In addition to last weeks news, Blogger has decided to "bring it" with the ability for users to create pages.

This move will definitely level the blogosphere playing field with the likes of TypePad and WordPress.com and it also serves as a strong effort to keep users from migrating.

The drawback is that there is a limit to the number of pages (10), but if you want to create more pages, like I said last week, it may be time to weigh your options.

Posted via email from nextSTEPH’s posterous

This post is from Stephanie M. Cockerl's blog, From the desk of next STEPH.

Disclosure: I am a TypePad affiliate.

If you have a blog on Blogger and are FTPing to your own web host, your days are numbered.

Blogger announced that it will end its FTP support soon.

Blogger states that they introduced custom domain support 3 years ago.

This is similar to the domain mapping that TypePad does for its users. This would give users the same Blogger features without the need for web hosting.

Read more about  the news here, Important Note to FTP Users.

This post is from Stephanie M. Cockerl's blog, From the desk of next STEPH.

I’m currently in the process of redirecting traffic from an old blog (which is self hosted using Blogger) to a WordPress blog (which is also self-hosted.)

Since the old site is on an ASP server (Yuck! I know!) I didn’t have the luxury of using an .htaccess file, but I had to do it old school way, meaning meta tag redirect for the top traffic generating pages.

This is an example of a meta refresh tag here.

Use the 80/20 rule.

This would be a good time to target the top 20% of pages that generate traffic over the past year. Concentrate on those first, so that you would lose the traffic and worry about the rest gradually like those pages that get less than 100 visits or 10 visits per year according to your scale.

Another tip I recommend is if you don’t have your permalinks in place yet, that you do so as soon as possible. If your not sure of  the permalink structure, you can always go ahead and use the post number, e.g. http://www.myblog.com/?p=150, that way no matter what structure you come up with, users will always be directed to the right post.

And if that fails, you can do what I did with my education posts, when I decided to spin off Never Left College.

Posted via web from nextSTEPH’s posterous

This post is from Stephanie M. Cockerl's blog, From the desk of next STEPH.

By the way, if you are looking for my personal posts, they can be found under the “unWired” category.

Let me know if you have a personal blog or not. Feel free to elaborate in the comments.

This post is from Stephanie M. Cockerl's blog, From the desk of next STEPH.

Over the next few posts, I’m going to expand on the basics on how to let your blog get noticed by the engines. I know there are tons of post out there that talk about writing and content, but I am going to focus on the foundations for most blogging services, The first of whom (to be alphabetically fair) is Blogger.

With Blogger, this tip applies if the blog is hosted on blogspot.com or on your own web hosting service.

1. Login to your Blogger account


2. Select and/or click on the blog you want to work with


3. Click on “Settings”


4. You should then be in the “Basic” tab


5. Then, you should be able to select if you want your blog to be noticed by the Search Engines or not by selecting “Yes” or “No”.

This post is from Stephanie M. Cockerl's blog, From the desk of next STEPH.

It seems like if you have an account on WordPress.com either for a blog or for an Aksimet Key, and one forgets to log out, the WordPress.com blue bar stays on top of the website.

Tags: wordpress, bluebar, blogger

This post is from Stephanie M. Cockerl's blog, From the desk of next STEPH.

Some popular examples of blog hosts with free web hosting include:

• WordPress


• Blogger


• Yahoo 360°

1. Register for a Feedburner Account and enable Feedflare. Feedflare enables subscribers to your blog to share blog posts by emailing and bookmarking them. For those familiar with HTML, Feedflare can also provide you with code to place beneath every post.


2. Place a feed of your blog on other sites. If you have a MySpace account or a FaceBook account, you can publish your blog’s feed in other places. Springwidgets lets you do just that. Check out the WildWE’s MySpace page for an example.


3. Write good content. I’ll tell anyone don’t post and comment for the sake of it. Post and comment with a purpose and be genuine.


4. Build a community. Make friends online (and off). Tell others about your blog (unless you are blogging anonymously). Find others who are blogging about similar topics and connect with them. Subscribe to their feeds to learn more about your neck of the blogosphere.

This post is from Stephanie M. Cockerl's blog, From the desk of next STEPH.

I been having a difficult time with the Feedburner FeedFlare code on Blogger. I have a couple of clients who were having challenges with JavasScript code for the FeedFlare ( a service that lets visitors bookmark blog posts to the social networking site of their choice (Del.icio.us, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc…). The code provided by Feedburner did not publish at all, no matter how much I published. So, after much thought and pacing, I decided I had to create the code from scratch. I described it to one of my clients as “making a cake from scratch vs. using the instant mix.” I “kneaded” the code exactly how I wanted it to look, published and the rest is history. The lesson… don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty and shape the dough in the way you want it.

This post is from Stephanie M. Cockerl's blog, From the desk of next STEPH.

This post is from Stephanie M. Cockerl's blog, From the desk of next STEPH.

This post is from Stephanie M. Cockerl's blog, From the desk of next STEPH.