Add Pizzazz to Your Blog Posts – Blogging Tips

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Add Pizzazz to Your Blog Posts – Blogging Tips

 

Blogging Tips

Put Pizzazz in Your Blogging Posts – Blogging Tips

 

Blogging Tips .  Blogging is one of the BEST ways for entrepreneurs to generate leads online.  Your blog is your home base and unlike the free accounts at Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Pinterest – your blog can’t be shut off.  It is your asset and YOU own it.

Making your blog posts stand out sometimes takes a little more than the built-in editors allow.  Here are some Blogging Tips to help you add a little pizzazz.

 

Note: My mission is to help Network Marketers who are struggling to move online, especially those buried by overwhelm. You will find information that will HELP you find leads and access to the finest mentoring system on the Internet today (Ann Sieg’s Renegade Team and Inner Circle). You will learn how to avoid the bright shiny things, effectively use blogging, Facebook and LinkedIn, A free 30 minute coaching call is yours for the asking.  Take action today!  When you are ready Join the Tea

Here are some useful blogging tips and tricks for using HTML in WordPress.

HTML in WordPress

Blogging Tips:  HTML tips

Today I go all geeky on you. The Blogging
tips topic is HTML in WordPress. Dry as
toast for everyone – until you need it.
then you’re wondering where your cheat
sheet on HTML in WordPress is. Now
you can Google for it.  (BTW, for other
geeks – yeah I know about CSS, but they
don’t.)

I put this HTML In WordPress up the other
night as a Doc in a Facebook group and
several people asked that I create
a blog and share it more widely. So here ‘tis.

This is fairly basic stuff – for Internet geeks
and it is JUST PLAIN CRAZY for normal
people.

Blogging Tips: HTML in WordPress

In the WordPress editors, the Visual
Mode isn’t perfect (yet) AND some
VERY useful things that you just
can’t do in the “Visual” mode.

Lots of people put this stuff into videos,
but I’m old fashioned. Videos are great
for overviews, but they make lousy
cheat sheets.

Let’s start with the basics. HTML (Hyper Text
Markup Language) was designed to format
things so that the person reading the “thing”
could be on a vastly different machine and
the document would format itself to
conform to reader’s equipment.

It was actually designed for scientists to
share technical papers. The World Wide Web
as we know it was an accident.

In HTML every special formatting starts with
something inside <> and ends with that
same something with a slash in the
brackets </>

You will need some of them when if you are
using a Search Engine Optimizer like
SEOPressor and it complains that you don’t
have enough of something.

So lets look at some useful codes.

Blogging Tips: HEADLINES

The first set of Blogging Tips will be about ways to
modify headline.

BASICS

<h1> Your Main Headline
This is a whole line tag

<h2> Your secondary headline (looks about
the same, just smaller) </h2>    – again a
whole line tag

<h3> Your third level and smaller yet
headlines </h3>

COLOR

Let’s make it Black and center it.
<h1 style=”text-align: center”>HTML in WordPress

Most HTML will take words like black and blue,
but it seems that HTML is WordPress will not.

Again note that EVERY HTML code start with <???>
and ends with </???>

You can Google for the codes for different colors.
There are literally hundreds of sites with these codes.

VERTICAL SPACING

Lets look at a long H1 heading.

Add Pizzazz to Your Blog Posts – Several Blogging Tips and Tricks

You will notice that the lines look a little run together vertically.
Let’s change that:    Here is the normal code.  It is easier if you
CENTER (hightlight with the cursor and click on the centering
icon) before you try to change the line spacing.
<h1style=”text-align: center;”>Add Pizzazz to Your Blog
Posts – Several Blogging Tips and Tricks</h1>

If we add ” line-height: 1.5;” right after the word “center;” and before the quotation mark we get this:
<h1style=”text-align: center;line-height: 1.5;”>Add Pizzazz to Your Blog
Posts – Several Blogging Tips and Tricks</h1>

Here is what that looks like.    Much better.  (BTW – I also use height; 1.2;)

Add Pizzazz to Your Blog Posts – Several Blogging Tips and Tricks

Blogging Tip:  More Pizzazz.

Here is another of my blogging tips while we’re at it – lets
give this headline a little more pizzazz.
how about doing it in BLUE
<h1style=”text-align: center;color: #0000ff;”>Add Pizzazz to Your Blog Posts – Several Blogging Tips and Tricks</h1>

Add Pizzazz to Your Blog Posts – Several Blogging Tips and Tricks

Note:  A lot of colors are BAD for headline – Green almost always looks washed out and is HARD to read.

ALIGNMENT

CENTER  To center some things you can highlight
and click the center button in the options bar or you
can enter code.   Here we are using “<div>”
a “division” of the code.  Start with <div> and end with
</div>   In this case we add the ‘align – “center”‘ to the
starting code.

<div align=”center”>

Stuff you want centered

</div>

LEFT

<div align = “left”>

Stuff you want left justified

</div>

Right justification works the same way

Again: note we start with <div> (division)
and end with </div>

SPACES THAT STAY

WordPress (and almost ALL HTML editors)
are very compulsive about removing excess
blank spaces.  They consider anything more
than one as excess.  But sometimes you really
want a blank space.  The code is called a
“non-breaking space” and is spelled  &nbsp;
I know that looks funny, but HTML needed a
way to show a character that is usually part of
its command set.  So they created “&(an abbreviation);”
code for things like the greater than and less than
characters.  That is how I could show you <div> when
normally HTML would think I’m starting a division.

You can use something like &nbsp;   to drive
a line in by three spaces and be sure that
those three spaces will be there when you view
your blog.

Some people like to start paragraph with ~~~~ or >>>>>

PARAGRAPHS AND LINE BREAKS

<p> start a new paragraph </p>

Now, HTML in WordPress doesn’t really require
that you start paragraphs with <p> so
I don’t usually bother.

This is a line break <br> I use it A LOT

I want to write <br>
short lines that <br>
break where I want<br>
them to.

Since HTML is designed to restructure itself
automatically based on the readers font size and
screen size things like spaces and carriage returns
in the original document are TOTALLY ignored.

HTML in WordPress blogs fiddles with this some.  They
allow you to press a couple of returns the way

I just did and keep the blank line.

“But this
and this
and this.”

with out the <br> at the end of each
line would come out as “But this and this and this”

VISUAL EDITOR SHORT LINES  In the Visual
editor you can make the editor enter the <br>
codes (invisibly) by pressing Shift Enter

HTML in WordPress tends to REALLY like one blank
line between paragraphs.  So <br> <br> <br>
which would normally end up with a new line
and then two blank lines gets chopped down to one
blank lines.

Even <p></p> <p></p> which
would usually be two empty paragraphs
are converted to one blank line.

The solution is the “non-breaking” space.
This is a character that readers can’t see
and that HTML in WordPress will NOT mess
with them.

Again the code looks like this  <p> &nbsp;</p>

I use this code to generate a new line that I know
will stay.

<p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>

If I put two of them,
I get two blank lines.These really are two
paragraphs, they just happen to contain something
that readers can’t see.

This is very useful if WordPress insists on moving text
up beside and image that you do not want there.

BULLET LISTS AND NUMBERED LISTS

One of my favorites- Bullet lists.  I like
Bullet lists.

I often do NOT like the default tiny print
that is so small and grayed out that it is
hard for me to read.

You start a “Unordered list” – that
is a Bullet list
with <UL>  and end with </UL>
Unordered lists ARE bullet lists. It
basically doesn’t matter
what order you put them in. This
is different from Ordered Lists
Ordered list are things like Step 1, Step 2, etc.

Each new bullet starts with <li> and (should) end
with </li>     Numbered lists start with <ol> and
end with </ol>.  Again these are “ordered lists”
(number 1 comes before number 2, etc)

So a normal bullet list would look like this.

<ul>

<li>   one item </li>

<li>   another item </li>

</ul>

Which would come out looking like this

  • one item
  • another item

Here is the way to override their default. We put a
paragraph inside each item and tell the system the
font, color, size, etc. that we want for that item.
For example  1) different font, 2) larger size, and 3)
color = red  (#ff0000).

<ul>

<li><p
style=”font-family:verdana;font-size:120%;color:#ff0000″>

one Item
</p></li>

<li><p
style=”font-family:verdana;font-size:120%;color:#ff0000″>

another item
</p></li>

</ul>

Now we get:

  • one item
  • another item

INDIVIDUAL AND GROUPS OF WORDS

Here is the question that started this rant.
How do you change the color and/or size of one
or a few words if you can’t use the header codes?

text text text
<FONT style=”color:#0000ff;”> text text</FONT>

You can use number pair for ###### or (sometimes)
words like black, red, green and blue.

You can change the color, size, etc. for one word or
several words.

You can stick a short SPAN into a longer text and
change just one word (like FONT) <span style=
”color: #008000″>HTML</span> gives you
in HTML for WordPress.

There are several standard Word processing codes like

Bold <strong> This is bold </strong>

Italics <I> This is italicized </I>

Underline <u>This is underlined </u>

Several<strong><I>This
is bold and italicized
</I></strong>

Note: In order to be nice to the system, you should
close the items in reverse order of how you
opened them. Think of one set as “inside” the other.

IMAGES

Usually when I want an image I just uploaded it
into you post.  Note:  You should put your keywords
in the title, the “alt” code and I’ve read that you
should put them in the Caption as well.  People
stop and read captions.
Sometime I want images that are not in my post.
For example, I can put links to images in FB posts,
or even in emails.  I store mine on Photobucket.com.
I have marked on of my albums as PRIVATE since
I have paid for some of these images and don’t want
them being used by others who wouldn’t know that
they are copyrighted.  When I hover over an image
it gives me some options. I click of the HTML option
and it pastes code into my clipboard.  I can then
paste the code where I need it.

When I first see the HTML code that I pasted, it looks like this.
<a href=”http://s1141.photobucket.com/albums/n590/HalePringle/?action=view&amp;current=HTML-Fancy.jpg” target=”_blank”><img
src=”http://i1141.photobucket.com/albums/n590/HalePringle/HTML-Fancy.jpg”
border=”0″ alt=”HTML”></a>

(BTW This is a FREE image from Stock.xchng http://www.sxc.hu/ )

There are four issues here.

First I have to  change of the “href=”…”
If I don’t and someone clicks
on the image, they will get sent to Photobucket.
But I DO want them to go to one of my capture
pages, so swap out the href=”” with a link to
someplace you would like people to end up.
People like to click on pictures!

Second I need to put “rel=”nofollow” into the code. Insert
before the href= when you insert a link to another site.
The rel=”nofollow” command keeps the Google spiders from going
to the other site and giving it a backlink. If I WANT to give a
backlink then don’t insert the code.

Another issue is size. If my image isn’t the right
size then I find “img src” and right between them I
insert width=”300″ height=”300″. Here I have to
basically guess and find a good set of height and width
by trial and error. Remember “We love HTML in WordPress!”

Last but not least, I need to insert my keywords in the alt=”???”
section. If I don’t SEOPressor will do it for me.

One other thing.  If you use code like this, you usually want to
make sure that there is a ‘Target =”_blank”‘ in the code.  This
tells the browser to open the link in a new window or a new
browser session (older browsers.)   You do NOT want people
opening your target site on top of your blog.  They might
not know how to get back or they might forget to come
back.

We end up with:
<a href=”http://HalePringle.com” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://i1141.photobucket.com/albums/n590/HalePringle/HTML-fancy.jpg” border=”0″ alt=”Key Words For this Blog”></a>

Adding Your Own Links

Some themes do not have a menu at the very bottom of the page
and that is where you want to put your “PRIVACY” Link or your
“LIABILITY” link.   You can edit the Footer.php code and use
code very similar to the last section, without the img src=”” stuff.

<a href=”http://YourSite.com/privacy.html” target=”_blank”> border=”0″ ><span style=”color: #808080; font-size: x-small”>Privacy</span></a> | <a href=”http://YourSite.com/earnings-income-disclaimer,html” target=”_blank”><span style=”font-size: x-small; color: #808080″ >Earnings &amp; Income Disclaimer</span></a> 

You replace the “x” in href=”x”   with the URL that will take them to
your privacy policy or terms and conditions polity

The LINK Button in WordPress

You probably know this, but it is not obvious.  (Ah
hates magic commands where you are just supposed
to auto-magically KNOW what to do!)  When you
want to create a link in your post, you click on the link
button and enter the URL of the destination you
want people to link to.  When you do, you get something
like this.

<a href=”http://HalePringle.com” ></a>>

If you leave this just as it is, your reader will see
NOTHING. The cursor is blinking between the
>< at the end of the link. This is where you type
something like Click Here for Hale’s Website.

Even more commonly people highlight some
words before they press the link button and those
words are put between the > and the <.

NOTE:  SEO Practices say that you should put
keywords as the words that people click on.  Google
gives much more credit to keywords than they
do “Click Here.”

I also like to add the target=”_blank” words.  I
do not want them opening anything on top of my
blog.

I have seen situations where I got extra copies of some
of the tags, so take a look after you create a link.
You should test your links anyway. (You DO TEST everything
don’t you? If you don’t HTML in WordPress will eventually
bite you. This is true in every system I have ever
worked with.)

BLOGGING TIPS: The Tab Key

I use aWeber to create Web Forms for opt- ins on
my blog.  Usually in the widgets area.  The other day
I noticed a problem on a page that had two opt-in
forms.  When I entered my Name into one forma and
clicked the Tab key to jump to the next line to enter
my email, the cursor jumped to the first line of the next
opt-in form.  Not cool.   A little digging turned up the
answer.

HTML uses a command called TabIndex to tell the browser
where the cursor should go next.  Normally these are
tabIndex=1  , TabIndex =2, etc.   AWeber uses 500, 501, 502,
etc. on every web form.  This means that when the browser
saw that I was done with the line marked as TabIndex=500
it found that there was another line marked as TabIndex=500
and it jumped to there.   The solution is to look through your
AWeber HTML code and find the TabIndex=500 and change
one set to a different number sequence – like 490, 491, 492, etc.

MORE INFO

Last but not least.   If you go to a
new tab in your browser and ask
Google   HTML ???? there are dozens of websites
dedicated to explaining how to do this stuff.
Just remember, You are using HTML in WordPress. It is
slightly different than standard HTML.

Blogging Tips:   When you put code like this in the
HTML version of the editor, click the Visual Editor
tab and then Click the HTML Editor tab again
and see if your code is still there.   WordPress is
compulsive about stripping things out if you make
the smallest mistake.

Lemme know if this helps.

OLD SCHOOL BONUS

The other day I fouled one of my
blogs up and didn’t close a CENTER
command and as a result the stuff
that should have been on the right
side of the screen was down at the
bottom. HTML in WordPress is like all
HTML – you can screw it up!

Since we don’t have the nice
tools that programmers have, I resorted
to a really old school technique. It is
brute force, but it works.

I did a Ctrl-A which marked the whole blog.
I did a Ctrl-X which cut the whole thing out
of the editor. I pasted it all into Notepad.

I then cut the top couple of paragraphs and
pasted them into the blog. I updated and looked.
Everything was fine. So I cut some more from
notepad and pasted it into the blog editor.

Rinse and repeat until I found the section that
was screwed up. It was fairly easy to look at
a couple of paragraphs and see where I had left
a closing DIV out. Brute force indeed.

BTW if you have a favorite HTML in WordPress tip
please let me know! I’ll update the blog and
give you credit to boot. :)

↓ ↓ If this post gave you some ideas – Go ahead & comment below.  ↓ ↓

Hale Pringle

Hale Pringle Ed. D.

 

Hale Pringle – Hale Yes!

Skype hale.pringle

Email: HaleYes@HalePringle.com

For Free 1/2 hour coaching call: Work with Hale

Work with me now: Join the Renegade Team Training System

P.S. If you are looking at your “job” and thinking “There has to be something better than this!”, I can help. If you are trying to work online and are totally overwhelmed, I can help! Take a look at http://HalePringle.com, or sign up for the free coaching call or email me or give me a Skype call. I’ll give you the benefit of my several years and many thousands of dollars in training and searching the rabbit hole called Internet Marketing and Network Marketing. I can help you with Lead Generation, blogging, and even career change. Add that to the finest mentoring on the Internet (Ann Sieg’s Team and Inner Circle) and you have a Winner!

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About Hale Pringle

Dr. Hale is an Internet Entrepreneur and Network
Marketing expert. His greatest pleasure is
helping people and he does just that, drawing
upon the immense resources that he has gathered
over the years in his unquenchable thirst for
knowledge.

Dr. Hale lives in beautiful, sunny Florida with
his wife, two dogs and a cat. His four children
are grown and are scattered around the state.

An eternal optimist you will hear him say
regularly: “Is this a Great Day?” The answer is
always, “Hale Yes!”

If you need help with your online marketing or a
network marketing opportunity Dr. Hale is the go
to man. “Hale Yes!”

Comments

  1. Hey, thanks for the post.Really thank you! Keep writing.

  2. Thanks again for the blog article.Much thanks again. Cool.

  3. Looking forward to reading more. Great article.Really thank you! Awesome

    • Jordan,

      As I just suggested to another Jordan, I would go to Gravitar.com and upload an image. Then when you post on Blogs, people can see who you are.

      Regards,
      Hale

  4. Awesome blog articlbuy real retro jordanse.Thanks Again. Cool.

    • Jordon,

      I suggest you go to Gravitar.com and upload in image. Then when you comment on blogs, people can see who you are.
      Glad I could help.

      Hale

  5. Thank you ever so for you post.Really thank you! Fantastic.

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