Blog Tutorial: Advanced: Putting a ClustrMap on Your Blog

Some of you have probably noticed that some blogs have a little map showing where their blog visitors are coming from. (If you’re not sure what that is, you can check out a sample on our right sidebar by scrolling down a bit.) If you’re interested in knowing which side of the world the people who’ve dropped by and checked your blog out are from, read this tutorial to find out.The service provider that most, if not all, SanrioTown members are using is ClustrMaps (http://clustrmaps.com/). Go to their site and create your own account. Don’t worry, because their service is free by default, but you can avail of their premium service if you want to. Initially, all you need to do is to enter your e-mail address and your blog URL. In terms of the latter, make sure that you enter the actual URL, which goes like http://blog.sanriotown/(username):(cobrand.com (ex. blog.sanriotown.com/tgmoderator01:hellokitty.com) and not the redirect URL (ex. http://blog.hellokitty.com/tgmoderator01). After filling all these necessary information and then sending it, you should be able to receive your initial password on the e-mail address that you provided there. Check your e-mail, and then sign in to your ClustrMaps account. You should be able to see various HTML code options. Scroll down until you get to the”Minimalist” option, because this is the option you’ll be needing for your SanrioTown blog.

If you don’t have one yet, open a new window for SanrioTown (http://www.sanriotown.com/). Sign in to your account and go to your Blogroll. Opt to create a new link. However, if you want to make things a bit tidier, you might choose to create a new category (click on the “Manage” tab and then go to “Categories”) specifically for your ClustrMap. Either way, once you’re on the “Add Links” page, type in “ClustrMap” on the “Name” field. Back on your ClustrMaps page, copy the first line within the double quotation marks (ex. http://www3.clustrmaps.com/counter/maps.php?url=http://blog.sanriotown.com) and then paste it on to the “Address” field. Lastly, get the second line within the double quotation marks (ex. http://www3.clustrmaps.com/stats/maps-no_clusters/blog.sanriotown.com-thumb.jpg) and then paste it on the “Image Address” field (found near the bottom of the “Add Links” page). Choose to save this by clicking on the “Save Changes” button.

Note: If you made a different category for your ClustrMap, make sure you tick on the appropriate option before you save it.

Congratulations! You now have a ClustrMap on your blog! If you want to see a more in-depth map detailing where your visitors are coming from, simply click on the small image on your blog.

Blog Tutorial and SanrioTown Official Blog Now In Chinese!

Good news to all the Chinese-speaking members of SanrioTown out there! The official blog and Ishida’s FAQ Blog have now been translated into Chinese for your easy perusal.

Here are the links:
Official Blog in Chinese: http://blog.sanriotown.com/tw/
Chinese FAQ Blog: http://blog.sanriotown.com/sanriotown_moderator_ch:hellokitty.com/

Blog Tutorial: Advanced: Getting More Traffic on Your Blogs

Sanrio Town‘s Ishida posted a new entry on how to add more traffic to your blog. What does traffic mean in the blogging world? Like the flow of cars on the streets where that word is most used to call this phenomenon, it describes the flow of activity going on in your blog, aside from the ones that come from you (like putting up entries). This includes comments from other SanrioTown members and trackbacks (your entries being quoted in other blogs). This means you’ll have more friends, even on the online world. We’re sure a lot of you are interested in this.^_^

Know how to do this by going to Ishida’s Blog here.

Blog Tutorial: Advanced: Using Windows Live Writer

We know a lot of our SanrioTown members are Windows users, so Ishida made a tutorial on how to make posts using Windows Live Writer! This will not only make your bloggging experience much easier, but you’re also guaranteed that it will work perfectly with your computer if you’re using Windows. Check out Ishida’s tutorial on this here.

Blog Tutorial: Advanced: Using Blogging Tools

We’ve posted (from Ishida’s blog) a few days ago on some tools that you can use to make your blogging experience easier. As he said in his blog, he’ll be posting the specific tutorials on how to use each of the blogging tools that he’s enumerated in that entry.

Right now, he’s already posted  a tutorial on using Flock. You can check it out by clicking here.

He’ll be posting more tutorials in the following days, so do watch out for these. You can visit Ishida’s blog here.

Make Blogging Easier with these Blogging Tools

Hi everyone! Ishida, one of the SanrioTown moderators, posted an entry on blogging tools, and we decided to share the information here to make it easier for all you SanrioTown bloggers. Check out his blog for more information on this.

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Blogging tools are software that allows you to post into your blog without the need for logging in to them. These are especially useful if you juggle with multiple blogs and don’t have the time to login on all of them at the same time.

Below are the tools that Ishida recommended:

1. Flock (for Windows/Linux/Mac) – The social browser. Flock is actually Mozilla Firefox under the hood, but the difference is that it incorporates it with easy access tools such as logging in and managing Photobucket and Flickr. Its other major feature is the ability to access blog accounts online that enables the user to post without having to login to the actual account. Download Flock here.

2. Windows Live Writer (for Windows only) – Microsoft’s own entry and attempt to grab a share of the blogging market. It automatically integrates itself into Internet Explorer which is a nice feature. Originally intended for Windows Live Space users, they decided to make this available for many (if not all) blog accounts.One thing is that you have to install Microsoft’s proprietary “dotnet framework” files for it to work. You can download Windows Live Writer here and the necessary dotnet framework files here. You have to install the dotnet framework files first before you install Live Writer.

3. Qumana (for Windows/Mac) – A free blog editor that’s based on simplicity and ease of use. It’s got the same full-featured functionality that Windows Live Writer has but is lighter on disk space. However, Qumana being JAVA-based, you may need to download the latest JAVA files for it to run. You can download Qumana here. If it requires you to download JAVA files for it to run, you can get the JAVA runtime environment here.

4. Scribefire plugin for Firefox (for Windows/Linux/Mac) – For those of you who don’t want to install anything, consider using Scribefire, a simple plugin that allows you to post to your blogs within Firefox. Its got the basic features but only has limited support to some blogs. You can download Scribefire here.

Blog Tutorial: Advanced: Changing Your Blog Title

Blogs are meant for us to show the world who we are, what we’re interested in, and just about anything and everything that we have something to say something about. What better way for us to tell our readers what our journal focuses on by telling them right off the bat what it’s all about – through our personalized blog titles! By default, the title of every SanrioTown Blog is “My Blog.” However, as was said already, you can change it to make it your very own, and to tell the readers what it’s all about. To do so, sign in to your SanrioTown account and then go to your blog. Click on options and you should be able to see something similar to the image below.

You’ll see that the Weblog Title is “My Blog.” Change this to whatever title you want to call your blog. Be creative! The more unique, the better, because a good title is usually what draws people to view your blog the first time.

A special bonus: you can add a short description that will appear right below your blog title to add even more interest to your journal. All you have to do is enter it on the “Tagline” space. Again, make it creative and interesting. A good tagline would be something that describes your blog in a nutshell but at the same time makes a person interested to check out the contents of that journal.

Click on “Update Options” to save your changes. Congratulations! You’ve just personalized your blog name!

Blog Tutorial: Advanced: Digg and Del.icio.us

Anyone ever wondered what these buttons are doing on the SanrioTown blogs?

Wonder no more! Today’s tutorial will discuss what these do, and how they help bring people to your blog.

Digg and del.icio.us are actually two websites that keep track of blog and blog entries. These are actually a bit like Technorati, in that these potentially could increase the number of visitors going to your blog. The difference between these two is that Digg notes specific blog entries while del.icio.us tracks down the whole blogs.

How do you use these? First of all, you have to have an account for these two sites. Don’t worry, registration is free, so there’s no need to fret about whether or not you have to pay to enjoy these features.

Digg reads the posts that you, well, digg as news articles, and that’s how it classifies them under. You can also create a short description of that blog entry there, as well as assign it under the categories that can be found on the site. Digg then automatically saves it on their system, and if users find your post interesting, they’ll also digg it. Keep in mind: most of the highly dugg entries are good ones, so be sure to make your posts as interesting and as informative if you want these to have high rankings.

Del.icio.us, on the other hand, installs a toolbar on your Internet browser, so if you find an interesting blog entry that you really like, you can add it to the site’s system simply by clicking on the button.

We hope that helped!

Blog Tutorial: Advanced: Tagging Your Blog Entries

If you want to add activity in your blog, like having more people visiting your blog and commenting to your entries, you can opt to add Technorati tags to your posts to make them pay more attention to your journal.

What Technorati does is that it categorizes blogs according to category. The “tags” are actually keywords that users set to identify what their post entries are about. When certain words are set as “tags,” this would automatically be read and classified by Technorati so that when someone searches for that topic you categorized your entry into, your blog should be listed down there.

Please note: as in previous entries dealing with codes, please remove the spaces between the brackets, otherwise, these wouldn’t register.

To create tags, switch to HTML/Code first. You can opt to write down your entry before or after you put in the codes, but what happens is that the codes that are listed below should be put at the very bottom or top of your post to make it neat. Then, enter:

< a href=”http://technorati.com/tag/%5Btagname%5D&#8221; rel=”tag” >[tagname]< /a >

Replace [tagname] with the keyword that you want to use. For example, if I wanted to use “sanrio” as my tag, the code should appear like this:

< a href=”http://technorati.com/tag/sanrio”&#8221; rel=”tag” >sanrio< /a >

If you want to use a tag that has more than one word, just add the following code:

< a href=”http://technorati.com/tag/%5Btagname%5D+%5Btagname%5D&#8221; rel=”tag” >[tagname tagname]< /a >

Again, just replace the [tagname] with the tag you want to use. For example, if you want to use “Hello Kitty” as your tag, just enter the following:

< a href=”http://technorati.com/tag/hello+kitty&#8221; rel=”tag” >[hello kitty]< /a >

Don’t forget to put in the “+” sign between the words on the first section, otherwise, it will register differently.

If you want to use more than one tag in your post, just enter the code that’s similar to what’s posted below:

< a href=”http://technorati.com/tag/%5Btagname1%5D >[tagname1]< /a >, < a href=”http://technorati.com/tag/%5Btagname2%5D&#8221; >[tagname2]< /a >, < a href=”http://technorati.com/tag/%5Btagname3%5D&#8221; >[tagname3]< /a >

The above code works for three tags, but you can add as many as you want.

Don’t forget to make your tags relevant to your topic!

Blog Tutorial: Advanced: Password-Protecting Posts

As we all know, blogs are made to share our thoughts to the whole world. However, some of our posts might be too private for everyone to see, and we want to limit the readers to our closest friends. This is where the password-protected posts come in.

You can protect your posts from eyes of people who you don’t know very well on the “Write Post” or “Manage Posts” sections of your blog. You can begin by typing in your entry as in a regular blog. Once you’re done, you can set the password by entering the word you want on the “Post Password” area (see the highlighted area of the image). Publish it. When you view your blog, what should appear should not be the entry, but a bar asking for the password from the viewer.

Be sure to tell your friends what your password is, or else they won’t be able to read what you wrote!