Next time you’re writing a post, scroll down toward the bottom of the ‘Write post’ page before you hit ‘publish’, and you will find the ‘Custom fields’ section.

Using the custom fields is easy. But what are they for? Well, let’s say I’ve just done my main post but I also want to mention what I’m reading at the moment or what television programmes I’m watching. That’s exactly the sort of thing that the Custom Fields section is for. Here’s an example of how to fill in the boxes:

As you can see, the ‘Key’ box is where you put what you’re doing (reading, listening to or watching something, or whatever). And the ‘Value’ box is where you give a little bit more information. It looks as if my secret is out, doesn’t it? According to the custom fields in the picture, I’m listening to Greenday.

After you have used the custom fields once or twice, the things that you enter in the ‘Key’ box will appear in a handy drop-down select box. Just choose the option you want. It’s as easy as that!

the_meta

There’s just one more thing you have to do though, before your custom field information will show up on the page.

Go to Manage>Files on your dashboard, and choose Posts. This will take you to where you can edit your post.html template.

Choose where you want your custom fields to show, and write {the_meta} in the file, as shown below. A good place to put custom fields is at the end of a post.

Styling custom fields

A quick look at the source code will show that custom fields are generated as an unordered list with the class of ‘post-meta’. Information entered in the ‘Key’ box is a span with the class of ‘post-meta-key’. If you are confident with CSS, custom fields can be styled just like any other element.

• Currently listening to: BBC News

There are lots of different ways to protect your email address from spammers and email harvesters. The safest way of all is not to put your email details on your website at all. Turning your email address into an image is another way, although that also means that your visitors can’t click on the image to send you a message: they have to copy the address from the image instead.

You can also use Javascript or hex values to encode your address, but it can take a while to find a suitable code snippet to use.

Blogsome users have another option: Smarty code. It’s easy, and here’s how to do it. Let’s suppose your real email address is **me@example.com**. Choose from one of the following:

Firstly, there’s this:

{mailto address="me@example.com" encode="javascript"}

Anyone looking at your blog source code will see this:

<script type="text/javascript">eval(unescape('%64%6f%63%75%6d%65%6e%74%2e%77%72%69%74%65%28%27%3c%61%20%68%72%65%66%3d%22%6d%61%69%6c%74%6f%3a%6d%65%40%65%78%61%6d%70%6c%65%2e%63%6f%6d%22%20%3e%6d%65%40%65%78%61%6d%70%6c%65%2e%63%6f%6d%3c%2f%61%3e%27%29%3b'))</script>

Or you could try doing this:

{mailto address="me@example.com" encode="hex"}

which looks like this:

<a href="&#109;&#97;&#105;&#108;&#116;&#111;&#58;%6d%65@%65%78%61%6d%70%6c%65.%63%6f%6d" >&#x6d;&#x65;&#x40;&#x65;&#x78;&#x61;&#x6d;&#x70;&#x6c;&#x65;&#x2e;&#x63;&#x6f;&#x6d;</a>

And finally there’s this:

{mailto address="me@example.com" encode="javascript_charcode"}

which returns this in the source code:

<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">
<!--
{document.write(String.fromCharCode(60,97,32,104,114,101,102,61,34,109,97,105,108,116,111,58,109,101,64,101,120,97,109,112,108,101,46,99,111,109,34,32,62,109,101,64,101,120,97,109,112,108,101,46,99,111,109,60,47,97,62))}
//-->
</script>

Whenever someone leaves a comment on your Blogsome blog, the link usually includes the ‘nofollow’ attribute. This means that Google and other search engines don’t count it as a proper link. If you wish to reward your regular commenters with backlinks that Google does count, then go to your comments.html file and follow these simple steps:

1. Find the bit that says something like this: <cite>{comment_author_link}{_e text=" said"}:<br /></cite>.
2. Change it to: <cite><a href="{comment_author_url}">{comment_author}</a>
{_e text=" said"}:<br /></cite>.
3. Then find this: {comment_text},
4. And change it to this: {capture name='text_comment'}{comment_text}{/capture}
{$smarty.capture.text_comment|replace:'rel="nofollow"':''|replace:"rel='nofollow'":""}.

Have a look at the source code for any comments that have been left on your blog. If the changes have worked, you will not see ‘nofollow’ on any of the comments.

As always when making changes, remember to save a copy of your original comments.html file so that you can put it back in your template if, for any reason, the alterations don’t work for you.

source: http://standalone.blogsome.com/

Yesterday, I decided to sign up for an account at Digg. When I filled in their sign-up form, I noticed that it said they would send me a ‘Welcome’ email after I finished registering, and I would have to click on a special link in that email in order to confirm that I really did want a Digg account. This often happens when you register to join a forum or online community, so I was not at all surprised by it. Their form also says that you have to click on the confirmation email link within 3 days, otherwise your request for an account will not be accepted.

That was yesterday afternoon.

By yesterday evening (six hours later) I had still not received a ‘Welcome’ email from Digg, so I clicked the ‘Lost Password’ box on the Digg site, gave them my email address and requested that they send me an email to confirm my ‘lost’ password. (I hadn’t really lost my password at all, but this method is often a good way to get someone’s attention if they are a bit slow at sending out ‘Welcome’ emails.)

It is now a full 24 hours since I signed up with Digg and I have not had even one email from them. Surely, in the 21st century, it should be possible to send out a confirmation email in less than 24 hours, shouldn’t it? Somehow, though, I can’t believe I am the only one who has had this problem with Digg. But perhaps there is a simple explanation:

Maybe they are just being Digg-norant!

Update:

It’s Monday 18th Feb and the Digg validation email has still not arrived. How rubbish is that?

Installations instruction are included, click here to download Mosaic 3 Column Theme

I’ve chosen a selection of the favourites to illustrate how to add those cute little Social Bookmarking links/icons after each post. You need to add either of the following sets of codes in the post.html file before the closing ‘div’. And you will need to save the relevant icons to your own hard drive to upload to blogsome, or use your own icons ensuring you replace the name of the image accordingly.

You will also need to add some styling into your Site Style Sheet as shown after the options. Re-styling can be done to suit the colours of your blog etc..

Make sure you save a copy of your files before you make any changes.

Option 1 - Text Only Links

<div class="sbmark">
<a href="http://digg.com/submit?url={permalink_link}">digg this</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;
<a href="http://del.icio.us/login/?url={permalink_link}&amp;title={the_title}">Post to Del.icio.us</a> &nbsp;|&nbsp;
<a href="http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?t={the_title}&amp;u={permalink_link}">Furl It</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;
<a href="http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url={permalink_link}&amp;title={the_title}">Stumble it!</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;
<a title="Save to Reddit" href="http://reddit.com/submit?url={permalink_link};title={the_title}" >Reddit</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;
<a href="http://technorati.com/faves?add={permalink_link}">Add this post to Technorati Favorites</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;
<a href=" http://myweb.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet? t={the_title}&amp;u={permalink_link}&amp;ei=UTF">Save to Yahoo MyWeb</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u={permalink_link}">Share on Facebook</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;
</div>

Option 2 - Icons & Text Links

digg this  Post to Del.icio.us   Furl It  Stumble it!  Reddit  Add this post to Technorati Favorites  Save to Yahoo MyWeb  Share on Facebook

<div class="sbmark">
<img src='/images/digg.png' alt='' /><a href="http://digg.com/submit?url={permalink_link}">digg this</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;
<img src='/images/delicious.png' alt='' /><a href="http://del.icio.us/login/?url={permalink_link}&amp;title={the_title}">Post to Del.icio.us</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;
<img src='/images/furl.gif' alt='' /><a href="http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?t={the_title}&amp;u={permalink_link}">Furl It</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;
<img src='/images/stumbleupon_16x16.gif' alt='' /><a href="http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url={permalink_link}&amp;title={the_title}">Stumble it!</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;
<img src='/images/reddit.png' alt='' /><a title="Save to Reddit" href="http://reddit.com/submit?url={permalink_link};title={the_title}" >Reddit</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;
<img src='/images/technorati.png' alt='' /><a href="http://technorati.com/faves?add={permalink_link}">Add this post to Technorati Favorites</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;
<img src='/images/yahoomyweb.png' alt='' /><a href=" http://myweb.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet? t={the_title}&amp;u={permalink_link}&amp;ei=UTF">Save to Yahoo MyWeb</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;
<img src='/images/facebook_share_icon.gif' alt='' /><a href="http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u={permalink_link}">Share on Facebook</a>
</div>

Option 3 - Icons Only

<div class="sbmark">
<a href="http://digg.com/submit?url={permalink_link}"><img src='/images/digg.png' alt='digg it!' /></a>
<a href="http://del.icio.us/login/?url={permalink_link}&amp;title={the_title}"><img src='/images/delicious.png' alt='Post to Del.icio.us' /></a>
<a href="http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?t={the_title}&amp;u={permalink_link}"><img src='/images/furl.gif' alt='furl it!' /></a>
<a href="http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url={permalink_link}&amp;title={the_title}"><img src='/images/stumbleupon_16x16.gif' alt='stumble it!' /></a>
<a title="Save to Reddit" href="http://reddit.com/submit?url={permalink_link};title={the_title}" ><img src='/images/reddit.png' alt='reddit' /></a>
<a href="http://technorati.com/faves?add={permalink_link}"><img src='/images/technorati.png' alt='save to technorati' /></a>
<a href=" http://myweb.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet? t={the_title}&amp;u={permalink_link}&amp;ei=UTF"><img src='/images/yahoomyweb.png' alt='Save to Yahoo MyWeb' /></a>
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u={permalink_link}"><img src='/images/facebook_share_icon.gif' alt='Share on Facebook' /></a>
</div>

Stylesheet Code

.sbmark
{
text-align: left;
font: 0.9em Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
color: #222;
}
.sbmark a:link {
color: #1AB22B;
text-decoration: none;
}
.sbmark a:visited {
color: #777;
text-decoration: none;
}
.sbmark a:hover {
color: #48F858;
text-decoration: underline;
}
.sbmark img { vertical-align: baseline;
padding: 0 5px 0 0px;
}

Installations instructions are included, click here to download Electric Lime Theme

The BASIC smilies have to be entered into a post manually, the WYSIWYG are available if you have the WYSIWYG plug-in activated, they are entered into a post from a pop up window.

BASIC code smiley :smile: :eek: :cool: :neutral: :lol: :cry: :idea: :evil: :twisted: :arrow: :grin: :shock: :mad: :wink: :roll: :sad: :razz: :oops: :?: :!: :mrgreen:

WYSIWYG