We've added some new features to the ANR Blogs. The first feature you may or may not notice right away depending on who's blog you visit. In keeping with the ANR Strategic Vision we have added a brand new style for the ANR Blogs. Part of this addition is giving you blog owners the option of choosing what style you want to use. If you use the new style you can upload your own custom header. This was added due to popular request and also due to the fact that not everyone can use the UC logo. Some other features that come with the new style is automatic meta tagging to help some search engines with page rankings. More on meta tagging below.

Let me explain how to change your blog style.

1. Login to the ANR Blogs
2. Go to the Administration area
3. Select "Edit Blog Style"
4. If you select and save the "UC Blog Style" an option to upload a custom header will appear

The custom header will automatically be resized to 740 x 117 pixels. So it's best to make your header this size from the beginning. Only JPG file types are accepted for custom headers.

The changes to meta tags are quite extensive so let me explain them below. Firstly, the page title has been updated to better reflect the page content by providing data that is context sensitive to each page. For example: "Post Title - Blog Name - ANR Blogs". The "Blog Description" is a field in the Main Blog Information page. This description is now added to all Blog pages. So you may want to check your blog description and make it properly represent what your blog is about. The last addition is the keyword meta tag. This meta tag is simply a list of keywords that describe the content on the page. A keyword field has been added to the main Blog Information page. So you can add keywords pertaining to your blog as desired. In addition to the keyword field tags that you use in your posts are added to the keywords meta tag. The meta tags have a limit as to how much data you can add so not everything can be added. Instead we try to keep the information added context sensitive. So on your blog's home page the keywords will list the keywords you've entered plus all the tags from your post's tag list sorted by count. When viewing each individual post the keywords lists that posts specific tags first then the keywords added for the entire blog.

Once again all of these changes are to help your blogs and blog posts rank higher on the different search engines. To see how best to make use of descriptions and keywords please take a look at the links below...

Google suggestions
Bing suggestions
Yahoo suggestions