Assuming that you registered your domain to other registrars, in my case at namecheap.

How to Use A Custom Domain on Your Blogspot Blog

1. Register your domain, in my example, I’m going to show you how to do it on Namecheap.com, since I registered all my domains on the said site.

2. Since Blogger requires you to create a CNAME and point it to ghs.google.com we are going to modify the URL forwarding functionality.

3. Just log in to your account and choose the domain you wish to use. No need to modify your DNS settings. Just click the URL Forwarding link at your side bar.

4. Enter ghs.google.com for the CNAME alias, just like the illustration below.

5. Just wait for the changes to propagate.

Just like most of the bloggers who just started using adsense, I was disappointed that I barely earn 0.5 cents a month on my first two months. Succeeding months earned me more than 2 dollars a month but hey, that’s not enough to support even my blogs’ hosting and domain registration.

How to make money online Using Google Adsense

Earning my first $100 is not easy, it took me about 4 months before I reached the said amount. Of course, If you are just starting to blog, there are several things that you need to learn in order to earn from Adsense. One and I think the most important factor is knowing SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

SEO will give you lots of visitors, your blogs need visitors for you to make money. Of course, receiving my first adsense payment is just the start. It is a continues learning process to improve your knowledge and eventually increase your adsense earning.

I am just averaging about $2.50 per day, and I am targetting to increase my adsense earning for $5 per day. Hopefully mid next month I can reach that goal.

This post is intented to share my Adsense experience and is part of Marghil’s writing project on Google adsense.
The project intends to showcase Adsense stories from different bloggers who are currently earning from the said opportunity.

More Google Adsense Stories

• My Google Adsense Story by Marhgil
• My Google Adsense story and how I landed on TopBlogs by PromdiLiving
• Biggest Google Adsense Story by Zaldy Dalisay
• My First Adsense Payment: Received! by TechieGirl
• My Google Adsense Story by Donser
• My First Google Cheque by Jehzlau
• An Adsense Story To Share by Dexter
• My Google Adsense Story by Don_ser

WordPress 2.3.2 is an urgent security release that fixes a bug that can be used to expose your draft posts. 2.3.2 also suppresses some error messages that can give away information about your database table structure and limits and stops some information leaks in the XML-RPC and APP implementations. Get 2.3.2 now to protect your blog from these disclosures.

You can check the details of the new version here

How to Upgrade to Wordpress 2.3.2

1. Download the latest files here.
2. Copy the latest files to your blog’s host using a FTP client or your control panel ( or what ever means of transferring files to your blog’s host),over writing your existing wordpress files.
3. Since this is not a major update, there’s no changes in the database structure so updating your files finalizes the upgrade.

That’s it!

What is Entrecard?

Entrecard is the first and only free exchange network for 125×125 ads. Through this revolutionary platform, you can advertise your own 125×125 Entrecard on any blog in the network, for free, for a number of days.

You pay for this advertising with Entrecard Credits, that you earn for free by networking (a.k.a. visiting blogs and dropping your card for other bloggers).

All you have to do is to place the Entrecard widget somewhere in your site, preferably on your sidebar. For you to earn Entrecard credits, you have to drop your card for someone else, done by visiting their site and clicking the ‘Drop Yours’ on their widget. Aside from that, you’ll earn credits from advertisers and every time someone drops a card for you. It’s that easy.

My entry is still new, so it takes only 6 credits to advertise on my blog.

It’s really another way to increase traffic and interact with other bloggers in the blogosphere, so come and give it a try

It’s totally free so no need to consult some San Diego tax attorneys

As a newbie in the bloggosphere, Marhgil Macuha really changed my views in terms of blog monetization, and I can say that some of his ideas are the one I am considering on my blogs.

Blog the Marhgil Macuha Way

So what does it take to be a successful blogger? for me there are two basic things:

• Traffic – You blog to share your views, opinions, expertise, but what’s the point of writing a good content if you don’t have any readers at all?

• Earnings – Ok if you don’t want to earn from blogging that’s fine LOL! .

How to be a successful blogger? Here’s the key: Build Traffic + Optimize Ads = Success.

Marhgil Macuha is currently sponsoring a mini-SEO contest allowing bloggers to optimize a certain keyword and who ever made it to the top of the SERP will get the prize. And yes, this is my official entry on his $150 Anniversary Mini-SEO Contest .

As of 01/01/2008, I made it to the first page of GOOGLE SERP!!!! yahooo!!!. Still a few days before the contest ends and still, 8 more websites to beat! hahaha. Win or lose, I still feel a winner, since I learned a lot from this contest, specially with the SEO thing.

Happy New Year everyone specialy to Marhgil Macuha! | YuoTube Video Downloads

How To Display Other Blogs Feeds to Your WordPress Blog

1. Open the template file you want to put the other blogs’ feeds. For illustration purposes, we will going to edit the sidebar.php. Our goal is to display the latest n posts of our target blog. In my example, we will going to display the latest 3 posts.
2. To do this, just add the following code anywhere in the sidebar.php where you want to display the feeds, customizing the highlighted text with your own preference :

<h2><?php _e('LifeGuide'); ?></h2>
<?php // Get RSS Feed(s)
include_once(ABSPATH . WPINC . '/rss.php');
$rss = fetch_rss('http://feeds.feedburner.com/EasyLifeGuide');
$maxitems = 3;
$items = array_slice($rss->items, 0, $maxitems);
?>
<ul>
<?php if (empty($items)) echo '<li>No items</li>';
else
foreach ( $items as $item ) : ?>
<li><a href='<?php echo $item['link']; ?>'
title='<?php echo $item['title']; ?>'>
<?php echo $item['title']; ?>
</a></li>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</ul>

3. Apply some CSS customization on the appearance, the above code should look like the image below.

Source(s): Wordpress Documentation

By default, the read more tag displays more...

If you want to change the words from more…. to something else, just type in the new words into the tag.

Designing the Read More Link

1. Open your current theme template files that contain the <?php the_content();?> tag. These files are usually the index.php and single.php files located at /<root>/wp-content/themes/<current theme directory>.
2. To change the way your Read More link appears on your front page, lets edit the index.php file. Open the file in any text editor.
3. Look for the call on <?php the_content()?>. The call may contain some customized words already, but since we want to place our own customized words, say ‘Please click here to continue reading’, we will edit the parameter to look something like this:

<?php the_content('Please Click here to continue reading »'); ?>

4. When you load your page, the read more tag will be changed from (more…) to ‘Please click here to continue reading »’





5. If you want to customize the appearance of your read more link, you may edit your CSS file.

That’s it

Part 1: Customizing the ‘Read More’ – Link Jumps to Top of Page

Upcoming Post(s):

• Customizing the ‘Read More’ – Adding image to the Read More link

more – <!–more–> WordPress tag that breaks a post into “teaser” and content sections. Type a few paragraphs, insert this tag, then compose the rest of your post. On your blog’s home page you’ll see only those first paragraphs with a hyperlink ((more...)), which when followed displays the rest of the post’s content.

Source: Wordpress Codex

How to use

1. While writing your post, just click the area where you want to end the excerpted content of your post and click the ‘more’ button on the Quicktag area
   The quicktags are the little buttons found above the editing window in your Administration -> Write -> Post SubPanel.

   

2. You can now continue with the rest of your post. When viewed on your site’s front page, your entry will now appear as an excerpt of your post up to the ‘more‘ point. Your readers can now continue reading the entire article by clicking the link generated by the ‘more’ tag, pointing to the rest of your post (default).

Link Jumps to Top of Page

By default, clicking the read more link will load the page and jump to the area where you placed the <--more--> tag. But there are some instances that you want to change its default behavior (just like this blog). Here’s How:

NOTE: Applicable in WP 2.1 and higher only. When you upgrade wordpress to a higher version, it is most likely that the file will be overridden so just take note of the changes you had done and apply it to the new version (where applicable).

1. Open the file wp-includes/template-functions-post.php
2. Look for the following code:

$output .= ' <a href="'. get_permalink() . "#more-$id\"
class=\"more-link\">$more_link_text</a>";

3. Change the above code to the following code:

$output .= ' <a href="'. get_permalink() ."\">$more_link_text</a>";

4. The next time you click the ‘read more’ link, it will point and jump to the top of page.

Part 2: Customizing the ‘Read More’ – Designing the Read More Link

Upcoming Post(s):

• Customizing the ‘Read More’ – Adding image to the Read More link

As I had mentioned on my previous post, I had just submitted this blog to Google and now is the time to check if its already indexed.

For new blogs, you may do the checking two days after your submission. For older blogs, this can be useful if you want to check which of your blog’s pages are already indexed by Google.

How To Check If Your Blog Is Already Indexed By Google

1. Go to Google.com, and type the following in the search box

site:<your blog’s URL> (Example: site:easylifeguide.net)

2. Click the [Google Search] button.
3. If no search results were found, your blog is not yet indexed by Google.
4. Once your blog is in their index and you do a search like we did above, you’ll see the screen below:

You’ll see your blog’s title, description, and URL in the search result.

As you can see on the image above, this blog is already indexed by Google. It has been indexed two (2) days after its submission.

It is suggested that after you registered your domain or upon creation of your blog, submit it to different search engines. For simple reason that It takes time for new blogs / sites to get indexed by Google. The earliest inclusion time for my other blogs are 4 days. Not bad though but it could take longer. And hey, don’t waste your money paying others to submit your blog, it’s really easy and you can do it by yourself.

How To Submit Your Blog / Site to Google

1. Go to http://www.google.com/addurl/
2. Type your blog’s URL (Top level page) in the URL box
3. Type some comments, or just add some keywords to describe your site (optional)
4. Click the [Add URL] button

That’s it!!

Google robots will then crawl your site the next time they’re out and eventually index it. Just wait for a couple of days or weeks on when your site will be indexed.

This blog has been submitted to Google today, so let’s see if when would it be indexed.