BlogRush Is Closing Down

BlogRush, a blog advertising system, has decided to shut down. John Reese, the man behind BlogRush, announced The Death of BlogRush in his blog. I also understand that separate e-mails were sent to individual users instructing them to remove the BlogRush widget.

The Launch of BlogRush
When BlogRush launched in 2007, the news spread like wildfire all around the Web. It should be considered as one of the highly discussed topics, among bloggers of course. BlogRush worked hard to implement many changes after the initial launch. The second release came with attractive reports and much more options for customization.

The Failure of BlogRush
But, it remained a fact that BlogRush could not attract very high click rates, in spite of its many efforts. John Reese, himself, admits that “the click-rates across the network are dreadfully low”.In fact, I wrote about this in one of my posts titled "Does BlogRush bring any traffic?". I also noticed that BlogRush filters some posts being syndicated. It is not yet clear why BlogRush did this, and we may never know. It may be due to glitches in the system.

Bye Bye BlogRush
Whatever said and done, I should agree that BlogRush looked attractive at the beginning. It might end as an unsuccessful idea, but the effort has been made. My wholehearted thanks to John Reese and his team for doing their best to make BlogRush a success.

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Top Droppers Widget for Blogger

In the previous post, we learnt how to install the Recent Droppers widget for Blogger.  In this post, I am going to cover the Top Droppers widget for Blogger.

The Top droppers widget is meant to display the links of top droppers from Entrecard on your sidebar. While recent droppers widget will reward every dropper for a short period of time, the top droppers widget will reward only bloggers who consistently drops on you. If you have a good blog, then the droppers will fight hard to get a link from you. In return, you might get regular droppers.

Now, we will see how to install the Top Droppers Widget for Blogger/ Blogspot. If you have followed my instructions to install the Recent Droppers widget, you will find the instructions here very similar.

How to install the widget?

1. Log in to your Entrecard account


2. Click on the "Statistics" button, located on the top menu.
   
   


3. Scroll down the Statistics page to a section titled "Top card droppers". You will see an orange colour RSS button besides the title. Click on the feed button.
   
   


4. This will open a new window. Look at the address bar in your browser window. The address should look like "http://entrecard.com/feeds/top_droppers/XXXXXXXXXX/rss2.0". Copy the address; we need to use this later in Blogger to create the widget


5. Now, log in to your Blogger account


6. On your Blogger Dashboard, click on the "Layout" link
   
   


7. This will take you to the "Page Elements" tab. Decide where you want to insert the recent droppers widget and click on the "Add a Gadget" link accordingly.
   
   


8. Scroll down the list, find a gadget titled "Feed" and click on the "+" button
   
   


9. This will open the "Configure Feed" window. Here, you need to paste the URL copied from Entrecard (Refer to step 4). Click on the "Continue" button


10. If you have pasted the feed URL correctly, you should see a prview of your top droppers in the window now


11. Blogger allows you to display a maximum of 5 droppers. If you want to display less than 5 links, select the number accordingly. Once you are satisfied, click "Save"

That completes the installation of your Top Entrecard droppers widget. Feel free to post your queries here, if you have any. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post

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Recent Droppers Widget for Blogger

If you are using Entrecard for building up your traffic, then this widget is for you. I am going to call this as Recent Droppers widget for Blogger/ Blogspot. You may call this as Latest Droppers widget or Entrecard Droppers widget or as you may wish.

The widget is meant to display the links of recent droppers from Entrecard on your sidebar. This list will be a dynamic one and will change as entrecarders drop into your Entrecard widget. The idea is to reward all your droppers for a short period of time with a link to their blog. Now, I will explain how to install the widget. It is going to be very simple.

How to install the widget?

1. Log in to your Entrecard account


2. On the top right hand corner of your Dashboard, look for the orange colour feed button
   
   


3. Click on the feed button


4. This will open a new window. Look at the address bar in your browser window. The address should look like "http://entrecard.com/feeds/inbox/XXXXXXXXXX/rss2.0". Copy the address; we need to use this later in Blogger to create the widget


5. Now, log in to your Blogger account


6. On your Blogger Dashboard, click on the "Layout" link
   
   


7. This will take you to the "Page Elements" tab. Decide where you want to insert the recent droppers widget and click on the "Add a Gadget" link accordingly.
   
   


8. Scroll down the list, find a gadget titled "Feed" and click on the "+" button
   
   


9. This will open the "Configure Feed" window. Here, you need to paste the URL copied from Entrecard (Refer to step 4). Click on the "Continue" button
   
   


10. If you have pasted the feed URL correctly, you should see a prview of your recent droppers in the window now
    
    


11. Blogger allows you to display a maximum of 5 droppers. If you want to display less than 5 links, select the number accordingly. Once you are satisfied, click "Save"

That completes the installation of your recent Entrecard droppers widget. Feel free to post your queries here, if you have any. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post

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Statistics Widget for Blogger

Here is my latest widget for Blogger/ Blogspot; I am going to call it Statistics Widget for Blogger. I have noticed a few sites displaying blog statistics like, total number of posts, total number of comments, total words in posts, total words in comments and similar data on their sidebar. I thought of coming out with a similar widget for Blogger.

What is Statistics Widget for Blogger?
Statistics Widget for Blogger will display the total number of posts and total number of comments on your blog. As of now, I have included only these two data for display. I do not see any value in displaying the total words in posts and total words in comments. I find them meaningless. If you are interested to display the total number of posts and total number of comments on your blog, please follow the instructions below.

Instructions to install Statistics Widget for Blogger

1. Log in to your Blogger account


2. On your Blogger Dashboard, click on the "Layout" link
   
   


3. This will take you to the "Page Elements" tab. Decide where you want to insert the statistics widget and click on the "Add a Gadget" link accordingly.
   
   


4. Scroll down the list and find "HTML/ Javascript" and click on the "+" button
   
   


5. This will open the "Configure HTML/ Javascript" window. In the title section, please type "Blog Statistics" or "Blog Information" or "Blog Data" or any other title as you may wish


6. In the content section, please copy & paste the following code:
   

   <script style="text/javascript">
   
   function numberOfPosts(json) {
   document.write('Total Posts: <b>' + json.feed.openSearch$totalResults.$t + '</b><br>');
   }
   
   function numberOfComments(json) {
   document.write('Total Comments: <b>' + json.feed.openSearch$totalResults.$t + '</b><br>');
   }
   
   </script>
   
   <ul><li><script src="http://yourblog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=json-in-script&callback=numberOfPosts"></script></li>
   
   <li><script src="http://yourblog.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default?alt=json-in-script&callback=numberOfComments"></script></li></ul>
   
   <span style="font-size:75%;"><a href="http://assessmyblog.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Widgets for Blogger</a></span>



7. Remember to replace the text in bold "yourblog" with your blog address. Take note to replace it in two locations.


8. Your window should look like the image below.
   
   


9. I have a link back to my blog at the bottom. You are free to remove the credit, if you don't like it


10. Click on "Save" button at the bottom right hand corner

That's it. You have created a widget to display the number of posts and number of comments on your blog. Please contact me if you have any doubts or you face any problems with the widget.

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150 Posts On My Blog

Yes, this post marks the completion of 150 posts on this blog. The journey on this blog started on 9 May 2007. I am happy that I could come so far in this blogging world, with a little success to cheer about.

Strange Coincidence
I wrote a post on Oct 3, 2007 to mark the completion of 50 posts on this blog. That was my first major milestone, in fact. And, exactly one year later, I am here again on Oct 3, 2008 putting together an article to mark the completion of 150 posts on this blog. Thats 100 posts for a whole year (Hmm... Surviving somehow!)

It took quite a while for me to write the last 50 posts. I hit the 100 posts mark on Nov 21 last year.

I would like to thank all my blogging friends and readers for the support, encouragement and guidance to keep me going.

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