Anything from a company to products, websites to blogs require a good name to have a good impression at the audience. Getting a good name for the site can be really difficult as most of the names are already taken by some one else. This case is especially prominent in the area of website’s domain name registration. Its similar to not having an email Id you wanted. Millions of domain names are created daily and deleted daily, so what matters is making sure that you get the names you want before some body else. But how will you do that? It simply requires a tool that will show you the available domain names over all the domains.

25 Sites to register or monitor domain names

Here are the lists of 25+ tools that will allow you to check for the free domain names.

GoDaddy.com

GoDaddy is probably the most popular domain registration service in the world. In 2009, it reached more than 36 million domain names under management. It has one of the most comprehensive service from domains to hosting to Site Building. It is one mega platform for buying and selling anything related to web services.

BustAName.com

BustaName helps you find available domain names based on the entered keywords. The keywords has to describe the website that you are going to make, and BustaName will bring back all the available domain names using these keywords. You can extend the search by adding synonyms, adding suffixes/prefixes, dropping vowels, etc. Once you get a list of available domain names you can sort them alphabetically, rank by quality and add potential candidates to your watch list.

Domai.nr

Domainr provides all the different possible domain names it creates. You’ll also see generic domains like .com,.net and .org. If you’re looking for a non-Latin internationalized domain name, you can enter characters with accents or other diacritics, and even scripts such as Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese and Hindi.

Domainr also shows whether a domain name is possible to register—different domains have their own restrictions for things like minimum domain length, top-level registerability, and International character support.

DomainFinder

DomainFinder is a simple web application for webmasters which helps you to find fun domain name.

Geek.name

This is another application that lets you find domain names.

Nameboy.com

NameBoy, as its “name” suggests, is a domain name generating tool that’s currently making waves all over the ‘net. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking to enter a competitive field such as free poker or something as unique as your whole name, NameBoy can find the available domain name for you.

Dot-o-mator

Dot-o-mator gives a domain name suggestions. User has to enter a word or words, and choose some endings (or enter your own), click to combine them. If you see a name you like, you can check its availability or save it to your scratchboard. There is a max of 15 words in the prefix and suffix boxes.

Domain Tools

This application lets you search for current and expired whois domains and dns tools.

Domize

In addition to checking whether a domain name has been previously registered or not (the limit of other domain name look-up tools), Domize will check whether unavailable domain names can be bought on the secondary market or whether they’re soon expiring. Most incredibly, Domize runs these additional checks in no time, meaning you’re spending less time waiting for page reloads or starting at spinning icons and more time finding your perfect domain name.

squurl

Squurl allows you to quickly and easily check domain name availability. It has a simple interface to add the keywords and search for the free domains available.

dnScoop

dnScoop.com attempts to estimate a value for an established website or a domain name by using factors such as:
1. Links pointing to the domain
2. Popularity of the domain
3. Age of the domain
4. Pagerank of the domain
5. Traffic to the domain

Ajax Whois

AW is a comprehensive and easy to use service for finding available domain names and obtaining WHOIS and other information about registered domain names. The first public version was built under the Microsoft .NET platform (C#) and was released to the public on November 17, 2005.

Domaintyper

Domain Typer is a simple to use search engine that allows you to simply add the desired name for the domain, and you will instantly be notified whether it can be used or not.

Moreover, the website includes a dynamic Web 2.0 domain name generator which comes up with random names for you to sift through and see if a memorable one comes about. If that is the case, a link is provided for you to buy it on the spot.

DNZoom

DNZoom By Bido consolidates nearly every facet of the domain monetization and management lifecycle into one easy to use application. Buy your domains, track their performance, update Whois information, and sell domains (coming soon!) all with a single, secure login.

Domain Pigeon

Domain Pigeon lists available domain and Twitter names which you can register as you please.

ALLWHOIS.COM

Allwhois™ automatically locates the appropriate “whois” database server for a particular domain name, queries that database for information about that domain name, and returns all available data. In addition, a domain name availability check will also be performed, even if a particular domain extension doesn’t have a searchable whois database.

Namethis

We all know how tiresome and painful finding a domain name can get. You just need to describe the project or product and Namethis will suggest you the name. This $99 service can really save you a lot of time and trouble.

checkdomain

Checkdomain is a simple tool that allows you to search for the domain name by typing in the name along with the appropriate domain, such as .com, .biz, .info, .ws (for businesses), .org (for non-profit organizations), .edu (for educational institutions), .net (for networks), .mil (for military) and .gov (for government agencies). You can also search domain according to countries.

easywhois

coolwhois

CoolWhois lets you look up the registration information for any domain name including the generic top level domains (.com, .net, .org, .info and .biz) and thecountry top level domains (such as .uk, .de, .to, .ws, .at, etc.).

Domain Punch

This is a desktop application that lets you manage all the domain’s protfolio. You can research and find good domain names, organize and manage your domain portfolio, watch expiry dates,monitor web sites associated with the domain (including ping and http home page check), get email alerts when the status of a domain changes or if the server fails a ping test, categorize domains into different groups for easy management.

Domainer

Domainer is the domain tracking and managing application built for MAC OS. You can enter domains that you would want to monitor with some additional details. It also shows domain-related data such as Page Rank, the amount of incoming Links, bookmarks on Delicious and Digg stories to a particular domain. Other useful features are syncing renewal dates with iCal, Smart Groups for organizing and import / export of lists.

Domain Portfolio Manager

Domain Portfolio Manager allows you manage all your different domains at one single place. It provides a great platform to
Sort Domains by Expire Date, by Registrar, by Genre and by IP address. You can also filter the list just to show certain domains – like ones starting with pe.. It provides a complete platform to manage all your domain chores.

Tweetname

This is an interesting application that allows you to register domains through twitter. Tweetname can automatically send a tweet from you when you successfully register a new domain name.

iWantMyName

iWantMyName is a domain registration and management service for international domain names. iWantMyName also makes it easy to connect domains to popular web services and applications.

I hope that this collection will help newbies who are planning to give their website a brand name.

The technique of having Multiple authors to manage a Blog is getting popular these days. Though this feature was already available in wordpress , recently Blogger too has enabled this feature. So now Blogger Users can have upto 100 multiple Authors or co-Authors for their blogs. So this new Team Blogging feature has enabled multiple authors to manage a single Blog. Although the owner of the blog will be the admin by default and all new authors he invites will be given co-author account. They can only EDIT their posts and they won’t have the feature to edit / delete others posts. However the admin can change the privileges of the co-authors anytime.

Adding Multiple Authors to Blogger Blogs

In this tutorial , I will explain how to Add more co-authors or guest authors to your Blogger Blog. Just follow these simple steps to enable this feature in Blogger.

• Sign in to Blogger
• Go to the Settings page of your blog. Click the link for Permissions.
• Click the “Add Authors” button to add one or more new authors to the list of people who can write posts for your blog.

• After adding the authors email id , click ” invite ” button.

• Blogger sends an email invitation to each person you listed in Step 4. If they agree to participate in writing the blog, they respond to the email affirmatively. Blogger does the rest for you.

Changing the permissions of the author

Once the author accepts your invitation , he can start writing in your blog. But he can only edit or delete posts written by him. He can’t delete posts written by others.

If you want anyone of the author to edit others post , then you need to grant him admin privileges. For granting Admin privileges , go to Settings page of your blog and navigate to Permissions subtab. Beside the author name you will see a button ” grant admin privileges “.

Click that button and you are done. Now your partner can edit or delete any posts. But one thing you must be very careful before giving someone the admin privileges is that once you grant someone admin privileges he has the power to remove you from the blog.

Since I will be creating new blogger themes soon , I thought this post will help my readers to upload my custom Blogger templates to Blogger. Here is an simple step by step process to install New Custom Blogger Templates to Blogger Database.

• Download your favorite Blogger XML template to your computer. If the template is contained in a zip file, ensure you have extracted the XML template.
• Log in to your Blogger dashboard and go to Template Edit HTML
• Ensure you back up your old template in case you decide to use it again. To do this, click on the “download full template” link and save the file to your hard drive.


• Look for the section near the top where you can browse for your XML template:
• Enter the location of your template and press “upload”.
• The HTML of your new template will now appear in the box below. You can preview your template or simply save to start using it!

I hope these step by step guide will definitely help newbie Blogger users to upload any custom Blogger template.

I have used a background image for this Page Navigation hack. If you want to show this without the background image just remove the background image url .

Let us start :

Step 1 : Log in to your blogger account and navigate to Layout section. Now go to the edit HTML subtab.

Step 2 : search this line ]]></b:skin> and add this CSS code above that line.
CSS CODE WITH IMAGE :

It must look like this :

Step 3 : Now search for this code or related in your template ( no need to expand widgets )

<b:section class=’main’ id=’main’ showaddelement=’yes’>
<b:widget id=’Blog1′ locked=’true’ title=’Blog Posts’ type=’Blog’/>
</b:section>

Now Add This script just below the </b:section> .

In the code above you can edit the lines in red to your wish .

1 : var pageCount = 5;

The digit in red represents number of posts to be shown in single page. Change the digit to show as many pages you want.

for example :

In my blog I have put that value as 2 . In each page you can see only 2 posts .

2 : var displayPageNum = 3;

here the digit in red represents number of pages to be listed.

For example :

In my blog I have chosen 3 , then 3 pages will be shown.

That’s it now we have added Page Navigation menu hack to our blog successfully. That CSS code will suit almost all templates. Please don’t remove the credit link.

I hope all of you will like this Page Navigation blogger hack . If you have any doubts please ask in comment section . Comments are most welcome , please give me your feedback about this blogger Hack.

You can also add this Page navigation hack in the another method : Widget style.

According to Google adsense help pages ” Where to place adsense ads ?“. Placing adsense ads below title and above article content can bring high ctr and performance.

This “heat map” illustrates the ideal placing on a sample page layout. The colors fade from dark orange (strongest performance) to light yellow (weakest performance). So it’s clear from the heat map that the adsense ads below post title can bring high ctr.

How to add Adsense ads below post title ?

It’s really very easy to add adsense ads below post title in blogger. Inorder to add adsense ads below post title ,just follow the below steps.

Before adding the adsense ads to blogger templates , we need to encode our adsense ads code.If you add the adsense code without encoding then you can’t see any adsense ads below post title.

Encoding Adsense Ad Code ?

To encode adsense ads, first create an adsense ad and then visit centricle website to encode. In centricle web page , you need to paste your adsense code in the text area and then click ” Encode “. Copy the encoded code. Now your adsense code is ready to be added to blogger template.

Adding adsense ad code to blogger template

step 1 : Go to layout section of your blogger template and then navigate to EDIT HTML sub tab. There check the “Expand Widget Templates “.

step2 : Look up the following tag : <p><data:post.body/></p> and paste the encoded adsense ad code above that tag.

Then click save. That’s it Now we have added the adsense ad code below the post title in blogger blog successfully.

Customizing Adsense ads

Here are the few customization tips , which you can apply to increase your CTR.You might have seen that most of the bloggers will show more than Three posts in home page / labels page / archives page. But as per adsense TOS we can show only Three ads per page. So due to this we will see some blank spaces between post title and content , when the three adsense ads are already loaded.In order to avoid this error , we can show adsense ads only in Post pages i.e pages containing articles.

Showing adsense Ad only in Post pages

In order to implement this hack in your blogger template. you need to change the encoded adsense ad code to this.

<b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType == &quot;item&quot;’>
Encoded Adsense code here
</b:if>

Now paste this code above <p><data:post.body/></p>

Making adsense ads to Float

After adding the adsense ad code to your templates , you can see that by default the adsense ad code will not allow any text to be shown nearby it.

So in order to overcome this error , we need to add some CSS codes to make adsense ad code to float either left or right.

For this we just need to modify the encoded adsense code to be added in step 2.

replace that encoded code with this one :

<div style=”float:left;padding:5px;”>

encoded adsense ad code here

</div>

Change the text in red to make adsense ad to float either to left or right.

My suggestion

According to me , instead of showing adsense ads in all pages ( home page , archives page and labels page ) , we can show adsense ads only in post pages to increase our ctr. If you are using the ” Read More hack for Blogger with automatic Thumbnail creator script ” then it’s advisable to show adsense ads only in post pages.

Hope you guys will like this hack. If you need any more customization , then give me your suggestions via comments.

Since some of my readers requested this hack in gtalk , so I am going to explain How to add this hack to your blogger template.

Before going into this , I would like to mention the previous versions of this created by some of my fellow Bloggers.

• Eblog Templates
• Hackosphere

But these versions had some disadvantages like :

1. It can’t automatically create summaries.

We need to add the following tag in all post pages while writing new posts

2. This feature can be available only for future posts.

That is if you already have 50 posts in your blog and then after that you are adding this hack to your template then you need to add the above tag in each and every previous 50 posts to make this hack working. But it’s a tedious process.

3. Can’t create Thumbnails automatically

This hack can’t create automatic thumbnails for posts.

Now a new version has been developed by my blogger friends. I would like to share that new version of read more hack with you all.

Read More hack with automatic Thumbnail creator script

This hack has overcome all the drawbacks of the previous version of read more hack. This hack is developed by Blogsphera . ( Translated version ).

Let’s see the installation instructions :

Adding the Javascript in the header

To add the javascript files to the header , first login to your blogger account. Then navigate to Layout section of your blog and then move to EDIT HTML sub tab.

There search for this tag : </head>

Now place the follwing code above that tag </head> :

then save your template.

Final step : ADD the code in post body

Now check ” Expand Widget Templates ” option in the edit html page. And then search for this tag

Now replace that whole tag with the code below :

You can now preview your template and then save it.

it will look like this :

Customizing The code

Now let us see how to customize the code to suit your style :

• var thumbnail_mode = “no-float”;

By default i have selected no-float. That the image will be unformatted. If you want the thumbnail to be shown only on left use the option ” float ” instead of “no-float”.

• summary_noimg = 500 ;

This code will decide how much characters must be shown in the post if that post doesn’t contain any images. I have selected 500 characters.. you can customize it to suit ur template.

• summary_img = 400 ;

If the post contains image , then this code will decide how many characters must be shown in that post. Change the number of characters to be shown to suit your template.

• img_thumb_height = 130;

This tag decides the height of the thumbnail to be shown in the post. Vary the number 130 to suit your template.

• img_thumb_width = 281 ;

This tag decides the width of the Thumbnail image to be shown.

Adding read more image

The author of this hack haven’t included any read more buttons in this hack. But I have modified the code and have included a image to link to the full post.



If you want to change the image then replace the url of the image with your own image

or if you don’t need any read more button , then replace the code in final step to this one :

<b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType == “item”‘>
<p><data:post.body/></p>
<b:else/><DIV expr:id=’”summary” + data:post.id’><p><data:post.body/></p></DIV> <SCRIPT type=’text/javascript’>createSummaryAndThumb(“summary<data:post.id/>”);</SCRIPT> <div style=’clear: both;’/><div style=’border:0px;padding-top:5px;;float:right;text-align:right;’><span class=’readon’><a expr:href=’data:post.url’ rel=’bookmark’>Read More…</a></span></div>
</b:if>

change the tag in red to suit your style.

Hope I have explained everything in this script. if you need any other modification or help please feel free to add to gtalk. I love to help you guys.

Hope most of you know the importance of a good background image . For Instance , some product graphics advertisements uses subtle background or texture to help create focus point. Even your Desktop also needs a good attractive background as well. And also for most of the web designers creating backgrounds is a tedious job , since for that you need to know photoshop or Adobe illustrator and other image editing software. Even though if you are good at CSS programming skills without a background image you can’t create a much appealing site.

So here I present some of the most famous and interesting abstracts and background tutorials for Adobe Photoshop users.It’s probably not about getting the exact effect they’ve got, but to pickup the technique and see how you can advance from there.

Calculations And Colorization :

Learn how to create an Alpha Channel using the Calculations dialog and we’ll use it to get a really great abstract photo effect.

Create a magical rainbow color flame in Photoshop

Repeating Seamless Background

A trick often employed on webpages is to use a seamless background that can tile both vertically and horizontally. If your website gets alot of traffic and you don’t like paying for extra bandwidth costs you need to optimize your site for every single kilobyte. This generally translates to NOT using a giant JPG as a background.

Abstract Summer Illustration :

Learn to create an illustration picturing the summer.

Texture of black bubbles effects :

Create cool texture of Black Bubbles in photoshop

Digital Star Effect

An easy tutorial to generate Digital Star Effect in Photoshop .

Mac-type background

This tutorial is about making a “mac” style background. You can use these in all sorts of situations, including the obvious –your desktop– as well as part of your designs or for corporate work

Cool abstract background

Being able to create effects from elsewhere is a great way to learn Adobe Photoshop. Here I will take you through the steps used to create abstract background from bubbles and waves.

Chroma Wallpapers

This tutorial explains how to create a energetic, vibrant, colorful wallpaper, like the ones available at Color Charge.

photoshop tutorial abstract light rays

An easy tutorial to create abstract light rays in photoshop.

Photoshop Retro Grid Background

Create Retro Grid Background easily in photoshop with this tutorial

vintage grunge textures

Brown Paper Textures

5 Fantastically Free High Res Brown Paper Textures created by Blog Spoon Graphics

Christy Sobolewski Textures

color grunge textures

hardcore vintage grunge

Old Grunge Photo Texture Pack

17 More Old Book Cover Textures

Vintage Texture Pack

Wood textures : Textures – Wood

Local Texture: Three by One

Feel free to use this for anything you want. It took five seconds to take the photo, but I’d still like to see the finished product of anything this is used in. Click download for larger.

Cardboard Textures and Objects

Add Visual Texture in 3 Easy Steps

Create an Awesome Background Using Patterns

Create a Realistic Torn Paper Effect in Photoshop

How To Make An Awesome Grungy Paper Texture From Scratch

53 Impressive Polka Dot Pattern Swatches

GrungeTextures

Brusheezy Patterns

Milleseicentopercento

Abstract Lines Background

hope you guys will like this one. If you have came across any other tutorial to create texture or background effect then please let me know. I will add them to this list as well.

Let us see how to add this Page Navigation Menu Widget :

In the code above you can edit the lines in red to your wish .

1 : var pageCount = 5;

The digit in red represents number of posts to be shown in single page. Change the digit to show as many pages you want.

for example :

In my blog I have put that value as 2 . In each page you can see only 2 posts .

2 : var displayPageNum = 3;

here the digit in red represents number of pages to be listed.

For example :

In my blog I have chosen 3 , then 3 pages will be shown.

Now save your template .
That’s it now we have added Page Navigation menu widget to our blog successfully .

I hope you guys will feel this method is easier than the last one.