Get More Traffic to your Site!

Hi there!

I’m sure that by now, you’ve noticed a few small changes to the i.ph homepage.

To showcase just how easy it is to create your own personalized blog on i.ph, we’ve made a video which I think is quite awesome!

We also moved the recent entries and recent albums list higher up the page so that it’s more visible, making it easier for people to find new updates on i.ph and sending more traffic to your blogs! Yay! Traffic! We then placed the tag clouds at the bottom and made it a little cleaner too. Precise tagging also increases your blog’s findability and leads even more readers to your sites.

We also added a featured blog section which we will rotate every two weeks. Our current featured blog is http://comicology.i.ph who writes about anything and everything related to comicbooks. That blog is also in the running to be one of The Top Ten Emerging Influential Blogs! Pretty cool eh? What’s even cooler is that you’ll be helping us decide which blogs get to be featured! You can send in your nominations to peterjuan@i.ph and yes, of course you can nominate yourself!

Some of you may have also noticed that a full page ad appears occasionally when you or other people visit your blog. The ad stars Ade Magnaye, one of the country’s more famous (or is that infamous?) bloggers who we are happy to announce is now part of the i.ph team. Quick! Go make him uncomfortable by teasing him about it on his i.ph blog! We’re doing a dry run to see if this form of advertising is acceptable to you folks. We feel that a full page ad works better to preserve the design of your blogs because there won’t have to be any permanent ads on your sidebar or blog posts. What do you guys think? You can let us know by discussing it in the forum or by sending us an email . We hope to hear from you soon!

That’s all for know folks! Before we wrap things up I’d like to leave you with another i.ph tip. Did you know that you can add photos to your articles by simply dragging it from any publicly available website and then dropping it in your post editor? Check out how easy it is by watching our short video tutorial.

How to Drag and Drop Photos Directly To Your Post Editor

Now you gotta admit, that’s pretty neat! That’s all for now folks! Until next time, good day and blog on!

Tips and Tricks: Be in Control of Your Privacy

Hi there i.phers!

Got a bit of exciting news for you! While version 3 nears its completion, we have also given more focus on adding community centered features. This will include featured blogs, featured albums, as well different venues for discussion and sharing between i.ph bloggers! These changes will be incorporated into the soon to updated i.ph main page! Watch out for that one!

On a similar note, we have a few tips on how you can better engage your own community of readers! Notifications are always useful to alert your readers when you have something new on your blog but wouldn’t it be even better if you could target specific groups or individuals about a post that’s posted specially AND just for them? Well guess what. Your i.ph blogs can do exactly that and it’s incredibly easy too! Check out these two short tutorial videos to learn how!

You can grant access permissions to anyone, including people who don’t have i.ph accounts! You can also create an unlimited number of privileged access groups as well as assign any individual to as many groups as you want! The best thing is that your private posts remain invisible to people who you did not give access to and are never, NEVER indexed by search engines. Pretty cool eh? So go ahead and try it out!

How to Post to the Future

When most bloggers have to be away from their computers or from the internet for several days, they usually declare a short "blog hiatus" explaining why their blogs will be inactive for an extended period of time. However, that is only one way to go about it. Your I.PH blog actually allows you to "post to the future" or simply put, set a future date for a particular article to be posted. This lets you schedule when certain articles are published on your blog. So let's say you'll be gone for 4 days, you can prepare 4 articles to be published automatically on the days when you'll be away. Neat eh? Here's how you do it:

• Login to your blogs and proceed to write an article as you normally would.
• Click on the little arrow on the right of the ADVANCED SETTINGS bar to access the advanced posting options.

click image to enlarge  

• Set the time and date when you want the article posted on your blog.
• Click Publish.

It's that simple. When the assigned time and date arrives, the article will then appear on your blog. It's a great way to keep your blog regularly updated even when you can't get to a computer or connect to the internet. Just because you're going on vacation doesn't mean your blog has to! 

How to create a Privileged or Private Post

One of my favorite features on I.PH is the ability to post privately. By making what we call a Privileged Post, I can put up an article on my blog that is only visible to people I choose. What sets I.PH apart is that the people I give permission to view the post, don't even need to have an I.PH account. If i know their email, I can share a private post with them. Your Privileged Posts cannot be seen by anyone who you don't give permission to. They don't even know that such a post exists. All the comments made in a Privileged Post are hidden as well. The whole post is also invisible to search engines so security is ensured.  Pretty neat trick eh?

So how do you create a Privileged Post on your I.PH blog? It's simple really:

• Put the title of your blog, the content and your tags.
• Scroll down a little bit, Below the post window, above the Tags, you'll see the Advanced Settings Header..
• Click on the button on the right side of the Advanced Settings header.

click image to enlarge

• This will show you the Restrict Groups Section

click image to enlarge 

• Select Private to make your post a Privileged Post
• Click on the name of the group that you want to give exclusive access to your post.
• You can also add the email of people who are not in your network on the smaller box to the right. You can add as many email addresses as you want.
• Then after you're done giving permissions, click on Publish. You're Privileged Post will be up on your blog, visible only to the people you chose.

So there. It's really easy. Try it out for yourself. And share with us the real life applications you have for this feature in the I.PH Forums. Tomorrow I'll show you how to create Privileged Groups. Catch you guys again soon!

Power Tip: Post via Email

Did you know that I.ph puts the power of mobile blogging right in the palm of your hands?

The post via Email feature turns any mobile device with WAP, GPRS or WIFI access into a blog publishing tool. Simply login to your I.ph control panel and click the post via Email link to set-up this neat feature.

Now you can blog right off your Mobile Phone or PDA by:

1. Creating a new email message. The subject line will be posted as the title of the entry. Photos/videos may also be included in the email as attachments.

2. Addressing the email to <secretcode>.<category>@<blogname>.<yourdomain>i.ph.

e.g.
its3am.bookreviews@news.i.ph or
its3am.poetry@myblog.news.i.ph

(If the "blogname" is not specified, the entry will be posted on the default blog. If the "category" does not exist, the entry will be posted under the "General" category.)

3. And Sending the email.

For more detailed instructions on how you can take advantage of the Post Via Email feature, check out the Knowledge Base. 

Hyperlinking = Better blogging

Bloggers love to be linked to, especially if you’re citing
content that’s originally theirs.  And when you’re quoting or
writing about articles from other publications, it’s always wise to
make the proper citation and it’s even better if you can provide a link.

After all, blogs amount to a big, world-wide conversation.  And it’s great if you can keep everyone in the loop.

What’s a hyperlink, you ask?  And how does one go about hyperlinking when making an i.PH blog post?

Click here to read the i.PH knowledge base article about hyperlinks.

Title text with multiple lines

Ever find the need for more control over the appearance of your
blog’s title text?  Aside from various new fancy fonts we have
made available thru the Calliope Design Editor in i.Blog
(which are also applicable with the entry and sidebar headers), you can
now force breaks in between lines.  Take for example this very
blog, http://news.i.ph.  This author divided the title after “i.PH”.

How to do it.  When editing your blog’s title in Design Editor,
simply insert a line break (by pressing the “enter” key) where you
would like to divide your title lines, and then click “Apply Changes.” 
It’s that easy.  Check out the screenshot below:

All about you - customizing “about me”

Blog readers love to learn more about the person on the other
side of the keyboard (i.e. the blog authors).  And what’s a better
way to make your public aware of who exactly you are than publishing
your own profile?

Check out the following knowledge base articles on customizing your profile:

• Managing the “about me” portion in your sidebar
• Managing your profile page (what users see when they click “More” under “About me”

Is your template up-to-date?

Ever wonder what this icon
flashing next to your “Change Design” link in i.Panel is trying to tell you?  It means
there’s new version of the template you’re currently using.

Refer to this knowledge base article to check on your template version or this one for help on how to change your design template.

We recommended that you keep your blog’s design template version
up-to-date. The newest versions usually include new SideBar Features
and are further optimized for faster loading.

Turning off comment moderation

If you’re like Atty. JJ Disini or me,
you’d prefer to let your readers leave comments freely without modereation.  With this feature, comments
automatically appear on your blog, without ever needing your approval.

You may now turn off comment moderation by logging in to your i.panel, clicking on “Management” under i.Blog and then “Manage Comments.”  Simply select “no” for “Moderate Comments,” click on “save,” and you’re all set.

Of course, for the privacy and security-conscious, there’s always a way to control content already published in your blog/s.

You can delete or even modify comments through the same “Manage Comments” window (as
well as identify the originating I.P. address or host of the comment
poster).  You can also ban I.P. addresses of errant comment-posters, such as spammers and trollers.

Smilies in your blog post

Ever wonder where the smilies, a.k.a. emoticons went?

It used to be that you can easily insert these:
with a few clicks of the mouse.  But now, that feature is nowhere
to be found.

Well, not exactly nowhere.  We upgraded our text editor to a
“lighter” one for a better posting experience.  The new text editor loads faster and has more easily-accessible
formatting features.  We are in the process of moving the smiley
button back into the editor, but for the meantime, you can always use
the old-fashioned colon and closed-parenthesis method of making smileys.

Some examples:

: and ) together make
; + ) =
: + ( =
: + D =
: + P =
8 + ) =

New WYSIWIG Editor

In case you haven’t noticed yet, we have installed a new WYSIWIG
(what you see is what you get) Rich Text Editor for creating or editing
posts.  The new editor features a cleaner, faster, and more
feature-packed interface than the older one.

Users have the option of using the following:

• No WYSIWIG - for the purists who prefer composing entries in HTML code;
• Basic Editor - for those who don’t need advanced formatting options such as colors and insertion of images and links;
• Advanced Editor
  - for the whole nine yards: for one-click insertion of images and
  links, and changing of colors, font size, alignment, and highlighting.

We recommend using Advanced Editor.  Remember, this is a Rich Text Editor, so you can use the usual Word Processor shortcuts such as Ctrl-B for Bold, Ctrl-I for Italicize, and Ctrl-U for Underline.  You can also choose among different colors and styles such as strikethrough, ^superscript, _subscript, citation, and many more.

In case your editor is not set to advanced, simply follow these procedures:

• Sign in to i.Panel and under i.Blog, click “Advanced Blog Options”
• Or can also use the http://yourblogname.i.ph/blog/ shortcut
• Click the “Settings” tab
• Then switch to the appropriate editor under “Options for WYSIWYG_RTE”

Here’s how the Advanced Editor should look:

(click for a larger image)

Another cool feature from i.PH.

Need help? Use the i.PH Knowledge Base

Have you had the chance to explore the full
potential of your i.PH account? In case you haven’t noticed yet, we
have a compilation of various informative articles, step-by-step
instructions, and other materials that may be helpful in your everyday
use of your blog.

Click here to go to the iPH Knowledge Base (KB). Or you may also click “Support” in the top navigation bar of the i.PH homepage and look for the link to the KB.