Tag Archives: General

Feedburner FeedSmith

Aug 11, 2007 by Matt | Posted in WordPress No Comments

WordPress users: Do you use Feedburner? If so, here’s something you may not know about:

By default, WordPress keeps the original RSS feeds it generates, and your Feedburner feed is a separate feed that coexists with it. Some people will accidentally subscribe to the plain feed instead of the Feedburner one, throwing the accuracy of your stats. How do you prevent that?

You use the FeedSmith plugin. It sets-up a redirect so anyone who accesses www.yourdomain.com/feed/ will be sent to your Feedburner feed instead.

One word of caution: If you install the FeedSmith plugin, make sure the feed listed in FeedBurner’s settings is your blog’s RSS 2.0 feed, otherwise some readers could run into compatibility issues (Feedburner can generate compatible 0.97, 1.0, and Atom feeds from an RSS 2.0 feed, but going the opposite direction can cause problems sometimes [like missing pubDate tags]).

RSS: Full Content or Summaries?

Aug 10, 2007 by Matt | Posted in Blogging 5 Comments

Full content or summaries? Nearly every blogger has asked his or her self that question at some point. Which is better? There’s no answer to that. The correct question would be “which is better for you?”

Full Content

  • A lot of users prefer full content feeds because they can stay in their feed reader and avoid visiting actual websites. Some people even refuse to subscribe to summarized feeds.
  • Full feeds make it easier for people to scrape your content. What’s feed scraping? It’s when someone republishes the full content of your posts on their website (automatically) without your permission and proceeds to make money off advertisements on the site.

Summaries

  • If you use summarized feeds, you force your readers to hop over to your blog to read the full content. This means the users will see your cool layout, they may post comments, and they could even net you some ad revenue.
  • Summarized feeds are smaller, loading quicker and putting less strain on your web server.

I only offer summarized feeds (I can hear the boo-ing already…), though you can offer either or both types of feeds. Personally, I, as a feed subscriber, don’t care which feed-type is available on a site. I use the MyNT RSS reader, so I read feeds a bit differently than most people.

In the end, it’s up to you (just ignore the complaints from your loud summary-hating readers :D ). Offer a summary feed, a full feed, or both.

Track Your Blog’s Stats

Aug 4, 2007 by Matt | Posted in Services and Tools 5 Comments

So, you’ve got your blog up and running. Are you tracking your blog’s usage statistics? No? Then stop right there! It’s important to know how many visitors/pageviews you get in a month. Why? Well, it’s a good gauge of how well you’re blog is doing.

I’m serious, no one should be without blog statistics. It won’t cost you a dime, and it won’t take much effort to set up.

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“Content Mapping”: How is your layout structured?

Jul 29, 2007 by Matt | Posted in Design, Featured One Comment

I’ve decided to call this technique “Content Mapping,” for want of a better term. What is Content Mapping? Here’s an example. The idea is that the colored blocks will help you visualize how your layout is structured. This has several applications. It’s useful for finding ways to improve your website, or for other things as well. Plus, it’s fun.

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WSC CSS-ified

Jul 29, 2007 by Matt | Posted in General No Comments

Hopefully you’ll notice some speed improvements around here. I’ve finally found the time to update Webmaster-Source’s layout to utilize CSS instead of tables. Don’t believe me? Check yourself! 100% CSS page layout.

Naming Your Site: No, “Bob” Isn’t a Good Name

Jul 28, 2007 by Matt | Posted in Featured, General 7 Comments

When you’re starting a new website, you need to come up with a name as soon as possible. How soon? You should pick a name before you start building your layout and all that. Why? Well, it’s not easy to make a logo and matching color scheme for a site without a name.

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Webmaster Articles Blog Carnival – July 18, 2007 Edition

Jul 16, 2007 by Matt | Posted in General No Comments

Welcome to the July 18, 2007 edition of the Webmaster Articles blog carnival. You may notice that we’re publishing a little early, but are you complaining? We’ve got a nice collection of articles this time around, so let’s get started.

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The Machine is Us/ing Us

Jul 12, 2007 by Matt | Posted in General No Comments

This is one cool video! Everyone should be required to watch this. The video is composed of video screen captures (and shots of a sheet of paper), edited into a short film that pretty much sums-up the internet and Web 2.0. It’s…right.Watch the video, and send it to anyone who doesn’t seem to get what Web 2.0 is all about. It’s a good introduction to the term.

Developing for the iPhone

Jul 11, 2007 by Matt | Posted in Design No Comments

The Apple iPhone is out, and the web is filled with everything you could possibly want to know about the iPhone…and plenty you don’t.

Sure, the iPhone can display normal web pages correctly, but the iPhone offers an interesting new opportunity: More powerful mobile web apps. Some sites are already building iPhone-itized versions. Take Digg for example. They’ve just released a beta of Digg for the iPhone. In case you didn’t notice, it’s designed to work in a similar manner to the apps built-in to the iPhone. Since Apple isn’t about to let developers write their own software for the iPhone, people are making web-based apps instead.

Do you want to do something like that? First of all, you should read Apple’s “iPhone for Developers” page and also their “Tech Specs” page.

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All Those Links: The Amazon Empire

Jul 11, 2007 by Matt | Posted in Monetization No Comments

Run a search on nearly anything (especially related to books) and Amazon is likely to be in the top three results. How did they do that? They’re SEO (Search Engine Optimization) experts. It all has to do with links.

First of all, people naturally link to Amazon. If you write an article about a book or other product, you naturally link to a place where you can buy it. There are tons of book review sites that link to an Amazon page for every book they review.

Second of all, you have an interesting little scheme service known as Amazon Associates. How does it work? In short, Amazon pays you to link to them. You read that correctly.

Suppose you review a book or other product on your blog. You link to the Amazon page so your readers can buy the book. In that link, you include an ID code that represents you. Whenever someone clicks through the link over to Amazon, the mega-shopping-giant starts logging what the visitor is doing. If they buy anything in the next 24 hours, you get a 2.5-8% commission. The big bloggers do this a lot, and make a considerable amount of money.

How does this help Amazon? Number one, you’re convincing people to buy stuff from them. Number two, that’s another link pointing to their domain. Once you realize that there’s a huge amount of people in the Amazon Associates program, it’ll hit you. Each one of those affiliates may have hundreds of referral links scattered throughout their sites. Multiply that by the thousands (if not millions) of Amazon Associates members, and…that’s a lot of links.

Don’t get me wrong, Amazon Associates is a great service. I’m just pointing out how much it’s benefiting Amazon. If they can do something like that, so can you. All you need is a valuable resource, and means of convincing people to link to you (I doubt you can afford to pay linkers, so I suggest coming up with something else).