12

Blogger Templates and WordPress Themes by ThemeForest

ThemeForest offers professional blog templates and themes at affordable prices. If you can't afford to hire that expensive designer then ThemeForest is the right place for you. They offer wonderfully designed WordPress Themes and Blogger Templates which will help make your blog stand out from the rest of the crowd.

More about ThemeForest
ThemeForest has a growing collection of hundreds of nicely designed templates. The prices range from about $10 to $35. In most cases the wordpress themes are a little more expensive and nicer looking than the templates for blogger.

My Favorite Blogger Templates

Red and White
An awakening template featuring two nice sidebars.


Underland
This template should make you and your readers feel as if you were underground.


Buy Themes Template
This would work great for a design blog or even a photo blog.

My Favorite WP Themes

Business Professional Package
Excellent template which will give you blog the professional and clean look.


Convergence Community
Convergence is a nicely put together WordPress theme with the intent and focus on creating a community site.


BlueLight
Manage your portfolio and blog posts easily with this mash-up Wordpress theme.
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32

Blogger Tag Cloud Widget by Categories / Labels

This widget is perfect for blogspot users who desire a simple tag cloud for their Categories. The Labels Cloud can easily be implemented within the sidebar of your blog and will match your template wonderfully.

Steps for Implementation
Step 1: Back it Up
Always make sure to back up your Blogger Template before doing anything else!

Step 2: The Labels Gadget
Make sure that you have the Labels Page Element installed. If you haven't already...
  1. Go to Layout >Page Elements .
  2. Click "Add a Gadget" and then add the "Labels" gadget.
Step 3: Locating the "Old Code"
  1. Now go to Layout >Edit HTML
  2. Make sure that the "Expand Widgets Template" box is unchecked.
  3. Now we need to search for the code that looks like this.
    <b:widget id='Label1' locked='false' title='Tags' type='Label'/>
    Your code may look a little different. So try using your browser's search tool to find type='Label'.
Step 4: Replacing the "Old Code" with the "New Code"
  1. Once you've located type='Label', remove the whole line of code that looks just like the code mentioned in part 3 of step 3.
  2. Replace this code that you've just deleted with the code below:
    /*
    Distributed by John Smith at WidgetsForFree.blogspot.com
    */ <b:widget id='Label1' locked='false' title='Tags' type='Label'>
    <b:includable id='main'>
    <b:if cond='data:title'>
    <h2><data:title/></h2>
    </b:if>
    <div class='widget-content' style='text-align: justify;'>
    <script type='text/javascript'>
    /*
    Simple Blogger Tag Cloud Widget
    by Raymond May Jr.
    http://www.compender.com
    Released to the Public Domain
    */

    //Settings / Variables
    var max = 150; //max css size (in percent)
    var min = 70; //min css size (in percent)
    var showCount = false; // show counts? true for yes, false for no
    var minCount = 1; // what is the minimum count for a tag to be shown? 1 for all


    //Begin code:
    var range = max - min;

    //Build label Array
    var labels = new Array();
    <b:loop values='data:labels' var='label'>
    labels.push(&quot;<data:label.name/>&quot;);
    </b:loop>

    //URLs
    var urls = new Array();
    <b:loop values='data:labels' var='label'>
    urls.push(&quot;<data:label.url/>&quot;);
    </b:loop>

    //Counts
    var counts = new Array();
    <b:loop values='data:labels' var='label'>
    counts.push(&quot;<data:label.count/>&quot;);
    </b:loop>

    //Number sort funtion (high to low)
    function sortNumber(a, b)
    {
    return b - a;
    }

    //Make an independant copy of counts for sorting
    var sorted = counts.slice();

    //Find the largest tag count
    var most = sorted.sort(sortNumber)[0];

    //Begin HTML output
    for (x in labels)
    {
    if(x != &quot;peek&quot; &amp;&amp; x != &quot;forEach&quot; &amp;&amp; counts[x] >= minCount)
    {
    //Calculate textSize
    var textSize = min + Math.floor((counts[x]/most) * range);
    //Show counts?
    if(showCount)
    {
    var count = &quot;(&quot; + counts[x] + &quot;)&quot;;
    }else{
    var count = &quot;&quot;;
    }
    //Output
    document.write(&quot;<span style='font-size:&quot; + textSize + &quot;%'><a href='&quot; + urls[x] + &quot;' style='text-decoration:none;'>&quot; + labels[x] + count + &quot;</a></span> &quot; );
    }
    }
    </script>
    <br/>
    <span style="font-size:80%;float:right;">Powered by <a href="http://www.widgetsforfree.blogspot.com">Blogger Widgets</a></span>
    </div>
    </b:includable>
    </b:widget>

Step 5: Previewing the New Tag Cloud
Before saving the template make sure to click preview. The new tag cloud should now be visible. If not, make sure that you've completed all the steps correctly.
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7

TweetLater Provides Great Automated Twitter Tools

TweetLater is a great Twitter Service which automates some of the dull parts of managing your Twitter Account. Such as filtering spam, scheduling tweets, shortening URLs and more.

Here are some of the free features on TweetLater.
Schedule tweets — Plan, set & forget
Schedule tweets and keep your Twitter stream ticking over with new tweets even when you're not in front of your computer. Publish tweets when your international followers are online and you're asleep.


Bulk upload & schedule tweets — Save time
If you have many tweets to schedule, prepare them offline, put them in a simple text file, and upload them in bulk. Save time by not having to enter and schedule them by hand in the system.


Track keywords on Twitter — Empower yourself
Set up alerts and track keywords in the public Twitter stream. TweetLater will monitor the Twitter tweet stream and periodically email you a digest of the tweets that contain those keywords. You can also use this to track your @replies.


Save and reuse drafts — Save hours of typing
Save draft tweets, frequently used text snippets and URLs and reuse them in your scheduled tweets. Save tons of time by avoiding repetitive typing.


Send welcome DMs to new followers — Automate
Send a nice non-promotional DM to new followers that focus on them and your future interaction with them, or simply to thank them for choosing to follow you.


Bit.ly URL shortening — Track those clicks
Add your bit.ly URL shortening account details to your TweetLater profile, and they will shorten your links with it so that you can track the clicks on all your links.


Follow those who follow you — Automate
Automatically follow people who follow you and save a ton of time while your Friends list builds itself.


Unfollow those who unfollow you — Automate
Automatically unfollow someone when they unfollow you if that is how you prefer to manage your Friends list.


Vet new followers — Semi-automation
Even though you've selected to auto follow new followers, TweetLater will interrupt the process for 72 hours and give you an opportunity to manually review new followers and decide if you want to follow, ignore, or block each new follower.


Purge your DM Inbox — Keep it tidy
You will probably agree that it's a bit of a pain to manually delete DMs from your Inbox, especially since they accumulate so quickly. You can run a purge on your Inbox to delete everything, or DMs older than 7 days, or DMs older than 30 days.


Personal status feed — Your own tweet engine
Grab your own personal 140-character tweet scheduling engine and RSS feed. You can schedule and publish tweets that don't go to Twitter, they go to your personal tweet stream, which is available in RSS, XML and Javascript formats.


Unlimited Twitter accounts — No charge
Add and manage as many Twitter accounts as you want. TweetLater will not charge you a dime.
Sign Up for TweetLater
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