Jump Breaks are useful even if you only show one Post per Screen

This article explains why it is useful to put jump-breaks into your post, even if normally you only show one Post on each "page" (ie screen).

Types of Blogger template / theme

This article is about the types of templates / themes that Blogger has, and how you can work out what type of template you have on your own blog. 

Creating a Shadow Blog

This article is about how to make a "shadow blog" - one that has the same structure as our real one, but less content, and which used only for testing.   

Making a Custom Map in Google Maps

This article is about creating custom maps using Google maps.  It supports another article about putting maps into Blogger.  But the techniques apply whenever you want to generate a Google map of your own, and embed it into a web-site etc.

Making a Gadget that looks like a Post

This article is about how to make a gadget display (almost) all the things you can put into a post in Blogger.

Making one post always come up first

One way to make a "Home Page" for your Blogger blog is to simply make sure that one particular Post always comes up first when someone visits your blog.    (This approach only works for Posts, it does not work for Pages.

Blocking categories of AdSense ads from your Blog

This article is about how to restrict the types of advertisements that AdSense places on your blog.  
 
If you don't have an adult-content warning flag on your blog, then doing this is almost essential for AdSense users, so that you comply with Blogger's Terms and Conditions and ban ads about sex / sexuality.

Changing colors in your Blog

This article is about changing the colors used in your Blogger blog.
 

The Law and Your Blog

This is a very brief look at some the legal issues that bloggers (using Blogger and other tools too) should be aware of.  

I am NOT a lawyer.  This is not legal advice.   If you need legal advice, consult a lawyer who's familiar with the internet, blogging, and the legal system in your country. 

AdSense and AdWords - what's the difference?

This article explains the difference between AdSense and AdWords, from a Blogger's perspective.

Blogger and Other Google Products - an oveview

This is a listing of other Google products that may be helpful to Blogger users.  Each product is briefly described, with links to the help centre, help forum, and other useful hints-and-tips article.

Inserting an animated picture into your blog

This article has detailed steps for inserting an animated picture into your blogspot blog.  

Chitika | Select - expanding beyond search-traffic

On Mon 8 March, Chitika are introducing Chitika Select, a new advertising product that displays ads to some additional readers.  This article is an initial overview of the implications for Blogger users.


Background:

Previously I've given an overview of Chitika.

At the time I wrote it, ads were only shown to visitors from the US and Canada (based on their IP address) who got to the website by searching.   That has now changed.


What's Changing?
From Mon 8 March 2010, Chitika are introducing a new product called Chitika | Select, which they're describing as an upgrade to Chitkia | Premium.  Under this new approach, ads will be displayed to readers who get to your site by search AND to others who some statistical techniques have predicted are more likely to click on ads.


Impact for Blogger users and readers.

On Mon 8 March 2010, all existing Chitka | Premium ads will be upgraded to Chitika | Select - unless you opt-out of this by logging in to your account, going in to the My Account tab, and ticking the option(s) at the very bottom of the page.

Your US and Canada readers may start to see more ads:

• Whether or not the do depends on their behaviour (and I'm guessing it will take a while to work out what sort of factors mean that people are predicted by be ad-clickers).
• Worst-case, seeing more ads could convince more readers to install ad-blocker software.

Some ads (but not all of them) may look different - we don't have any details about this yet, and I'd guess won't until 8 March at least.

The announcements say that Chitika | Select ads will include both pay-per-click and pay-per-impression (CPM) banner and image ads, but they don't actually say whether the latter are a new feature being introduced with Select or not.  The way that the opt-out feature is presented makes me think that they're probably new, though.


What's not changing:

Readers who

• didn't get to the blog by searching, and 
• who also aren't included in the group that Select ads are shown to

will continue to not see any Chitika ads:   the ad-space simply collapses, without showing anything else or displaying alternative ads

The alternative-ads feature will continue to work for Chitika Premium ads, but it wont' be there for Select.

There are some other Chitika products apart from Premium, but they're more focussed to shopping sites, so probably not used by Blog-spot users, and they don't appear to be affected.

For now, Chitika Select is only available for US/Canada readers.   They say that the technology introduced behind Select will let them change this in the future, but it's not changing for now.

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Related Articles:



Chitika Overview

Putting Chitika ads into your Blog

Extra customization of Chitkia ads

And from Chitika:

• The blog-posting announcing the change
• Their white paper giving more background
• Opting out of Chitika Select
• Your questions Answered

Blogger and key non-Google products: an overview

This article is about other Google products that may be helpful to Blogger users.  Each product is briefly described, with links to the help centre, help forum, and other useful hints-and-tips article.