Fancy Black Skin For LinkWithin Gadget

LinkWithin is an excellent plugin that can be integrated in both Wordpress and Blogger todisplay related stories by fetching posts that belong to the same category/label or tag. It really loads fast and do help in increasing reader engagement in reading more and more and helps build pageviews. Months ago we introduced a way by which you can customize the look and feel of this plugin by overriding its default stylesheet. You can surely override any Class or ID by simply using the !important property.

The custom CSS code we offered enabled users to change font colors of the text title, edit thumbnail sizes, borders and change background with an image. Today I am sharing the stylesheet for the Black color theme of linkWithin related post widget used on our blog. We coded it using simple styles and effects. It attracts visitors more and provide some neat and clean suggestions. The steps are really easy, so lets make it Fancy!

Without the custom Code the gadget looks as dull and grey as this one:

Step1: Adding the LinkWithin Widget

In order to apply this skin you will first need to install the linkWithin widget to your blog. The tutorial below will help you to add this plugin to your BlogSpot blogs. The plugin will appear in post pages only and will remain hidden on homepage.

• Read: Install linkWithin on Blogger

Step2: Applying the Black Skin

Now you just need to follow the easy steps below to install the black Skin and change over all dull and grey look of the widget.

1. Go To blogger > Template
2. Backup your template
3. Click Edit HTML > Proceed
4. Search for this style tag:

]]></b:skin>

   5.  Just above it paste the following big chunk of Code:

/*---Related Posts---*/ 

#linkwithin_logolink_0 {
display:none!important;
}

#lws_0 {

clear: both!important;       

margin: 0 0 20px 0!important;    

}

.linkwithin_outer {
    margin: 1px 0px !important;
   background:url("https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje9gmKPYjEzpE4TlJ0I2iw5Uy4cD70dUB8o2J3sw5Km9cxMMG9gUemKWMpYq9o5pjdELRxCdLaWaLtj0ArauDbR4JtT1i27YkIOVXnLdQvyWVVapDhmD8j9BuRJczSFsrME-AiC9q_3nE/s400/mbt-related-posts.gif") repeat scroll rgb(42, 42, 42);
    height: 260px;

      width:590px!important;

    padding: 0px !important;
    box-shadow: 0px 4px 4px -4px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.7) !important;
    border-radius: 5px 5px 5px 5px;
    }

.linkwithin_inner {
width:590px!important;
}

.linkwithin_text {
margin: 0px !important;
    padding: 10px !important;
    font-family: "Droid Sans",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;
    font-size: 1.35em;
    color: rgb(255, 255, 255);
    font-weight: 700;
    line-height: 1.35em;
    text-transform: capitalize;
    background-color: rgb(18, 18, 18);
    border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);
    border-top-right-radius: 5px;
    border-top-left-radius: 5px;
    background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(center top , rgb(36, 36, 36), rgb(18, 18, 18));
}

.linkwithin_posts a {
   border-right:0px!important;
    margin: 10px 0px 10px 20px !important;
}

.linkwithin_posts a:hover {
   border-right:0px!important;
    margin: 10px 0px 10px 20px !important; background:none!important;
}

#linkwithin_logo_0 {display:none;}

.linkwithin_img_0 {
    border: 1px solid #666 !important;
    padding: 1px !important;
    width: 100px !important;
    height: 70px !important;
    margin-right: 20px !important;
    overflow: hidden;
   background:#666!important;
}

.linkwithin_img_0:hover {
  border: 1px solid #666!important;
opacity:0.8;
}
.linkwithin_img_0 div {
    width: 100px !important;
    height: 70px !important;
}

.linkwithin_title {
    color: rgb(255, 255, 255) !important;
    font-size: 1.1em !important;
    display: block;
    padding: 0px 10px 0px 0px !important;
    font-weight: 700 !important;
    line-height: 1.45em !important;
    margin-top: 10px !important;
    font-family: "Droid Sans",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif !important;
   text-decoration:none!important;
  width:120px!important;
}

.linkwithin_title:hover {
text-decoration:underline!important;

}

     6.  Hit save and you are all done!

Visit any of your post page to see it working just perfectly. Enjoy the new colors. :)

Suggested Reading:

You may also like checking the first Custom Skin we introduced in august 2012.

• Read: Customize LinkWithin

You May also find the following widget useful:

• Read: Show Slides of related posts at bottom of a page

Questions?

The widget will display up to 4 thumbnails. If you wish to show more thumbnails  then simply increase the width size highlighted in yellow.  Also set the number of stories to 4 on linkWithin homepage as mentioned in the tutorial where you learnt how to install the widget on your blog.

Despite setting number of stories to 4, our widget displays 4 thumbnails. We have contacted the LinkWithin team to fix this bug on their side. Its not important that the widget will display 3 thumbnails for you as well because such bugs occur rarely for some websites/IDs and requires manual fix from linkwithin team.

If you have any questions then please do not hesitate to let me know. I hope with this new Fancy theme, your readers would enjoy clicking between posts and would spend more time on your blog. Peace and blessings buddies. :)

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Thumbnail Image Fix For Pinterest Buttons in Blogger

Pinterest as you all know is the new social media network introduced just this year that has slowly attracted fair amount of traffic and is grooming daily thanks to publishers and community members. We introduced various codes on how to add a Pinterest pin it button to your webpages but due to server side errors the JavaScript code introduced by pinterest for Firefox and Chrome is not functioning for the past one month. So We fetched a new code using AddThis servers and designed a custom Pinterest counter that works just like the original pinterest button. I also managed to write a simple XHTML code for the original pinterest button which will fetch the correct thumbnail image out of your BlogSpot blog and will work just fine without a description or blank thumbnail image problem. Lets check these fresh codes which works just fine. I will also update the old tutorials today.

Live Demo

The Original Pinterest Pin it button

The following code will work just fine on any blogger blog.

<a class='pin-it-button' count-layout='vertical' expr:href='&quot;http://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=&quot; +data:post.url + &quot;&amp;description=&quot; + data:post.title +  &quot;&amp;media=&quot; + data:post.thumbnailUrl'>Pin It</a>
<script src='http://assets.pinterest.com/js/pinit.js' type='text/javascript'/> 

Here are some regions to give you an idea of how the code works:

• data:post.url will fetch the Page Link/URL - Retrieved using url variable
• data:post.title will fetch Blog post title - Retrieved using description variable
• data:post.thumbnailUrl will fetch a 72 x 72 image thumbnail of your post. The is the data attributed provided by blogger which is often used while displaying the Mobile version of your blog on smartphones or iPad or Samsung Galaxy Tablet. The image surely looks small but this is the only allowed attribute we can use at this moment. I tried a lot to write a script that may force increase the size but the codes were not accepted by strict xml rules of blogger editor. Therefore this method will only display a 72x72 pixel wide image unlike the second method which displays large thumbnails. - Retrieved using the media variable

Enough of code syntax and literature , time to add it to blogger. Kindly link back to this page if you wish to share the above code with your readers. This code is released first time, therefore an attribution link would be enough a favour.  Follow these steps:

1. Go To Blogger > Template
2. Backup/restore your template
3. Click the Edit HTML button
4. Click Proceed
5. Click the box "Expand Widget Templates"
6. Search for this code:

<data:post.body/>

  Now if you wish to add the pinterest button below blog post titles then paste the code in step#7 just above the code in step#6 else if you wish to display the button at the bottom of posts then add the code in step#7 just below step#6 code.

      7.  Choose the code for your preferred size button and paste it inside your template as guided in step#6

For horizontal counter Use this code:

Paste the code below just

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;item&quot;'>

<a class='pin-it-button' count-layout='horizontal' expr:href='&quot;http://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=&quot; +data:post.url + &quot;&amp;description=&quot; + data:post.title + &quot;&amp;media=&quot; + data:post.thumbnailUrl'>Pin It</a>
<script src='http://assets.pinterest.com/js/pinit.js' type='text/javascript'/> 

</b:if>

For Vertical counter Use this code:

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;item&quot;'>

<a class='pin-it-button' count-layout='vertical' expr:href='&quot;http://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=&quot; +data:post.url + &quot;&amp;description=&quot; + data:post.title + &quot;&amp;media=&quot; + data:post.thumbnailUrl'>Pin It</a>
<script src='http://assets.pinterest.com/js/pinit.js' type='text/javascript'/>

</b:if> 

     8.   Save your template and all done!

Custom Pin it Counter

For that kindly proceed to this tutorial:

• Read: Floating Social Media Sharing Widget

New to Pinterest?

If you have no idea what pinterest is and how to pull out traffic from it to your blog then please read the following delicious tutorials:

• Read: How to promote your blogs with Pinterest?
• Read: Pinterest Step by Step Guide

Need Help?

If you encountered any problem during installation of the codes then feel free to let me know. I just hope this code and the previous update may help you with the best pinterest experience ever. People will surely now repin your posts once they see fancy thumbnails appearing in your board. Peace and blessings buddies. :)

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Fill up a simple Appeal form for Disabled AdSense Accounts

With an increasing awareness about the online earning business, it has been seen that people are opting blogging as their sole career. Whether you are a professional blogger or a newbie, there is no doubt that the revenue been generated through blogging, highly depends on the Google AdSense account. Where most of the bloggers find the service as a satisfactory tool to make money by providing spaces for ads, there are some who often complain about their AdSense accounts getting disabled for ‘invalid activities’.

Taking an action on the queries about this disabling of accounts without any good reason, Google has recently introduce an easy way to its publishers who have been suffering by a sudden full stop on their earnings, and also answering why do they actually suspend or even disable few accounts. Therefore, if you have ever been a victim of such a situation, there is all what you need to know.

Why Google Suspends AdSense Accounts?

While talking about how important publishers are for Google, The team mentioned that they invest a good deal of time and Dollars, both, to avoid the bad ads been published on the sites as well as to keep bad sites with inappropriate content out of their network. However, in order to control the accounts that sign up for AdSense to promote bad ads and bad clicks, some of the publishers suffer invalidly. It is quite justified too because each day more than a hundreds of users apply for an AdSense account and to monitor such a huge record is done by specially designed tools and methodologies, that again, might misinterpret some ‘innocent’ content too.

What to do With Your Disabled AdSense Account?

Previously, AdSense team seemed much cruel in case of any account getting disabled; there was no reason provided that why actually the account has been terminated. But as Google says, it has reasons for everything it does. With the new policy that has been announced by Google AdSense team, publishers would get their questions answered. According to Google, it would now take the following actions to facilitate the ‘innocent’ publishers to enable their account again.

1) The accounts that would be detected for an ‘invalid activity’ will be now be suspended for some time rather than getting terminated in the first place.

2) Google has come up with a new form service that works as a tool for the publishers who find their accounts suspended. Filling this form will stimulate the process, bringing the issue under the consideration of the officials.

3) Although Google is strict about the violations of the rules and regulations that the publishers must follow, the team will now provide more details on invalid activity’s causes. (Read about the causes of invalid activity at Ad Traffic Quality Resource Center)

4) Once a violation is detected, the publisher would receive an email, notifying about which rule has been violated and what should the publisher do to avoid suspension.

5) To make things easier to understand, Google dedicates a video series that explains why some policies exist and how can one make sure that he is working with them. The first video specifically targets the issue regarding invalid traffic. Have a look!

getting their AdSense account terminated without any reason was a serious problem for the publishers who look forward to have consistent earnings through their blogs, Therefore, this initiative, though small, but active, has been welcomed by the professional publishers. Moreover, Google seems determined in coming up with new updates to prevent the unnecessary termination of AdSense account.

Share your views about it, :)

Blessings,

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Met a Strange Guy Today with Only tears in His Eyes

I had to share a new tutorial today but my entire mood turned upside down when I met a young guy in a Mental Hospital. I thought I better share this experience with you all. Since I am on vocations, I try to give more time to friends and family and stay away from work the maximum I can afford. Every evening I go for fitness in a nearby Gym with a home friend (named Ahsan) in order to release stress and recharge myself mentally. Today Ahsan requested that we better meet his close relative whose young son just got admitted in Psychiatric hospital.

You might also enjoy reading the story of 99 coins:

• Read: 99 Coins - The Desire to earn just one more coin

This was the first time in my life when I stepped into a mental treatment hospital and saw things that are difficult to narrate. We met a young guy about 19 years of age. His name is Ahmed and he is Ahsan's cousin.  Ahsan told me that Ahmed became a victim of serious mental disorder just 3 months ago and now his condition has deteriorated so much that even his dad can not control him when anger surrounds him from all corners.

Ahmed's dad had requested Ahsan earlier to pay them frequent visits and spend some time with Ahmed so that he may feel better and get rid of this sudden insanity. The moment we entered Ahmed's room, he stood up like a kid and crawled towards Ahsan with a smile all around his face. He seemed extremely excited to see Ahsan and welcomed him like a normal man. He was speaking with his tearful eyes only without even moving his tongue. He seemed silent and would speak little. He seemed a healthy teenager with great strength. Ahsan took him out of the room and offered him cigarette. He loved it and started smoking like he was smoking his last. Ahsan is a happy-go-lucky person so he started funny conversation with him and tried to distract Ahmed from his gloominess & loneliness. Ahmed would often smile when he was asked questions about female staff members. I was just looking at Ahsan's stupid questions and was wondering why was he reacting this way and why did he offer the kid cigarette. But to my curiosity, I found Ahmed enjoying Ahsan's company.  I left them enjoying their funny talks (Ahsan speaking while Ahmed remained just quite behind a seldom smile) and went to meet Ahmed's dad in patient ward.

I asked uncle for reasons due to which Ahmed lost his mental stability. Uncle's story was indeed strange yet a thoughtful message for many parents who fail to give their children the rights they deserve.

Ahmed was 10 years old when his father sent him to boarding school. He was a homesick kid who loved to remain close to his parents but due to business matters his father had to sent him to boarding school. After completing his secondary classes, Ahmed was sent to Bangladesh where he stayed for more than 3 years. During this long period he remained thirsty for the love of his parents. In school he was often bullied and would face sexual harassment.  The moment his dad realized the tortures he had been through in August 2012, Ahmed was far from being normal again. His dad accepted all his mistakes and requested us to help his kid recover from this hell. I was literally dumbfound after I heard the story. I am really not able to put everything into words. Ahmed's tears are still framing in front of my eyes. Imagine a guy who was normal 3 months ago and turned into a mentally upset case today.  Ahmed asked me that he also wishes to join gym and ride my bike. I smiled at him and promised that his wish will soon be fulfilled. I hugged him tightly and then left for gym.

• Read: US Statistics For Mental Disorder Cases

Everyone of us has some rights and we are normal as long as we are provided with these necessities of body and soul. Keep your loved ones close to yourselves and never abandon a being.  Learn to spread love as much as you can and hold firmly to the trust people have on you. Be kind to God for creating you in perfect shape and colors. Never keep a bird in cage and never snatch from others the right to smile and laugh. Never break someone's trust and never stop fighting for your rights. Ask for it boldly when you know its your right to demand it. Never remain silent when a situation needs an answer because silence is an act of cowardliness and you are indeed better than this.  You could have been in Ahmed's place but you are blessed with so much happiness around, so remain kind for everything around. I am sorry I could not write a tutorial today because I could not stop thanking God for his countless blessings. God bless you always brothers and sisters.  May you have the best of life.

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You can now display just one 300X600 Ad Format on a page

Blogging is becoming the most promising online business gradually, however, there are few who find themselves lucky enough to enjoy a good revenue been generated through it. There is no doubt thatadvertisements act as the soul of earning and we must thank Google for introducing its AdSense program. It has been lately seen that Google seems more interested in targeting the issues of its clients and in order to enhance the earnings of the publishers, it has recently introduced a new 300x600 ad format, big enough to consume a large space of your blog. While the Publishers were delighted with the news, hoping to have more revenue, Google has announced that the new offer would also be having some limitations.

The Limitations

Considering the new format to be large enough, Google has now announced to have some changes in its policy to keep a balance in between the valuable content of the blog and the advertisements. If you were aiming high to achieve this golden opportunity by placing two or more 300x600 ads on your blog, this one is surely a bad news for you as you would now be permitted to place only one 300x600 ad unit on each page of your blog.

We previously saw that the limit for AdSense for content ad units was three ads per page, which is still the same, however, the slightest change is that you can now place only one 300x600 ad unit out of the three, choosing the two remaining ones of any other size.

Google states that the major reason for this limitation was to keep in view the needs of both, Users and the Advertisers. For those who have availed the offer to its fullest, placing more than one 300x600 ads on a single page, Google requests them to remove the ‘extra’ ads units by Jan 10, 2012 to avoid inconvenience. A notifying mail has been already sent to the affected publishers, asking them to make this update on their blog.

Although the news might not be a welcoming one for most of the bloggers, it is good to see that Google is taking interest and coming up with new strategies to enhance the online business for the publishers and the advertisers. It is soon to be expected that the team would announce new sizes and policies that would further contribute in boosting your earnings.

Share your views about it,

Wishes,

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How to Help Google Webmasters Know if your Site is Hacked?

These days when online earning through blogs and websites is turning into one of the most appealing businesses, there are unavoidable risks of getting your website been hacked. How about malicious content been injected on your website, forcing your readers to never come back to pay a visit? The thought is itself awful, isn’t it? A good news is, Google has lately announced that it has some solutions for those webmasters who are the victim of website hacking.

As I have been saying in my previous posts, Google is smart enough to keep a track of everything, all the time and hence according to the new policies, the site that would be detected as a “hacked website” would be displayed with a warning message “This Site may be compromised”. This has been done to ensure safety of the users who might find the affected site in the search results and find themselves been overloaded with themalicious content.

What makes this news worthy to read is the fact that as a blogger, it is important for you to find whether your blog/website is at risk or not, because in case, it is, then there are wide chances that your website becomes a source to distribute the malicious content among your devoted readers. Moreover, when Google realizes that your site is compromising to facilitate the distribution of malwares, even your site would be having a warning indication in the Google search, affecting your page ranks and your earnings terribly. Therefore, Google has advised all the webmasters to verify their site in Webmaster Tools. Although there are some specific tips for preventing and removing malware from your site, it is still better to be on a safer side to avoid going through a bad phase in business.

A disease can be cured only if you predict it right; however, a dilemma here is that most of the Webmasters do not actually realize when their sites have been infected with the injected malwares. To overcome this, there are two common ways that can help in letting you know that there are malicious third- parties on your website. Let us first see these two ways and then we will talk about how to get your site cleaned from this unwanted mess.

1) Injected Content

As a blogger, you might know by now that what actually these hackers aim for, yes, all they want is to drag your potential traffic to their own sites. One common attempt of doing so is to influence search engines by injecting the links of their sites. This is done way too intelligently where these links are hidden, making their detection difficult by the webmaster. For example, injected malwares appear with your content, making it difficult for the webmaster to identify that he is a victim.

Solution:

Making it easier for you, Google will diagnose all the sites for such injected content, and if your site is one of them, you will receive an e-mail about the notification of this detection. If you would find the content risky, you can then use Fetch as Google tool to check the content of your site.

2) Redirecting Users

There would be hardly anyone who would like to be redirected every time when he visits a site. A good way to hack a site is to redirect its users to malicious sites. This is what the users really hate and might never return to your site in fear of getting redirected again to spammy sites. Again, this can be done in several ways where the hacker might target the viewers who access your site through their mobiles or those who are coming from search engines. It was interesting to find that what actually hackers do. They actually modify the configuration files and serve different users with different contents.

 

Apart from this, such a hacking can also be done by injecting JavaScript into the source code of your site.

Solution:

In order to avoid this, you need to keep a track of your server configuration files for such modifications. For the malicious behavior due to the JavaScript injection, the JavaScript may be designed to hide its purpose, helping terms look like, for example, “eval”, “decode” and “escape”.

Cleanup your Site and Prevent Hacking!

With the two common ways stated above, you can get to know whether your site is compromised or not. If you find your site in risk, then it is necessary to clean it up from the changes that the malwares have brought with them, also preventing your site from getting hacked in future again. You can clean up your site by following the instructions given by Google and prevent such compromises too.

However, you need to consider the sensitivity of the matter and must contact the Google team, informing about your site been compromised. For that you need to submit areconsideration request after you clean up your site. This is important so that Google can then remove its warning label (indicating you as a compromised site) from its search results.

With that, the post comes to an end, We hope that nothing happens to the sites of our readers, because once affected, it really can bring disastrous outcomes.

Best Wishes,

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Google Explains How to Write a Proper Reconsideration Request?

Your blog can really make your life a complicated one if it gets into the bad lists of Google. Throughout my career as a blogger, I have come across many newbies who are often way too worried for their blog ratings. It has also been seen that sometimes a blog with a considerable rankings and readership goes under a sudden change, bringing disaster that keeps on increasing. It is important to understand the significance of a consistent good progress when it comes to an online earning business because, that is where you have no boss to appeal and no actual help to get the things fixed up for you. However, Googleseems merciful enough to let the suffering bloggers a chance to help their blogs and offers a reconsideration request form that the bloggers have to fill and submit to the Google Team.

Although the name speaks all, the reconsideration request is what that works on your behalf to interact with Google for solving issues that might have lead in decreasing your rankings-and-earnings. By now, most of the bloggers do know about this facility, or rather opportunity, there are many of them who find it difficult to draft a good reconsideration request. Taking a serious notice of this, Matt Cuts, the head of Webspam, Google has answered what the team actually looks for in a reconsideration request.

1) Mention The Goal of Reconsideration request

Probably due to the language barriers or the misunderstandings about the scenario, bloggers sounds confused while stating the actual problem that they are facing. You need to first analyze the problem that might have created difficult circumstances for your business and once you are done with it, it is time to recover your mistakes.

2) Tell Google what it wants to know

It is important to understand that whatever happens to your blog is due to some reason behind it. Therefore, you need to tell Google about what has been done wrong by you mistakenly or unintentionally. For example, if there is something related to the pagelinks, spamming, etc., you need to mention that and also the fact that now you have stopped doing so.

The team wants to know what has been done by you to cure the issue, like if it was related to the pagelinks, you should pull them down as much as possible and state your efforts in the reconsideration form too.

3) Assure Google for Future

Google is professional enough when it comes to the mistakes committed by the publishers. It is to be noted that not all the reconsideration requests are accepted by Google, in fact, only few requests are even taken into the notice. What Google looks in your request is the surety that you would not be repeating the similar blunders or violates the rules and regulations of Google in future.

4) Additional Details giving weightage

It is always better to keep your policies and goals transparent from Google. Adding details like the sites that you link to, using SEO for unethical stuff, etc., would earn you more trust of the team. Moreover, also suggest what you would be doing in order to avoid similar circumstances, say taking trainings, keeping a track of Google blogs, following the regulations, etc. To know more about it, also see this video.

Google can be a tough one when it comes to convincing it for reconsidering your blog and improve your ratings. Therefore, you need to be extra careful while drafting your request. A quality request would itself be considered as a plus point for you.

Best Wishes

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