Some Disadvantages of enabling Google+ comments on Blogger‏

The Google Plus comments integration with Blogger is turning quite some heads now, and a lot of bloggers have gone ahead and implemented it. This seems to be one of the biggest improvements in Blogger over the recent past. And at first glance, it looks pretty slick, with a clean and solid implementation. It makes things really easy, especially for bloggers who can track the conversation more easily. At the same time, readers can contribute right from Google Plus, without needing to open the blog. However, upon closer inspection, it seems that the new implementation isn't without its flaws.

How to create your First blog - what platform to choose?

Alright. So here's a topic that has been dragged around quite a lot by now. But it never seems to go out of fashion, because every year, more and more people are entering the blogosphere. Recent trends have changed the job-oriented mentalities, and have inspired entrepreneurship. Therefore, it is high time people should start looking into alternative sources of income, or even a productive hobby that can reward them for their time and effort. Hence, in this post, we are going to walk new users through in creating and setting up their first blog, and the platform they should choose

Is blogging worth it?

That depends on how you see it actually. The key behind blogging is hard work and dedication. Every job needs those two ingredients, but blogging needs them more than anything. If you are willing to give a couple hours or so to your blog every day, 365 days a year, only then can you hope to earn decent pay-checks.

Replace your blogspot domain with a Dot com domain From Godaddy

One thing that makes people, who want to start a blog, hesitate is the set up of a custom domain. Even people who have a free blog don't immediately want to move to a custom domain, because it all seems like a a lot of work, and too complicated at that. Many are unsure as to where they should get a domain from, and are afraid they'll get scammed online. We have compiled this small guide to help such people overcome their hesitation, and take the big step that will essentially influence the growth of their blog. For this purpose, we walk you through Domain setup from GoDaddy, a large and reputable domain registrar.

Update: MBT Readers can for an account with a special discount of 35% on all purchases:Offer Expires 30th april!

What is GoDaddy?

is a large and reliable domain registrar and web hosting company that serves millions of domains - so you can be sure that they won't be running away with your money. The best thing I like about GoDaddy is, it is integrated into Google Blogger. If you have a Blogger blog, you can simply buy a domain from inside your Blog's dashboard!

Choosing best webhosting for Blogger blogs

To many, blogging is not just a hobby, but a business, a career. Time and again, we have emphasized the importance of keeping a business-minded approach in order to be successful. Being a business of sorts, blogging should also be treated as such. Businesses require investments, and need to grow. So does blogging. When people create a free blog, they don't usually think ahead, and instead end up restricting themselves. The most people would do is, buy a domain and leave it at that, especially Blogger users. They don't realize the importance of a proper web-hosting. Hence, in this post, we talk about why you should get a web-hosting, and which host to choose.

Why buy a web-hosting?

Web-hosting refers to storing your website files on a separate and dedicated web server. This is different from domain hosting. Domain hosting simply refers to purchasing a custom URL for your blog. While it is true that Google provides free web hosting for your Blogger, the fact remains that this hosting is really limited. You will face the following restrictions even if you buy a custom GoDaddy domain for your Blogger blog.

5 most practiced Ways of building Active blog Readership

So you've taken the first steps into blogging, and have set up a blog (and purchased a hosting or at least a domain hopefully)? Far from the job being done, we are only now getting started. Granted that choosing a blog topic, setting up a blog, buying a custom domain and hosting etc are some of the hardest parts. But that's as far as your decisions go. The next phase is to build upon those decisions. So now that you have started a blog, it is time to start building a readership!

Social media

Social media is your one-stop-shop for building your readership. People nowadays don't just want to visit websites. They want content to appear right on their screens while they are surfing through their social network news feeds. For this, you need to create social media profiles for your business, because you need people to visit your site again and again, and not just the first time.

Basic SEO Tips for a Newly Launched Blog - Beginners Guide

Blogging is more than just about creating an online space for yourself and putting up content there. You have to be the best in order to compete with the best. But even becomes less important when it comes to optimizing your blog for search engines. After all, you want your great content to reach your potential readers, right? Otherwise, what's the point? This is the part where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes in. In this post, we'll take our beginner readers through the basic SEO process - things they should implement on their own blogs.

Google Webmaster tools

Google Webmaster Tools is your friend! Whether you like Google or not, you will have to sign up for Google Webmaster Tools (GWT). GWT is basically a dashboard where you can not only get yourself verified as an official owner of your site, but also get access to a lot of tools, features, and reports. With GWT, you can change how Google sees your website, and even receive messages from Google regarding updates, and errors found on your website.

Google Tips to Optimize International Websites

Have you ever considered delivering your content for multiple regions and in multiple languages? More and more websites are going international (being made available in multiple languages) these days, and you can easily see why. The broader the audience, the better. And unless you have a region specific website, there's no reason why you should not go international. However, there's a lot more to it than just translation, as emphasised by these quick tips from Google for internationalization.

1. Change your markup instead of your style sheets

Learn where to use markup and where to use CSS for internationalization (shortened to i18nafter the starting character i, and the 18 character spaces between the first and the last n). Things like language are inherent to the content present on page. So in this case, markup should be used for i18n. You can't always rely on CSS. So use attributes like lang and dir (for direction) with the html tag.

Note: In some cases, i18n markup might not be supported by the markup language, as is the case with XML. In such cases, CSS may be used.

2. Use a single CSS file

When using different languages and directions (LTR or RTL), do not use a separate style sheet for each locale. Use a single CSS file, and bundle together existing CSS rules with their international counterparts. A single file makes it easier to maintain things, and only a single file needs to be loaded. Consider a scenario where the default CSS file loaded, but the international file failed to load. A single file approach would be better in that case.

3. Use [dir='rtl'] attribute selector

A language can either have an RTL (Right to Let) or LTR (Left to Right) directionality. RTL directionality requires different markup than LTR. So you can use the [dir='rtl'] attribute selector in this case. F

4. Look carefully at position properties

As in the example above, you often need to reverse or mirror the position properties for RTL and LTR languages. For example, what's aligned left in LTR should be aligned right in RTL. So you should look at all the position-related properties for LTR, and mirror them for RTL. These include margins, padding, text-align, float, clear, and so on. There are tools out there as well that do the job for you, such as CSS Janos .

5. Look closely at the details

Just like with CSS positioning properties, you might want to mirror some other details as well, such as box-shadow for images, text-shadow for text, arrows, background, markers, and so on. Same goes for JavaScript positioning and animations.

Another very important aspect is the fonts and font sizes. A font size for one language might seem adequate, but it may be too small for other languages. For example, Arabic texts usually need to be bigger than English texts because they're difficult to see in a smaller font.

So keep an eye out for details, and feel free to contact us if there's a problem. We'd love to help. Cheers :)

15 Content Writing Secrets of Professional Bloggers

Are you a writer? Do you try really hard to write an article but still not get enough user response and feedback? You research for hours and utilize your brain to its fullest and are still not able to produce an effective piece of writing? What if I told you...you are not focusing on the things that need to be focused on? Without knowing what qualitatively affects your written content, how can you produce an effective one? Let me tell you a few of the most important content writing tips you, as a content writer, should know. These are also the various writing etiquettes and techniques used by the professional bloggers which make their writing effective. So, instead of blaming and underestimating yourself, focus on these15 secrets to improve your writing substantially:

1. Title is what's getting you the Click!

Okay, let's say you wrote an amazing article. So, what among that is gonna drive the readers to you? The content? The definitions/explanations you gave? The multimedia? NO, it's the TITLE that gets you the click. And with an unattractive and lame title, forget about getting user views but your own ones. The title should be brief and direct, but should be attractive and tempting, so that it pulls the viewer to your article.

RebelMouse: Bloggers Can now build their Social Website!

“RebelMouse” is the new web service launched by Huffington Post CTO “Paul Berry”. It’s a free service that organizes your online presence into a sleek, beautiful, and dynamic social site. Currently the “RebelMouse” service is in beta, and new features are constantly being added. People make personal websites, but these personal pages are often neglected and are a source of constant embarrassment. Well, worry not. RebelMouse is there for you.

RebelMouse links your Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest and more of your social sites to your RebelMouse page and publishes the content that you shared on these social network sites. You can then add content (Posts, Videos, and Images etc.) directly to your page, plus you can customize and rearrange your posts. The resultant is a sleek, good looking, social page that updates dynamically with your social network. In short, RebelMouse can be used to automatically generate a personal page with content that it pulls from your social networks. 

How To Gather Thousands of Traffic Catchy Ideas for your Content?

The secret to becoming a great content writer is to produce great content. Pretty straightforward, yes? What determines the traffic hits for your content is the topic. This 'topic' part is the most important one and also the first and foremost thing to decide before the actual writing. A content writer would always wish to acquire a constant source of unique and interesting topics for him to write on, but such a source is naturally not available. This is why generating ideas that can grab you an sample amount of traffic is the hardest step in online content writing. But there are solutions to every issue right? Let’s take a look at a few tips that can help you in generating traffic catchy ideas for your content.

1. Brainstorm:

Brainstorming is one technique used in writing that actually helps a lot. For content writers, it can generate several ideas for a topic. What you need to do is write down the subject of interest or your core topic on the top of a page and then write all that you can think of about that topic. You may even write phrases or draw images but make sure everything that comes to your mind about that particular topic is written on the page. When you’re done, you analyze the words and phrases and generate a creative topic. Brainstorming helps you in identifying the several unique aspects that you can approach a topic with and hence makes the ideological step of your writing easier.

Automatically share your blog posts to Google+ on Blogger!

Sharing the content you create online on your blog with your friends, family and followers is a great way to get the word going. And since word-of-mouth marketing is often considered to be the best marketing tactic, your content gets a lot more out-reach when your followers in-turn share your content on social media. It's crucial for growing your blog's audience and engagement. But often times, one does not have the time to manually open social media pages, and share a post. Keeping this in view, Google has added a new feature to blogger, which allows bloggers to automatically share their blog posts on Google Plus.

How to connect to Google Plus?

Integration is really easy. In the Blogger dashboard, you can see a gear icon at the top right of your dashboard. Click on that, and then click on Connect to Google+ (option available only if you haven't already connected your profile to Google+).

How To Set Up Alerts for 404 Error Pages in Google Analytics?

To a casual web surfer, there's nothing more annoying than hitting rock-bottom, i.e. getting a soft 404. I mean sure, things can be spiced up by adding creative 404 pages and what not. But a 404 is usually not a good sign, and shows negligence on your part. Server errors (3xx) are somewhat tolerable (and permissible), since there's no controlling a web server. But a 404 is something a webmaster can easily correct. Talking about which, Google Analytics can make finding 404 errors a lot easier! There's a small trick you can use to get alerts for 404 error pages, so that you'll be the first to know when there's a 404 broken link on your site!

Of course, there are other, more advanced ways of finding and fixing 404 errors. Google Webmaster Tools can be a starting point, and so can be Google Analytics (we'll discover troubleshooting 404 pages with Google Analytics in a later post). And so many others. But Google Analytics remains one of the best analytics software out there. And for what it's worth, this particular little trick can come in really handy - something webmasters should definitely try.

What Is The Best Way To Mobile Optimize Your Site?

The concept of searching for content online using mobile devices is steadily on the rise, primarily due to the vast plethora of mobile devices and tablets now readily available in the market. They really seem to be advancing the cause, and more and more people are buying and using them. So how are these evolving trends changing things, and how does it effect you as a website owner? Previously, we have looked at various ways to optimize your sites for mobile devices. And there are more than one way to handle this problem. So what solution is the best for delivering content to mobile devices?

How To Publish WordPress Posts From Microsoft Word 2013‏?

WordPress is a very powerful publishing platform, and a very popular one too since more than 45% of blogs are hosted on WordPress. Its major selling point has to be its powerful functionality coupled with an intuitive and user-friend user interface. But if I were to pick out one flaw in WordPress, it would have to be the droll post editor combined with a slow UI that makes editing and saving posts a headache. But what if you could write your blog posts into a powerful word processing software such as Microsoft Word? As it turns out, you can! In this post, we'll show you how to create and publish a blog post directly from MS Word 2013!

Can You Really Make Money Blogging in 2014?

So, another year has passed, and we've entered a whole new, more promising one. We find ourselves yet again asking the question that we ask each year - can you still make money blogging in this year? A question that, no doubt, will prickle the interest of many a bloggers, especially new ones or those aspiring to become one. So, can you really make money blogging in 2014?

It seems like only yesterday that I last wrote on a topic like this, even though it's been almost an year now. So much has changed, yet so much has stayed the same. Even though the backbones of SEO remain the same, a lot of frontal details have changed. So is this year going to be any different for blogging? Let's take a look.

Best Advice For Making Money Online in 2014

So you want to make a name for yourself out there (and perhaps a buck)? Making money online today is no less of a phenomenon than it was a few years ago. The competition has grown, yes, and it's difficult to maintain a steady pace. But then again, so have the number of ways you can make money. However, to make your business successful, you have to step up your game. Here are some tips to help you make your business successful in 2014, and secure a better future for yourself.

1. Taking risks

People often tend to get intimidated by their competitors' numbers. Often, businesses try to inflate their statistics as a propaganda. So often times, they may be exaggerated. Studies show consumers are still being more careful with their money and not putting as much on credit. So not every business is doing great. There's no need to panic. If you or your product are worth the price you have listed, and you are not pricing yourself out of the market then stay put with your prices!

Also, now might be the time for some good investments. Do not be afraid to take risks, because what's business without risk, eh?

How To Create A Great Website That Is Valuable To Your Audience?

Are you an entrepreneur looking to set up a new blog or website? The Google Webmaster Academy can help! Ever since its launch in 2012, it has helped hundreds and thousands of webmasters take their websites from mere startups to large money-making ventures. However, going over each resource from the academy can be time-consuming. Here's our version on how to build a website from scratch to greatness.

Step 1: Setting up a new website

Setting up a website is the easiest part. But you have to get out of the comfort of a sub-domain, and spend a few bucks on buying a custom domain name and hosting (unless you're Blogger, in which case you just need to buy a domain).

But before that, you need to decide whether you want a blog, or a website.

Read: 5 Major Differences Between a Website and a Blog

If you decide that you want to get a blog, you have the choice between two of the most popular platforms, Blogger and WordPress.

How To Research On A Domain Before Purchase?

Are you doing your homework before buying new domains? When purchasing new domain names, chances are they might not exactly be 'new'. It could have been registered and abandoned by someone else before. Or worse, it could have been involved in malicious activities that could have resulted in search penalties. So how can one do prior research to check if a domain is safe before actually buying it?

Site search

First step: do a site search. Search Google for "site:yourdomain.com" (minus the quotes), and you should come across pages from that domain, provided that there's some content on it. If you can see results from that domain, including the latest content, then that domain is in great shape, and has no indexing problems.

However, be mindful of the fact that if a domain is parked, it won't usually return any result for a site search. So unless a domain name is parked, absence of results in site search can be  pretty bad sign.

How To Use PageSpeed Insights To Make Your Site Mobile Friendly?

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that going mobile is the new norm these days. A mobile-friendly site is no longer a luxury, but a necessity. If you're working on making your website mobile-friendly, and haven't heard of PageSpeed Insights, then you know nothing! Google has put together (and now updated) a great tool - PageSpeed Insights - to help developers and webmasters make their pages mobile-friendly, with recommendations on mobile usability, and more.

It is the goal of any webmaster to optimize their website so as to minimize its loading time. A fast-loading page goes a long way in improving your website's user experience. But suppose you manage a very fast ~1 second load time for your website. If that comes at the cost of usability, then it's really not an improvement.

Halo Effect in Adobe Photoshop

 Since this is my first blog post, I hope you will enjoy this. I am giving here a simple tutorial on how to give a Halo Effect(Camera Lens Flare Effect) -don't connect this with Psychology- to pictures through Adobe Photoshop. You can use the latest CC version or any of the CS version for getting this effect.  You can also watch the video tutorial I made.

Step 1
At first open the picture, which you want to give Halo Effect...

A picture opened in Adobe Photoshop

How to Fix 'GfxUI has stopped working'

A few months ago I faced an error in my computer. On every start-up a window pops up, saying 'GfxUI has stopped working'. While searched for finding a solution, I found that this is something related with Intel Graphics. I posted the question inMicrosoft Forum and got an answer which solved the error.
There are various solutions to solve this error. But I am posting the one which worked for me. You can have a look at all possible solutions -if this not worked- through here.

Now, let's see how to solve this problem. This is the error message you used to get in your computer on start-up or while going through Graphics Properties.

GfxUI has stopped working