enrii.blog

Philipp Lenssen wrote about using Comic Sans font in the Google AdSense and my first response is... Yuck!

He then mentioned about an initiative to ban Comic Sans font. I'm glad I found a group of people who hates Comic Sans font as much as I do. I can't tell the exact reason why I don't like it, but I really hate to see that font.

The site also created a petition to ban the font.

At this moment, there are only 1,635 signatures and they are aiming for 2,000 since the November of 2005. The number of people who signed is unbelievably small.

I was wondering whether there is actually not that many people that hate the font, or the petition is not well spread?

Reasons to Install FeedBurner

Sometimes, I am really curious whether there is anyone reading my blog. From Google Analytics, over 80% of the traffic came from search engines, mostly from Google. Am I really write for search engines only?

Since I share my full feed, there is no point for the readers (i.e. you) who read at RSS readers come to visit my site.

I think the best motivation for a blogger to continue writing is for him to know that he has followers. And, I don't get much comments on my blog.

Setting Up FeedBurner

Simple. Create an account at FeedBurner. Add in your current blog feed, then get a new feed link from FeedBurner. E.g. http://feeds.feedburner.com/enriiblog

Obstacles

I have been promoting the default WordPress RSS link all the while and I think I could have a few readers subscribed to my feed. I think it is not appropriate to ask everyone to switch to the new feed link provided by FeedBurner.

Moreover, if I ask you to use this new feed link so that I can track you, would you like use it? Nobody likes to be tracked.

The WordPress Plugin

To solve the problem, I installed the FeedBurner FeedSmith WordPress plugin (gbyeow suggested me to install this years ago, but I didn't do it until now). The plugin will automatically redirects your original feed link which looks like http://blog.enrii.com/rss/ to http://feeds.feedburner.com/enriiblog.

So, you will need to enter the FeedBurner feed link into: WordPress admin page > Settings > FeedBurner.

There are users reported some .htaccess issues in the older version. It seems like we no longer need to do anything with .htaccess with the latest version of FeedSmith.

OK, It's working now!

Now I know how many people subscribed to my feed.

What else could you achieve with FeedBurner?

• Link to AdSense account - If you already have an AdSense account, adding ads into your feed can be done in a few clicks.
• Email subscription - If you have readers who do not use any RSS readers, they could subscribe to my post via email.
• Put subscriber's tag (FeedCount) - A small tag that you could put on your blog to show everyone that you have many subscribers.

Do you use it?

Just a note, if you are not aware, FeedBurner is now part of Google.

Only a very small percentage of the Internet population is aware of the RSS format and its benefits, and that number is growing slowly over time.

Let me do my part to spread the importance of RSS (specifically, full RSS if possible).

What is RSS?

RSS = Really Simple Syndication

RSS is a format used to deliver information from websites and pages that get updated regularly. An RSS document (which is called feed) contains either a summary or the full content from a website.

Why RSS is important to me?

I no longer read any blog directly on any website. I wouldn't be able to read that much if there is no RSS. Imagine that you have to visit website by website, to see if they have updated it. If you have 20 blogs to follow, clicking and waiting them to load would have to take a long time. What if you have 50 websites/blogs to read?

With RSS, you can see it all in one screen when you are using RSS reader. I'm using Google Reader and I'm very happy with it. Do give it a try, if you are not using any.

If you are a web content publisher, make sure your site provides RSS feed so that your readers can subscribe to it. Besides saving your followers' time, you save lots of bandwidth! Of course, you might be earning less ads revenue, but if that's so important to you, there are lots of advertising networks that allows you to put ads on your RSS feed. One good choice would be to use Google AdSense with Feedburner.

Canonical Ltd announced it few days ago. It's available for download or upgrade now.

Linking to own blog is something that every blogger does. Normally, after I finish writing a blog, I shall receive email notifying that I'm receiving ping(s) from the blog post I have just written. Then, I had to delete the mail (it's polluting my pure inbox), then delete the ping manually. I can accept ping from other blogs, I just don't like to see my own ping showing up in my own blog.

Just days ago, when I was browsing in WordPress support forum, I saw somebody asked how to disable self pings. I never thought somebody actually created a WordPress plugin to do this.

Go here to get it for yourself: No Self Pings

(This is also a test post to know whether it really works)