How to align videos to centre in the sidebars

When you first start adding content to your template you will find that videos, in particular, may not be displayed centrally in the widget. Or, if you already have videos on your blog, they may be thrown to the left within the widget. So, you might want to realign the videos so they are centered in the middle of the widget. This is one of the easiest things to do actually. All you do is add the <center> and </center> tags into the videos widget itself.

A typical embedded video code will look like this:

<iframe title="YouTube video player" class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="167" height="154" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/O0hh1kSb2RE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

For two or more videos I add the <p> and </p> closing tag between each video, to give a line space between each video, like so:

<iframe title="YouTube video player" class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="167" height="154" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/O0hh1kSb2RE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

<p>
</p>
<iframe title="YouTube video player" class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="167" height="154" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/xzRTQ8Yaipw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Once you have added all the videos you want in the videos widget, you simply add the <center> tag at the very beginning of all the video code, and </center> at the very end of all the video code. The end result will look like this:

<center><iframe title="YouTube video player" class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="167" height="154" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/O0hh1kSb2RE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

<p>
</p>
<iframe title="YouTube video player" class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="167" height="154" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/xzRTQ8Yaipw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></center>

If you don't want to get confused you can place the <center> and </center> tags on new lines by themselves. By doing so it does not affect the other code any differently, and the end result will still be exactly the same as if you put them on the same lines as the video code itself.

This usually works for centrally aligning most other widgets too. You can add the <center> and </center> tags to things like feedjit widgets, embedded images, clocks, and to some search bars, for example. Give it a try and see what works and what doesn't.

How to make Secret Pages on your blog - PART 1

INTRODUCTION

I have done a lot of researching on the Internet to find out how to create secret blog pages but I always end up on tutorials that tell you how to add a static page to a linkbar, then remove the tabs navigation menu bar and replace that with just a normal link. Unfortunately, I've done that with many of my static pages already, and sure it saves space if you add all your static pages into a dropdown menu but really, there is nothing secretive about that. You can still find the static pages. But that is also limiting because on Blogger you are only allowed 10 (recently updated to 20) static pages. I want, and maybe you want, 100 or more secret blog pages.

Well, the good thing about Blogger is you literally have millions - the potential is there in reality - of pages to use on Blogger. Each blog post page is a separate page on your blog, and is just as good as a static page. A lot of people whinge about Blogger because this is not right, or that is not right, or the Navbar is a nuisance, or there is not enough pages on Blogger to use, etc. Unfortunately, most people do not see the potential of Blogger as I do. I see just one blog as having the potential of being as large as any website out there on the internet. If you have, let's say, 10 blogs on Blogger all up, you literally can have one website as large as Facebook - and its all free. All you do is have one of the 10 blogs as your main blog then just link them all together.

But anyway, what I propose here today is to separate, or divide your blog in half. One half contains your normal, every day posts, and the other half contains secret content that cannot be normally accessed. The secret posts content will be invisible to everyone in the beginning because you will remove all links and all visual signs of their existance on your blog. I'm talking about normal blog posts that you can hide from any visitors that visit your site. The potential for this is huge on Blogger whether you realize it or not.

This subject became my biggest challenge when I first discovered the need for having secret pages on my old blog. The problem I had facing me was to place certain blog posts in my blog that only could be found via one specific link on my blog. This specific link also had to be hidden, and it had to be displayed on my home page so it was not an obvious link. With secret pages you need a starting point, and without it no-one, except yourself, will ever know there are even secret pages on your blog.

So, what is the purpose of having secret pages on Blogger? Well, the possibilities are endless really. Let's say you want to add content to your blog that you don't want just any visitor to find. Let's say you have top secret videos you want to display on your blog, or top-secret recipes you have found on the internet, or trade secrets of certain individual's careers you want to add but don't want to share it with just anyone. You don't want, let's say, to set your blog to private and you don't want these secret blog posts to be displayed within your normal blog posts only to show up in your blog archive. What do you do?

HOW TO GET STARTED!

With all that in mind, you first need to write down what you want your secret pages to contain. The contents of your secret blog post pages are important to figure out, especially considering it will be a secret. That is something you need to work out for yourself, as to what the contents of your secret pages will be. If I tell you what my old secret pages were then it wouldn't be a secret anymore, would it?

For arguement's sake, let's say you have top-secret recipes you wish to display on your blog. So, you will need to organize your blog's secret post pages in a different manner than your blog posts would normally be displayed. Because you will be adding secret content to these secret post pages you need to write all the urls, titles, and basic contents of each post down into a journal - basically so you know where everything is.
But why write it all down into a journal? You need to write it all down so you can keep a record of where all your secret pages are. You see, when you begin to put this tutorial into practice on your blog, you will soon learn that there are no widgets or obvious links displaying these secret post pages on your blog anywhere. The only way you, as a blog author, can truly locate each secret post page quickly is to locate the posts in your "Edit posts" section of Blogger.

What we will be doing to create these secret blog post pages is to link them together. The first link will be displayed on your homepage somewhere but it can only be found by placing a clue on your homepage somewhere. Once the clue on your homepage has been found it then needs to be clicked on. So, I will teach you how to create a link that will turn into a pop up window, and all your secret blog post pages will only be displayed and, hopefully only viewed, in pop up windows. The first pop up window linked page will be your very first secret page. That first pop up window secret page will then contain a second clue and a second pop up window link that leads to your second secret page, and so on. However, once the first pop up window secret page's link has been clicked on, the only way to get out of the whole secret pages section of your blog is to close down the pop up windows. You then have to start all over again.

In order to really be successful with creating secret pages you need to give your blog an overhaul. You will need to reorganize your blog and all its links so no secret page urls are displayed as links but at the same time you still need to make your blog's normal content visible to your visitors. It will be hard work, and time consuming, but once completed it will be worthwhile having made that effort to reorganize your blog.

In Part 2 of this tutorial I will discuss the basics of reorganizing your blog, to allow for your secret pages to be added to your blog. In the meantime think about what you want to add to your own secret blog post pages, write it all down and make a plan on how to execute the order of that content.

Eliminate those annoying advertising popup windows from your blog

One of my pet hates in this world, its in my top 5 list, are those annoying popup advertising windows you see on a lot of websites. They infuriate me because they keep appearing over and over again. On some websites, when you click to go to a new page a dammed popup up advertising window will show up. Now, to make things even worse is getting embed codes from these websites, or any website really, only to find a damned popup advertising window shows up on your blog.

I have had this problem for a very long time, perhaps a year now. At first I didn't know where the first popup advertising window came from, and I done everything but delete my entire blog. I went through every bit of code on my blog but still couldn't find the code for the popup advertising window. Then I started thinking the code itself does not actually exist as a visible code that you can simply remove. If only things were that easy!

Over time I came to learn that these popup advertising windows are invisibly attached to certain objects you add to your blog. They are like a computer virus - but more like an internet virus. They are normally attached to widgets you add to your blog. For example, the website http://www.geovisites.com looks fine when you visit it but the moment you add their widget you end up with a popup advertising window on your blog or website. Even if you delete their links within the widget itself you still end up with the popup advertising window and you can't get rid of it.

However there is a drastic solution to all of this. That solution is to not only delete that widget that created a popup advertising window you got from the website but you also have to delete your entire blog template too. If you don't delete the widget first and you just decide to delete your template, you end up with the same popup advertising window attached to your new template. Its really a vicious circle!

No matter what you do to your blog, or how nice you have made it, it only takes one popup advertising window attached to your site to make you regret ever having placed widgets on your site in the first place. Advertising popup windows can be blocked altogether by programmes that are free to download but that is not the point. Not everyone will have an ad blocker on their computer. Not everyone can see your blog like you  can if you have an ad blocker. You would not, in this case, even see the advertising popup windows but everyone else who doesn't have that programme can.

As a blogger you have a duty to perform, not only for youself but for others too. Your duty is to make your site as accessible as possible to other people. If you want people to continuously come back to your site you must make your site safe for them to visit. Are advertising popup windows safe? I am not about to click on one of them to find out!

HERE'S SOME FREE ADVICE: Let's say you want to add a movie to your blog, as I had done in the past. NEVER, EVER, EVER embed a movie from www.movies2k.to. You will end up with an ILivid popup advertising window that not only you can't get rid of but it also tries to download the ILivid movie manager application onto your computer. Watching movies on that site is fine. I don't trust the site to download any of their movies....who knows what would be downloaded to your computer - even if you got the movie at all. (However, downloading movies from this site using the Real Player download function is quite safe and I do this all the time.)

Any time you ever want to add something to your blog or website, use this rule of thumb: If any popup advertising windows show up on a website you are trying to get something from, DON'T GET IT FROM THAT SITE! Keep your site safe and free of popup advertising windows. If you don't you will simply lose out and visitors will refuse to come back to your site. If you do have popup advertising windows showing up on your site, the only way to track them down is to revisit each site you got your widgets from. If a popup advertising window shows up from any of the sites delete that widget straight away. Do this with all your widgets.

But, these popup advertising windows will not only just show up because they are connected to certain widgets, they can also occur because you have linked your site to a website that has these popup windows on their site. Once that direct connection between your site and their site occurs, your site is also going to display the same popup advertising windows.

Some time ago on a blog I had that no longer exists I had a chatbox widget. In that chatbox were links to some people's websites/blogs - belonging to my visitors. They kindly left me their url and so I checked them all out. However, a few of the urls I clicked on simply refused to load because they had been targeted by college popup advertising windows. Actually, these are the worse case scenario blogs/sites because the direct link to these blogs are ineffective. Meaning, if you go to click on the blog links the blog starts to load momentarily, then the blog gets redirected to another site, then redirected to yet another site, then redirected to yet another site. There simply is no way to view anybody's blog when you are being automatically redirected away from it by some f***ing popup advertising or some link that has made their site unable to load normally. What's worse is at this point you (the visitor) have no control of the redirections of urls you end up on. Your only solution is to close the web pages down before something nasty shows up on your computer or on the Internet - if that may be the case. Your desire to get to that other person's blog or website instantly becomes your worst nightmare.

Always remember to check if any of your widgets create popup advertising windows. If they don't that's great. If they do then delete the culprit widget, delete your entire blog template and replace it with a different template. That way those annoying redirections will disappear and people will happily visit your blog or website. But remember one thing - never do what you done in the first place that created those redirection links. Learn from it and be smart next time you want to add links to your site/blog.

Who knows how many people out there who have this problem who are also not receiving visitors because their site is targeted by links that either cause popup advertising windows or there's links on their site that redirect visitors away from their site? Unfortunately there is very little constructive help out there on the Internet to solve this problem. So I'm writing this article to make people aware that there is a solution to this problem. If you are the victim of advertising popup windows like I was then apply my solution to your blog/website and be free of them and never repeat the same mistake again.