Facebook Timeline Cover: Create Hot Designs!

Facebook's new Timeline profile design have almost replaced all old profiles and offers a complete different social touch. We have shared detailed tutorials on how to customize the look, colors and layout of Facebook and now its time to customize Facebook timeline Cover Photos. New creative ways of Changing the look of timeline is at its peak. Some online tools have been created that lets you to automatically generate a Cool Cover for your new profile. These generated covers fit perfectly in your timeline with proper width and height dimensions. Using these tools you can make amazing cover photos either using your memorable photos or a cool designed version of your Profile title or your name.

I am listing below 4 great website tools that will help you make beautiful Cover photos for your FB Profiles. Lets check them out then!

FB Cover PIX - Facebook Cover Gallery

FB Cover Pix is created exclusively for uploading, exploring, and sharing cover photos that can be used on Facebook's new Timeline profile design. It offers a large gallery of downloadable images which you can upload to Facebook and add them as your cover pages.

myFBCovers - Facebook Cover Gallery

myFBCovers is an interesting site that does not only allow you to create a Facebook Cover but you can also share your personalized cover with myFBcovers members and can expect to win a cash prize up to $50 per week and $100 per month if your cover gets the most downloads. You can also take inspiration from thousands of cool designed covers and can see which colors and design is downloaded the most. I am going to design one, will you? :)

It allows you to crop and adjust your cover size. You can also add effects like Polaroid and panorama. It has all possible Cover categories like Abstract, nature, celebrities, holidays and much more!

TheSiteCanvas - Generates a Profile Cover

The intro image that you see at the top of this post is created using thesitecanvas. It is my favorite because it lets you convert your simple Facebook Name into a beautiful Movie like Title Design. You can select which design would you like for your name or can you can even choose your photos to give them a unique look and pattern. Do try it out!

Facebook Profile Covers

Facebook Profile Covers also lets you choose a Design cover for yourself out of 1000 available profile covers. It is pretty much similar to myFBcovers but it does not offer any cover Contest. You can only create and download your designs but can not make Money online with your covers. It is still worth try due to its beautiful colors and variations.  It though contains a watermark on all designs.

I hope you find these tools helpful in branding and personalizing your timeline layouts. I will be posting more on customizing Timeline profile. Peace and blessings pals! :)

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The Biggest Lie On The Internet Disclosed - TOS Simplified

It is generally accepted that acknowledging "I have read, and agree to the terms of services..." is the biggest lie on the internet. I don't read them, and you don't read them (most probably). Nobody reads them, and you know it, even if most people won't admit it just to sound smart. Even the companies who write them know it. Well, I don't blame them. The fact of the matter is, most ToS are freakishly long, and heavily laden with legal jargon only lawyers are supposed to understand. Some ToS are just plain ridiculous. Well, now there's a service, TOS-DR, that intends to end this rule of ignorance by bringing some companies' (like Facebook, Twitter, Skype etc) ToS closer to the layman user's level of comprehension.

Many websites, even the really reputable ones, include some ridiculous and highly questionable clauses that they know most of their users won't read. For example, did you know that Skype doesn't give you a right to leave the service? (crazy, i know right?) Some can even deactivate your account without notice. And if they sell your email ID to some imaginary widow who wants to share, and put some of her money in your bank account, you can't sue them over the scam. Enter, TOS;DR.

What is TOS;DR?

TOS;DR, short for Terms of Service; Didn't read says it all in its punch-line: “I have read and agree to the Terms” is the biggest lie on the web. We aim to fix that. It is a service that will do the job for you by scrutinizing a company's TOS, and then rating it in terms of user-friendliness and fairness. The project from Unhosted takes inspiration fro the Creative Commons, which makes it a point to provide summaries of its licenses for the layman.

The whole idea revolves around flags or badges assigned to each clause in a ToS. A company's ToS is first read and analyzed by the TOD;DR team, and then summarized for an easier reading. The clauses are then assigned a flag, with a green thumbs-up as a good sign, and a red X meaning the clause is highly questionable. Companies are rated as well based on these flags, among other things. A grade from A (best) to E (worst) is given.

Following is an image comparing two services on TOS;DR, Twitpic and SeenThis. Twitpic was given a place at the rock bottom with an E, mainly due to its objectionable terms such as "Twitpic takes credit for your content", which means your photos can be sold without you receiving even a penny. On the other hand, SeenThis scored an A due to its friendly and fair terms. According to project lead, Hugo Roy, Wikipedia is an exemplary service for them, mainly due to its clear summary of its TOS and its practice of soliciting feedback from users before a change in terms. Wikipedia hasn't been graded yet.

Many other websites haven't been graded either. The service is still in its infancy, and wasn't supposed to be officially launched until September this year. According to Roy, it's tedious and hard work. "iTunes’s ToS are longer than MacBeth," He adds. "I don’t want to read bad ToS for the rest of my days."

The service is aimed at educating people about what they're getting into. It's not legal advice according to them, rather, just an opinion. "What we do here is not legal advice. We’re only expressing opinions," Roy explains. "But I’d say to TwitPic or Facebook, sure, go ahead and sue me," adding that it’s probably not in their best interest to "have trials about how bad their ToS are for users." Like always, we like a new idea that could change the way people think. And this could very well be it, and hopefully will induce companies to improve their ToS for users.

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MoneyPak: Send Money To Paypal without Bank Account

PayPal is the largest payment gateway in the world, and millions of people are using it to send and receive money. But PayPal needs you to have a credit card, or at least a bank account for you to add money to your PayPal account and then transfer or spend it. If you don't have a bank account or a credit card, then you can still add funds to PayPal using GreenDot MoneyPak. With it, you can either load money to an issued PrePaid card, or add money directly into your PayPal account without getting into the hassle of bank transfers and what not. It is perhaps the only way to add money without a bank account.

What is MoneyPak?

MoneyPak is a great and efficient financial service that lets you use load your PayPal account with money with live cash. Originally, it was intended for GreenDot issued PrePaid cards, which work just like Payza PrePaid or any other PrePaid cards. You could buy a MoneyPak, and add it directly to the PrePaid card, which could then be used to make purchases or transfer money to another card. Adding money to PayPal works the same way.

MoneyPak is a convenient way of adding funds to PayPal. You don't need to have a bank account or a credit card. There are no bank fees or Credit Card interest charges. This is the only way you can add funds to PayPal without a bank account. And once you've added the money, you can transfer or use it instantly!

How to add money to PayPal?

It is quite simple really. You first have to buy a MoneyPak. You can buy this in the U.S or abroad from any major retailer such as Walmart, Walgreens, CVS/pharmacy, Rite Aid, Kmart, 7-Eleven, Kroger and Meije etc. You buy this with live money, so no credit card or bank transfer hassle. It's your choice on how much money you want to put into the MoneyPak, which you then pay at the counter.

Once purchased, simply log on to your PayPal account, and click on Add Money. Select the MoneyPak option from there, and add the required information. You may first need to provide your name, address, date of birth and Social Security Number so that you can be verified by GreenDot. You can then add your purchased MoneyPak into your PayPal account, and the money will be transferred almost instantly.

Here's a video explaining the process.

Fees and limits

You can put any amount of money into a MoneyPak ranging from $20 to $500. At Walmart, you can add up-to $1,000. Each MoneyPak has its own convenience fee of $4.95. For security reasons, PayPal restricts the amount you can add through MoneyPaks to $4,000 per month. There are no other hidden charges for adding funds into PayPal.

Unfortunately, MoneyPak is only available in places where there is a partner retail store. You can check whether it's available in your area by visiting the MoneyPak Store Locator.

Once your money is transferred from your MoneyPak to PayPal, it will instantly be added to your PayPal account balance. You can then check your PayPal balance to see for yourself that the money has arrived. Now you can spend your money anywhere PayPal is accepted, including ebay!

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Easy Settings For URL Parameters in Webmaster Tools

Google is the world's largest search engine. It crawls millions of webpages everyday. But one problem it faces is duplicate URLs on a website linking to the same content. For instance,  the URLs example.com/blog/category/news and example.com/blog/index.php?category=news can both point to the same page, hence creating duplicates, and reducing site efficiency for Google's crawler. In the interest of good SEO, it is important that you optimize your URLs to avoid duplication. To this end, Google Webmaster Tools now gives you a Configure URL Parameters feature, which will help you recommend actions for the GoogleBot crawler to take, so as to increase your site's crawl efficiency. It will also lessen the resource burden on Google that goes into the crawling of your website. In this post, we will show you how to set easy settings for URL Parameters.

Update:  Read: Optimize URL Parameters For Blogger

What are URL parameters and how do they increase URL count?

URL parameters are parameters, or values, passed into a URL for searching or refining. For example, if you search for something on this blog, you will see a URL like this; http://www.mybloggertricks.com/p/search.html?MBT=search_query, where MBT=search_query is the URL parameter. They usually come in a key/value pair, with MBT being the key, and search_query being the value. You can manually search this blog by replacing search_query with anything you want to search for.

You might have seen eCommerce websites, where a product can be found via multiple ways. For example, example.com/tablets/apple/ipad.php and example.com/tablets/index.php?make=apple&product=ipad will both point to an iPad. Notice that multiple URL parameters have been used, separated by an ampersand (&). There can be more parameters, such as color=black, 3g=no, and so on.

Here is a video from Google summarizing what URL parameters are, and how to configure them in Google Webmaster Tools.

Types of URL parameters

Before you dive into configuring URL parameters for your blog, take a look at the different types of URL parameters. This will help you in the configuration process. There are two basic types of URL parameters.

• Parameters that don't change your content - These parameters have no effect of your actual content, and are simply for tracking purposes to let site owners know where a certain user has come from, or which affiliate id has referred him. E.g. example.com/index.php?affiliateid=12345, and so on.
• Parameters that change your content - These parameters will change the content on your page. Take a look at our search bar. The URL parameter MBT=search_query effects what is displayed on the site. If I write MBT=SEO, it will show me a list of posts that has the keyword SEO in it. It I change the word SEO, then it will show me something else, hence it has changed the content. As per Google's URL parameter configuration tool, there are 5 different types of URL parameters that change a page's content.
• Sorts - These are used to sort a list of items according to a certain value, e.g. sort=price_ascending
• Narrows - These refine a search and narrow it down to lesser content from a larger set. For example, color=black
• Specifies - These determine what content will be displayed on a page. For example, make=apple&product=ipad. Our example with the search feature on this blog falls under this category
• Paginates - Displays a specific page in your website. E.g. page=3.
• Translates - Displays the content in a specific language. E.g. lang=en

Configuring URL parameters in Webmaster Tools

Before starting off, it is important to note that you can only configure URLs that have parameters in the key=value format. URLs that have a different structure are 'ineligible'. For e.g. example.com/page/3 is not eligible, but example.com/index.php?page=3 is.

To configure URL parameter actions for your site, log onto your Google Webmaster Tools account, and select URL Parameters under Configuration on the left sidebar. You will either see an option to add a parameter, or you will see a message telling you that Google has no problems with your site.

Caution! If your website is okay, then you should leave it at that! If you accidentally set a site-wide block, then it could result in your pages getting de-indexed from Google. So beware of what you do from now on.

Parameters that do not change content

The first thing you should do is, think of all the URL parameters that you know don't change your content. These can include affiliate ids (affiliateid=12345), sources (source=facebook), tracking id (track-id=abc123), and so on. Add each of these parameters (whichever may apply), and then mark them as "Does not affect content".

Parameters that change content

For parameters that change content, select the appropriate option. You will see more options pop up. You can tell Google how that parameter changes the content by selecting from among the five types of parameters we discussed about that change content. You also have the "Other" option for parameters that do not fit into the given five behaviors. You cal also tell GoogleBot how to handle that particular parameter. Here are some of the response types.

• Let GoogleBot decide - This is the standard option if you don't know what you're dealing with, or if you can't decide how a certain parameter should be handled. You will be safe with this option selected :0
• Crawl Every URL - Every URL with this parameter will be crawled, as Google will identify each unique value. In our MBT search example, MBT=SEO and MBT=blogging are two different URLs, and should be treated accordingly.
• Crawl Only URLs with Value - Only the URLs with the specified values in their parameters will be crawled. For example, if I add only the value SEO in the MBT parameter configuration, Google will only crawl URLs with MBT=SEO in them, but not MBT=blogging. This is only useful for sorting purposes, where you can only ask Google to crawl your content that's ordered in an ascending order, and not descending.
• Crawl No URLs - Beware! If used wrong, this could have catastrophic results. URLs with the specified parameters will not be crawled at all! If I select this option for the MBT parameter, Google won't be able to access our search results.

What option to use with what parameter types?

Sorts need to be handled with care. If a parameter is never used in a URL by default, then you can select "Crawl No URLs". Otherwise, Sorts generally fall under the "Crawl Only URLs With Value" category. Sorts offer the same content, with just the order changed, which doesn't make a bit of a difference to Google. So between sort=ascending and sort=descending, you should go with either one, but not both.

Narrows are tricky as well. Mostly, they select data from a larger set, making the narrowed data somewhat redundant. For example, lets say example.com/search?product=shoes&color=black shows some 50 black shoes at a store. But example.com/search?product=shoes&color=black&price-from=10 may show just 5 shoes that are above $10. This smaller data-set isn't of much use to Google. So you can select the Crawl No URL option. But again, be sure to double-check your options, because wrong implementation can lead to disaster =/

The rest of the parameter types, Specifies, Paginates and Translates generally fall under the "Crawl Every URL" option.

If you are not sure about something, just select "Let GoogleBot  decide". Don't carry out experiments of your own! If you have questions, feel free to ask them here, and maybe we could help solve them. Cheers :)

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Optimize URL Parameters For Blogger in Webmaster Tools

You were recently presented with a post on Configuring URL Parameters in webmaster tools but details specific to BlogSpot blogs will be shared today because incorrectly optimizing URLs could make your blog posts and pages stop appearing in Google Search. We must congratulate Google for making it easy for webmasters to more easily control how their websites be crawled unlike Bing which never stops begging to optimize "Query Parameters for Normalization" without even specifying what parameters to ignore!

URL parameters help Google to crawl your site more efficiently and give priority to your  more useful content by controlling the parameters that effect the site content. In blogging platforms like Wordpress and BlogSpot, there are several parameters, that effect the page content. Famous amongst them are replytocom, Showcomment, commentPage, m and utm parameters. We will be guiding you through all this headache to make it pretty simple to optimize URLs for Blogger blogs and enhance your SEO.

Note: To understand this post clearly kindly first read about some related terminologies in this post:

• Google URL Parameters Explained

Some Important Parameters

To check what parameters Google has found out on your blog, simply log into your webmasters account  and then click Configuration > URL Parameters

You will then see a list of around 7-8 parameters for which you need to specify their behavior. The number of these parameters could be greater if you are using Google Custom Search

Some of these parameters are:

1. showComment       
2. m
3. commentPage
4. utm_source
5. utm_medium
6. utm_campaign
7. max-results
8. updated-max
9. share

Parameters follow a URL with a question mark. See an example of the showComment parameter.

http://www.mybloggertricks.com/2012/08/website-testing-effects-performance.html?showComment=1345044786974

This parameter tells Googlebot about the location of a comment on the page by comment id. In blogger each comment has an alpha numeric id that starts with alphabet "c" and contains numbers as the remaining characters.

Optimization Settings

To make things fast, safe and easy I am sharing below the webmaster sheet for MBT blog to give you an idea of what options to choose for each entry. You will find Edit and Reset link to the right of each parameter. Make the settings for each parameter one by one as shown in the snapshot that follows.

Remember these points:

• This method will only make crawling easy for Googlebot and will not make any of your pages disappearing from search.
• You need to set Effect and Crawl entries only
• To see the structure of the URL you can click "show example URLs" in the popup window to pre-check how the URL looks like.
• Effect None here means that the parameter does not change the content of the page.
• Effect Paginates here is used for CommentPage and m because both are simple identifiers to show page number for comments greater than 200 in Blogger
• Effect Sorts is chosen for max-results and updated-max because both sorts the page content in order of time and date.
• For parameters we were not too sure we chose "Let Googlebot decide" instead of choosing "No URL"

The snapshot below will make your task even more easy. Carefully set the options as shown. 

Will it reduce Crawl Errors?

Fortunately yes it does! Most of the errors are caused by duplicate URLS or due to absence of canonical link attributes. This method makes it extremely easy to control the URL structure of your Blog within your webmasters account.

Got Questions?

I have kept the tutorial short this time because specific details had already been shared in our previous post. If you have any question that is troubling you or if I could not clarify any step clearly please let us know by posting your query in the comment box below. I hope this tutorial helps blogger users to make their web pages more search engine friendly and smoothen the path for spiders to dig deep.

Answer these simple questions:

How far do you think configuring URL parameters would effect your Search Engine Traffic? Can you use this guide to normalize parameters for Bing?

Peace and blessings buddies. :)

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transfering your blog

Whenever, we think about the history of most productive Blogging platform the first word which clicks our mind is either WordPress or Blogger. Still lots of Well-known bloggers are in doldrums whether to select WordPress, or they should try their luck with Blogger. Blogger and WordPress have been competitors since an elongated period but in the meantime WordPress has developed tremendously, in spite of getting introduced before Blogger. Mohammad has covered lots of posts regarding avoiding Blogger to WordPress conversion but one should always know how to do something, so we may continue to make use of the resources. So in this article, we will cover How To Migrate Blogger to WordPress Blog without losing a single SERP Ranking or Page Rank Juice.

Mohammad himself started his dream Blog on Blogger (MyBloggerTricks) which become the biggest hit of the decade and later on he put everything on the line by starting yet another blog with totally different niche (SmartEarningMetods) but this time he chooses WordPress, and stunningly the results were pretty much similar. This proves that Blogging Platform doesn’t matters a lot. The only thing which is responsible for your success is Quality, Quality, and Quality. 

Note: This guide does not motivate you to shift your blogger blog to Wordpress. It is only an instruction guide for those who are well aware of the challenges faced at Wordpress platform.

Main Goal:

Assume you are currently using a low quality domain i.e. abc.blogspot.com and you want to migrate it from Blogger BlogSpot Blog to WordPress (Self-Hosted Blog) with a professionalized domain i.e. www.mybloggertricks.com

Problems You Might Face During The Migration:

• When you transform from Blogger to WordPress, the chances are exceedingly high that you might lose your quality subscribers i.e. Feedburner until or unless you redirect your BlogSpot Feeds to your new WordPress Blog.
• Rarely your few posts might be ranked well in Google search engine, but after Blogger to WordPress conversion you might notice a noticeable decline in your SERP Rankings. Therefore, you have to keep your Cool until or unless ranking get backs to normal.
• Human visitors will feel a bit stressed when they will try to visit your blog with OLD bookmarked URLs, if you don’t permanently redirect your old URLs to new one.
• You need to Learn WordPress in order to get full command on it.  This is the most difficult part to get into plugins and theme. However, experience lead us to success so don’t hesitate and maintain patience.

Ultimate Solutions:

The problem listed above might appear magnificent, but we can minimize their effect by utilizing effective methods. We will simply redirect our OLD blog posts to NEW one so search engine bots don’t get confused in identifying whether we are on Blogger or WordPress.

In this tutorial, we will learn how to switch from Blogger to WordPress without losing your major SERP ranking. We will also discuss how to redirect our old feed to New WordPress Feed, so let’s get back to work.

Step by Step Guide

Before we get started, it will be splendid if you create a dummy blog for experiments. By doing this, you will not only eliminate mistakes and by chance if anything goes wrong you will have the certain satisfaction that you are not working on your main Blog. This will also minimize your errors in the main Blogger to WordPress transformation. Don’t forget to take a Backup of your Blogger Blog i.e. Posts Data as well as Template.

Step#1: If you don’t have a Hosting then what are doing here go ahead and get a cheap domain, as well as Hostgator hosting. We will recommend you to go with Hostgator because those guys are always ready to help.

Step#2: Now you have to import your entire Blogger Blog to WordPress

• Go to WP-admin Panel >> Import >> Tools >> Blogger
• Now give permission to WordPress to access your existing Blogger account by pressing the button which says “Authorize”.
• After granting permission you able to see list of multiple blogs attached to your certain Blogger account, just import that blog which you want to migrate to WordPress by pressing “IMPORT” button. Now after the blog is completely imported give admin right.

Step#3: Now Copy the following PHP coding and save it into an empty notepad, renaming it to “Blogger.php”. After that you have to use CPanel or any other FTP software to upload it to Your WordPress Theme Directory. Keep in mind you have to Upload it in your Theme Directory i.e. WP-content/themes/your-theme where your-theme is representing your theme’s name.

<?php

/*

Template Name: blogger

*/

global $wpdb;

$old_url = $_GET['q'];

if ($old_url != "") {

$permalink = explode("blogspot.com", $old_url);

$q = "SELECT guid FROM $wpdb->posts LEFT JOIN $wpdb->postmeta ".

"ON ($wpdb->posts.ID = $wpdb->postmeta.post_id) WHERE ".

"$wpdb->postmeta.meta_key='blogger_permalink' AND ".

"$wpdb->postmeta.meta_value='$permalink[1]'";

$new_url = $wpdb->get_var($q)? $wpdb->get_var($q) : "/";

header ("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");

header("Location: $new_url");

}

?>

Step#4: After Uploading the PHP file to your WordPress directory

• Go to WordPress Admin >> Add new Page.
• In the title write blogger while keeping your post body empty (Don’t use capital “B” in blogger)
• Now select “blogger” from the templates tool in the sidebar menu and then publish the page.
• Make sure that your domain structure looks like this www.xyz.com/blogger.

Step#5: Now you have to redirect your current BlogSpot Blog to WordPress but if you don’t redirect the existing blog Search bot will mark you as spam because you are duplicating your content for the sake of traffic. Just Copy the following Chuck of code and

• Go to Blogger >> Template >> Revert to Classis Template >>
• Now you will be able to see a text box, just paste the Code there and save your template. Remember: Replace http://www.mybloggertricks.com/ with your domain name and don’t forget to align http:// as well as trailing slashes with your domain name.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en" dir="<$BlogLanguageDirection$>">
<head>
<title><$BlogPageTitle$></title>
<script type="text/javascript">
<MainOrArchivePage>
window.location.href='http://mybloggertricks.com/'
</MainOrArchivePage>
<Blogger><ItemPage>
window.location.href='http://mybloggertricks.com/blogger/?q=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>'
</ItemPage></Blogger>
</script>
<MainPage><link rel="canonical" href="http://mybloggertricks.com/" /></MainPage>
<Blogger><ItemPage>
<link rel="canonical" href="http://mybloggertricks.com/blogger/?q=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>" />
</ItemPage></Blogger>
</head><body>
<div style="border:#ccc 1px solid; background:#eee; padding:20px; margin:80px;">
<p>This page has moved to a new address.</p>
<h1>
<MainOrArchivePage><a href="http://mybloggertricks.com"><$BlogTitle$></a></MainOrArchivePage>
<Blogger><ItemPage>
<a href="http://mybloggertricks.com/blogger/?q=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>"><$BlogItemTitle$></a>
</ItemPage></Blogger>
</h1>
</div> </body></html>
<!-- replace mybloggertricks.com with your WordPress site URL --->

Congratulations! You are successfully migrated to WordPress without losing a single piece of Search engine rankings I guess that deserves Cheers!

Redirecting your old Feed URL to WordPress Feeds:

When you migrate from Blogger from WordPress, your Feed URL might change so to redirect your existing feeds to WordPress

• Go to Blogger >> Settings >> Site Feed >> Custom Feed >>
• And now write your new WordPress Feed URL and save it.

Got Questions?

So I Hope you have enjoyed the roller-coaster rider , If you have any problem regarding Blogger to WordPress transformation feel free to leave your comments in the comment box below. Till then Peace, blessings and Happy Migrating.

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