Baby customization step: Header background color

A vast majority of bloggers like unique template different from, and distinquishing their blog from other blogs. Many too likes fancy graphics. I on the other hand prefer simple template with no graphics and I use the no frills Blogger standard Minima template as this is a blog which soughts to provide useful information and simple easy to understand instructions. So far, the only substantial customization is to convert the standard 2 column Minima template to 4 column Minima template.

Today, I went a teeny weeny step more by changing the Header background color to #5588AA; which is the same blue color for the hyperlinks. All I need to do is to change the following in the template (via EDIT HTML in the LAYOUT):

#header {
margin: 5px;
border: 1px solid $bordercolor;
text-align: center;
color:$pagetitlecolor;
}

#header-wrapper {
width:100%;
margin:0 auto 10px;
border:1px solid $bordercolor;
}

to

#header {
margin: 5px;
border: 1px solid $bordercolor;
text-align: center;
color:$pagetitlecolor;
background-color:#5588AA;
}

#header-wrapper {
width:100%;
margin:0 auto 10px;
}

Please tell me what you think of this teeny weeny customization by leaving a comment:

John Chow is following Enviroman @ Peter Chen

I received an email announcing John Chow is following enviroman at Twitter. Should I be happy? I don't know. Years back I remembered John Chow's blog was given a very high valuation and he is very well know. When I got that email, I did some checking and found these - John Chow vs. Google - Guess Who's Winning and 4 Lessons From John Chow Google Bombing Experience. What did they say? Essentially, John chow did some SEO and link building for the phrase "Make Money Online" which Google didn't like. Seems Google called it Google Bombing. Looks like John Chow's has dropped from his high flying position from Google's perspective. It seems that Google is 'manually' punishing John and has dropped him to the 51st result for the term "John Chow," and his "make money online" campaign has been dropped to 57th. And now googling John Chow doesn't turn up in page 1 of Google's SERP (Search Engine Result Page).

However, I wonder if John Chow really minds because it seems his earnings in 6/1/07 jumped to $12,569.61 from $2790.05 from in 12/1/06, I assumed because of his "Google Bombing".That is, his monthly income increased by $9779.56 which is a hefty 350% increase. John Chow also claimed that his income is not highly dependent on traffic from Google.

Now I checked John Chow's Twitter profile page. Wow, he is following 22,948 and has 21,759 followers on Twitter. That is, he is following more than he has followers. I suspect he is using the tactic to increase Twitter followers by following others in the hope of others following him when they get the email announcing John Chow is following them. Should you copy John Chow's strategy? I don't know. But I myself will probably not for the time being.

Twitter - Second baby step to increase followers

My earlier post regarding Twitter - First baby step to increase followers on Twitter got me "baby results", an increase of a few followers on Twitter. Fairly encouraging? After all, these are baby steps.

Now the second baby steps. I will now append the following signature line each time I respond to a comment:

Peter @ Enviroman (Blog*Star)
Follow me at Twitter @enviroman

like what I have done at How to delete comments and Add space to blog post, but not with space bar.

Let us see what results from this (admittedly feeble) effort.

First baby step to increase followers on Twitter

After publishing Peter @ Enviroman at Twitter I received a comment asking how Twitter can help increase traffic to a blog. My answer was that one of the step we can take is to Tweet each time we publish a new post.

Well, you can tweet all you want, but if you have no followers at Twitter, it is not going to help much. So one must try to get more followers at Twitter. Writing that post Peter @ Enviroman at Twitter is a first step. That did help because after publishing that post, I had added a few more followers at Twitter. Another one will be to put a link to Enviroman's Twitter Profile which I should have done lone ago because of laziness, not done, but which I am going to do immediately after I hit the PUBLISH button. Will follow up with others latter.

Peter Chen Enviroman at Twitter

After neglecting Twitter for a long time, I finally decided to give it a little extra attention by letting my readers and visitors know my user name for Twitter is enviroman, same as my user name at Google Blogger's official Google group - BLOGGER HELP GROUP. I am going to test Twitter to see if it can help increase traffic to my blog or blogs.

If you too want to try to use Twitter as an application to increase traffic to your blog, better join Twitter very quickly because if you are late, you may not get the user name you want because someone else have taken it.

Why is Twitter's user name important? This is because the user name you select will become the URL of your Twitter home page, like mine is http://twitter.com/enviroman. So in order for people to find you easily on Twitter or for members and potential members to recognize you, you will need a user name that is associated with your blog.

Now why do I say you have to be very quick? This is because Twitter limits the number of character to maximum 15 alphanumeric characters and do not allow . or - or _ Now that means if Twitter don't increase that maximum later, the maximum usernames will be 15¹⁵ = 4.37894⁺¹⁷ but if you exclude meaningless usernames like shgf4er9u90ue5ci and only include meaningfull ones like my name peterchen (I would not want peterchen6 or something similar), then you will have a very much limited choice.

Now what I would like to have will be something like - bloggertipsandtricks (too long) or my first Blogger related blog (less used because of trademark issues) - bloggerfordummies (too long) or peterchen (taken). Fortunately for me, my online name at BLOGGER HELP GROUP is enviroman and that is available and this 4^th best will have to do.