I have always thought that adding Related Posts in RSS Feeds would be useful for both the blogger as well as for the reader and that everyone thought the same way. But after reading this post on Problogger.net, I found out that Darren considers Related Posts in RSS Feeds as clutter and so do Daniel Scocco of Daily Blog Tips as he comments on Problogger’s latest Speedlinking post:

JohnTP, I am not sure about adding related posts to the feed.

Darren discussed that some time ago. Most RSS readers are loyal readers, and it is very likely that they have already read all the posts on the Related Entries. Plus, if you combine related entries, feed flare, and footer copyright message your feed gonna get cluttered.

I have subscribed to many blogs and I have not yet finished reading all their older posts, so I would find it useful if they included Related Posts in their RSS Feeds so that I could easily find their older and related posts while reading the latest posts on their feed.

Adding Related Posts in RSS Feeds benefits both the blogger and the Reader – the blogger gets to increase pageviews by getting their RSS readers to visit their older posts and the Reader gets to read the older posts that they had not read before. So as a reader, I would be happy if all the blogs I read had Related Posts in their RSS Feeds.

Do you consider Related Posts in RSS Feeds as clutter?

I first read it over at 901am and then at ShoeMoney that MyBlogLog tracks our visitors Ad clicks

Are you using Adsense and MyBlogLog together? Remember the rule about not being able to disclose the CTR rates to third parties? MyBlogLog is gathering this exact data on your site if you’re using the service. Using Adsense with MyBlogLog could get you banned from Adsense!

Just to be on the safe side I have removed MyBlogLog from this blog. What is your opinion on this?

To reward my readers I have decided to feature some of their good blog posts here once in every week! If you would like to see your blog posts featured here, start commenting regularly on this blog and join my MyBlogLog Community.

The Top Commentators come first in the list and then the members of my MyBlogLog Community. I hope you enjoy reading these blog posts

Continue reading ‘Rewarding Regular Readers – 23 Feburary 2007′

WordPress 2.1.1 has been released with about 30 bug fixes, mostly minor things around encoding, XML-RPC, the object cache, and HTML code and Version 2.0.9 includes a security update.

Download WordPress 2.1.1 from here and version 2.0.9 from here.

Continue reading ‘WordPress 2.1.1 and 2.0.9 Released’

A few days back I noticed that the latest version of WP-PageNavi WordPress Plugin was not working with the latest version of Ultimate Tag Warrior (UTW) on Tag pages in WordPress 2.1. I contacted the plugin author of WP-PageNavi and soon got the fix for it.

As the author won’t update the plugin on his site until about 1st May 2007, you can download the fix from his forum.

On the page where you select the AdSense Ad format and color for your Ads, there is an option below to choose what to display if no relevant ads are available. Currently AdSense gives us three options – ‘Show public service ads’, ‘Show non-Google ads from another URL’ and ‘Fill space with a solid color’.

The ‘Show public service ads’ is the default option and most publishers leave it that way. The last option ‘Fill space with a solid color’ just fills the Ad space with the desired color and is of not much use.

Instead of showing Public Service Ads (PSAs) or filling space with a soild color, why not try to make that wasted Ad space more useful ? By useful I mean something that will help you earn money unlike PSAs.

Continue reading ‘How To Make Use Of AdSense Alternate Ads Feature’

MyBlogLog is a social network that allows you to connect and engage with your readers and blog readers get to connect with the authors and other fans of their favorite sites. It lets you add friends, join communities and even leave comments on other people’s profile pages.

I have added the MyBlogLog Widget to this blog’s sidebar that shows the last 15 readers to visit this blog and puts a face to each of them. When you click the readers pic it will take you to their MyBlogLog profile page from where you can find out the sites and blogs the reader runs, his/her favorite communities, contacts and view other MyBlogLog users who are part of the reader’s community.

Continue reading ‘Join my MyBlogLog Community’

Back in August 2006, I had explained a way to add Related Posts to your feed. But it involved modifying the wp-rss2 file. Now thanks to Solo Technology, you can add related posts to your feed without modifying any file but by just activating their wonderful WordPress Plugin.

You will need either UTW or w-a-s-a-b-i Related Posts plugin installed and activated.

Their first release of the plugin only supports UTW. So if you want support for w-a-s-a-b-i Related Posts, download the second release.

Installation

Download the plugin from here, unzip it and upload it to your plugins directory and then activate it. That’s it!

Why do you need to add related posts to your feed?

Because it will help you get your RSS readers to visit your blog and thereby increase your blog’s pageviews.

These days I have been getting spam mails send using the contact form on this blog. Some of these mails look like

Britney wrote:
You have a wonderful website here. May God rich bless you always.

Nicole wrote:
Looking for information and found it at this great site

Just while I was thinking of a way to avoid this, Mark (from Weblog Tools Collection) came up with a plugin that adds the Akismet comment test to the PSXMail plugin. Inorder to use this plugin you have to have Akismet installed and activated as a plugin already with a valid Akismet Key.

Continue reading ‘WordPress Plugin: PXSMail with Akismet’

Google recently announced that it will begin reporting the number of subscribers any RSS feed has through Google Reader and Google Personalized Homepage. Hence on February 17th, FeedBurner publishers noticed an increase in their feed count. This is great news as you can now have a better idea of what your actual feed counts are.

My Feed readers jumped from 500+ to 800+ and I am really happy about it and wish to further increase it to 1000+

Continue reading ‘Google Now Started Reporting Subscribers’