Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Changing Recent Comments

First, I would like to thanks Hans for this beautiful blogger hacks. This posting will not tell you how to add the recent comments to your blog, you can find it here and the Indonesian version here. Those two versions are working great, but if you want to have a different look for your recent comments please read on. If you follow the first link, you will find something like this:


Remember to choose Custom CSS. Click Customize and then Add Widget To My Blog. You can then follow the rest of the instructions to add the widget. But, before you view your blog you have to edit your template and declare three classes called ".bbrecpost", ".bbrecpostsum" and ".bbwidgetfooter". You can put those three classes anywhere in the skin declaration of your blog. Or just find this code: "]]>" and put the classes above that. Your recent comments will surely work.
Now, if you would like to take it a little bit further you can customize the look of your recent comments. The script that is responsible for this recent comments looks like this:

You can find the actual script here. The script called a function named "showrecentcomments" and uses json feeds as the input. If you have a little knowledge of C++ or Java, this wouldn't be a problem because the code is really similar. What this function do actually is looping through all the comments and then write it one by one in your blog. In the actual script, each comment will be divided into there groups (bbrecpost for the header, bbrecpostsum for summary of the comment and bbwidgetfoot), hence you must provide those three classes mentioned above to give it a different style than the common recent comments. In my script I didn'use the ".bbwidgetfooter" and introduce a new class called ".bbrecdate". You can see the implementation right here in this blog. These are my classes:

.bbrecheader {
font-size: 80%;
font-family: verdana, Trebuchet;
padding-left: 2px;
line-height: 1em;
}

.bbrecheader a:hover {
font-size: 100%;
text-decoration: none;
}

.bbrecdate {
text-align: right;
border-bottom: 1px dashed $bordercolor;
border-left: 1px dashed $bordercolor;
border-right: 1px dashed $bordercolor;
line-height: 1.2em;
font-size: 80%;
width: 70px;
float: right;
}

.bbrecpostsum {
background: #F5F5F5;
font-size: 80%;
font-family: verdana, Trebuchet;
padding-left: 2px;
line-height: 1em;
border-top: 1px solid $bordercolor;
border-bottom: 1px solid $bordercolor;
}

.bbrecpostsum a:hover {
font-size: 100%;
text-decoration: none;
}

Everything is quite clear I guess, but you must have a variable called "bordercolor" declared in your variable declaration. You can also download my script here. Use it at your own risk or better download it and put it somewhere where you usually put your online files. A little note: the script is originally Hans's, you can use the script or modify it but please remember to put credit for the original author in your blog. If you have any question, just leave it in your comments. I would love to help you and get back to you soon.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Blogging

Having an internet cafe is opening up many doors for me. For an example, I can now start (again) my hobby of blogging. This hobby was stopped before because I was having trouble finding internet connection (which was free) after I resigned from my job as a programmer in a timeshare company. But now as I have internet connection 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, there are plenty of time for me to create new posts.

I started blogging when the blogging feature was introduced by Friendster. At that time, I have heard a little about blogging but didn't really know what it was. So to satisfy my curiosity I started blogging with Friendster. But after a while I found it that there was many limitations with Friendster's blogging feature, such as the need to change the look of your blog. At that time (I don't know if Friendster already improved their blogging feature now) Friendster didn't provide online tools to modify your background color, font color, or changing your header background with image that kind of stuffs. Then I found out about Blogger. It was like founding heaven for me, because you can use the predefined themes and then edit its html coding. Changing the color of your background and font was really simple as there is an online tools that you can use and even preview the changes before saving them. The introduction of sidebar also amazed me. Inserting new widgets to the sidebar is really simple, all you need to is a simple click. I have been using Blogger as my blogging place until now. I've heard about many other site which provides blogging such as Wordpress. It also has many big fans. I will try to use it later, but for now I am satisfied with Blogger.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Profile Suns Warrior III

This is the youngest of all Suns Warrior: Gustu or known as Bonbon by his friends. A bit eccentric, the guy who claims to be a vocalist of an unknown band, is the latest administrator to join with Suns.NET. At first, it seems that he is irresponsible but after a long hard fought you can be sure that he is a true administrator now. Here is the complete profile of Bonbon.

Name : Ida Bagus Putu Ekawadi
Nickname : Gustu or Bonbon
Birthday : 1986
Occupation : University Student
University : Udayana University
Status : Still Looking for a Partner (anybody interested?)
Friendster : Bony Eka


Sunday, October 07, 2007

How To Increase Your Page Rank?

Many bloggers would have asked the same question as myself, how do you increase your Google PageRank? Well, let's not get too hasty right now. I mean do you already know what a PageRank is? Maybe you have some clue about this thing, but I'll try to expain here for you.

PageRank is a system for ranking web pages developed by Google's founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University. So Google uses PageRank to determine which site will they viewed on the first page of a search conducted by a person. What really tricky is how does Google give a PageRank for a site. To determine its PageRank, Google analyze the link structure of the site. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important." Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages' relative importance. Get the meaning? So to improve your PageRank you have to get other sites link to your site. It would be really excellence if you have links from sites who have higher PageRank than yours. By using this methodology some sites on the internet act as a provider to exchange link within their members. LinkALizer is an example of such sites. You have to register as a member to use their service. To register you only need to fill in the url of your site and your email address. They will then send an invitation to exchange links with other sites. You can accept or reject the invitation. Should you accept, you must put the other site's link in your site. That way, the other site's PageRank will go higher and so as yours.

Well, that is really the simplest way to make your PageRank higher. Optimizing the keywords of your site is also another way. But it requires a skill in SEO. Maybe we'll talk about SEO some other time when I'm finally understand what it is about.