Wordpress Lets You Do That?

Really Simple Syndication. Doesn’t sound really simple to me but it is. RSS is a technology that has been around since about 2000, and what it does is publish blog entries, videos, podcasts and news headlines frequently in a standard format to users who subscribed to the blog’s RSS feeds.

Using RSS allows us (subscribers) to receive updates and content to those sites that we subscribe to instead of going to your bookmarks and constantly checking for updates manually.Now if you’re like me, and have a dozen great sites/blogs that you really like, it can be very time demanding to visit them every day and check for updates.

In order to subscribe to an RSS feed, we have to have an RSS Reader. These readers come in both local (desktop) or web based readers, and you can access your feeds no matter what computer you are using, and no matter where you are in the world. If you are a FireFox user, then you can automatically add Feeds to your browser simply by clicking on a Blog’s subscribe button. A great web based RSS Reader is through Google Reader, and you can set it up even better so you can view it through iGoogle.

Once you have subscribed to a RSS Feed, your reader will automatically update once a new feed has appeared and you will be able to click on a link to view the new post.

So this leaves the question, ‘How do I subscribe to a RSS feed?’. The easiest way, is when you are at a blog you want to subscribe to (like this one:) look at the browsers address bar and you will see an image similar to the one in this post. Click on that image and you will be presented with the opportunity to subscribe via your bookmarks, or other RSS readers that may be there. Many blogs have a very prominent RSS image and encourage readers to subscribe.

Akismet is a free plugin for non commercial use (relaxed rules from the owner apply) that you install to your Wordpress blog. What the plugin does, is to stop and isolate spam that comes to your blog. This spam is via Pingback, Trackback, and of course via Comments.

These packets of information are first submitted to the Akismet web server to see if those who sent the packet is blacklisted on their own server. As Akismet puts it, they either give it the thumbs up or the thumbs down. The information on their web server is kept current so you don’t have to worry about new attackers.

If any spam is caught, it is isolated and you can review if you wish (in case there is a false positive). Other than that, the spam is deleted in 15 days automatically. If a spam post does get through, check it off as spam and Akismet will remember it for next time.

To use Akismet, you will need a Wordpress.com API key. This is the same key that you should have if you have previously installed Wordpress Stats. Once you have logged on to your dashboard, activate the plugin, and you will be asked to enter your API key. Once done, Akismet is ready and will do its thing in the background.

If you have an active blog, and get lots of comments, this is a very valuable tool for managing your time more effectively, and you won’t have to work out what is spam and what isn’t.

If we are truly serious about our online presence, then we have to keep up on our web statistics. Web stats tell us loads of information about our visitors. Where they came form, what they looked at, what images they clicked on, what page they left on, and how much time they spent on our site.

If you’re in the business of online marketing, then paying attention to your web stats is crucial, to tweak your site for that competitive edge. The good news is, that you can now install a plugin from Wordpress.com that will allow you to see all this information and more from your Wordpress Blog.

If you have not already got the plugin, you can get it at wordpress.com. Once uploaded to your blog, you’ll have to visit wordpress.com and register, then you will get a security key to activate the plugin. This key is called an API key. Once you have the key you will have to enter it via your blog. This key is emailed out to you, so be sure not to delete the email. If you have more than one blog, you will use the same key for each.

Once activated, you’ll generally have to wait half an hour before the plugin begins to work. The Web Stats are located on your Dashboard and there is plenty of information contained there to keep you busy. Take note of where your traffic comes from, as you can beef up your efforts in these areas, and cut down in areas where you may be dedicating a lot of time trying to get small amounts of traffic from.

Add This is a Plugin that you can add to your Wordpress site that will make Social Networking and Bookmarking, a whole lot easier for just not you, but anyone who stops by your blog.

What it does is it inserts a small button at the end of each of your posts. When you run your cursor over the button it expands and there are links displayed to every major, and a host of smaller, Networking and Bookmarking sites.

Sometimes you can insert a plugin for each of your preferred sites, such as Digg and Facebook, but this plugin caters more for your readers who may use the tool if their Bookmarking site is available. This becomes more important as your levels of traffic starts to increase.

All you have to do is to go to the Add This website, and download the plugin. Upload to your server, activate, and at the end of each post you’ll have a nice little button that you can have easy access to turbocharge your SEO efforts.

You may have noticed some people have nice looking signatures at the bottom of each blog post they write. I’m sure most of these people don’t type in this signature each time they write a post so how do they do it? Is there some setting in Wordpress that you can add this?

Well, no, there isn’t. There is however a tricky little plugin called funnily enough, Add Signature from the team at Dagon Design. Once you download the plugin and unzip it to your FTP Folder, you can upload it to your Plugin Folder on the remote server.

All you have to do now is login to your admin area and activate the it by going to the Plugin area. Once you have done this hit the settings tab and look for the DDAddSig button along the top nav bar.

Once in this page you can choose how your signature displays and on what posts and pages. Try writing your signature in HTML to get some great backlinks and anchored links back to your other Wealth Creation sites. Great for SEO. It might take some playing around but it doesn’t take too long to figure out.