Book Review: Blogger – Beyond the Basics

Blogging is easy – blogging right is difficult! A little help is always useful if you are planning to blog right.. The book “Blogger – Beyond the Basics” by Lee Jordan proved to be my bridge from blogging to blogging brilliantly..

The book is for users who have just entered the blogging field and would like to create a name for themselves in the blogosphere. The book quickly ramps you up from beginner to an advanced level user with ability to derive maximum out of your blog.

Blogger This book is for those who want to use Google’s Blogging platform – Blogger. However, many tips in the book go beyond blogger and are generally useful for anyone. This is the first book that i have found in the market that covers blogging. Frankly I have also thought about writing a book on blogging but never went beyond the initial TOC.

The key to blogging (as you may have heard) is content. Without appealing content, a blog will not get readers. This book is about getting the platform right so that your content can create maximum impact. At one place in Chapter 9 the author does provide interesting suggestions on how to discover content that you could be writing based on the keywords.

The book starts by introducing a fictional business that wants to ensure its social presence in Chapter I. The next chapter logically dives into creation and customization of the site look. It is here that they cover conversion to a 3 column layout (my absolute favourite!).. The interesting part of the book is inclusion of 3rd party tools and sites apart from blogger platform itself making it relevant to the person rather than the tool.. chapter 3 is all about social bookmarking including introduction to quintessential feedburner.com.. The theory on blogging isn’t left out as it makes its appearance in Chapter 4 and covers blogrolls, backlinks and suggestions on how to get ur blog interesting.. The blogger platform let’s you extend the functionality e.g. polling, slideshow, 3rd party badges on the site using widgets.. if ur interested, they even introduce you to setting up ecommerce on blogger.. for the tinkerers, you can get ur fill by learning to create custom widgets! yes, it is not that difficult (but u don’t know that if you haven’t read this book :)).. Web 2.0 is driven by RSS and the guts are opened up for you in Chapter 6. by now, you are expected to know everything that is there to know technically about this platform..

so how about making some money like a pro? Chapter 7 gets u started with google adsense & leaves u with more options of making money $$.. Chapter 8 covers j0439350 analytics and measuring site performance with google analytics.. and if u thought adding the javascript was all there was to this chapter, you will be surprised by the comprehensive coverage of analytics here. Oh and they don’t leave you just yet.. the final pillar is the SEO and that is taken care of in Chapter 9.. some great tools and techniques are presented here and this is generic to all bloggers on any platform.. and if you are only running a blog, you are done with here. for all corporate honchos with their static corporate websites, the final chapter 10 covers integrating blog with their corporate website..

Since i have been a blogger user for long, this book proved extremely useful for me. The book is complete with required screenshots and contains code where required. The screenshots are useful and the code provided immediately relevant.

The language of the book is a tard dry but I am ok with it (after having read numerous technical manuals).

While the book covers a lot of ground I would have loved some case studies on popular blogs that would have customised blogger. Information on how regular users have found blogger useful for them would also have been a welcome addition.

One can only gauge the relevance of the book based on the impact it has had on one’s blog. For me I have implemented the following after reading the book:

  1. Converted my layout to 3 column and expanded my template to 1024 pixels
  2. Put up a comments feed (i had been looking for this for sometime now)
  3. Added a sitemap for the blog
  4. Verified the blog with google and live search webmaster tools
  5. Changed the blog XML Validation from Strict to Transitional
  6. Changed the Facebook profile from vertical to horizontal

I am sure that there is something for you in the book that is waiting to be discovered. really, this is worth a read if you are in the blogging world and are using the blogger platform!

and if you are in the Delhi/ NCR region, do remember to setup urself with fellow bloggers in Delhi at www.delhibloggers.in.. u can work out the finer details with other folks from the group…

MY RATING: 5 on 5

Technorati tags: ,

Comments

Lee said…
Thanks for posting a review of the book on Amazon! It's always great to see what people have to say. This book was a lot of fun to work on and I hope many people find it useful.
August 22, 2008 at 4:41:00 PM GMT+5:30
valrossie said…
TCFS is a sub-programme under the Innovation and Technology Support Programme of the ITF. It aims to enhance the level of collaboration on R&D between organizations in Hong Kong and Guangdong Province. Projects funded by the TCFS will have to demonstrate an element of Guangdong/Hong Kong cooperation (e.g. collaboration between research institutes and enterprises in Guangdong and Hong Kong)
------------------
valrossie
Internet marketing
September 8, 2008 at 6:56:00 PM GMT+5:30
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Community Star Discussions and Future

In my continuing discussion with Community Stars across the country, I had a discussion today with Sadashiv. Though he works out of chennai and was here for a short trip, he found time today to discuss the opportunities for Community Star program to improve on. Some of thoughts we generated out of the discussion are as follows: 1. Community Stars are disengaged 'cause of lack of communication with them from MS. Better communication channels need to be developed. 2. Award experience and delivery of the Community Star benefits leave a lot to be desired. 3. Community Stars feel that MS is not laying enough importance on Community Stars and do not value their contributions much. More information needs to flow to CSs. From our end, we are doing the following: 1. Launch an extranet portal exclusively for Community Stars. We will host issue submission on this site. Also, we will share opportunities via this site e.g. beta opportunities 2. Re-launch the Community Star distributi
Read more

Making Vista Search your PST Files

Vista can index a lot of files and for some reason it doesn’t index the MS Outlook files.. maybe it is as Outlook is already doing the same.. in case you still want to search PST from Vista Search here is what you can do: Go to the Control Panel Choose "Indexing Options" Click on the "Advanced" button Click on the "File Types" tab Check the checkbox next to "PST" to include it in the search Select the bullet next to the option "Index Properties and File Contents" Click OK and OK again on the message that appears. This is especially useful for information workers like me who have large PST files and are forced to archive from time to time … indexing the archives would return the information from these forgotten folders as well :) Tip taken from On10.net Technorati tags: Outlook , PST , search
Read more

Technocratical Society

In the past days, I haven’t been blogging. A lot has happened in that time – terrorist attack in Mumbai, MNS lost track, global recession set in and Congress advanced in the country. Here’s an ode to the state of the society as viewed by my nephew, Shantanu Chandra who is in Class XII, Amity International, Gurgaon. The lines below capture the times prevailing and the need for us to drop the “chalta hai” attitude but with caution: This techie world of gizmo and gadget This eerie feeling of incongruous widget Which gives us pleasure and takes pain Along with it makes us insane; Absurdness to such a horizon from where one would never fall And still people call you “Microsoft—…That’s all” A teen like me can’t do without a mobile-call Even though I know it is killing my brain cells, after all; This techie world of gizmo and gadget Makes a non-techie guy weird and hollow The bureaucrat are more concerned about their Sunday meal Than to serve the poor people whose w
Read more