Posts Tagged ‘RSS’

Subscribers to this blog will receive an email every day with any blog posts of the last 24 hours – sometimes a few, sometimes none, depending on how the muse or inclination has taken us (or how hard I’ve wielded the whip). And thanks to Feedburner what you get is a smart email.

So how do you add this to your blog?

First you’ll want to “claim your feed” at Feedburner. If you have a Google account you can use that, or create a new one. Follow the instructions to set things up there.

Then you want Feedburner to work from your blog – we use the FD Feedburner plugin which takes care of all this. Once installed (Plugins, Add New then search for the FD Feedburner – Install and Activate) you’ll have a link to configure the Feedburner under the Plugins Menu.  What we use here is the form provided by Feedburner within a Text Widget box. Nice and simple – have a play and set yours up.

Babs

Well, literally not figuratively . Or is it the other way around?

I was thinking about premium WordPress plugins.

What do you use?

If you don’t use them, why?

I have two.

One I lost. Yup, forgot what it was called and where I downloaded it. The other one is an RSS bomber, which I have yet to use. At least I know where that one is!

Out there in the big wide WordPress plugin world, there are many premium plugins that enhance your SEO, promise to fetch you traffic and even bake you a cake of you let them. Ok, I am making up the cake baking bit, but if there was one, I’d know about it.

So can your words be music to my ears? Can you tell me what you recommend as premium WordPress plugins, point me to any reviews that have caught your eye?

If you have created a WP premium plugin, come and tell us about it, as I said I am all ears today

Sarah

I discovered a plugin about 2 years ago that greeted people when they visited my site. It knew (by magic ) who had sent the person, google or a certain forum and welcomed them.

A little banner greets the person and invites them, after welcoming them to stay in touch via RSS or email and you can customise it to say what you want. For a small fee you can remove the creator of the plugins name

This marvelous tool is WP Greet Box. I love it, I love it to bits. If someone visits from a social bookmarking site they are welcomed, fellow Googler, Stumbler etc. I am a member of a forum and when people pop over to view a post from that forum, I personalise that greeting to them, and demand they leave me a comment, they know who they are and are bemused by it. On one social network, Nikki Pilkington, Ida Horner and Steven Healey regularly post links to their works on Birds/ Blokes on the Blog and the Greet Box welcomes them appropriately too. Often  it simply says ” Thank you for clicking Nikki, Ida or Steven’s link”.

Yesterday on twitter I was chatting to Graham Hunt of Entrepreneur Solo fame, and author of the Bootstrapping guide and he had seen the Greet Box and loved the idea of it. Sadly it conflicts with another plug in or the theme of his site, whilst he is working it out, there is another option.

Referrer Detector You can read all about the similarities and differences between the two plugins on the download page. Given the choice, I’d use the WP Greet Box, when there is no choice for reasons of conflict then I use Referrer Detector. No point in missing out on greeting our readers is there?

Ian McAllister pointed out that sometimes the conflict is another plugin called YARPP. YARPP shows related posts in your side bar or elsewhere on your blog. If you get the time, check out the link – the floating tabs are sublime, just run your mouse across them.

Now if only someone would invent a wave goodbye box for when someone leaves my site, I’ll be truly happy

Sarah

I recently started to look at how accessible my blog was to other readers.

When starting a blog yourself, things like readers for the visually impaired are generally not high up on your to do list, not because you don’t care but because you don’t know you should have these things. This is where having a blogging coach or a pro blog designer is worth their weight in gold

After doing a little research I thought I would list a few of my faves here and you can tell me what you use and like, or how you get on with these

OdioGo, reads your blog aloud, (A text to speech reader of your RSS feed) superb for visually impaired readers  – note when tagging images, these will be verbalised through the reader, make sure they are tagged properly.

chgFontSize is a plugin that allows the user to adjust the size of the text on screen. It has a cookie so it remembers the correct setting every time. Whilst it’s possible to adjust the settings of the computer, it may not always be possible to do so if the PC is in a public place. This gives your reader the choice. Choice is good

WPtouch not all blogs are read on a PC or laptop, more frequently they are read on mobile devices. WPtouch is a nice plugin that makes it easier to read on a mobile phone. I have installed on a busy blog Wapple Architect which reaches more of the mobile phone market than I thought possible. It’s a bit more complicated to install as you have to register with Wapple and get a development key, but if you have a blog with international readers it’s worth it.

So what do you use to reach more of your blog’s readers?

Sarah