Add Verisign Secure Login to your site

You probably have noticed sites that have the VeriSign Logo on their sites and may have wondered what it was and what did it stand for.  Again, like so many other times in the past, I accidentally came across in my facebook settings while editing my personal facebook settings.  I noticed the option to add my facebook account to VeriSign PIP and decided to try it out.  When I got to the VeriSign Personal Identity Protection Labs website I noticed the familiar logo, one seen on other websites many other times.

What is VeriSign?  VeriSign is a technical way of installing a SSL Certificate on your website, allowing trust between you and the consumer when they visit your site.  (For more information on SSL and TLS, visit Wikipedia.)  Consumers and readers feel much more safe when they visit a website with the VeriSign Logo.  VeriSign supports sites that use OpenID and as you know, Google Blogs are OpenID. If you are hosting a site on your own server, you can setup your own personal OpenID free of charge, just click here to set yours up, or if you are unsure you can visit the site to see if your website is OpenID supported.  Once you are setup with an OpenID, you can than setup your free VeriSign PIP.

Now what is the difference between the VeriSign Trust Company, this costs money and the free one, well, the free one you have to setup everything on your own whereas the one that costs a fee, somebody does all the work for you, and you get the special logo on-top of it.  Why do you need VeriSign?  Well whenever somebody sees a VeriSign Logo on your site they feel more secure about visiting it.  People who are not Internet savvy as we are are always leery about even visiting a Google blog.  When they see the VeriSign Logo your visitor suddenly feels okay that the site is secure and can trust that it will not leave a trail of viruses on their PC.

Click here to visit the VeriSign trust site  - this is needed if your site is not OpenID supported
Click here to visit the VeriSign personal identity portal - this is a free technical setup process for already openID supported sites.

Make the perfect social buttons for your blog - How to add google buzz, facebook, Digg and retweet to your blogger blog post

If you really want to get your blog posted onto the various social networks it is usually very helpful to post as many different ways to have links as you can. If you take a look at my blog, you will notice that you can post my blog posts and/or blog to the most popular networks, blog posts to facebook, twitter and digg since these three are the most popular.

First you want to add sociable, this one is easy to add. Just click here to go to your blog layout section.  Next click on add a gadget and do a search for sociable. From there you can choose which networks you want your blog posted to. Next choose a spot for it, mine is at the top of my blog posts, you can add yours anywhere you like.  I like these because they are like mashable, and they look nice at the top of my blog post.

The next best thing are adding Google Buzz, retweet, digg and facebook post buttons for blog posts, these are not only very useful but also quite successful. I prefer to have mine, as you can see above my blog post, showing at the top lined up. Here are different codes you can easily add, here are the instructions:

Click here to open up blogger directly in HTML. Check the "expand widget templates" at the top of the html code, click ctrl + f and do a search for the following code:

<data:post.body></b>
Now above or below the text paste the following code as is:
<!-- Facebook --><br /> <div style='float:right;padding:4px;'><a expr:share_url='data:post.url' name='fb_share' rel='nofollow' type='box_count'/> <br /> <script src='http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/connect.php/js/FB.Share' type='text/javascript'/> </div><p> <!-- retweet --> <div style='float:right; margin-left:4px;'> <script type='text/javascript'> tweetmeme_url = '<data:post.url/>'; </script><br /> <script src='http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js' type='text/javascript'> </script><br /> </div></p><p><!-- DIGG --><br /> <div style='float:right; margin-left:4px;'><script type='text/javascript'> digg_url = '<data:post.url/>'; </script><br /> <script src='http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js' type='text/javascript'/> </div></p><p> <!-- Buzz --> <div style='float:right; margin-left;padding:4px;'> <a class='google-buzz-button' data-button-style='normal-count' data-locale='en_IN' expr:data-url='data:post.url' href='http://www.google.com/buzz/post' rel='nofollow' title='Post on Google Buzz'/> <script src='http://www.google.com/buzz/api/button.js' type='text/javascript'/> </div></p>

I personally prefer to put this code above the post line, that way it shows at the top of each and every blog post.  If you prefer to put it below than the code will show below each and every blog post.  Below I have a share it button though, that way if the person wishes to share after they read the blog post, they have the option as well.

These are all of the three buttons social network share buttons ready to copy and paste. A few other ways that are a favorite of mine is adding outside comment boxes to my blog, a few are Intense debate and Disqus. I like disqus because of the yahoo button, also it has facebook but lately the facebook button has not been working for Intense debate or disqus. To learn more about these to outside comment sites click the links.

Advertising your blog with social networks - Adding share buttons to your posts

Adding a share button to your blog has to be one of the most important things needed when advertising your blog.  You can write ten posts a day but without a facebook share button, digg this or other social networking buttons your really not getting anywhere but maybe a lucky google search hit.

In past posts I mentioned different ways of advertising your blog through social networking that you will find useful but how you want to do it is even more important.  In blogger if you go to your layout and add a gadget, do a search for social network and there is a gadget that you can add to your blog that lists almost every single network that is available out there.

My favorite way is by integrating a comment gadget/widget in with my blog for comments.  Two that I have used with success are intense debate and disque.  When a user leaves a comment, they can share with their social network of their choice and are also able to leave a comment by connecting with facebook, blogger and a few others.

Facebook buttons and badges, like the ones you see in my side panels, are just as important as well.  The more you advertise through social networking, the better chances of being found by a reader doing a simple search in google or bing.