Word Count Website

I do a ton of writing, and some of the articles I write require a certain amount of words in the content. I love the Wordpress software for this– it has an automatic word count feature. I think this Wordpress added this feature in this year, because people used to have to use a plugin for it. It is one of my favorite features for Wordpress.

But for my Blogger blogs, I’m out cold. No word count feature there. I used to just copy & paste my articles into a special Notepad program, or sometimes Microsoft Word. But whenever I adjusted the text in those programs and re-pasted the article into my Blogger publishing window, the text would have all these line breaks and etc. Grr. It was extremely laborious to have to backspace white lines, fix all the text, etc.

I’m taking the long way around, just to tell you about a cool (and FREE) little online tool that will count your words. It’s easy and very fast, so I use it all the time, all day long. It’s the Cut & Paste Word Count tool. I love it! The only thing negative I can think of is that the author inserted instructional text in the box already, and you have to get rid of it in order to copy & paste your own content. It’s a tiny, but extra step that I’d like to see disappear.

Anyway, the site is good, it’s free, and it’s very convenient.

Free Web Hosting?

The only two free website hosting companies I know of are Wordpress.com and Blogger.com. But free hosting at these sites is extremely limited– you are never allowed to alter or view the “inner” files (like .htaccess file) so you don’t have complete control over your site. And while Blogger allows you the ability to customize your sidebar widgets and monetize your blog, the free Wordpress.com accounts do not.

I have recently heard about another free web hosting program, 000webhost.com. I have not tried this yet! But it looks good, actually! They operate just like a “real” blog, with FTP uploads, allowing you control of your own files and themes, and more. Again, I have not tried this! So I don’t know how risky this is- I just saw another blogger talking about it. But the thing is free– what have you got to lose? If you’re going to be serious about blogging, and you are concerned this company may up and leave, you can save your database files easily enough, and transfer them to another host (many web hosts like Bluehost will transer your database files for free).

So if you are budget-conscious and willing to take a chance, this might be worth trying out. Be sure to read their terms of service! I am going to try them out when I can set aside some time. I’ll definitely have a full review then.

More Quality Blog Themes

I’m always looking for more and varied blog themes for both Wordpress and Blogger. Here are two new sites to add to your bookmarks. These sites have a large variety of themes and templates.

PYZAM Blogger Templates
eBlog Templates

Of course, because these sites offer free templates, you often have to endure advertisements for diet pills and/or class reunion websites. It’s up to you if you want to endure them or not. It’s for reasons such as these that ad blockers for browsers come in handy.

How to Hide the Blogger NavBar

Many Blogger blogs have the Blogger NavBar– that horizontal bar at the very top of Blogger blogs. It’s not changed in many years– it’s either black, blue, silver, or tan, and gives you the ability to browse other Blogger blogs (NOT a recommended habit, by the way) or to search the current blog. I believe its usefulness has passed.

Most new blogs now have their own search feature, and I do not recommend surfing Blogger blogs (too risky for malware). And besides, the old Blogger NavBar looks soooo tacky. It’s the same old bar that’s been up there for more than five years.

If you want to hide the NavBar, it’s as easy as putting in a “do not display” command in your HTML code. Here’s a great tutorial video I found at Blogger Templates:

Remove Blogger Navbar - video powered by Metacafe

Hope this helps! Let’s make the blogosphere a prettier place!

More Blogger Templates!

I just discovered some more terrific Blogger templates, all free for the taking. They are absolutely eye-popping! Blogger Buster has the list of them– a long list of them (beware, the page is very graphic heavy). I am very impressed with the styles. No more clunky Blogger templates! And these templates look easy to customize, too. Blogger blogs are really the way to go if you are new to blogging, want easy access (Google owns Blogger, and the sites are almost never down), and cheap hosting (free!) even if you buy your own domain. Blogger really can’t be beat. I think they should follow others’ examples and start offering some cool promotional items.

Enjoy the new templates, I know I will!

InLine Comments for Blogger

Blogger, the most popular free blogging platform, has really been making leaps and bounds lately. I’m glad to see the newer developments with the software (better functionality, more user-friendly, etc). (I’m still waiting for some better templates… I guess I shouldn’t hold my breath about that, it’s been– what? 10 years with the same templates? Blogger dudes: lay off the excessive promotional products and get some new templates, eh?)

The main beef with Blogger, still, is their laborious and outdated comment form system. I just hate the popup comment boxes, and what’s worse is the “page” comment form that takes you away from the blog post. Oftentimes, I completely forget what I am going to say in my comment because the comments are so distanced from the post. WordPress has a much better comment system.

With that said, there’s a little tweak I’ve recently learned about, to give your Blogger blog an “inline comment form.” That is, at the bottom of your post is a little box where you can type in your comment text. Add name email, and URL, and you’re done! It’s a fine tutorial done by Blogger Buster, and you can see it here. I highly recommend it. Inline comment forms are far, far superior to Bloggers dumb old popup windows. Try it out and see if you suddenly have more comments to your posts!

A Blogger BackUp Tool

You’ve heard it said again and again and AGAIN. Lose the weight or get on diet pills. No no– kidding! What you’ve really heard it said over and over again is always BACK UP YOUR BLOG! This is so important. A fellow blogger recently lamented that she tried to update to Wordpress 2.6, but something went wrong with the installation. She tried to revert back to an older version of Wordpress, but wiped out her entire blog with hundreds of posts. OUUUUCH. So I’m going to say it again–

ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR BLOG!

I try to back mine up every week, and/or after a really big post that I’ve spent a lot of time on. It’s good to back up your MySQL data if you host your own blog (and you can backup all your posts and comments through Wordpress itself by going to “Manage” and then “Export.”). But what if you have a Blogger blog?

There’s a way to back up your template– I posted about it here. But backing up your template does not back up your posts and comments. There are three things you can do here. You can:

1) Copy and paste all your posts html and all the comments in a word document file and save all this on your hard drive. This is very time consuming and labor-intensive.

2) You can create a new blog for free at Wordpress.com. They allow you to export your Blogger posts and comments there. You can make the blog private so that you do not have duplicate content on the web. And everytime you update a new post, you can export the new stuff there again.

3) You can download and use the software program Blogger Backup. It’s free but it is a little complex to use. Read the instructions carefully.

What do I use? Well, for my Blogger blogs I have used a combination of #2 and #3.

Backingup your blogs is another job. It does take effort to maintain your blogs if you want to run a serious and professional site. But an hour spent in making backups is three days saved in frustration and crying. So go backup your blogs!

Usint Drop Caps for Blog Articles

Here’s a terrific tutorial I found for using drop caps for your blog posts. I have been wanting to do this on one of my blogs for quite a while! It’s for Blogger blogs, but saavy bloggers could figure out how to do this with Wordpress. I am going to tinker with it! Drop Caps look so classy.

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