Monthly Archives: August 2007

Feedburner FeedSmith

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?

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…

Join The NTugo Network

Do you run a blog or website with interesting content? Would you like to gain a little more exposure, and help others do so as well? You could join the NTugo Network. How does it work? To join, you must link to the Network…

Blogging Tip: Cheap, but great, prizes for contests

It’s not too unusual for bloggers to run contests in attempt to raise their PageRank/Technorati Authority. You may have considered this briefly, but dismissed the idea when you couldn’t think of anything good to offer as a prize. Here’s a possible solution: Refurbished iPods.…

BlogBuzz August 7, 2007

Merging RSS Feeds With SimplePie

Have you played around with SimplePie? If not, start experimenting. SimplePie is an amazingly useful file you include in your PHP scripts so you can parse RSS feeds. It’s fast, it’s powerful, it’s easy to use, and there’s a lot you can do with…

SimplePie: Parse RSS With PHP

LastRSS. MagpieRSS. Neither have been updated in over a year. What’s the best way to parse RSS feeds and output them with PHP? Simple, use SimplePie. What is SimplePie? It’s a file you include in your PHP scripts, allowing you instant access to RSS-parsing…

Track Your Blog’s Stats

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…

BlogBuzz August 4, 2007