.

However, as personal devices/computers and the web gets more sophisticated, the rules are enhanced so that browsers can do  more interesting things.   This means that code that was valid several years ago may not be valid today, because the rules have changed.

How to make the code in your blog valid

The short answer is that there is no way to force Blogger to generate valid code.

The slightly longer answer is that Blogger software makes your blog's posts and pages into web-site pages by combining:

• Its own rules, and
• Your data, ie your posts, your selected template, the settigns you've chosen in the Layout and settings tabs (ref:  How the data in your blog is organised.).

You can control whether the code on your posts is "valid" - but only as far as Blogger's Post-editor lets you (eg it takes out <p> </p> tags and uses <br /> instead - this isn't regarded "good practise").

And you can edit your template to remove certain things that are not valid.

But no matter what you do, you can not remove all the "invalid" code that's generated by Blogger when your posts or pages are published, and you don't have the freedom to "clean" their code either:  Blogger provides us with free hosting and unlimited bandwidth - the price of this is that they impost some limits on what we can do with them.

So your overall site will not be valid accordingto the W3C rules.  There is nothing that you can do about this - and personally I don't think this will change any-time soon.

Is invalid HTML code really a problem:

At first glance, this may seem like a disaster - if Blogger won't make "valid" code, then we cannot use it to make blogs/sites that display properly, or that meet Google's own webmaster guidelines.

That's not quite right, though:  an important feature of the way browser-software and the internet work  is that browsers try to to work out what to do with HTML code that they don't understand (eg code that isn't valid any more, or code that's got new features that the brower doesn't support yet).  Instead of crashing, they make a best-guess about what to show on the screen, even though this might take them (a little) longer than showing valid code.

What that means for us Blogger-users is that our sites will be just fine most brower-software..

What's more, Google have promised that the  HTML which Blogger produces will work on the  most recent and last-most-recent version of the currently popular web-browsers - even though it's not "valid".

The only consequence is that our blogs may take a little longer to load, while the browser decided what to do with the "invalid" code - but in most cases, this extra time will be small compared to the time needed to load our pictures and gadgets, not to mention other cool things like Twitter messages or Facebook like buttons.

Of course, if you're a purist and hate "breaking the rules", then having an "invalid" blog may be more of a problem than you can bear.  But if you're realistic, you will notice that there are many, many fine sites made with Blogger, and this lack of valid HTML doesn't appear to be doing them much damage.

SEO and code-validity

In the early days of search-engine-optimization, people thought that having valid code would make it easier for Google and other search engines to look at and index your website - and this would make it do better in search results.

Initially, they may have been right.  But Google et al are pretty motivated to index everything - especially the blogs that their tools create.   And today, web-search "spiders" have become pretty clever about understanding web pages, no matter whether they're valid or not (or were valid before, or will be valid in future, etc)

In short, if you've been reading up about SEO and found a recommendation to "make sure your website code is valid", then I'd suggest skipping that advice, and spending your time worrying about more important things, eg that:

• Your posts are all original, with no copyright material in them.
• They all have titles with important(*) words in them
• They all have descriptions with important words(*) in them
• Your pictures all have titles and alt-text.
• You are using the social media (Facebook Twitter, LinkedIn, etc - what ever works for your audience  effectively.

(*)  technically, the phrase is "key words" - and there are zillions of guidelines telling you how to choose "good" key words for your niche.   But  the simplest approach is to use version is "interesting" words, that people who are looking for your blog post are likely to use.

---

Related Articles:

Does search-engine-optimization matter for your blog.

Copyright, blogs and bloggers

Showing a picture on your blog

Understanding Blogger's Add-a-Gadget tool

Showing a working Twitter message in Blogger

Adding Facebook like, Send and Share buttons.

Get ideas for your social media policy by reading other people's

Recently I posted a template for helping to work out and document how you use your blog vs Facebook, Twitter, email, etc.

This is mainly for bloggers who look after blogs-sites for companies, community groups, etc - basically any organisation.  It came about because I started using Blogger to do the website for a choir that I sing in, and I needed to think about all the issues shown.

If you are having difficulty figuring out how you should use these tools together in your own setting, it might be heplful to look at some of the example social media policies listed on the Social Media Governance website.   Some of these are from big companies and non-profits, but some are from far small outfits which might be like yours.

Remember, sometimes it doesn't matter what rules you follow - so long as everyone understands who does what, and acts consistently.   Most problems happen when people have different expectations about who should do what, when and how.

Chitika now supporting all countries

Chitika is one of the advertising programmes that is an alternative to Google AdSense.

Initially, their ads were only shown to website-visitors who were in the USA and Canada.   That list extended a while ago.   Now they say that they're available in all countries.

Actually, their post makes it sound like you can sign-up as a publisher no matter what country you are in.  But I was signed up while they were still limited to showing ads to USA/Canada visitors, despite not being in those countries.   So I'm pretty sure that they mean their ads will be shown in all countries.

Custom Search Engine improvements

Google have announced version 2 of the "custom search element" - this is the "thing" that lets you put a custom-search tool in your blog (and any other website).

Important features are:

• Search UI is rendered based on the settings stored on the Google CSE servers ... any configuration changes you make in the CSE control panel ...[are shown]  on your web pages the next time they reload. ...

• All element code is loaded asynchronously for reduced page load times.

• Client-side customization allows you to overwrite global CSE settings on a per-page basis ...

Faster load time is very welcome - I've been noticing that custom search gadgets take a long time to load, relative to other things on my blogs.

And the first feature seems very handy - it means not having to copy-and-paste new CSE code whenever you change a CSE using the control panel. But this has a price: the existing code (in the best option for Bloggers) had two parts - one for where the seach box goes, and one for where the search results go. In the new code, there are still these two parts, but each one has two sections: one section that needs to be added to the header and one to the place (usually a widget for Bloggers). That means:

• Four separate pieces of code to install
• Installing means editing the template as well as adding a gadget
• If you change your template, you need to remember to re-install the CSE code too. 

That said, I'm not sure if the first code sections need to go into the header, or whether they could beside the other parts, perhaps with a loss of speed - any advice is welcome.

Lastly, Google says that the existing CSE code will continue to be supported for now (although there's no way to get it from them any more, they are now only supplying the updated code) - but that this won't last forever.   So sooner or later, you will need to update any custom-search(es) on your blog.

5 Reasons why SEO is irrelevant for your blog

This article explains what search engine optimization (SEO)) is and why it is sometimes not relevant for  bloggers, ie why many of us should ignore all the "essentials SEO for your blog" advice and focus on writing good-quality original posts.


It also has a simple guideline for deciding if a particular piece of SEO-advice is relevant for your blog.

What is "SEO" anyway?

Very simply, SEO is a bunch of things that you can do that make it more likely that your site will be high in the results-list and then clicked-on when someone searches for "topics like yours" on Google, Bing-etc.

There zillions of websites / books / blogs etc with the latest "amazing SEO strategies" that you "absolutely" need to implement on your blog.

But very few of them stop to ask whether SEO is relevant or not, meaning that lots of people waste time doing "enhancements" that really aren't relevant for their blog and audience.

Read on to find out whether you need to take any SEO-notice or not.

Why SEO doesn't matter for lots of bloggers

1 Your blog is just for you

Do you keep a blog to record your thoughts, photos, journeys?

If it's private, so only you can read it, then SEO is totally irrelevant for you, because search-engines cannot see your blog, much less point anyone else to it.

2 Restricted readership

This is very similar to point 1:  If your blog is for your friends and family, who you have personally invited, and if you have stopped all other readers (or so you think), then Google is never going to list it. And you don't even want search engines to know it exists. SEO isn't something you need to think about.

3 You get your customers through other methods

You might be sceptical, but let me explain with a story.  When I started Blogger-HAT, I wasn't looking for readers. I just wanted a place to keep my own notes about how I'd fixed problems with Blogger, so that I could find the information again if I needed.  (My very first post was about how to put AdSense ads right inside posts - and it's still popular today.)

Then I noticed that in the old Blogger-help-foroum, people with a reputation for helping others were more likely to get help themselves. (Karma or whatever). Answering a few questions each day seemed like a good insurance policy against the day that I got stuck.  But it was tedious typing the same answer over and over, so I started making articles about common topics, and linking to them instead.

At this stage, SEO still didn't matter: I was writing for me, and then I was writing for people who I'd identified outside of the blog, and not fussed about advertising revenue.  So it didn't matter that I wasn't doing key-word research or density analysis, or even write compelling headlines or labelling pictures.  I just wrote up the solutions to problems for the people who came to my blog from the help-forum. And this was fine because I wasn't aiming for more readers, or advertising revenue.

Of course times change:  the move to the groups-based Blogger-Product-Forum has seen a lot more people searching for answers instead of asking in the forum, and I've become more aware of the benefits of owning a blog with a higher page-rank.  So these days I do worry about SEO a little, because it's now relevant to me, now.

4  Your blog is for a business with a local customer base business

If you're a hairdresser or cafe-owner, and your business makes money by cutting hair or sellng coffee, then on-line visitors from all over the world aren't going to contribute directly to your bottom line. And if pay for file-hosting, they may cost you and give no return.

What you need are warm bodies walking through your door, and telling their local friends good things about you.   But unless there are no other cafes or hairdressers in your area, there's almost no chances that you can get a high place in the search-results for "cafes in mytown" because the directory sites and local media (who have lots more time, energy, SEO skill - and access to a wider range of business information) will beat you every time.

That's not to say you shouldn't have a website to share information about your business, and on-line tools to get customers - but focus on social networks like Facebook fans, directory listings, Twitter conversations, Pinterest-displays, forum-posting, etc instead wasting time on an "seo-quest" that you're bound to lose.

4 It's a tool for delivering an on-line newsletter

Some people use a blog purely so they can use the follow-by-email gadget as a very simple newsletter subscription management tool. It's not the best tool out. But it is free, and it means that your previous newsletters stay on-line in case people ever need to refer to them.

Unless you want newsletter subscribers to find you by search, instead of by off-line relationships, then SEO doesn't matter for you, either.

5  You just don't want "customers" or visitors.

Or maybe you just hate the thought of being famous or mainstream!    Or whatever other reasons you have for not wanting too many people to find your blog by searching for it.

What if none of this applies?

If these points don't apply to your blog, then probably you do care about attracting visitors from search-engines,

So you should spend some time thinking about things you can do on your blog to make it more likely that search-engines will:

• List your your pages in the search results shown to people who are in your target audience, and
• Do it in a way that makes it more-likely that these people will click through to your blog.

Unfortunately there are no simple answer to what you should actually do.   It all depends on your blog, how your template works, what sort of people are in your audience and what they do on-line.  So really, you need to read all the advice and weigh up:

1. How much time/effort it would make to do what they suggest
2. Whether the suggestions "fit" with the audience and purpose of your blog
3. Your instincts about what changes are most likely to help your current and future readers find you more easily

You need to keep coming back to this point every time your read another expert's advice:   does this suggest helpe me achieve what I want to achieve, given what I know about them.    If any possible change doesn't get a "yes" answer, then it's a good think not to do.

Also remember that you don't have to do everything all at once:  SEO is a like delicate game of cat-and-mouse that's been going on since the internet was invented.   The only rule is that the rules changes very often.   So you will never be "finished", and a  website will never by "totally SEO'd"


That said, I am interested in hearing what changes you've made for "SEO" reasons, and how well they have worked for you.

---

Related Articles:

Restricting blog-readership isn't as secure as you think

Advertising and blogger, some things to consider

Follow-by-email:   turn your blog into a subscription management system

Picasa - a very basic introduction

Linking Blogger and the social networks