How to take better pictures - no matter what sort of camera you have

This weekly blogger tip is complements of Shutterfly:   tips about how to take great photos, of various types, no matter what sort of camera you use.

Why?

Why take your own pictures, when there are so many free-photo-search tools out there?

Well, if you want your blog to be copyright-legal, then you need to either find free-use photos, or make your own. Creating your own post-photos is especially useful to prove that your local blog really is local (like this) - and taking pictures that I take myself and host pictures in Picasa / Google+ Photos means that my posts always have a thumbnail image.

How?

Great tips from the pros, here: http://www.shutterfly.com/how-to-take-the-perfect-photo/

The best bit is that this isn't just a glossy, or a snobby "fancy-cameras-only" guide.    There are tips for every combination of  camera type:

• DSLR
• Smartphone
• Point and shoot

and photo type:

• Portraits
• Selfie
• Bokeh
• Macro
• Action shots
• Close up
• Wide angle
• Food
• Candid
• By the water
• Landscape
• Panorama

PS Shutterfly said

"Please share this interactive on your site or blog. Just copy and paste the code below"

So I did. But it looks like it's not working 100%. To get into their tool, click here: http://www.shutterfly.com/how-to-take-the-perfect-photo/


Happy snapping!

Giving your Blog a Home Page

This article is about the options for setting the home page for blogs made with Google's Blogger.

Blogs don't have a "home page", main page or "landing page" in the same way that regular web-sites do.  Instead, they show the newest post first, since (hopefully!) most readers will be return visitors, coming back to see what's new.

But there may be blogs/websites where you want a welcome message or a particular post to appear first whenever someone visits your blog, or where you want to put all your posts in reverse order.

This article is about options for giving your Blogger blog a "home page".

It lists four options, and gives advantages/disadvantages of each approach, and links to articles with details about implementing each case. If you can think of any more approaches, please leave a comment below.

Options for giving your blog a home page include:

• Static page combined with a custom re-direct - as discovered by Nitecruzr, and now described here.  This was my recommended method of home-page implementation for a while.   However it did not work on mobile themes for a while, so I changed my mind.  But it does work on them now, so I'm back to recommending it again.

• Displaying all the posts in reverse order

• Choosing one post to be a welcome message, and always giving it the latest post-date

• Displaying a gadget at the top of your posts area, and only showing it on the home page.

Advantages and Disadvantages of each option

Option	Advantages	Disadvantages
Static page and custom re-direct	No theme editing is needed Easy page editing - no messing around putting content into a gadget No gaps on other pages due to the gadget being "missing" Simple, elegant, and fully functional for both desktop and mobile visitors.	Back in 2011, I wrote:   "Google probably didn't intend to give us this option when they set up custom re-directs, so it's possible that they might remove it again.   It's such a nice solution, though, that I think it's worth the risk for now". But it's now 2017, they haven't removed it yet.   So I'm thinking that it's not going away any time soon.
Show all posts in reverse order	Great for new readers - they can "follow the story".	Return visitors have to navigate down to where they were up to last time:  the blog has no way of helping them to remember where that was. You can't use most of Blogger's date features:  newer and older posts links will take the reader in the "wrong" direction.  And you have to manually enter any dates that would be relevant. Your posts will get "older" as you write more:  this may confuse search-engines, and there's a risk that google might to things to "very old" posts in the future.
Make one post always show up first	You can still use all of Google's date features. Readers will know when you actually posted to your blog. Great for returning readers:  they can see your (current) welcome comments, and then go straight to the latest post after that.	You have to remember to edit the "chosen" post every single time that you make a new post - one day, you might forget. This approach probably won't work on multi-author blogs:  there's a very high chance that someone would forget to edit the chosen post and change its date.
Show a "welcome gadget" on the home page only	Doesn't need any changes to Post date-time settings. Your blog still functions like a blog (older/newer post links , archive gadget etc). An HTML/Javascript gadget can be very flexible, and you can get Blogger to write all the HTML for you - see Making a Gadget Like a Post. You can use things other than text, eg a picture or even a poll. It includes an extreme option:  you could show no posts on the "home" page, and just show the gadget.	You need to edit your theme to make this work. You need to re-do the theme customisation every time that you change to use a different theme. The welcome gadget isn't one of your posts: it's not included in exports of your blog contents (It is in an export of your theme - but the words inside it are not included). A gadget cannot show quite as many things as a post.   Doesn't work for mobile device users if your blog has a mobile theme enabled, unless you some some specific things to make the gadget show on mobile.

Can you think of other ways?   Please leave a comment below.

Setting the homepage's post date into the future doesn't work

Some people suggest that you can set the post-date of your main page in the future - and at some times  this has worked.

But now that scheduled posting is working the way most people expect it to (ie if you write a post today, and publish it with tomorrow's date, then it is shown to your readers from tomorrow onwards), this will not work - because your "home page" won't show until that future date is reached.

There may be some ways you can fudge it in to working (eg post the page with a date in the past, and then post it again with a future date).   But I VERY STRONGLY don't recommend this:  even if they work today, they may stop working at some time in the future when Google make a change to how future-dated posts are handled.

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Related Articles

Displaying a gadget only on the home page

Showing your oldest post first in Blogger (AKA Showing your posts in reverse order)

Making one post always come up first

Changing the date for a post.

Stopping certain pages from ever appearing on the home page

Direct linking how-to for affiliates: url shortening, iframe, redirect

Affiliate marketing in short words: you drive traffic to the advertiser's landing page, where traffic converts. Direkt linking is, if you drive traffic from e. g. Facebook ad campaign or Bing directly to the advertiser's landing page. You give as the target url for the ad campaign the tracking url of the advertiser's landing page. Direct linking lets CTR grow, cause there isn't any page between your bought visitor and advertiser's landing page - the visitor goes directly to the converting page. But firstly AdWords, then Facebook, then Bing and other try to prevent direct linking of affiliate offers. Firstly affected are Clickbank links, then many other. Nevertheless there are ways to direct-link ads to affiliate offers. In general there are 3 ways: you will successfully direct-link your offers, if you use not a single method alone, but a combination of these methods.
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Fetch as Google has Changed : Unlimited Fetch and Render

Fetch as Google

"Fetch as Google" is a common tool used by webmasters to index their latest website content on Google. Once you fetch the post or page and then index it, its indexed in Google search engine within a few minutes. I have used it several times myself. But today i noticed some changes in this tool and i am discussing it here.

New Fetch and Render Button

Previously we use to get a "Fetch" button. But now there are two buttons, first is "Fetch" and second is "Fetch and Render" . Here Rendering means that Google will take a screen shot of the page that you have rendered. Previous Google just used to Fetch the text content but now the rendering feature enable it to take screen shot of the page.

Unlimited Fetch and Render ?

Previously there was a limit of 500 fetches/week for every Google Webmasters account. And this limit is still there. Frankly speaking i have never used this limit to the maximum amount. So even if google st it to unlimited then it will not increase usage of this tool. But its the decision of Google to keep it on 500 fetches/week.

I am using this tool from past few years and will continue to use it. I will update the information on this page after using the new features of "Fetch as Google" .

How to surf with US IP address (or IP of any specific country)

It is the common problem: preview of an affiliate offer, which isn't valid in your country. You will be redirected from the offer you want to another offer, which is valid for your country. But you must see it - cause you want decide whether to promote it or not.

The answer is clear: you must look the offer like somebody from a country where this offer is valid. The solution which firstly comes into mind and which i never got to work is to use free proxy. I have never finded any working free proxy. Never. Don't know why. But there are 2 really working tools, which are free and easy to setup and use. They work out of the box:
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