1. block Adsense, to not alter your impressions and your CTR, and to prevent accidental clicks by you on your own Adsense ads (Google could punish you, with the feared Adsense ban);
2. block Analytics, to noy alter your website statistics with your own visits / site searches.

And, thanks to Adblock Plus, a Firefox add-on, you can surf thorough your site without concern, from Mac, Linux or Windows, and without modifying configuration files.

You have to install Adblock Plus for Firefox. Then, during the add-on installation or after, add the following Adblock Plus lists (from Easy List):

• EasyList, to block Google Adsense (or other ads);
• EasyPrivacy, to block Analytics or other tracking systems.

From now on, your own visits will no longer be counted, and you’ll prevent accidental clicks.

Ok, this solution isn’t so “ethical”: a lot of websites survive thanks to advertising: with everyone installing Adblock, these sites could not longer be able to offer free contents.

So I suggest to disable it with those sites you visit often (you can add exceptions to Adblock Plus).

Do you know other tricks to block Google Adsense and Google Analytics from your own visits?

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Here’s a screenshot:

You can find my review here: ElegantBlue: a nice 3-column SEO friendly Wordpress Theme, for free!

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This tutorial is very simple, and, since it isn’t a hack, it doens’t mess up your blog template. It will take 2 minutes of your time, so it’s very recommended!

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Invalid XML: too many tags - Too many tags describing this tag.

Don’t worry, they’re caused by the format you’re using for the feed you have submitted to Google Webmaster Tools: the “RSS” format.

Since blogspot supports both RSS and Atom feed formats, I tried the latter, and it worked nicely. So, all you have to do is resubmitting a new sitemap (deleting the buggy one), using the same syntax as before, but using “atom.xml” instead of “rss.xml”.

Here’s the proof of what I said:

I also updated the instructions to add a sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools with the correct URLs.

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• use larger ads unit inside posts;
• attach larger images (I think it’s important, for a gossip blog);
• …

With a little CSS editing, you can easily enlarge it!

Wider Gossip City VS the original version

Standard Gossip City VS wider Gossip City

You can increase the theme’s width by 140 pixels. How?

• reducing left sidebar’s width by 60px;
• enlarging the sidebars and post container by 80px.

Enlarging Gossip City

Now you have to hack a little the CSS stylesheet. Open the style.css file and follow the instructions!

Reducing left sidebar’s width

Find

.SRL { width: 230px; float: left; padding: 0px;}

and replace it with

.SRL { width: 170px; float: left; padding: 0px;}

Now you have to narrow the sidebars’ container, too. Find

.SR { width: 415px; float: right; position: relative; padding: 0px 0px 20px 0px; }

and replace it with

.SR { width: 355px; float: right; position: relative; padding: 0px 0px 20px 0px; }

If you want to stop here, you have to edit another line, otherwise jump to the next section!

So, you don’t want to narrow the theme any more. Find

.SC { width: 455px; float: left; padding: 0px 0px 20px 0px; }

and replace it with

.SC { width: 515px; float: left; padding: 0px 0px 20px 0px; }

Now, you have to fix the comments div’s problem.

Enlarging the main container

Find

.CON { width: 900px; position: relative; margin: 0 auto; padding: 0px; margin-top: 25px; }

and replace it with

.CON { width: 980px; position: relative; margin: 0 auto; padding: 0px; margin-top: 25px; }

Use original width for the comments’ div!

Since the Gossip City theme isn’t fluid, you have to reduce the comments div’s width, else it’ll look awful. Find

.Comments { margin: 20px 0px 0px 0px;}

and replace it with

.Comments { margin: 20px 0px 0px 0px; width: 455px;}

Use original width for the trackbacks’ div!

Same problem for the trackback list’s div. Find

.TrackList { background: #f4ebef url(images/TrackListBottom.gif) no-repeat bottom; padding: 15px; margin-top: 20px; position:relative;}

and replace it with:

.TrackList { background: #f4ebef url(images/TrackListBottom.gif) no-repeat bottom; padding: 15px; margin-top: 20px; position:relative; width: 425px;}

Why 425px, instead of 455px? Because the TrackList div has got a 15px padding; since

real width (we need 455px) = declared width + padding-left (15px) + padding-right (15px)

declared width must be 455-15-15 = 425!

That’s all, folks!

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Adding your Blogger-based blog to Google Webmaster Tools

First of all, in the Dashboard, add your blogspot.com hosted blog by typing your blog’s URL in the text box and pressing the “Add site” button. Now you have to verify it; just follow this simple how-to: “Add Google Webmaster Tools to your Blogger Blog - TakeOnTheNet”.

Adding the Sitemap(s)

Now the last step: we have to add the complete sitemap. We’ll use the blog’s feed as a Sitemap, but to get the complete feed we have to use some addictional parameters.

1. Log into Google Webmaster Tools, enter your blog’s properties and select e Add sitemap;
2. select “Add general web sitemap“;
3. my sitemap url is: atom.xml?max-results=500&start-index=1
4. press “Add general web sitemap“.

If you need more sitemaps, repeat the four steps, changing only the url; just add 500 to the last number of the previous sitemap’s url:

1. atom.xml?max-results=500&start-index=501
2. atom.xml?max-results=500&start-index=1001
3. atom.xml?max-results=500&start-index=1501
4. …

and so on.

Important: in Sitemap > Overview, the “URLs submitted” column will show effective number of articles submitted +1 (so, a full sitemap will show 501 urls, not 500), because, in the feed, the URL of the home page is also retrieved.

Feed’s parameters explanation

1. max-results: the max number of articles to put in the feed - a sitemap with too many articles could exceed its limits (50000 articles or a sitemap file size of 10 MB - remember: the feed doesn’t retrieve only links, but also articles’ bodies); we’ll use this parameter to split the sitemap in sub-sitemaps;
2. start-index: the index of the first article to be retrieved in the sub-sitemap: if max-results is 500, then this index is 1 for the first sitemap, 501 for the second (if we have more than 500 articles), 1001 for the third, and so on.

So the sitemap’s url looks like this:
http://yourblog.blogspot.com/atom.xml?max-results=500&start-index=((N-1)*500+1)
with N the Nth sub-sitemap you’re asking for.
To put it simple, just add +500 at the last number of the url, every time you need a new sub-sitemap.

(for more info, read the Google Data APIs Protocol Reference)

PS: I’ve discovered that another one found a similar solution (next time I’ll search better before reading Google APIs ): http://phydeaux3.blogspot.com/2007/10/blogger-feedburner-sitemaps-and.html
He suggests to use a smaller number for max-results; so, if you experience problems with 500, just use 100.

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• Blogger tutorials
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