Blogging Tips and Tricks

Hey Jammers! Here is all of the information I have compiled on making your Animal Jam blog, or any blog, as glamorous as possible!



TIPS:

Here are the basics of Animal Jam blogging for daily updates:

• MECHANICS, MECHANICS, MECHANICS!!!! This is a given for any blog, but I will emphasize it for Animal Jam blogging. Capitalize, punctuate, spell, and grammar-ify correctly! The whole point of  AJUB (Animal Jam Update Blogging) is so that people understand you. it doznt help iff ur sentces look like dis or eeven like dis espeshully like dis. u need to puntshuate corectly so that people ken undurstand u so ur sentces arnt all mashed up like dis. Example of a hard to understand post: hey jammers hows it goin todays new item is the tan carpet what do you think of this item bye jammers!!!!!!!
• Make your posts longer than a sentence. Any AJUB post can look like this: "Hey Jammers! The new item today is the Tan Carpet! That's all I have time for today, see you Jammers!" Some good ideas for lengthening posts to longer than a sentence are:
• Find some things of interest around Jamaa. Write a story about it, open it up for discussion, or just point it out.
• Have contests! Everyone loves a good competition! You don't have to have a fabulous prize to make a contest great! Just make sure the contest is original. Riddle contests, screenshot contests, and story contests are all great ideas!
• Create comics and funny pictures! Nothing gets a good blog audience involved like a few laughs!
• Show little things like tips and tricks for blogging/Animal Jam (like what I'm doing now). 
• Put up guides for player-controlled things, like clans, trading, and adoption.
• Engage the readers! Some Bloggers complain that they don't get enough comments. Well, to do so, you must add something to the post that will draw in the reader, get the reader to read, and then ask for a response. Things like funny pictures and interesting facts will get readers to respond, but if you can't do that, just add a question into your post. Things like "What do you think of this item?" and "What is your favorite ______?" should trigger responses.
• If you feel that you are not receiving enough pageviews/followers, be assertive! Go out and put your Animal Jam blog out on the Internet! Visit other blogs and ask if they will mention your blog, or even just ask if your blog can go on their blog list, if they have one. However you do it, just find the right people who will be kind enough to share your blog with the world.
• Last but not least, BE YOURSELF! Sure, you can look at other blogs for ideas of how to structure your posts, etc., but when it comes down to it, have your own, unique personality. Be as  spunky, vivacious, funny, and as you as you can possibly be. Be yourself, and you will find that you fit right it in the blogging world!

Layout & Gadgets:

1) Configuring a favicon

Have you ever wondered how blogs get the little symbol by the blog name on the tab?

Here's how!

First, go to Layout.

Find the "Favicon" section and click "edit."

On the pop-up, choose "Choose File" and pick the file to upload for the favicon. Make sure it fits the requirements.

Click "Save." You now have a favicon!

2) Add a poll

Many bloggers want to know how you can add a poll to their blog, so they can ask questions and receive responses in an easy way.

First, click on Layout.
Next, click on "Add Gadget."

In the window that pops up, scroll down until you find "Poll." Click the plus sign to add it.
In the new window, there are different things you can change about the poll. You first need to add a question,  then add answers.

Key:
Red: Where you add the question
Blue: Where you can add the answers.
Black: You can remove an answer if you wish.
Green: If you have too few answers, you can add more.
Pink: Depending on the type of question, you can allow people to pick more than one answer.
Purple: Change the date of the poll closing.


3) Image links
Many people prefer to have links to pages in corresponding images on the sidebar, rather than in the traditional bar at the top of the page, or even on the side. The benefits of having the pages linked like this are:
> You can have descriptions of the pages
> It just looks neat :)

Here is what you have to do:
First, open up the "Add Gadget" window.

Scroll down to find "Image."

Click the add button, and you will be taken to the configuring page.

Now, the trick is to find the appropriate graphic/image to fit the page. Here are a few graphics/images that could correspond with some pages you may have on your blog. These images I extracted from the HTML of the Daily Explorer and the Animal Jam Help Desk. Since anybody can find these, you do not need to give credit for these images.
Questions:


Rare Item Monday:

List all of the rare items sold on Mondays.

The Alphas

Have information about each alpha.

Contests:

Epic Dens:

Have DE Epic Dens, or pick your own!

Scamming Awareness:

Trading Station:


Help (Animal Jam or Blogging):


Game Guides:


There are many, many more pages and graphics that you could use out there.


To set it up:

Once you have found the image you want, right-click on it and click "Copy Image URL."

Go back to the Configure Image window.

Insert the following information:

Red: The Page Title
Blue: Page description
Black: Add the page link (Ex: http://www.animaljamnox.blogspot.com/p/trading.html)
Purple: Paste the image URL

Click save, and you have your very own image page link!

Some ideas of how you can use this:

• Make all links images, if you have less than 10 pages.
• Make half the pages image links, half on the top bar

Be creative!

HTML:

HTML: What is it?

HTML (or Hypnotis somethin' or another....Oh yeah! Hypertext Markup Language! Knew it was somethin' like that...) is the language of web pages. Many websites are created by typing hundreds of lines of gibberish that looks like <body> <img src="http://www.animaljamnox.blogspot.com/p/doo-dah.html" width = "100" height = "100"/>....and so on, so forth. A useful feature of Blogger is that you can directly edit the HTML of your blog. Many people bypass this feature because they either do not notice it or have no idea of what it is. However, you can use this feature to add some really neat stuff to your blog, such as custom cursor, falling objects, etc.

How to change your cursor:

Recommended website where to find cursor: http://www.cursornation.com
Once you have found the cursor you want, copy the HTML code provided.

Go to Blogger. Click on Template, and then on "Edit HTML."


On your keyboard, hit CTRL and F at the same time. In the small pop-up, type in </head>

Right before </head>, paste the code.

Save and close.

Visit your blog. Notice a different cursor? If you try this and it doesn't work, just comment your question below.


Falling Objects:

Falling objects is a pretty neat seasonal thing for your blog. You can change it with every different holiday, event, and party under the sun.

I recommend using the following link: http://24work.blogspot.com/2012/01/falling-objects-falling-text-marquee.html


Sorry for not helping any....but this website gives step-by-step instructions. Just scroll down to find everything!

Blog Music:

Recommended Website: www.soundcloud.com
You don't need to create a SoundCloud account to do this! Simply:
1) Find the music you want
2) Click on the title of the music
3) Click on "Share"

Yellow: Copy this code
Purple: Before you copy the code, you can change things about the music like autoplay

Now, open up the "New Gadget" window and add "HTML/JavaScript"

Paste the code into the "Content" space, and add a title in the "Title" space.

Save, and now you have blog music!

I hope those tips were helpful! I will now work on the requests. If you want to make a request, just comment below!

If you would like me to add something to your blog/troubleshoot/other, send me an admin request at cheesevms915@gmail.com, and make sure to say what you would like me to add!

*Idea from BlueGecko of Jammer Central*