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Archive for the ‘Blogging’ Category
Top 9 Social Media WordPress Plugins
March 5th, 2009 by Blogging Rock Star
You should allow your readers various ways to interact with your blog be it bookmarking, sharing, saving, or emailing. Given the chance they could be your greatest promoters.
Below are my top 9 social media WordPress plugins:
1. Add To Any – Compatible 2.0 – 2.7.1
Allows readers to share, save, bookmark, and email your posts using 122 different social sites. Very easy to use and compact, also allows you to customize the look.
2. WP Digg This – Compatible 2.2 – 2.7
Adds the Digg button to your posts with the added option of choosing which posts you want to add it too.
3. Social Bookmarks – Compatible 2.5.1 – 2.7
Adds the social media buttons to the end of your posts. You can also select which media site to show and use.
4. HB Social Bookmarks – Compatible 2.3.3 – 2.7
If you’d like to add the feature to a sidebar this plugin will do just that. You can choose which site to show and use.
5. Share This – Compatible 1.5 – 2.7?
This is possibly the most popular social media plugin. It’s very simple, compact, and clean looking.
6. Sociable – Compatible 2.2 – 2.7
You can’t go wrong with a plugin by Joost de Valk aka Yoast. It adds the social sites to the end of your posts and again you can choose which to use.
7. Twitter For WordPress – Compatible 2.1 – 2.7
This will display your Tweets on your sidebar.
8. WP To Twitter – Compatible 2.5 – 2.7.1
This works in the opposite direction of the above. It send a Twitter Update when you post something new on your blog.
9. Meet Your Commenters – Compatible 2.5 – 2.7
This is a very unique and smart plugin. When someone leaves a comment it will show the profiles of the sites they are a member of in the dashboard so that you may add them.
Posted in Blogging + Open Source + Technology + WordPress | 
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RSS – What Is It?
September 18th, 2007 by Blogging Rock Star
RSS is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. It’s basically a “What’s New” report for your blog.
The RSS on your blog creates a way for your visitors to detect changes on your website, fetch the new content from your blog, and present them in a condensed way.
So a visitor clicks on the RSS, what happens then?
The first thing they need is a RSS news reader, also called an aggregator. There are all kinds of news readers available.
Some are web-based, meaning you access it through your web browser, some you can download and use it on your desktop or mobile device.
My Yahoo, Google Reader and the Subscribe to this page in your Mozilla FireFox are other examples of an RSS news reader.
When your visitor clicks on the RSS on your blog, your blog sends the feed URL to their RSS feed reader.
This basically tells their news reader where they need to go to for your blog’s updates, and to stay on-alert for updates.
When you post a new blog entry, the news reader will notify your visitor by sending him/her a summary of the new content with a link to the actual entry on your blog.
How does having the RSS on my blog benefit me?
In many ways, RSS is similar to subscription newsletters, but better.
- You don’t need to send out newsletters. No need for mass mailing or emailing. All you do is post your new entry.
- The RSS news reader does all the update ‘pulling’ for your visitor.
- Your client has complete control of their news feeder, they can add and remove any RSS subscription anytime they want.
In addition, because the news feeder sends your visitor a condensed summary of your updates, in a way, it’s like serving sending them a menu of your “today’s special”.
They can access information on your blog easier and faster, in a way they have total control.
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