A Signature For Your Blog Post?

Have you ever thought about to add a signature to you blog post? Adding a signature to each post of you blog will no doubt bring your personal touch to your readers. It is an identity of representing you online. Moreover it brings an uniqueness to your blog as well. I was inspired by Lorelle VanFossen’s signature on her blog.

For WordPress.com Blog

I think it is fun to have your own signature for your blog just like you sign your signature in each email. It also serves a purpose: that is something uniquely reflects your personality. I like to do things differently because we are all unique in many ways. So if you are like me, then go ahead to create your unique signature using your desired program. Make sure you save your signature and copy and paste it at the bottom of each post. I use My Live Signature program to create mine here. What do you think?

For WordPress Blog (WordPress.org Blog)

If you have a WordPress blog, you can just download LiveSig v0.4 plugin here to your PC (personal computer). LiveSig: WordPress Plug provides step-by-step instructions of how to install it. Basically you do as follows:

• Unzip LiveSigv0.4 file that you’ve just downloaded
• Then upload it to this folder: public_html/wordpress-content/plugins/ using any FTP
• Then login to your WordPress dashboard, and click on Plugins/LiveSig v0.4 to activate it
• Finally click on Settings/LiveSig/LiveSig Options. Make sure you select an appropriate user, enter the corresponding MyLiveSignature code and hit Save button to save it

It is Free to obtain MyLiveSignature code, but you need to register in that site to get it. For a small amount of money, you can get animated signature code there too.

Would you like to have a signature for your blog post? Why or why not? Please leave a comment below.

Related article
Adding a Signature To Personalize Your Blog Post

Get a Trackback Service for Your Blog

If you don’t know what a trackback service is, you may find out from this post. A trackback service is a mechanism that allows two blogs to communicate each other. Suppose you find an useful article and it is related to what you like to say, so you decide to write about it and link to this article in your post. If both blogs support a trackback service, then you may see your post’s permalink as well as excerpts showing up on the other blogger’s comment section. See the screenshot below:

This is fun since I am always curious of who links back to my blog. It is one way that I can track what post(s) of mine the other bloggers are interested in. Getting a trackback service can help you boost your blog/website traffic too. So it is important that your blog supports a trackback service.

Some blog softwares supporting automatic pinkback service are WordPress, Movable Type, Typo and Community Server. However, Google Blogger still doesn’t support a trackback service yet. Instead it provides a backlink service from Google Blog Search. You may find out how to get a third party trackback service for your Blogger from this article: Get a Trackback Service for Your New Blogger. Learn How?.

As for WordPress.com/WordPress.org blog, go to WordPress dashboard, click on Settings/Discussions/; make sure you tick Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks.) to enable it. See the screenshot below:

Would you like to get a trackback service for your blog? Why or why not? Please leave a comment below.

Related articles
How TrackBack Works
WordPress Trackback Tutorial

How to Add a Favicon to Your WordPress Blog?

Update: This is for a full version WordPress blog only. If you have a WordPress.com blog, this will not apply to you since you don’t have access to all the files.

Adding a favicon to your blog/website is one way to express yourself. It tells people a little bit about your blog/website too. Professional blogs/websites will never leave it out. If you don’t know what a favicon is, it is a 16×16 pixels or 32×32 pixels image (icon) that is displaced in your browser’s address bar. Check the screenshot below:

I just added a favicon to my WordPress blog. Now it is your turn to add yours. If you don’t know how, the following steps could be useful:

• First you need to have your image ready in your PC (personal computer).

• Second visit Create a Favicon With Free Favicon Generators Online and follow one of the instructions there to create a favicon.ico image file.

• Third download favicon.ico image file to your PC and unzip the file.

• Next upload the unzipped favicon.ico image to public_html/wp-content/themes/your-theme-name/. Make sure you change your-theme-name to be your actual theme’s name.

• Next login to your WordPress Admin dashboard; click on Appearance/Editor/Header (header.php).

• Then insert the following code in your header.php file; more specifically between <head> and </head>.

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/favicon.ico" />

• Finally save your header.php file.

If you use Internet Explorer as your browser, then holding Ctrl and hit R at the same time to reload your blog/website. If you use Mozilla Firefox as your browser, then holding Ctrl and hit F5 at the same time to refresh your blog/website. You should be able to see a favicon which is next to your URL now. However, some people’s favicon may not be shown immediately.

Would you like to add a favicon to your WordPress blog? Why or why not? Please leave a comment below.

Related article
How to Add a Favicon to Your New Blogger?

What WordPress Plugins do Most Bloggers Like to Use?

I searched around the Internet and found some very useful plugins most WordPress bloggers like to use. These plugins are for full version WordPress (WordPress.org) blogs. That means if you have WordPress.com blog, then you can’t use them. As you know plugins extend WordPress to do almost everything for your blog/website. Check out the following articles to see what plugins other bloggers have suggested:

• 10 WordPress Plugins Every Blog Should Be Using – This article’s author, Kyle Eslick, has listed 10 WordPress plugins that every blogger should be using. Reviews were provided for each plugin there.

• The Top Ten WordPress Plugins – The author has picked the top ten WordPress plugins out of hundreds. Those WordPress plugins will make your blogging life easier.

• WordPress Plugins Every Blogger Should Be Using – A collection of the most popular WordPress plugins such as find related posts, ultimate tag warrior, the best AdSense plugins, and more…

• 25 WordPress Plugins Every Blog Should Have – Wow! A list of 25 WordPress plugins for your blog/website? What a collection! Read through to see which plugins you might be interested.

• 10 Must-Have WordPress Plugins – One of the biggest advantages to use WordPress software is that it provides bloggers countless of plugins that you can use to extend your blog software.

• Top 10 WordPress Plugins – The wonderful thing about WordPress plugins is that it allows you to add so much functionalities to your blog/website. Leap to the site to see what WordPress plugins the author has rounded up for you.

• ^new Lists of favorite WordPress plugins – made by Lorelle a year ago. Lorelle found 48 lists out of 280 plugins that were recommended by other bloggers to their readers.

After I’ve read the above articles, I am amazed WordPress plugins can do so much for our blog/website. Maybe you have already had installed some of them. So what are your favorite plugins you are using now? or what plugins do you want to recommend to your readers? Please leave a comment below.

How to Get Your WordPress.com Blog Verified By Google?

Update (8/12/10):
Okay here is a good news for anyone who tries to get a WordPress.com blog verified by Google. Thanks to @frannie84 who pointed out in her comment that now you can login to your blog’s dashboard, click on tools/tools to submit your blog to Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo! Site Explorer, and Bing Webmaster Center. Enjoy!

A couple weeks ago, I wrote a post, How to Add Google Sitemap to WordPress.com Blog?, which showed you how you can submit your blog’s feed to Google Webmaster Tools account. Now you might wonder how you can get your WordPress.com blog verified by Google too. It seems it is impossible to do that because we don’t have controls of our files; but hope is always there. The article, Get your WordPress.com Blog Google Verified, will guide you the way of how to do that. Still I want to show you the way I got my WordPress.com blog verified here:

• Go to Google Webmaster Tools account. If you don’t have one, get a Free one here.

• Once you got one; sign in with it.

• If this is the first time you sign in, then type your blog’s/website’s URL (the address for your blog/website) in the text field and click on Add Site.

• Under Verified? Click on the button Verify.

• A new window is shown; saying Verification Status: NOT VERIFIED.

• In the drop-down list; choose Upload a HTML File.

• More information will be shown here. You have two choices to submit your blog/website:

1. I’ve created a file named google2ae4cd3d07afcb8a.html.
2. I’ve uploaded the file to http://yoursitename.wordpress.com/ and can view http://yoursitename.wordpress.com/google2ae4cd3d07afcb8a.html in my browser.

(google2ae4cd3d07afcb8a.html is given by Google. You’ll get your own)
(Make sure you replace yoursitename with your own domain name.)

• Since you know we don’t have controls of our files; so we’ll go for the choice 1.

• Go to your WordPress.com dashboard, click on Pages/Add New to create a new page named http://yoursitename.wordpress.com/google2ae4cd3d07afcb8a.html. This page can be empty. Make sure you change yoursitename to be your own domain name. (Keep it private once Google has verified your blog/website)

• Go back to your Google Webmaster Tools account and click on the button Verify.

Now wait for Google to update your status. Google Webmaster Tools will inform you once your blog/website are being verified. After you’ve succeeded, you will enjoy reports about your pages’ visibility on Google.

Would you like to get your WordPress.com blog verified by Google? Why or why not? Please leave a comment below.