BlogShaper

Here I have compiled some best and top blogging tools,resources,plugins for websites and blogs. Please notify me if i have forgotten some.

Wordpress :

For the best resource available for wordpress check my older post "Top Wordpress Tools For Websites/Blogs". It's all bout wordpress.

Movable Types :

Movable Type Styles

Style Library -If you are looking for a way to make your Movable Type blog look fresh, then look no further.
The Style Contest - A collection of Movable Type Styles created from contests to create the best styles. Only the best is here.
Style Generator - Use this if you wish to take things in to your own hands and
create your own Styles for use with Movable Type.
Best Movable Type Plugin's
MT Notifier - This plug-in gives you a great amount of control of notification options for your users and helps with keeping your users connected to your Movable Type blog.
InlineEditor - No more clicking through 3 or more pages to edit your posts on Movable Type, this plug-in allows you to edit through Ajax technology right on the same page as your post.
MT Blogroll - If you want to link to your favorite blogs and sites, then you need a “blogroll” (collection of links to sites and other blogs), and this plug-in solves this problem with providing you the ability to create and manage as many “blogrolls” as your heart desires.
Movable Type Plugin repositories
Official Movable Type Plugin site - a comprehensive alphabetical list of Movable Type plugins.

Blog Hosting :

Dedicated & Shared Hosting Services
Dreamhost - Offers a lot for a very small amount of money.
CirtexHosting - Hosting plans starting at as little as $2.
BlueHost - Another affordable hosting solution.
HostGator - Cheap shared personal hosting.
Media Temple - Grid based hosting; known to be able to sustain lots of traffic.
Paid Blog Hosting Services
TypePad - If you are a MovableType fan, then TypePad is the premiere service to be using to host your blog.
Blogsite - An enterprise level blogging and publishing platform. Multiple blogs can reside withing one blogsite. Amazing SEO visibility.
Free Blog Hosting Services
WordPress - WordPress allows you to create and host a blog on their own servers and you can display it to the world. You don’t get as much customization and functionality as if you have it hosted on your own server (for example, advertising is not allowed), but it is still a very good way to blog without paying money.
Blogger - A service owned by Google, Blogger is a way to have your blogs hosted for free and you can post as much as you want. It allows Google’s AdSense to be used.
Xanga - iXanga is a lively community of online diaries and journals. Users create their own profiles and there are many opportunities to interact with other users.
LiveJournal - LiveJournal is excellent if you wish to blog on a personal level and join a community and share your blogs among friends.
Vox - A new contender to the arena but Vox is a very nice and powerful blogging tool; not to mention free!; You receive many social experiences with this option as Vox is based heavily on community based blogging.
Tumblr - Tumblr is great if you don’t have time to blog, but still want to share something now and again. It lets you easily post videos, pictures, links, and of course you can write there too.
Mini-Blogging Services

Jaiku - Jaiku allows you the ability to post “mini-blogs” which are short blogs (usually under 140 - 160 characters in length) about whatever you decide. Jaiku also allows you to link together content from other services and social sites that provide RSS/ATOM feeds and they can be displayed as well.
Twitter - Twitter lets you say what you are doing in 140 characters or less. Recently new features have been added that have made it into a great communication tool.
Mobile Based Blogging
TextAmerica - A way to blog on the go. You blog with service by adding photos to your mobile blog and then later on you can add text descriptions and people
can see your world on the go.
Twitter - Twitter also has solid support for blogging from mobile devices.

Tips :

Blogs about Blogging
About.com Weblogs - Professional blogger / freelance writer Deborah Ng covers a wide range of blogging topics for all levels of blogger, but is especially good for new bloggers.
Advanced Business Blogging - Two people who are really making money with blogs and new media and showing others how to.
Blogging for Business - Ted Demopoulos focuses “on practical business implications and uses of new media and technologies, including Blogging and Business, pod-casting, and other ‘Cool Internet Stuff’.”
Andy Wibbels - The author of Blog Wild! puts emphasis's blogs for small business marketing, but his tips are useful for all bloggers.
Problogger - Darren Rowse is the definitive guide to making money with your blog.
MasterNewMedia - A site about independent publishing and social media which publishes articles showing how to create effective blogs and improve online marketing strategies.
Copyblogger - a great resource of no-nonsense information for bloggers (and everyone else who wants to learn how to write well)
DailyBlogTips - a place where you can find useful tips to improve the quality of your blog. Updated daily.
Blogging Pro - news, tips and technical support for bloggers.
Blogs in Education - a great list of useful resources aimed at those who want to use blogs for educational purposes.
Tips

10 Most Practical Blogs for Entrepreneurs - No philosophy, theory or personal rants/raves/ramblings here - just practical tips for business
owners.
Twenty Usability Tips for Your Blog - Tips for increasing the usability of your blog for your users which can lead to new and returning readers.
Big list of blog search engines - a very detailed resource for blog search engines.
Search Engine Submission Tips - an interesting list of techniques and strategies you can use to make your blog appear in relevant search results.
How to Make Money From Your Website - a practical guide that explains the differences between the different advertising systems that you can use on your blog.
25 Tips To Optimize Your Blog For Readers & Search Engines - useful tips that help your blog stand out from the crowd.
Research, Promote And Monetize Your Online Writing: A Blogger’s Guide To Twitter - a great guide by Michael Pick that shows you how to get the best out of
Twitter.
25 Tips for Marketing Your Blog - a detailed list of tips to help bloggers optimize their site for online marketing.
9 Lessons for Would-be Bloggers - Joshua Porter shares interesting lessons he learned in 7 years of blogging.
Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes - Jacob Nielsen writes down a list of the worst things you could do on your blog.
How to Become a Freelance Blog Writer - Leo Babauta shows how to become a freelance blog writer and get rewarded.
How To Prevent Running Out Of Blogging Steam - Did you run out of words? Here is what you can do when you have to face a situation like that.
13 Tips To Get Your Blog Noticed - a list of short tips to make your blog shine among the others.
Blogging Forums & Sites

Blogger Forum - This site has a nice forum with plenty of resources for helping you on your beginnings in blogging.
Bloggst - a fairly new community devoted to bloggers, and blogging, with howtos, interviews and other resources.
True Blogging - a forum completely dedicated to bloggers, blogging resources and blog monetization.
Blogger Talk - great resource for bloggers who want to share their experiences.
Bloggeries - a community for bloggers from all over the world to gather and discuss their blogs.
Webloggers - forum on marketing blogs, software for bloggers, blogging news and mobile blogging.
The Blog Herald - a source of blog and blogging related news for bloggers.

Blog Tools And Resources :

Blog Search Engines

Technorati - One of the most popular search engines for blogs; its top list is one of the most often cited metrics on the Internet.
Sphere - a blog search engine that offers a contextual widget which shows related posts from other blogs.
Google Blog Search - A very simple blog search engine. It’s basically Google Search that only looks through blogs and comments on blogs.
Ice Rocket – A Google-like blog search engine.
Blog Top Lists
RSSTop55 - the most comprehensive list of blog top lists and blog submission sites on
the net.
Blog Statistics & Analysis

StatCounter - A completely free statistics and analysis tool for tracking your blog’s numbers.
Site Meter - Site Meter comes in two flavors, Site Meter Basic and Site Meter Premium and this service offers advanced analytics of your site statistics.
AWStats - A free and open-source alternative to track your site statistics.
Feedburner - A wide range of tools to sniff up your RSS feed, including HTML preview, geotagging, merging link and photo feeds, password protection, and one of our favorites - a customizable GIF-based headline animator. They can also insert ads into your feed and have both free and premium analytics.
Alexa - Alexa has the statistics for all of the internet and it lets you compare your blog to another.
Google Analytics - a free, full-featured (albeit a bit slow) analytics program from Google (ex. Urchin).
MeasureMap - another free tool for detailed analysis of your blog’s visitor habits
Blog Monetization

PayPal - PayPal allows you to set up a donations system on your site. Your readers can click a button that will bring them to a page where they can send you some cash.
Chitika - Contextual interactive CPC advertising. Requires more screen real estate than AdSense, but tends to have higher click-through rates and payout rates.
LinkAdage - Text links and text advertisements to generate revenue from your website by way of bidding, brokering, and exchanging text advertisements.
Txtswap - If you want to exchange text links to try and bring in more users, and in turn raise the potential to gain income, this is another service to try.
Google AdSense - Almost certainly the largest single source of income to bloggers worldwide. Pay per click and per view.
Yahoo Publisher network - pay per click ads, similar to Google AdSense.
AdBrite - Get paid for text link advertisements on your blog.
Text Link Ads - One of the leading suppliers of text link advertisements.
BidVertiser - an advertising system where you set the bids for pay per click ads.
ReviewMe - a marketplace for paid blog reviews.
PayPerPost - another marketplace for paid blog posts; often criticized, not only because of the idea of paid blog posting, but also due to the fact that they don’t require full disclosure on paid posts.
BlogBurst - get your blog syndicated by the big time media; best blogs get paid for their content.
Spreading The Word

Reddit - Social content site with focus on fun stuff, politics, science; sometimes, anything goes. Witty descriptions are obligatory.
ClipMarks - A service that allows you to save and share “clips” from web pages.
Digg/Stumble - Social content site that likes technology-related content; especially Google and Apple related. Promoting your own blog - especially too aggressively - on Digg is not a good idea.
Blogmarks - another “clipping” service for saving and sharing links from the web.
Newsvine - Social news site with plenty of options and features
Netscape - Netscape’s social news portal, less oriented towards technology than both Digg and Reddit
Del.icio.us - If you need to share bookmarks or you want people to tell you about websites, Del.icio.us will allow you to do that.
Miscellaneous Tools
MyBlogLog - Possibly the coolest blog community building tool around. Doubles as a simple analytics tool.
BlogRolling – Blogroll manager.
PollDaddy - cool polls for your blog.
BlogPolls - another provider of free polls for bloggers
Favicon Maker – simple service that enables you to easily create a favicon from an image.
Qumana - a desktop blog editor for Mac and Windows.
Blogjet - another desktop blog client, works only on Windows.
Blogarithm - enables you to track all your content at one place.
GeoLoc - a widget that shows your visitors’ locations on a world map.
JunkIWant - display your Amazon wish list as a widget on your blog
BlogSticker - create stickers for your blog.
MyOpenId - enables you to identify yourself for various online service, using your blog address.
BlogFlux tools - several cool tools for bloggers.
ImageShack - free photo hosting service.

RSS :

Rss Readers

Mozilla Thunderbird - Mozilla’s e-mail and RSS reader, supports skins and add-ons.
Omea - one of the most fully featured RSS readers out there; can get a little slow as its database grows; free in its basic version, also has a commercial, advanced version with more features.
Newsfire - RSS reader for OS X.
PixelNews - a commercial Mac OS X RSS reader that comes with a huge database of feeds.
Liferea - RSS reader for Gnome users.
Akregator - RSS reader for KDE.
RSSOwl - works on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. Offers, among other features, a multi-pane, highly customizable interface, OPML and blogroll import, internal browser, and a search engine.
BottomFeeder Rich-featured multi platform RSS reader (works on Linux as well as Windows and OS X), supports CSS customization, OPML import/export, and plugins.
Google Reader – In addition to tracking your feeds, Google’s popular RSS reader allows you to star items (like in Gmail), view trends in your feeds and reading habits, and recently added an option to read feeds offline.
iGoogle – Formerly known as Google Personalized Home, iGoogle allows you to include RSS feeds as part of your custom start page.
My Yahoo! – Still the most widely used custom homepage on the Web, My Yahoo now allows you to add RSS feeds alongside your weather, stock quotes, and news. Similar to Netvibes and Pageflakes, My Yahoo allows you to re-arrange your feeds with drag and drop features.
My Netscape – Netscape’s personal homepage service also includes the ability to add RSS feeds as content modules. An account also lets you participate in their Digg-like homepage voting.
NewsGator Go! – NewsGator’s mobile version syncs with user’s online accounts, allowing you to read their feeds on the go for $29.95.
LiteFeeds – Once downloaded to your phone, LiteFeeds allows you to browse your feeds, email articles to friends, or bookmark them to your del.icio.us account.
Mobispine – Mobispine is a free Java application for reading your feeds on your mobile. The service also includes a web component where users can add feeds to the Mobispine database, see related feeds, and leave comments.
Google Reader Mobile – If you use Google Reader, you can access a version designed for mobile phones.

RSS to E-mail convertor

Feedblitz - one of the most popular RSS to e-mail converters. Supported by FeedBurner. Also has a Firefox plugin.

RSS feed validator

Feed Validator – By entering your feed URL at Feed Validator, the service will literally translate your RSS to code and identify any potential problems. It works with versions of RSS up to 2.0.

RSS plugins

Sage - RSS reader for Firefox, has a decent amount of options, allows CSS customization.
Wizz - a very advanced RSS reader for Firefox with a huge set of options.
Feedlist - a wordpress plugin that displays linked lists imported from an RSS or ATOM feed.
Fedafi RSS plugin - a plugin for Wordpress that creates a full text valid RSS 2.0 feed from your Wordpress blog and adds a style sheet, tracks subscribers and clicks on articles.
Good News Trillian RSS plugin - allows you to read RSS feeds in Trillian.

RSS manager

Feedburner - the obvious one. Recently acquired by Google, FeedBurner has become the de facto standard for RSS feed management, offering a huge set of features, including detailed analytics, chicklets, feed optimization and ad insertion.

RSS Mixer

Yahoo! Pipes - an advanced RSS mixer with a graphical user interface; supports simple operators, filters, and many advanced functions.
Feedbite - a combination of an online RSS reader and an RSS mixer, with the possibility to vote for RSS “bundles”.
Google Mashup Editor (GME) - Google’s set of developer tools for creating mashups.

RSS ping tools

Pingoat – On Pingoat, you enter your blog URL and select the services you would like to ping. Doing so will make sure that the selected sites crawl and index your site. The site has nearly 50 different services you can ping.
Ping-o-matic – Enter your blog or feed URL and select from a variety of blog search engines and Ping-o-matic will send them a ping. The site has about 20 services to choose from.
Blog Flux – In addition to a variety of other tools for bloggers, Blog Flux offers Pinger, which includes more than 30 sites you can automatically ping, including several language specific indexes.
ping service – This site is mostly in Dutch and automatically pings a few of the larger services such as Technorati and Weblogs.com.

Feed directories

Technorati - indexes blogs based on tags and authority, as measured by incoming links.
Weblogs.com - one of the original feed directories, Weblogs.com simply shows the most recent blog updates automatically as they happen.
Icerocket - a blog search engine that also keeps track of blog statistics with their Blog Tracker product.

RSS tips and tricks

Steve Rubel’s collection of RSS hacks
Another set of RSS-related hacks from Steve Rubel
Web Worker Daily’s tips on RSS reading
5 RSS tips by LifeDev
Steve Rubel’s 35 ways to use RSS feeds
RSS tools for Firefox - a detailed roundup of RSS-related add-ons for Firefox here on TechnicalTricks
Mister Tipster - a hardware USB mini display aimed specifically at displaying RSS feeds
Some RSS tips from Wired
Read RSS on your AppleTV.

Miscellaneous tools

SearchFeedr - RSS feed search, supports Yahoo!, Google, MSN Live and Altavista.
RSSMicro - an RSS search engine; searches over 65 million feeds.
RSS Panel X - a Greasemonkey script that displays RSS, Atom, hAtom and OPML directly from originating website.

| posted in Blog Tricks, Interesting Articles | [ More ]

A relatively easy method of increasing page views on your blog is to add a list of related posts below each article. This offers readers a ready-made reading list of other articles on your blog, which are of a similar theme or subject matter.

You will see it when you when you click on any of the post it will be shown under the post. You can see it in my blog also.

Sign in to Blogger

Dashboard --> Layout --> Html (Check Expand Widget)

Search for the following:(Use Ctrl+F for easy searching)

<p><data:post.body/></p>

Now paste the following code right after it.

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
<div class='similiar'>





<div class='widget-content'>
<h3>Related Posts by Categories</h3>
<div id='data2007'/>
<div id='hoctro'>
</div>
<script type='text/javascript'>

var homeUrl3 = "<data:blog.homepageUrl/>";
var maxNumberOfPostsPerLabel = 4;
var maxNumberOfLabels = 10;

maxNumberOfPostsPerLabel = 10;
maxNumberOfLabels = 3;

function listEntries10(json) {
var ul = document.createElement('ul');
var maxPosts = (json.feed.entry.length <= maxNumberOfPostsPerLabel) ?
json.feed.entry.length : maxNumberOfPostsPerLabel;
for (var i = 0; i < maxPosts; i++) {
var entry = json.feed.entry[i];
var alturl;

for (var k = 0; k < entry.link.length; k++) {
if (entry.link[k].rel == 'alternate') {
alturl = entry.link[k].href;
break;
}
}
var li = document.createElement('li');
var a = document.createElement('a');
a.href = alturl;

if(a.href!=location.href) {
var txt = document.createTextNode(entry.title.$t);
a.appendChild(txt);
li.appendChild(a);
ul.appendChild(li);
}
}
for (var l = 0; l < json.feed.link.length; l++) {
if (json.feed.link[l].rel == 'alternate') {
var raw = json.feed.link[l].href;
var label = raw.substr(homeUrl3.length+13);
var k;
for (k=0; k<20; k++) label = label.replace("%20", " ");
var txt = document.createTextNode(label);
var h = document.createElement('b');
h.appendChild(txt);
var div1 = document.createElement('div');
div1.appendChild(h);
div1.appendChild(ul);
document.getElementById('data2007').appendChild(div1);
}
}
}
function search10(query, label) {

var script = document.createElement('script'); script.setAttribute('src', query + 'feeds/posts/default/-/' + label +
'?alt=json-in-script&callback=listEntries10');
script.setAttribute('type', 'text/javascript');
document.documentElement.firstChild.appendChild(script);
}

var labelArray = new Array();
var numLabel = 0;

<b:loop values='data:posts' var='post'>
<b:loop values='data:post.labels' var='label'>
textLabel = "<data:label.name/>";

var test = 0;
for (var i = 0; i < labelArray.length; i++)
if (labelArray[i] == textLabel) test = 1;
if (test == 0) {
labelArray.push(textLabel);
var maxLabels = (labelArray.length <= maxNumberOfLabels) ?
labelArray.length : maxNumberOfLabels;
if (numLabel < maxLabels) {search10(homeUrl3, textLabel);
numLabel++;}
}
</b:loop>
</b:loop>
</script>
</div>

</div>
</b:if>