Technology Bloggers

Technology Bloggers adopts post authorship

7th May 2012 3 Replies Christopher Roberts

Until recently I haven’t been as aware as I probably should have been of the Google update, which allows authors to claim authorship of their posts in the SERPs.

I was recently talking about the blog in the (Google) Webmaster Central Help Forum, when someone suggested that we should use Google Authorship. I had heard of it before, but wasn’t 100% sure what it meant, or why we should take the time to adopt it.

So after a little research, I am here to present my findings to you 🙂

What is Google Authorship?

Google Authorship is a relatively new part of search results, whereby Google shows the (Google+ profile) avatar of a person next to articles they have written in the SERPs. This means that people know who wrote something, even before they visit the page.

Google will not only give an avatar which it fetches from the writers Google+ profile, but it will also link to that persons profile. It might also provide additional information like how many circles the person is in. See the image below for more of an idea of how it looks.

How Can I Claim My Posts?

If you run your own blog, and you are the only person who ever writes on it, it is dead easy. Just add a link to your Google profile page with ?rel=author after it, and with the text being the same name as your Google profile, to your profile, or just every page of the blog.

The code would look something like this:

<a href="https://plus.google.com/114686389155717038852?rel=author" rel="author" title="Christopher Roberts on Google+">Christopher Roberts</a>

What if I Run or Am Part of a Multi-Author Blog?

If you are part of a blog with multiple authors, it can get a bit more complicated. Basically, the admin needs to make sure that there is no sitewide Google+ profile link, as that could mess things up. Each individual author will need to either link to their Google+ profile with the tag rel=”author” on every post they write, or link to their profile page on every page they write with the tag rel=”author” and then on their profile page link to their Google+ profile with rel=”me”.

It may sound a bit complicated, but it does make sense. If you don’t own a site, don’t worry about it. If you do and need some help, ask me in the comments, or send me a message 🙂

How Do I Claim Authorship of My Posts on Technology Bloggers?

Recently I have been very busy tweaking bits of WordPress’s code, in order to make it as easy as possible for you to claim authorship of the posts you write on Technology Bloggers.

There are three really simple tasks you need to complete. The first is to go to your Google+ profile ‘About’ page and under ‘Contributes to’ add Technology Bloggers – https://www.technologybloggers.org. The second step is to copy your Google+ profile URL and paste it into the ‘Google+ Profile URL’ box on your WordPress admin profile page. Finally in the box below (‘Google+ Name’) add your name as it appears on your Google+ profile. That is it! The blog does the rest of the work for you, and adds a link to your Google+ profile to your writer profile page.

A screenshot of the data you need to fill in on your profile, in order to claim authorship of your posts on Technology Bloggers.

If you don’t have a Google+ profile page, your link will just direct to your WordPress profile page. Not sure what I mean? Don’t worry, if you don’t have one, nothing bad will happen!

I have updated the post guidelines to include a section about how to link to your profile, however this article probably has a more detailed explanation!

A Final Word About rel=”author” and rel=”me”

If you are still confused about rel=”author” and rel=”me”, look at it this way: rel=”author” lets search engines know that the URL with that tag in is pointing to your author profile, be that WordPress, Google+, about.me or another; rel=”me” lets search engines that the URL with that tag in is another website/profile/blog etc. that is yours.

To see the Google Authorship in action you will have to wait a while for Google to index the pages and register the authorship. To check that your code is working okay and that Google can find your authorship, try using Google’s Rich Snippets Testing Tool.

For more information on Google Authorship, please check out Google’s help article on it.

Gravatar – are you making use of it?

30th April 2012 20 Replies Christopher Roberts

I don’t think enough people know about Gravatar and the what it does, so as a result I have chosen to write an article about it, to help you get more out of the web.

What is Gravatar?

The best way to describe what Gravatar is is the same way that it is described on Gravatar.com: A Globally Recognized Avatar. But what does that mean?

“Your Gravatar is an image that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things like comment or post on a blog. Avatars help identify your posts on blogs and web forums, so why not on any site?” – Gravatar.com

How better can I explain that? A Gravatar is an image that you can be associated with across the web. Any Gravatar compatible site – like most WordPress blogs, and many other forums, blogs and websites across the net – that you put your email into will display your unique image, whenever you write a post or leave a comment.

When you finish reading this article, cast your eye at my avatar, you can see it on the left of the writer bio box.

Until recently I had been using the Technology Bloggers logo as my avatar, however I have chosen to change to using my own website logo – the iconic blue ‘C’.

When you sign up for Gravatar, you also get your very own profile page. Here you can link to your website and write a short bi-line for the world to see. Everyone has a custom URL, and until today I didn’t realise that mine was actually my name! Okay, by default it is, but I was the first person with my name to register with Gravatar, which means that I must have had one for a pretty long time!

To check out my profile, please go to https://en.gravatar.com/ChristopherRoberts.

How Can You Make the Most Out of Gravatar?

If you scroll down the ‘our writers‘ page you will see that some of our writers have chosen to add a Gravatar to their email address, so that when they post, their customised image comes up. I then take this image and post it next to their profile on the our writers page. Some people don’t send us an avatar, and don’t have one linked to their email, so they have a randomly generated image associated with them.

The default image if you do not have a Gravatar - the Gravatar logo

If you look down the list you will see some of each. Which do you think looks better? Personally I believe that having an image of your choosing that follows you everywhere on the web is a great idea.

How to Get a Gravatar Avatar

Linking your email(s) to your chosen image(s) really could not be easier.

Step 1: Go the the Gravatar website.

Step 2: Click ‘Sign Up’ – this can be found on the top bar

Step 3: Enter your email address

Step 4: Check your emails and click the confirm link

Step 5: Upload the image you want to follow you everywhere on the web

Step 6: Voila! Any time you comment on Technology Bloggers of any of the other ‘kajillion’ blogs, websites or services that support Gravatar, your image will be associated with you

You can add more email addresses if you use different ones for different sites, and can even add more pictures, so you can comment on one site with one picture and on another site you have a different one!

Once you have an account you can also set up your Gravatar profile page, where you can tell the world about yourself, and link to sites you love.

Gravatar makes you identifiable across the web as a unique individual, not just another faceless/anonymous name.

Win 1 of 10 Monitive accounts with Technology Bloggers!

25th April 2012 10 Replies Christopher Roberts

Technology Bloggers has been growing for over a year now, and today marks the announcement and launch of its first ever competition!

We have been approached by a few firms in the past offering to give us prizes for giveaways, and have never really got round to launching a competition. However now thanks to a new widget/bit of software I have discovered called Rafflecopter, we are able to run competitions with relative ease!

If this competition is a success, then I hope that we can run more in the near future! 🙂

The Prizes

So, to the prizes! We are very lucky to be able to give away 3 Monitive Premium Accounts and 7 Monitive Basic Accounts. Check out their pricing plan page for more info on the accounts.

Monitive

The kind sponsor of this contest is Monitive, who provide site monitoring services, so you know if your website goes offline. Many people have written on Technology Bloggers how site uptime is a vital part of a hosting package, as customers could be lost, and your site could lose rankings, if it goes down.

With a Monitive account you get weekly emails, which let you know if your site has gone down. With basic, pro and premium level accounts (all but the free) you can have it check your site as frequently as up to once every minute, and if it ever finds your site is down, it can email you, text (SMS) you, and it even offers Twitter DM alerts.

Does your site go down on a regular basis, maybe at a time you are not ever online? Well without a Monitive account, you probably don’t know! If your host regularly takes your site down at night, and you don’t know, it could seriously affect your overseas traffic – especially traffic from the other side of the world.

If your website, blog, forum, search engine etc. goes down, it isn’t good. That is why Monitive offer to check it is up, by sending regular (as regular as you choose) requests from servers all around the world.

With a free account you can monitor one website, and get 4 free introductory texts. With a basic account, you can monitor five websites, and get 10 free introductory texts. Pro accounts get to monitor 10 services, and get 10 free text messages every month. If you have a premium account you can monitor up to 30 websites, DNS’s, FTP servers, MySQL databases, POP3’s etc. and you get 30 text messages every month, so if a single site, server, FTP etc. goes down, you know – fast.

I have been using the service for around a week now, and it works really well. It is easy to use and has all the data you want to see.

How to Win!

I want to make it as easy as possible for you to enter, and I want to make it so that everyone can enter, as we are a community blog, which means everyone should be able to benefit.

To enter is really easy, you only need to do a few things, but the more you choose to do, the more entries you will get.

The first thing you must do is sign up for a ‘Free’ Monitive account. Once you have done this, you can start entering.

Sign in to the Rafflecopter widget below, however you like, Facebook or email. The first thing you must do is tell us the email address you used to set up the account, as we will need this to upgrade your account if you win. After that, do as many or few of the options which become available to you, the more you do, the more entries you get!

Rafflecopter

The Rafflecopter widget loads below this text, it seems to be taking its time (at least when this article went live it was) so be patient, it should load in after a few seconds – and it doesn’t load on some pages, so make sure you go to the giveaway page to get it to work.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Winners

This competition will end at 12.00 am on Saturday the 19th of May. Winners will be announced within the following week, and then their accounts upgraded accordingly.

Best of luck to everyone!

I hereby declare Technology Bloggers first ever competition, live!

Championing responsible innovation in partnership with the Bassetti Foundation