Tag Archives: modules

An Easy Way To Add HTML Tables To Your Lenses

Posted on by
Reply

Sometimes you have content for a lens that’s best presented in a table. But Squidoo doesn’t allow HTML <table> tags in any modules.

Fortunately, there’s the SquidUtils Table Generator developed by lensmaster thefluffanutta to help you build custom tables for your lenses.

It’s a simple tool that works well. Tell the generator what format your data is in, paste in your data and choose your style options. (The color fields for Border and Shading apply to all of the options, not only the last one.)

Press a button and the tool shows you a preview of the table with your data and gives you the code to copy. The preview makes it easy and quick to experiment with different options. When you’re happy with how the table looks, copy the code and paste into a text module on your lens.

Now that your data is in a proper table, you can publish as is or customize the formatting even more if you want. A few ways you can do this are to bold or italicize text, add hyperlinks and adjust the cell widths.

Here are two examples of how I’ve used and customized the generated table code…

Office Character TableOn my Office TV Show lens, there’s a two column table that matches characters from the UK version of the show with their counterparts on the US version. The table generator settings for this were Border: Boxes; Border Color: black; Shading: None; Alignment: Center.

After copying the generated code into a text module, I modified it by bolding the header row text to help that stand out.  Then I added hyperlinks for most of the character names.  The links help readers find more info about each character and potentially increase clickouts.

Results TableMy Fantasy Football Addiction Test has a table to tell readers what their score means. The generator settings for this were Border: Header; Border Color: blue; Shading: None; Alignment: Left.

I customized this table by bolding the text in the header row and all of the scores in the first column. Since the text in the left column is shorter than what’s in the right column, I adjusted the width settings of each cell (width:140px and width:440px, respectively). This balances the table and allows enough room for the longer text in the right hand column.

Now go have fun adding tables to your lenses…

Check Your eBay Module Search Settings

Posted on by
Reply

While updating my Hess Trucks lens yesterday, I noticed something strange. Most of the eBay modules showed no search results. No listings means nothing for a visitor to click and potentially buy on eBay. That’s not good if you like earning commissions.

I copied the search criteria from one of these modules directly into eBay’s search tool and got a “Your search returned 0 items” message. That was followed by another message, “Search using the wildcard symbol (*) is no longer supported.” What!?

That’s right, eBay got rid of wildcard searches. To clarify, eBay took away a useful and powerful tool for shoppers to find the specific items they’re interested in buying. Brilliant! If I had stock in eBay, I’d consider selling it.

How can lensmasters (and eBay shoppers) replace wildcards in our searches?

You’ll need to build a new search query to find listings you want displayed in your eBay modules. Read eBay’s advanced search engine options page for info on constructing search queries. Test your new query on eBay. When you’re satisfied with the results, update your module and republish the lens.

In my case, I had used the wildcard to find items from a specific decade (e.g. 198* for trucks from the 1980s). So I replaced 198* with a Boolean OR search. Using eBay’s syntax that search is now (1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989). It’s ugly but it works.

If your new query is long (my query above went from 4 to 51 characters), you might have to break up your listings into multiple modules due to eBay’s 100 character limit on search queries. The important thing is to check your eBay modules now and replace any wildcards.

Farewell to the Flickr Module

Posted on by
Reply

Last month Squidoo abruptly retired the Flickr module because Flickr appeared to be blocking most of their images from loading on Squidoo lenses. Squidoo HQ and several lensmasters tried to get Flickr’s technical assistance on this with no success.

I’ll miss the Flickr module. It had some shortcomings but was an easy way to add good photos to lenses. It was also helpful in generating click outs and getting traffic from image searches.

I understand and agree with Squidoo’s decision to retire the module, but the way they did it was horribly executed. The retirement decision was announced on June 15 with no date given for when it would go away. The module disappeared from public view 3 days later. That doesn’t count as good advance warning for lensmasters to prepare and make changes before the module went away.

In the announcement, HQ said that, “When the module goes away there’s nothing you have to do. It will simply disappear from your lenses.” They got that half right, it did simply disappear. But there’s lots that this sudden disappearance required lensmasters to do if they were using the Flickr module.

Depending on how you used it, a disappearing Flickr module could mean anything from losing a few non-essential images to your lens morphing into an empty site because the bulk of your content went missing. For anyone that wrote text in their Flickr modules, this module retirement was devastating because that text also disappeared from your viewable lens and the sight of the search engines.

I had some lenses in that latter category. Worst hit were my tour an aircraft carrier, tour a battleship and sail a tall ship lenses. All of them used a Flickr module for nearly every ship featured. Each module had images and all of my written info for that ship in it. When the Flickr module disappeared, so did the content for those lenses.

Fortunately, I saw the announcement that the module was gone from view and was able to add Text modules and copy the content into them within a day of the Flickr modules disappearing. The lenses didn’t have many images, but at least the written content and links to the ships’ websites were available. If I’d been on vacation, those lenses would’ve been sunk.

Most of my Squidoo time over the last month has been spent fixing up existing lenses with Flickr modules instead of working on new lenses. I’m still in the slow process of finding, selecting, downloading, recording and uploading images to those text modules and updating other lenses that used Flickr images. Since Flickr’s image blocking also impacts images linked to in HTML code, I’m updating lenses that used that, too. (I mostly did that in Text List and Link List modules so I sent a feature request to HQ asking for the image upload functionality be added to those modules. Please do the same, hopefully they’ll add it if enough of us ask.)

What should Squidoo have done instead?

  1. Communicated the date when the module would be retired and no longer publicly viewable. This is one of the original Squidoo modules, used nearly 400,000 times according to the Add Modules tool. How could HQ not give lensmasters a date and time to prepare for its retirement? Makes no sense to me.
  2. Modified the module so that the images and their links wouldn’t display but the module’s text would still display. That would’ve given lensmasters time to adjust without taking away our content overnight. The module already had the ability to not display a selected image if it didn’t have an appropriate Creative Commons license. This filter could have easily been modified to not display all images.

This is a good reminder of why it’s important to back up your lens content (something I don’t do but should start). The wording of the June 18th announcement sounded like HQ considered deleting all of the content in the Flickr modules before they realized how many people had written content into them. That would have been disastrous.

Farewell, Flickr module, you’re already missed.

How did the Flickr module retirement affect your lenses? Are you still making changes because of it?

Image credit: simminch, used under Creative Commons.

Catch of the Month: Delicious Dump Cake Recipe

Posted on by
2

Each month I’ll feature a lens that I discovered while exploring Squidoo.

This month’s catch was discovered by my wife (who is not a lensmaster, despite my best efforts). She was recently at an event where she tried dump cake for the first time and loved it. Last week she went online, found the recipe and made one.

As we were enjoying the delicious cake she made, my wife told me there was a Squidoo lens on page one of the recipe search results that she visited and liked. Naturally, I was curious to see it…right after a 2nd serving of cake. The lens she found was Delicious Dump Cake Recipe by Susan52. It’s a good one and worthy of representing Squidoo on page one.

Susan does a nice job of providing the right amount of recipe related info. There are tips on making a bigger or smaller cake, ideas for recipe variations, a video and links to helpful products. My favorites were the apron and refrigerator magnets with the dump cake recipe on them. Brilliant idea.

This was the first time I’ve seen the recipe module in action (I haven’t visited many recipe lenses). The module looks clean and professional with a pic of Susan’s dump cake and a link to the printable version. Definitely make use of it for your recipe lenses.

Susan’s recipe is almost identical to the one my wife used. The key difference was shredded coconut…the dump cake my wife first tried had coconut and she wanted a recipe with it (maybe Susan will add it as a variation). We learned after making the first dump cake with 1 stick of butter that Susan’s recommendation to use 1 1/2 sticks is better. That’s how much we’ll use next time. Recommendations based on personal experience like that will help any lens stand out and add value for the reader.

The cake is delicious and the kids loved it. Maybe now I can convince my wife to build her own recipe lenses…

Image by Mac33

Add An FAQ Section To Your Lens

Posted on by
1

One way to add more on topic content to your Squidoo lens is with a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section. Providing an FAQ helps visitors who may be looking for the answer to a specific question on your topic.

Where can I get ideas for FAQ questions?
Watch your lens stats for questions in the search terms. If someone is looking for an answer, it’s likely that others are, too. Adding the question to your lens helps the search engines know you have the answer. All of the questions in the FAQ section at the bottom of my fantasy football commissioner guide lens came from search stats. (A bonus of doing this is that you may find search terms that spawn ideas for new lenses to build.)

You might also find questions in your guestbook comments. Another way is to look at the lens from a visitor’s perspective and think of questions you would have about the subject. The cool thing is that you can add to the FAQ over time as you brainstorm or find new questions.

Where do I get the answers for these questions?
Write your own original answers. You’re the expert that wrote the lens so this should be the easy part.

What Squidoo modules are good for an FAQ?
The Text List and Text modules are naturals for an FAQ. They look good, the content gets crawled by the search engines and you have formatting options. When using either module, I like to put each question in bold so it stands out.

What types of questions should I add?
Only feature questions that complement your lens topic. If the FAQ list gets too long, consider building a new lens that covers a subset of the questions and point readers to it.

Any other FAQ tips or ideas?
Another option is to write most of your lens content in a natural question and answer format. Phrase the module title in the form of a question then answer it in the body.

If you have a lot of lenses in a niche, you could build one lens that’s the FAQ for all of them. Each lens in the niche would link to it and the FAQ lens would link back to the other lenses in its answers.

Experiment with different formats and have fun adding an FAQ to your lens! Let me know what you discover.

Image credit: Steve, used under Creative Commons License