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How to Display the Feed Button

Cathy Tibbles — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:00:35 +0000

To some people words like “feedreader” and “rss” make their eyes glaze over and focus attention to that speck on your tooth. So why not loose the geekeze, and make it easy for readers to subscribe? Let them, “get an email every time you post” instead of “subscribe in a feedreader”.

Here are the subscription options and displays for some of the best sites out there:

Copyblogger:

This is my favorite title for a subscription feed “email updates” – how could you mistake that? Note, that copyblogger’s audience is primarily bloggers, and yet- why use geekeze like rss & feed when you don’t have to?

He also includes the ever appropriate call to action: “Enter your e-mail:”

Problogger:

Notice the “What is RSS?” link, and a simple “subscribe via email: __________” form. Note also, that this blog with its 123K readers(!) is targeted at internet-savvy readers!!

WPHacks.com

Notice the explicit intructions: “Enter your email address…” and the title (which has NO mention of the word, “subscribe”): “receive automatic updates via email:” Love this one!

The huffington post:

The biggest(?) blog of all time, does NOT use the word, “subscribe” when describing their RSS feed!! How about the word, “alert” instead?

How do our Mom Bloggers do it?

5 Minutes for Mom uses “Email Updates” plus explicit instructions to enter email address in the box provided.

Problogger (where I get a fair bit of information)also suggests that we not only make it clear what the feed is but that it is also free!

So there ya have it, a little weekend inspiration to make those subscription forms more accessible to your readers!

Essential Plugins for a new WordPress Installation

Cathy Tibbles — Thu, 14 May 2009 21:50:56 +0000

: Image via CrunchBase

Included in all our bundled packages are 10 plugins:

1. *Akismet anti-spam
2. contact form
3. All In One SEO
4. TinyMCE Advanced – installs extra options in the write panel
5. Google Analytics or WordPress.com Stats – which one?
6. *WP DB(database) Manager
7. Sociable bookmarking options.
8. Broken Link Checker
9. Feedburner
10. WP-Super-Cache to speed things up

* We strongly recommend these two.

Did you know that if we are already doing work on your blog, you can add any plugin to your work order for only $5? If the only items you have on your work order are plugins, there is a minimum of 3 or $15.

Everybody’s got one, do you?

Cathy Tibbles — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 02:03:07 +0000

It’s one of the cool things about blogs. You can read them in your very own “feed reader”. And for those who do this, it is quite likely the ONLY way they will read your blog. So, we need to make sure that your blog is EASY PEASY for others to subscribe to. (Subscribe = how they grab your blog and feed it to their reader.)

1. Find an image of those RSS buttons. Here’s over 35 styles, each with 8 or more different colors and designs. I’ll use one from my photobucket account. You may use this one too if you like.

Once you have selected your image, you need to copy the location like this:

If you have one uploaded to your blog, go to your “manage” panel, and find the image in your media library. Copy the url (location) from that image.

2. Find the Address of YOUR feed. WordPress publishes several feeds for you. They have their own names, and you can see where they are coded in the header of your blog (if you look under View Page Source).

If you are using the feedburner widget, and have a feedburner url, use that instead. It will be:

www.feeds.feedburner.com/mommymotivation.

In your page source it will be something like this:

www.mommymotivation.me/feed/rss/.

Or, if you are NOT using permalinks, like this:

www.mommymotivation.me/?feed=rss.

There are several options that you can use, and 3 or 4 different feeds to access. Find more options on the wordpress manual, here.

3. Put these two things together in a text widget. In your design admin tab, under “widgets” select the sidebar that you’d like it to appear in. Then select the “text” widget on the left. Open it up, enter a title and your feed details like this:

http://i284.photobucket.com/albums/ll40/o2cathy/blog%20artwork/feed.png” alt=”button” /> www.mommymotivation.me/feed/rss” title=”feed”>Subscribe to my Feed.

(Replace the red text with the URL’s that you found in step 1 & 2.)

Sit back and revel in the fact that you did something nice for all your loyal fans today.

Cheers!