Personalization of your Active Rain profile is easy to do with all the handy widgets available to bloggers these days. One of the most popular (free) widgets is the My Blog Log. Signing up for this bit of technology will allow you to see who is visiting your blog. You will also be able to see which of your links are getting clicks and what blogs are sending you the most visitors.
If this is appealing to you keep reading!
First you must be a member of My Blog Log. Join here. (If you are a member already, follow these instructions skip to the Widget section.) Become a member, fill out your profile and upload your photo. Once complete go to >My Home > Get Widgets > (see illustration below)
Use the widget page to configure your widget to match your color scheme. Several style and sizes are offered by combining screen names (or not), full or half-size and number of rows. You may also personalize the title to suit your theme.
NOTE: the graphic on the right shows your choices. Once satisfied click "Preview & Get Code".
My Blog Log offers several formats for your Log Widget. Here are some samples:
Open the next window, check your work. If you don't like what you built, just go back to the previous window and start over again. Once satisfied cut and paste the code. (Highlight code "HOLD CTRL C" to paste it to the clipboard. (Next illustration shows Code)
NOTE: the code trails off the window, be sure you scroll over to get the COMPLETE code. It will begin with an opening bracket "<" sign and end with a closing bracket ">"
With your code still pasted to your clipboard, open your Active Rain Home Page.
In the upper left you will see "My Settings" click on it.
If you have filled out your profile, there will be words in the Description blog. Place your cursor at the end of your text and "PASTE" the code. Click "UPDATE."
Your Blog Log will take a few seconds to populate. Done right it should look something like mine on the right column of this page.
Good luck with making your Active Rain Blog pretty!
If you would like more Unofficial Tech Support Tips visit my profile page. At the bottom there are links to various tech topics for building your AR Blog.
If you want to be the first to know about future tips, subscribe to my blog.
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Colorado Licensed Broker
ABR - Accredited Buyer Representative
CIPS - Certified International Property Specialist
CRS - Certified Residential Specialist
The Berkshire Group Realtors
3801 E. Florida Ave. Suite 400
Denver, Colorado, 80210 USA |
Mobile: 303-589-2022
Fax: 303-953-5362
kristal@tbgdenver.com
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Selling Denver and the 'burbs
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Broker Associate, ABR, CRS, GRI, ePRO, PMN, PNG
The Berkshire Group, REALTORS
3801 E. Florida Ave., Suite 400
Denver, Colorado 80210
720-279-4599 ~ direct 303-953-5362 ~ fax
Selling Colorado Since 1984, Serving the Following Areas:
Shoes . . . Cars . . .?
Want to share some of them? One of them?
Kristal,
Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!
Once again, a valued member of the AR community takes the time to help the rest of us out... This is very timely help for me, and I'm guessing, for others as well!
Thank You!
Pat
Hi Kristal - many thanks for the time you take to do posts like this. I had seen these bloglog things on others sites, and I wondered how to do that. Thank you for sharing this info!
Ann
Aw shucks. I'm a "stealth" viewer. This totally takes the fun out of surfing blogs when the owner knows you've been there.
Where's my Stealth Cape????
I've used My Blog Log for a few months now. I really like it. (I use it on my "pretty" blog.) Thanks for sharing with everyone.
Awesome. Thanks for the tips Kristal. I'm still finding my way around here and you just answered one of my big questions. Instead of a MBL widget, I added a Twitter one instead.
Sometimes I feel the same as Lenn when i know that I'll be visiting a site with a MyBlogLog widget. It would be cool to surf invisible if you chose to. It would be cool to do that w/o logging out of MBL.
Kristal,
How do you know so much? I have seen these around on peoples blogs. Thanks for putting this up.
Kristal
I just installed the HTML for it last night.
Thanks for the info as always, KK. I like the look of these, adn some of the other things we see, like the PollDady widgets. Not sure which I like best and don't want to overcrowd. Hmmm.
What kind of shoes did you get? :)
Jeff
This is so sad, according to My Blog Log, I started to do this last Dec - is it really May?
KK - Thanks for this great tutorial. I've wondered where people get those widgets. I jointed my blog log a while ago and have done nothing with it.
Do you have all of the tutorials you have written in one place. I'd love a Best of the Best KK Tutorial Blog. <just a thought> <please>
Your one on how to add links to AR was a lifesaver, and the one on how to add photos in columns - way cool. Thanks!
Patrick ~ Hopefully you will find it helpful, did you install your Blog Log yet?
Ann ~ As you know there are no secrets here!
Lenn ~ I know you are always watching. I will never take your maps! :)
Chris ~ you must be a friend of Craig's if you have a "pretty" blog!
Andy ~ Twitter is something I just noticed, but I really do know what it is...can you explain?
Cheryl ~ Yes, we are both fans of SnagIt. I bet we sell a lot of them!
Rich ~ Yup considering all you must wade through, be lazy.
Neal ~ Cool, you are way ahead of me. Why didn't you write the toot?
Ravi ~ Not bad for "free!" :)
Lisa ~ You are welcome Jersey girl!
Jeff ~ OVercrowding looks cheesy I know what you mean. Shoes? I don't know yet, Caleb said they are in the mail. Flat Jonathan lost all his money in the tumbleweed chase or so he said.
Dena ~ Yup, it is May, 2008. Been blogging have you?
Missy ~ Glad you agree the tutorials help. Sometimes I wonder...
Ben ~ Let's face it, you are HOT, that's why the girls come to visit you! :)
Ben ~ Are you saying we can delete people we don't like? More cool yet!!!
Maureen ~ I have saved some tutorials at the very bottom of my profile page. Otherwise it would get old digging through my nearly 400 blogs...unless you need to break your insomnia one night... Go for it!
Mana ~ Blog and they will come! Visit other blogs and they will follow you back home to see where you live, kinda.
Robert ~ Implementation is good. Let me know how it goes!
Mott ~ Now I guess I need to blog about "Why things don't work." With HTML code you must be sure you have copied the whole code. Place it AFTER the tags that are there. I found at one point I had too many words and the code would not "fit" into the AR word limit. This is not counted as a word, so chances are you have a partial tag or something. Try it again. Go all the way back to MyBlogLog and capture the code. Make sure you having the ending and closing tags < > Good luck!
Christy ~ Cool! Glad it works for you. I remember when you had trouble with the photos...:) You've come a long way...
Joan ~ This is one of those processes you want to be wide awake and without interruptions! Good luck and let me know how it goes.
Kristal,
How cool. I love stuff like this. I'm going to work on it tomorrow when I'm bright eyed and busy tailed.
Fran
Kristal...WOW! Great tip. this will be fun to install and watch. Thanks for your help.
Regards...Jay
Kristal,
I found your post very helpful although I have to admit I'm going to bookmark and come back to review. Thanks a million.
Kristal,
Thanks so much for all the time you took to compose this valuable post. The tracker is very exciting!
Have a fantastic day!
I'm with Lenn ... after I installed this a few months back, I can't do stealth viewing anymore. ;-)
Thanks, as always, for your "Tech Support".
PS: I'm not logged in.
Doreen ~ Catching up is a goal... good luck!
Suzanne ~ Well now you know. It's just a fun little widget. Hope you find the time to add it to your arsenal!
Jay ~ Watch? I hope you have more to do! :) Just kidding I know you do, it just gets hard to respond differently to each comment, if you know what I mean!
Bob ~ Lovely lurkers they are too!
Diane ~ Bookmarking works. If you are like me you will bookmark it and someday in the future you will notice how cool this looks on someone else's blog and return to do it. Good luck!
Antoinette ~ We have no shortage of trackers...thanks for stopping by!
Jon ~ you are very welcome.
Elaine ~ funny you should mention you aren't logged in! You lovely face has been captured, so I guess logging in is not necessary! If you want to remain stealth someone mentioned you click on the red 'X' that appears if you "hover" over your face. That will hide you from view. I am afraid to do it for fear I won't be able to "undo" it. Anyway I love seeing your face...even love comments more! So many stroll by and say nothing.
Eric ~ Plunging is good, don't forget to wear a swimsuit!
Dena ~ time does fly when you are having fun.
kk
Kristal,
I was thinking of it but I'm glad you wrote it because I'm not sure I would have the time to figure out how to add all the great graphics..you said it better anyway..I just started to use it and might have missed a good feature you included.
Kristal
Interesting idea What are now doing more of or differently as a result of the info?
Kristal: Question for the techy lady ... I added the widget to my AR blog, but the photos are all of people who have visited my outside blog. Do you happen to know if the photos will eventually include both blogs?
I also noticed the Twitter when I went in to change the colors and eliminate the names. Will be lurky to see if anyone knows what it is or does.
Here's another question ... I tried entering the code to my other blog for the Top Links. The copy under it says it's not linking. Do you have to pay for the upgrade to have that widget work?
Elaine ~ each blog should have it's OWN CODE. What you did was use the same code for both blogs. :) You need to create a second site. Go to "Add site/blog I author" and put in the AR blog!
kk
Neal ~ anytime you want my Unofficial Tech Support job you can have it. You just can't have my pretty Italian very fast car, expense account and all the shoes they (AR) sends me! ;)
Dave ~ you ask a very important question. You must be an engineer type who is not satisfied with just looking at the pretty colored widget! :)
On my real blog (which is sadly neglected at the moment) I always pay attention to the traffic and search words. Knowing what folks are searching for when they find me tells me if I am 1) being found 2) being relevant 3) and gives me additional food for thought.
Folks who are on MYBlogLog are mostly industry folks. The consumer is researching us stealthly.
The statistics are important in many ways. How do you use yours?
kk
Teri ~ My eyes must have bounced off your post! Yes, you know me from RT from a long time ago. We are also reciprocal link partners...forever and a day!
Thanks for stopping by!
kk
Ryan ~ I be checking your homework soon, get it done! :)
Peter ~ if you can inspect homes, I'm sure you can "pull it off." Good luck!
kk
Denise ~ 100%! Thanks!
kk
Krystal,
I have seen this blog log on several profiles and I didn't know where it came from thanks for the tip.
Hello:
You have posted several handy-dandy blogs regarding how to insert photos, these widgets, etc. I am unable to print them out to have on hand to utilize (I love to have the instructions when I am trying to do it). Is there a way to print this info out, or is there some way to tag this page to my blog so that I can always find it when I need it?
I feel like I am the Techno-Geek(ess) and you are the Techno-Goddess! Thanks for any help.
Thank you for taking the time to go into detail to share this with everyone.
Rob ~ Thanks!
Marilyn ~ It is very hard to print out a web page and have it all be on the paper. But you can try by using the "prtScn" button. The best way to save info on Active Rain is to "Bookmark" it. Or you can save it to outside bookmarking services like Gmark (google) if you use Firefox their is a program called "firemarks" Delic.ious and others. Pick one and use it! Good luck.
Judi ~ you are welcome.
Thanks to all for stopping by.
Gene ~ you will find an endless list of things to digest here.
kk
Kristal - I'm just getting in on the action late this week - thanks for another great tip! Do you ever tire of all the hero worship? :-) I'm hoping to get mine to look like yours but looks like I don't have enough visitors to tell yet.
Hope your Dad's doing well. Talk to you soon - off to have a little R & R with friends tonight.
Cyndee ~ hope you enjoy your night out...you have earned it! :)
George ~ I will visit, then you will know! Thanks for stopping by.
kk
George ~ you are welcome, anytime! Don't you sleep? It's late on the East Coast!
kk
George ~ OK that's a good excuse. Guess you are a Yankee fan. Hope your team wins!
kk
I love Lenn's cape, first of all lol
KK, you do a great job of explaining. Now I will wait for you to do the same for the vflyers listing widget :-)
Jennifer ~ I hope you decide to do it, when you do let me know!
Carole ~ gimme, gimme gimme...my job is never over! :) OK
KK: I added the widget to AR a few days ago. My goodness! Can't believe how many of my Localism articles are being read vs my regular blog. Thanks for suggesting it as I hadn't considered it for AR even though I've been using it for the other one for a few months now.
Joddie ~ Getting started takes awhile for everyone! Good grief I didn't have a response for weeks after I started, so don't feel bad. Hang in there. I will visit to check out your work...
Elaine ~ The power of AR is getting stronger. My AR blog is on page 2 & 3 for "denver real estate". That is not so easy to do... You might as well have the log here too. Happy Mom's Day to you. I know you are Mom to a cute dog and some kids too. :)
I set it up but did not customize it. I am going to bookmark this blog and follow your suggestions on how to customize when I get some time.
Thanks
Missy, you can block comments to only those that are your contacts and you can also block which faces show up in the log. I've blocked one such person, so their photo doesn't show up in the widget.
Thanks KK,
The explaination under Description leads one to believe javascript would be deleted if put in there...so I never tried it.
Thanks for the tutorial...
David and Tonya ~ Your question is important, I probably didn't explain it well enough. You need to sign up for My Blog Log and fill out a profile. Don't forget to add your photo. Once you have done that you can add the My Blog Log script from that site to yours, as I explained here.
Without becoming a member, you cannot get the service! Does that make sense?
To the others who have commented, I will get back here to respond someday. My list gets deeper....please throw out a lifesaver!
kk
Ryan ~ I'm with you. Where do we stop? How many are too many?
kk
Ryan ~ I just visited your blog, it loaded ok, not super fast but not so slow as to worry. I think your widgets look good. You do have two ways to contact you, is one more efficient than the other? I do like the vFlyer slide show, that is very cool!
kk
Hey, thanks for checking it out KK. Yeah, I've wondered if I should eliminate one of the contact ways. I don't know if one is more efficient than the other or not but I noticed yours, which seems to consolidate several methods into one widget. I may have to check that one out! How's it working out for you?
I just added the vFlyer widget last night to see how it looked. I like it too! Guess I need to get the other listings in there.
Ryan ~ the vFlyer is of great interest to me. I told my office staffer about it last night. Hopefully she will like it too. It appears to me to have the capability to consolidate a variety of tasks.
As per the Meebo, it works fine, trouble is I forget to log in, so I'm thinking about removing it in favor of the other.
To many widgets, to little time!
kk
Kristal, I took meebo off to because of the logging in. It was a waste of space since I didn't log on. Do others like it ?
KK & Missy, I also removed Meebo for the same reason. Instead, I have added Windows Messenger, which I'm usually logged into when I'm in front of the computer.
KK, how do you like the jaxtr thing? I was thinking about maybe adding it. Also, what other tasks do you see the vFlyer widget taking care of for you?
Ryan ~ I've had some contact via Jaxtr, more than Meebo. Of course I seldom remembered to log on, so that assessment might be unfair.
RE: vFlyer, I think I read where it will print a hard copy. Methinks it would save time by doing the online brochure and printing it out. Right now my staff person does multiple tasks to service our listings. I need to check it out further. I do know everyone is chatting about it and loving it!
Ryan ~ certainly, I think we should compare notes!
LInda ~ Good, I will have to visit your blog next!
David ~ Hope it works well for you, I'll visit you next (after Linda that is!)
kk
Howdy Kristal
Thank you for giving so must of your time to do these very fine and helpful bolgs your doing to help every one on Active Rain.
Have a good one
Very clear and nice instructions. Everything I have seen from you has been excellent. You seem to really have a handle on this platform.
Thanks,
Todd
Hi Sharon ~ Thanks for stopping by! It is funny how some of the old blogs continue to provide helpful information. Of course nowadays 113 comments can happen in an afternoon! Remember when we got excited to have a course of 4 or 5 comments? It really wasn't that long ago.
I don't have a plan for Florida yet. I do want to take your course someday. Maybe I'll catch up to you this year. Thanks for the invite.
kk
Good stuff. Thanks.
I found your blog entry on blog log very easy to follow. I had started to complete this with instructions on another blog but it was way over my head. I was stuck trying to figure out where to paste the code and they couldn't answer me. Yours was quite clear. Thanks for being so kind to help others.
THANK YOU Kristal! I'm about a week old on ActiveRain and just getting started. It's great to get help from the #1 RainMaker in Colorado! I'm on the Western Slope in Grand Junction. I'm working hard and have moved up to #5 in my county. There's 5,514 of us in Colorado and I'm now at #572, so working hard is really helping. I just need to figure out WHEN to blog. Every time I do I disappear to page 3 of blogs in about 3 minutes and no one sees my blog, so no comments :( I'm gonna figure it out tho! Thanks Much!