Top blogs

This post is part of a series on web hosting and related matters. We keep updating these posts. This posts deals exclusively with website domain names. The term 'website' includes all types of sites including blogs. How to create a website? How do I maintain a self-hosted blog? How can I have a blog with a name independent of suffixes like .wordpress.com ? Can I change my existing website? I am stuck with a blog on a free platform, what do I do? We keep encountering such questions. Hope, at the end of this series, you will have answers to all such questions. What is a domain name? The domain name is the name by which a website is known. It is the website's address on the vast network called the World Wide Web or the web . The domain name of ITB website is www.indiantopblogs.com . As we all have unique addresses of our homes and offices, all websites have a unique domain name. My blog is on Blogger and has domain name xyz.blogspot.com. Am I right? xyz is a s...

by Indian Top Blogs This is the second post in the archiving series. You can see here the first post on blog archiving . If you have landed here directly, we'd recommend that you read that post before reading the present one. Displaying blog archives: keep it simple yet effective You can display archives on the blog in many ways. Some bloggers choose to keep a separate page for archives and put individual posts manually on this page. But this is seldom the most efficient way of managing and displaying archives.  Archive display is better done using an automated system, i.e. by using a widget. We list below the most common ways in which archives are displayed on blogs: a. A box stating ‘archives’ or ‘select month’ or something like that. When you click on it, you get a drop-down list. This saves space and is very unobtrusive. However, the list collapses after you click on a link in the list, and you need to re-open the list. Many visitors find this need for rep...

by Indian Top Blogs What archive display should I use on my blog? I have put posts in all relevant categories, so why should I have a blog archive at all? I like to put posts in a manually run archives page; why should I go for an automated one? We are posed many such questions by bloggers. We thought, instead of replying to these questions, we'd rather engage our visitors in a detailed discussion on blog archive display so that they consider all pros and cons and take the best decision for their blog. So comes this 2-part series on blog/ website archiving. Importance of archiving for blogs and other websites ' Archiving ' for this discussion would mean ‘compilation and storage of old records and their display on the website’.  The archive is the sum total of resources crated over time and arranged properly so that they can be retrieved without confusion. Blogs, more than other websites, MUST have a proper archiving system since the key content in blog...

As we announced earlier,  we will bring out the 2012-13 edition of the    Directory of Best Indian Blogs  by May 30.  In the process of surveying the blog world for good blogs and then scrutinizing individual blogs, we always get wiser about the status of the Indian blogosphere and the habits of bloggers. We plan to bring out a number of posts on what we are observing this year. First, our journey so far.  By the end of April, we had compiled a database of nearly 50,000 Indian blogs. We kept on adding new blogs to the list so that we didn't have to recheck blogs already checked by us. But a database with majority of  entries that do not meet our criteria was proving a drag rather than a help in scrutiny of individual blogs. So, at the start of our short-listing exercise this time, we decided to drastically clean the database. After removing mirror blogs, blogs that have not been updated for over a year, blogs with automated content and ...

It is long since we talked about blog design ( website design by implication). In this post, we’d talk about how important it is to keep the design simple and how great companies are going about it. Judgment first, discussion later ;) . It helps in numerous ways to keep a website or blog clean and simple. It helps navigation, reduces clutter and so allows the viewer space to breathe and reduces his / her chances of getting irritated, keeps viewer focus on the most important thing you want to say, and yes it tells the viewer that things are straight here and he / she will not likely be misled. Simplicity and cleanliness go together but are not synonymous. A simple design is the one that does not have too many elements and the elements are not too sophisticated. You have not used too many shades and hues, effects, cute buttons, smart apps, advertisements in the garb of news, etc. The visitor finds in one or two clicks what he or she intends to find. In short, s imple means '...

This is an old post. Even while transitional old posts have been removed from TopBlogs, this one is being retaining it as it serves an archival purpose. In 2013, Technorati used to bring out such reports, Google Plus was buzzing. One takeaway, however, is very relevant all the time for blogging: blog regularly and produce high-quality content. This post is based on a TechnoratiMedia document, called ‘2013 Digital Influence Report’. This latest study by Technorati gives very interesting insight into the behavior of brands and consumers when it comes to their engagement with social media. Facebook, Google+, Twitter or blog: whom do the consumers trust most? One question that the report tries to answer is what platform do the consumers trust the most in taking buying decisions on the net. The answer – obvious to us ;) – is blogs! Blogs are trusted by consumers more than Facebook and Twitter, and we sort of knew it, but it comes to us as a surprise that blogs ran...

You can build a food blog easily and maintain it with just a little effort. It can also earn you some dollars. But to make a food blog successful and to make good money from it, you need to take care of something extra .  What's that extra that differentiates a great food blog from the ordinary? Before discussing that, let us recapitulate the food blogging scene. What is a food blog? How do food bloggers maintain blogs? A food blog is a blog that deals with human food. That is too simplistic a definition of food blog, because food blogging covers a vast area including  maintaining a kitchen garden picking up the best veggies and fruits ingredients: their types, usage recipes/ cuisines: differnent types according to location (English/ Scottish, Continental, Asian, Indian, Chinese), ingredients (vegan, non-veg), base (mutton, pasta, gluten free, dairy), cooking style (baked, fried), serving time (breakfast, lunch), taste (spicy food, sweetmeats/ desserts), etc foods for speci...