UK Bloggers Guide

So having established that the technorati widget works on blog.co.uk, I thought I'd check that my favorite widgets from widgetbox.com also work on blog.co.uk.

The short answers is yes, they do work on blog.co.uk

Links:
An Introduction to Widgets for your Blog
widgetbox.com

It took me ages to get my head around the use of trackbacks in my blogging activities. How does a new blogger test that trackback is working as intended on their blog? Heck, how do they even understand trackbacks?

Well I have the answer to both questions: They can use my swanky new Trackback Test and Demonstration.

Checkout my Free Trackback Test and Demonstration.

So the Technorati javascript widget does work. I activated a "Free HTML" content unit within my template, and simply pasted the javascript in to it.

Take a look at the borrom of the right menu and you'll see the Technorati box working fine.

Couple of notes : Use of the Technorati Widget is not compulsory, and when u first add it to your blog, it can take a minute to start working as intended.

So, my experiments to determine whether blog.co.uk is a viable business blogging platform have grinded to a halt.

NOT A GOOD BUSINESS BLOGGING PLATFORM
I'm going to have to say "No, blog.co.uk is not a viable business blogging platform". It's a combination of two reasons.

While the use of your own domain name is available, you can only use a domain name registered/purchased through blog.co.uk. You can't purchase a .co.uk domain name and when trying to purchase a .com domain name I was faced with a purchasing process that was written in German.

Next is customisation. It's design and layout options are simply not flexible enough for a commercial blogger that may look for scalability in their their blogging platform.

A BRILLIANT PERSONAL BLOG PLATFORM
I will say you'll be hard pushed to find a better personal blogging platform that blog.co.uk

So, that's it. I guess I'm done with blog.co.uk - I came, I saw, I tinkered and I bought a bloody pro account! But it's simply not going to cut it as a commercial/business blogging platform.

I'll be back at my regular haunt: The UK Bloggers Guide

Thought I'd try out the domain mapping feature of blog.co.uk - Forget it!

Having just gone pro on blog.co.uk as part of series of articles I'm writing for The UK Bloggers Guide, I thought I'd check out their domain mapping feature.

Domain mapping allows you to lose the xyz.blog.co.uk domain name and use your own.

But ironic that you can't register a .co.uk domain, and when you try to register a .com, the whole payment process is in German.

Poor show, bringing my experiment with blog.co.uk as a viable business blog platform to an end. Which is a bitch considering I just paid for the pro upgrade about 2 hours ago.

So TypePad is still my number one choice for UK business bloggers.

EDITED : The short answer is no, but read on to discover how this was tested.

What's the all the fuss with NOFOLLOW?
When someone makes a comment on one of your posts they can include a URL. Perhaps to their own site or blog for example. A search engine crawling your site would then follow the url and index that content.

On blog that ranks well within the search engines, this would encourage spammers to post comments just so they can get their content indexed.

There is a NOFOLLOW attribute that can be included in html that would stop a search engine from following the link.

In an effort to beat spammers, many blog platforms have NOFOLLOW automatically included in their templates. Which is great for fighting spam, but not so great for genuine commentators to my blogs.

I personally have no problem with passing on a little link love by allowing links to be followed by serach engines. So I don't want the NOFOLLOW attribute screwing with my commentators.

So, does blog.co.uk have the NOFOLLOW attribute in use by default?

There's only one way to find out. Once I've published this, I'll comment on it and check the source code of the page.

So I gone pro on blog.co.uk, before I get tied up in testing out the features of a pro account, I need to plug in my essential blogging tools. I'll start with technorati.com

Step One: Create a Free Technorati Account
Create your free technorati account at technorati.com

Step two: Claim Your Blog
Before they'll include your blog on technorati, they want to make sure that u are the owner of the blog.

This is very straight forward. Submit your blog url and then you include a small piece of unique html code in one of your posts.

Looks like this:

Technorati Profile

Once you've published the post, technorati will crawl through your blog looking for the code. Hey presto. You have now claimed your blog.

So I've been playing around with blog.co.uk for a series of articles I'm doing on The UK Bloggers Guide (http://www.ukbloggersguide.com).

The next step is to see how it competes in the Business Blogging arena. Is blog.co.uk any good for businesses? Over the next couple of weeks I'll be looking at a number of its features including:

- Domain Mapping
- Customisation
- Search Engine Optimisation
- Customer Service
- Blog services integration (feedburner, technorati, digg, etc)

I had a trawl through the help section of blog.co.uk to find out how to disable the 'tags' feature.

Tags are simply key words/key phrases. There are instances of tags used with blog.co.uk.

The first is the tag you use to describe the content of a specific post, and are entered by you just before you publish the post. You can assign multiple tags to a post.

EXAMPLE : A post about grooming a cocker spaniel may use 'cocker spaniels' 'dogs' and 'grooming'

The second type of tag, is a keyword used to describe YOU! Now it's these that cause the most concern for blog.co.uk users because your accounts default settings allow ANYONE to tag you. Screw that!

EXAMPLE: User idontknowwhy found someone had tagged her as 'lives in a fish bowl'. Not particularly offensive, but very annoying. Read the post.

You can change the settings so that only people on your friends list can tag you, or you can disable it completely. It took me a while to figure out where I change the settings for tags. It's under 'profile' then 'Edit Profile'.

Step by step guide:

1. Log in
2. Hit the 'myblog.co.uk' button on the right hand side of the page, just under the search box.
3. Now select the 'Profile' link under it.
4. Go to 'Edit Profile'
5. Scroll down to the 'Tags' section and choose your new setting.
6. Scroll to the bottom of the page and hitthe save button.