How to Burn Blogger RSS Feeds at Feedburner

What is RSS?

A RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed is a XML-based format for your content. Most blogging platforms, for example, will have an RSS feed built in. Whenever you start publishing posts, your latest posts will be updated in the RSS feed. Visitors to your website can subscribe to your blog’s RSS feed in an RSS reader such as Google Reader.

What is FeedBurner?

Most blogs have RSS feed which is detected automatically by commonly used feed readers when the blog URL is added to the reader.

However, if you want to make it more obvious and easier for readers to subscribe using RSS, or want to know exactly how many people subscribe to your blog then the best option is to add a Feedburner RSS feed and email subscription to your blog.

Feedburner is a free web service which enhances bloggers and podcasters ability to manage their RSS feeds and track usage of their subscribers.

How to create a feed with feedburner

1. Go to Feedburner and sign in to Feedburner with your Google Account (create a Google Account first if you don’t have one).

2. To set up your RSS feed with Feedburner, simply copy the URL of your RSS feed and paste it into the “Burn a feed right this instant” box. Then click Next >>

3. On the next screen, choose the second options - RSS.

4. On the next screen you will be given your RSS feed’s new URL on Feedburner. You will want to use this URL anywhere you reference your RSS feed on your blog. Change the feed title and address with your own.

5. When you click on Next, you will be given the options to setup tracking features for your RSS feed.
Check "Clickthroughs" and "I want more!..." options.

Adding Your Feedburner Feed To Your Blog

This is used to add the RSS icon and easy subscribe options to your blog side bar using a text widget as explained below:

1. Click on the Publicize Tab > Chicklet Chooser in your Feedburner account and copy the HTML code.

2. Go to Blogger Dashboard > Design > Page Elements and add a new gadget

3. Select HTML/JavaScript from the pop-up window and paste the html code in the box.

Adding a FeedBurner Email Subscription

After you have set up your feed, you will want to consider giving visitors the option to subscribe to your content via email. If so, you will want to go to the Publicize tab and click on Email Subscriptions. Click on the Activate button to start email subscription service for your RSS feed.

You will then want to click on Communication Preferences in the left sidebar menu. This will allow you to customize the activation email subscribers receive to confirm their subscription.

Once customized, click Save. The next options you will want to configure are under Email Branding in the left sidebar menu. This is where you can upload a logo, customize the Email Subject line, and change the font styles, colors, and sizes to format the email subscribers will receive. Click Save when finished.
The last (and most important) setting for your email subscription is the Delivery Options. This is where you will tell Feedburner what time to deliver new RSS feed updates to subscribers.

Once saved, click on the Subscription Management link. Here, you can get the code to add a subscription form on your blog or you can get a link to your take visitors to the opt-in form for subscribing via email.

To add it on your blog:

1. Go to Blogger Dashboard > Design > Page Elements

2. Add a new Gadget

3. Select HTML/JavaScript & paste the code in the box.

Redirecting All Your Blog Feed To Feedburner

Unless you redirect all your blog feed to Feedburner you won’t get accurate subscriber numbers because some of your readers subscribe using your original blog feed.

To do this:

1. Go to Settings > Site Feed in your blog dashboard

2. Add your Feedburner address to Post Feed Redirect URL and click Save Changes.

3. Now all your feeds is automatically redirected through FeedBurner and you’ll be able to track subscribers.

If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider Subscribing!

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Add Facebook Like Button Below Post Titles

This Facebook Like button will allow visitors to Like your post and share it to their Facebook friends. In this post we will see how we can add a Like button for each individual Blogger post, and not a Facebook fan box for the entire blog (which is also a good idea to have in your sidebar). Having a Facebook Like button below your post titles makes easier for Facebook users to like specific posts on your blog, which in turn displays the liked content on their profile (and potentially on their friend's feeds).
If you want to add the Facebook Like Button below your blogger post title, then follow these steps:

Adding Facebook Like Button Below Post Titles

Step 1. Go To Blogger Dashboard > Template > Edit HTML 

Screenshot 

Step 2. Click anywhere inside the code area and search - using CTRL + F keys - for this piece of code:

<data:post.body/>

Note: you might find it more than 3 times, stop to the second one (or third one in case it won't show up after applying the code from step 3)

Step 3.  Just above it, paste this code:

<p><iframe allowTransparency='true' expr:src='&quot;http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=&quot; + data:post.url + &quot;&amp;layout=button_count&amp;show_faces=false&amp;width=100&amp; action=like&amp;font=arial&amp;colorscheme=light&quot;' frameborder='0' scrolling='no' style='border:none; overflow:hidden; width:100px; height:20px;'/></p>

Screenshot

Step 4. Save your template and you are done with this simple implementation of the Facebook Like button on your Blogger blog.

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Auto Read More with thumbnail for Blogger/Blogspot Posts

How to make posts in the blog homepage to be displayed with an automatic "read more" button and a thumbnail.

To be more specific, this will show the title of the post, then a short summary with a number of characters and a thumbnail, that will be the thumbnail of the first image uploaded inside the post. After the thumbnail and the post summary, there will be a "Read More" link, which when you click on it, will take you to the actual post.
This Automatic Read More script will summarize content and a post summary will be shown only on the main blog page (homepage), category pages, and archive pages.

Using the Automatic Read More feature in Blogger Posts

Step 1. From your Blogger dashboard, go to Template and click on the Edit HTML button:

Step 2. Click anywhere inside the code area, then press the CTRL + F keys and search for this code:

<data:post.body/>

Note: after hitting Enter, you'll find this code more than once but you need to stop at the third one.

Step 3. Replace the code above with this one:

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != &quot;static_page&quot;'>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != &quot;item&quot;'>
<div expr:id='&quot;summary&quot; + data:post.id'><data:post.body/></div>
<script type='text/javascript'>createSummaryAndThumb(&quot;summary<data:post.id/>&quot;,&quot;<data:post.url/>&quot;,&quot;<data:post.title/>&quot;);</script>
 <span class='readmore' style='float:right;'><a expr:href='data:post.url'>Read More &#187;</a></span></b:if></b:if>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;item&quot;'><data:post.body/></b:if>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;static_page&quot;'><data:post.body/></b:if>

Note: if you don't see any changes after going through all the steps, please try to replace the second <data:post.body/> as well.

Step 4. Now search for the following tag:

</head>

Step 5. Just above the </head> tag, add the following code:

<script type='text/javascript'>
posts_no_thumb_sum = 490;
posts_thumb_sum = 400;
img_thumb_height = 160;
img_thumb_width = 180;
</script>
<script type='text/javascript'>
//<![CDATA[
function removeHtmlTag(strx,chop){
if(strx.indexOf("<")!=-1)
{
var s = strx.split("<");
for(var i=0;i<s.length;i++){
if(s[i].indexOf(">")!=-1){
s[i] = s[i].substring(s[i].indexOf(">")+1,s[i].length);
}
}
strx = s.join("");
}
chop = (chop < strx.length-1) ? chop : strx.length-2;
while(strx.charAt(chop-1)!=' ' && strx.indexOf(' ',chop)!=-1) chop++;
strx = strx.substring(0,chop-1);
return strx+'...';
}
function createSummaryAndThumb(pID, pURL, pTITLE){
var div = document.getElementById(pID);
var imgtag = "";
var img = div.getElementsByTagName("img");
var summ = posts_no_thumb_sum;
if(img.length>=1) {
imgtag = '<span class="posts-thumb" style="float:left; margin-right: 10px;"><a href="'+ pURL +'" title="'+ pTITLE+'"><img src="'+img[0].src+'" width="'+img_thumb_width+'px" height="'+img_thumb_height+'px" /></a></span>';
summ = posts_thumb_sum;
}

var summary = imgtag + '<div>' + removeHtmlTag(div.innerHTML,summ) + '</div>';
div.innerHTML = summary;
}
//]]>
</script>

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != &quot;static_page&quot;'>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != &quot;item&quot;'>
<style type='text/css'>
.post-footer {display: none;}
.post {margin-bottom: 10px; border-bottom: 1px dotted #E6E6E6; padding-bottom: 20px;}
 .readmore a {text-decoration: none; }
</style>
</b:if>
</b:if>

Note: 

- To change the number of characters shown when there is no thumbnail, modify the 490 value in blue. For the number of characters shown when a post has a thumbnail, modify the 400 value.
- If you want larger thumbnails, modify the 160 (height) and 180 (width) values in red.

Step 6. Click on the Save template button to save the changes.

That's it, enjoy!

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Marlinspike: Certificates have 'real problems'

By Tom Espiner, ZDNet UK, 16 March, 2012 17:10 Last year, hackers perpetrated a series of digital certificate compromises, striking at a deep level with potentially far-reaching effects both for internet users and the hacked companies. In March, news broke of a hack of Comodo, when an intruder obtained nine fraudulent digital certificates. Then in September it emerged that hundreds of thousands of Iranians may have had their Google communications intercepted after a compromise of Dutch certificate authority DigiNotar. DigiNotar declared itself bankrupt after the hack resulted in the Dutch government revoking trust in its certificates. Certificate authority GlobalSign stopped issuing certificates while it investigated a hack on its systems in September. It later found that its SSL certificate had been exposed during the attack on an external server. A major problem with certificate compromise is the undermining of trust in numerous security mechanisms. An attacker can set up a website that looks bona fide, and trick people into thinking they are visiting one website when it is in fact another. An attacker can also white-list malware on an operating system to gain full control of a device. Security technologist Moxie Marlinspike has come up with a technology called Convergence, designed to overcome the need for organisations to rely on digital certificates. He spoke to ZDNet UK about the technology, trust, and anonymity. Q: Last year a number of certificate authorities were compromised. Do you think the certificate authority model is broken? A: There are very real problems here. My thesis is that what we have now lacks what I call 'trust agility'. We've made a decision somewhere along the line to trust these organisations, and now it's very difficult for us to untrust them. So, they don't have a tremendous amount of incentive to continue engendering our goodwill, or behaving appropriately, or employing the best security practices. Why is it difficult to revoke trust in them? Comodo is a good example. Right now, Comodo should apply somewhere between a quarter and a fifth of the certificates on the internet. So if I, or a browser vendor, decides that they no longer trust Comodo, and remove them from their trust database, that means that that quarter to a fifth of the internet will basically break — you wouldn't be able to look at those websites any more, until they've all gotten different certificates from different certificate authorities. That's a really tough business decision for a browser vendor to make — that they're going to break a quarter to a fifth of the internet for their users, or, that they are somehow going to try and co-ordinate a quarter to a fifth of the internet to migrate to some other certificate authority. Read this AVG: Hacktivism is slowing down business Read more Your Convergence project seems to be making the trust model open source, or making a collective decision, through various different trusted authorities. The major objective is to provide trust agility: the idea that we still rely on third parties to certify a communication, but that you can untrust them at any time. You can make a decision to trust some organisation or set of organisations, but at any time you can revise that decision if you decide that they no longer warrant your trust. It does additionally provide properties that allow you to rely on organisations to collectively certify communications. So you can decide you don't want to trust any individual organisation, but five different organisations. If they all agree, then you consider that an indication to be certified. The system of notaries — doesn't that rely on some kind of user technical savvy, and is that beyond the purview of most people, and most employees of organisations? The way I see it is that ideally Convergence would be based in web browsers — web browsers using Convergence as the mechanism for certifying secure communications. The web browser would come with a default set of notaries, just like today a web browser comes with a default set of certificate organisations. Most users would never change their notaries, and they would depend on their browser to make those appropriate decisions for them. I think that's entirely reasonable. Users could decide to modify the notaries if they liked. How would you define a notary? A notary is very similar to a certificate authority. The only difference is that the trust relationship is inverted. Right now servers initiate a trust relationship with a certificate authority, which means that one server or website will make a decision about the organisation that's going to certify all the traffic for all users around the world, whereas notaries are selected by the client — the client initiates the trust relationship, first connecting to the notary and asking it to certify communications. The major problem with the model right now is that if the certificate authority is compromised, then that affects all users for all websites. With the certificate authority model, are there any particular security problems with servers initiating the trust relationship? The major problem with the model right now is that if the certificate authority is compromised, then that affects all users for all websites. They can continue to operate purely because even after a compromise it's difficult to untrust them. My problem with VeriSign as a manager of TLDs [top-level domains] is that I think it would be unwise to place all our trust there. Under the DNSSEC model there would be reduced trust agility. Even as unrealistic as it might be, today I can remove VeriSign from the trust database in my browser or my operating system, but I can never change the fact that they are the organisation that manages dot.com and .net domains. Are attacks on certificate authorities inevitably state sponsored? My intuition is that of the attacks that we've seen with organisations like Comodo and DigiNotar, [they] were not state-sponsored attacks. You have a not very bright hacker, based on......the statements that he made in his communiqués. The reason why I don't feel this is state sponsored is that: one, I'm sure there are state-sponsored attacks happening all the time, but most countries simply have their own certificate authority and so it's very easy for them to intercept secure communication — they don't have to hack anybody. Their ability to intercept communication is baked in. For really well-funded entities, like nation states that for whatever reason do not have their own certificate authorities — Iran, for example — they can just simply buy a certificate-authority certificate through a programme called GeoRoot, which is run by GeoTrust, which is owned by VeriSign. That would allow them to immediately have a certificate-authority certificate they could use to intercept any communications they want. With Convergence, the notaries could be guaranteed by security companies. Symantec is a security company that owns VeriSign SSL, so why not use Symantec as a trusted entity? Sure, it depends on who you trust. I feel that all security companies are not equal. Different people might trust different organisations for whatever reason. I feel there is some difference between collective trust versus [individual] trust. I feel like I can identify some sort of an organisation, where even if I might not trust each of them individually, and absolutely, I would trust their collective response. I would trust them not to be colluding with each other. I wanted to ask you about SOPA and PIPA. Do you think they're going to change the information security landscape? Do you think they are going to lead more people to try out encryption? It's possible. In terms of the information-security landscape, the lesson for me here, whether or not this stuff passes, is that it came close to passing, and that they are trying to pass legislation like this. A lot of people are looking at this legislation and thinking that the future of DNSSEC hangs in the balance. If this passes, then people are, "Oh, well, we shouldn't deploy DNSSEC, but if it doesn't pass, then we'll deploy DNSSEC." And to me, the question is its own answer. Read this T-Mobile: We intercepted secure email from phones Read more DNSSEC depends on trust in government. If governments are going to start messing with DNS responses, or intercepting DNS queries, they can very easily do that with DNSSEC. DNSSEC depends on a hierarchy of trust in centralised organisations that are either controlled by nation states through the cc top-level domains or by organisations that happen to be in the purview of the government through the global top-level domains. To me then the question is its own answer. If people are even thinking about doing this, then we shouldn't put our eggs in that basket. It's extremely likely that even if it doesn't happen now, then it will happen at some point in the future. We should be looking for entirely different solutions. I think of this kind of stuff from the perspective of a technologist. I'm not in a position to lobby for or against, and really I want nothing to do with it. On the technical side, if this kind of legislation did pass, it would only increase the development of a tamper-proof internet. People would immediately start working on solutions that would prevent people from tampering with the internet in this way. I guess that's a good thing? I think it's something we should do one way or the other. This is the writing on the wall — we're looking into the future with that legislation. We should be prepared. There is a lot of government interest in being able to look at communications. On the other hand, there are some compelling cases for people wanting to be anonymous and have anonymous communications, especially when they are trying to effect some kind of social change. What is your view on the balance between people wanting to effect social change and law enforcement wanting to intercept communications? My feeling is that right now, law enforcement is doing all right. Their mechanisms for intercepting communications are pretty extensive. This question is like, choose your team, and I know what team I'm on — I'm on team anonymity. Law enforcement has not built a lot of trust. If you look at the mechanisms they are using to intercept people's communications and trap people, it doesn't feel like they're really doing it appropriately. There's a lot of politics about this. If you look at what's been happening in the US with wire-tapping, it's totally insane. That kind of stuff is really driving people towards technical solutions that allow them to preserve their privacy. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Get the latest technology news and analysis, blogs and reviews delivered directly to your inbox with ZDNet UK's newsletters.

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Adsense Ad Code Converter

HTML has special handling for characters like < and > symbols, so it doesn't work well with those characters where they shouldn't be.

Having spurious characters like those symbols in your text can have some weird effects - blocks of text not appearing, broken formatting, and generally just not seeing what you expect to see.

This can all be fixed by 'escaping' those characters. This process involves scanning the text for those characters, and replacing them with a special character-code that browsers can interpret as the correct symbol, without actually embedding that symbol in your text.
For example, the escaped character code for > is &gt;.

This tool automatically converts javascript ad code into the correct format so you can embed it directly into your new xml Blogger template. It’s perfect for converting AdSense, AdBrite, Chitika or any other javascript ad code you may have.

Instructions

Paste your Adsense code or any HTML in the empty box and then press the Convert button.

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How to put Adsense ads on Blogger/Blogspot

If you want to earn money from your site/blog, Google Adsense is the most popular service to monetize your blog or website content. When implemented, Adsense will display targeted Google ads on your blog and they can generate revenue on either a per-click or per-impression basis.

In order to display ads on your site, you should first Sign Up to Google Adsense program.

Before adding your ads, keep in mind that Adsense allows only up to 3 ad units, 3 link units and 2 search boxes per page.

In this tutorial i will show you the three ways you can add Adsense ads to your blog.

1. Adsense Gadget

Use this method to add ad unit as a widget, in places outside the blog post area. You can position it by simply dragging it in Page Elements, just like any other widget. To add the Adsense Gadget, follow these steps:
Step 1. Log in to your Blogger Dashboard, go to Layout and click on the "Add a Gadget" link on the right side.

Step 2. From the pop-up window, select the AdSense Gadget

Step 3. Configure ad format and colors (see the screenshot for more details)

Step 4. Finally, click on the Save button and you're done.

2. Inline Ads

This will display an ad unit at the end of each post. To show ads between posts:

Step 1. Go to Design > Page Elements and click the Edit link in Blog Posts gadget box.

Step 2. Check the "Show Ads Between Posts" box.

Step 3. Configure ad frequency, ad format, and colors. Live preview is provided beneath the settings.

Step 4. Click on the Save button to save the settings.

3. Adsense code

The most notable benefits of using this method are:

• You can place ad anywhere in your blog
• You can add the code anywhere in your blog template - in your post content or page.
• To find out which format perform the best, custom channels will help you to track the performance of specific groups of ad units.
• You can choose types other than ad unit i.e. link unit, search box.

To create an ad unit:

Step 1. Go to Google Adsense website.
Step 2. Click on My ads tab, go to Ad units and then click on the "New ad unit" button.

Step 3. Choose your ad type, choose format and colors and assign channels.
Step 4. When you have finished editing, click on the Save and get code >> button and copy the code provided.

To add an ad unit to your blog, you have the following options:

• Paste the code in a HTML/Javascript gadget
• Paste the code in the blog post or page HTML section, or
• Paste the code direct in your template. (if you choose this option, first you should convert adsense ad code)

If you have any more questions, leave a comment below.

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How To Remove Blogger Threaded Comments

The Blogger Threaded commenting system allows a reader to reply to other reader comments on that post. Blogger supports threaded commenting with two levels - the original comment, and the replies to that comment. If you want remove threaded comments from your blogger blog, follow these steps:

Important!
Before anything, we need to make a back-up of our Blogger template so that if we do make any major errors, we can easily restore the original working template to our blog.

To make a back-up of your Blogger template, from your Blogger dashboard - go to Template and click on the "Backup/Restore" button on the right side.
Clicking on this button, will prompt you to save your existing template as an XML file to your hard drive. You can change the name of the file and choose the location to ensure it is easy to find if you need to use this later.

Removing the Blogger Threaded Comments (with reply option)

Step 1. Go to Template and click on the Edit HTML button

Step 2. Click anywhere inside the code area and press CTRL + F keys to open the Blogger' search box 

Step 3. Paste or type the following code - or the first line of it - inside the search box in order to find it:

<b:if cond='data:post.showThreadedComments'>
            <b:include data='post' name='threaded_comments'/>
          <b:else/>
            <b:include data='post' name='comments'/>
          </b:if>
        </b:if>
        <b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;item&quot;'>
          <b:if cond='data:post.showThreadedComments'>
            <b:include data='post' name='threaded_comments'/>
          <b:else/>
            <b:include data='post' name='comments'/>
          </b:if>
        </b:if>

Step 4. Now remove it (you'll find this code twice and replace it twice) and paste this code instead:

   <b:include data='post' name='comments'/>
          </b:if>
               <b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;item&quot;'>
                     <b:include data='post' name='comments'/>
     
        </b:if>

Step 5. Save the changes by clicking on the Save template button.

That was all!

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