This article is a work in progress and will remain a sticky in the Examples category. We'll be using this to link to Blogzerk blog and forums posts that we feel are important for users of Blogzerk (or any Blogware-powered blog).

Look and Feel

• Using an Image Header on Your Blogzerk Blog - Enhance the look of your blog by using an image header in the background of your blog's header.
• Check Out Our Custom Themes - We offer custom themes you can only get with Blogzerk.
  
• HOWTO: Adding a Custom Component - Learn how to use our custom component code generator to quickly add a custom component.

Stats and SEO

• Adding Google Analytics to Your Blogzerk Blog - Get a different view of your stats using Google Analytics.
• Search Engine Friendly Page Titles - Make your page titles more search engine friendly.

Posting Articles and Photos

• Beta of Blogzerk Photo Uploader for Windows Released - Use our Windows-based photo uploader to quickly load single and multiple photos to your blog's photo album.

Miscellaneous Cool Stuff

• HOWTO: Create a Firefox Search Component for Your Blog - Create a search component your visitors using Firefox can install to search your blog.
• HOWTO: Add Google Calendar to Your Blog - Add your Google Calendar's events as an RSS Headline component.
  

This video podcast kicks of a series of short howto videos on common tasks you'll encounter when using your Blogzerk blog.

Today's howto covers adding a photo to an article. This only covers the case where you have an image saved on your hard drive that you want to include in an article post. Note that this isn't the only way to skin this cat and may not even be the way you prefer, but since we wanted to include using the File Manager in this howto, that's why we did it the way we did it. In the next few howto's, we'll show you how to use images from your photo albums and direct URLs.

An iTunes/iPod formatted video file is attached to this post for use in iTunes. If you subscribe to our RSS feed with iTunes (sub with iTunes now), it should download automatically into your Podcasts section. Also, here it is as a 640x480 MPEG-4 (Quicktime compatible, 9.5MB) movie or WMV (4.6MB) movie. We traded a bit of quality for file size so it won't be crystal clear.


Please let us know what you think of this in the comments as well as any requests you have for future topics.

I just posted a how-to in the Blogzerk Forums on adding Google Calendar as an RSS Headline Component to your Blogzerk blog to display Google Calendar entries as a component.

Note that Google allows you to create multiple calendars and each has its own RSS URL so you can display multiple calendars as components on your blog or just use multiple calendars to separate your personal and blog calendars.

This is the first of what is hopefully going to be an ongoing series of articles where we highlight the way one of our customers is using Blogzerk for their business, club, or other use.

To kick it off, we are profiling RAM Radio. I asked Pam of RAM Radio some questions about the blog and using Blogzerk:

Is this a personal or business blog?

Business

What is the primary purpose of your blog?

Internet radio station

[ed. note: available on iTunes and Live365, see RAM Radio for more info.]

Who is your target audience?

Listeners of RAM Radio and potential listeners

What makes Blogzerk worth paying for?

Scalability. There seems to be nothing I can't do with the blog. It looks beautiful right out of the box, however it is very easy to create your own style. The posting interface is very intutive. It's perfect for the beginner right up to the more experienced developers. Forums are very helpful and Blogzerk staff are open to enhancement suggestions.

You are using your blog as your primary web site. What were your reasons for using the blog instead of a standard web site and what are the benefits?

My partners are not familiar with HMTL and Blogzerk lets them update pages easily, yet it allows me the freedom to create. There really isn't any limit on what you can do with the software.

Approximately what percentage of your visitors are via RSS compared to a browser? Do you promote the RSS feed or the subscribe via email feature of your blog?

Honestly I don't know what percentage of visitors are via RSS. I don't have many subscribers, but I have seen my content used on various sites via RSS. It has been great promotion for the bands and our station. RSS is a vital component to RAM Radio.

[ed. note: this month, approx. 33% of the visitors to this blog were via RSS]

Is there anything else you'd like to say about your blog, RAM Radio, etc?

As an independent internet radio broadcaster, my time is very precious since I am involved in all aspects of running the station. Blogzerk is a blessing because it organizes the pages automatically and is easy to update. I do not get bogged down with maintaining the website at all. I have the freedom to focus on the station's growth instead.

Pam's blog is a good example of how to use your blog as a web site and shows how easy Blogzerk makes it to create and update your blog's content.

If you have a Blogzerk blog and would like to be featured here, please send an email to info@blogzerk.com.

Feed Icons is a site where you can download the new standard feed icon shown below to display on your blog. The zip file contains just about every graphic format you could want and all the common sizes. For an example of integrating this into a Blogzerk component, see the right side of our blog.

Thanks to Russ Beattie for the tip.

I just posted an article in the Blogzerk Forums on how to prevent Google Images from indexing your blog's images which can help reduce the bandwidth used by your blog. Check it out and if you have any feedback or questions, reply to the forum article.

With the 1.1 release of the Performancing for Firefox (PFF) extension, Blogzerk (and all Blogware-powered) blogs are now supported. This means you can install the extension in Firefox and have a nice, quick way to post to your blog. PFF supports all the basic HTML tags and also recognizes your existing categories. I'm posting this using PFF.

Here's some other new features (see this post for a full list):

New features

• More Technorati Support
• Delicious integration
• Trackback support (including auto-discovery)
• Draft support (and default to draft option)
• Ping support
• Statusbar Icon Enhancments (drag and drop)
• More Settings Options

Hot on the heels of our forum post on adding a "Post to del.icio.us!" link to your blog, I've added a new forum post on adding a "Digg This!" link to your blog's article and category templates. Check it out. If you like it, be sure to Digg This!

I've just added an article to the Blogzerk Forums on adding a custom login form component to your blog. This takes that code for the standard login component (which isn't customizable in Blogware) and extends it to add a link to log in to the User's Control Panel or request a forgotten password.

I just posted an article in the Blogzerk Forums on how to add a "Post to del.icio.us!" link to your blog's category and article view. Check it out on the Blogzerk Blog.

Thanks to Vic Correro writing at ProBlogger for the inspiration. Much like him, I've been wanting to do this for a while but needed a kick.