Earn A Living Online

There was a comment in a past post asking about adding the Social Bookmarking icons underneath WordPress posts. I personally use something that FeedBurner provides (FeedFlare) to accomplish that. The question stated that the icons were needed to help the posts look less "blah". Well, the ones I use are simple text links so they won't help in that regard. In this post, I will briefly describe FeedBurner and FeedFlare and point you to some resources to get started there. I will also be providing general information about adding plugins to improve functionality of your site. I will get more in depth about plugins in the Blog Series but this post will give you enough info to get started in the meantime.

FeedBurner is a way to manage your RSS feed and makes it easy for people to subscribe to it (including by email). I'll point you to some great resources to get a better undetstanding.

• First off, if you'd like to know more about RSS feeds in general check out Feed 101
• Advantages to using FeedBurner for bloggers
• Using FeedFlare will give subscribers ways to share and subscribe to your content
• Learn more about FeedBurner's many options by going to FeedBurner.com. It's definitely worth the time to read as much as you can on that site and soak in all that you can. Very valuable stuff.

FeedBurner has some great information to answer any question that you may have regarding your RSS feed. There's no sense in me duplicating any of their content here. But, without a doubt, FeedBurner is currently the best way to promote your RSS feed. All of the top bloggers use their service and Google owns it so it isn't going anywhere.

Installing Plugins on WordPress Blogs

Plugins increase the functionality of your blog. There are hundreds of them out there. FeedBurner requires a plugin or two to get some of their stuff working on your blog. Any site that offers a plugin should have specific instructions on how to install the plugin. But, there are general steps that you will no doubt encounter when installing plugins.

First, to find plugins you can check the Plugin Directory at WordPress.org or just Google what you are looking for. You will need to download the plugin to your computer, in most cases you will have to unzip (or decompress) it, and then upload it to your server (wp-content/plugins folder) and activate it (click Activate next to the plugin name in the Plugins section of the WordPress admin). There may be other specific things that need to be done after that depending on the plugin but the steps should be on the site that you downloaded the plugin from.

Advanced information can be found in the Manging Plugins document at WordPress.org.

You will need to know how to use FTP software. I just Googled FTP 101 and came up with this page. That will teach you what you need to know. I recommend using the FileZilla client for FTPing. It's free.

Occasionally when downloading plugins they will be in .zip format. You have to unzip them. I just Googled how to unzip and ended up here. It goes through the unzipping process. There are a lot of free unzipping utilities. I use WinRAR but the Unzipper built into Windows is fine or even WinZip if it's still around.

That should get you started promoting your feed and adding some plugins to help share your content. More detailed steps will be given in future posts in the Blog Series.

Related posts:

1. Adding A FavIcon To Your WordPress Blog Without A Plugin
2. When Duplicating Content Is Appropriate – And How To Do It In Your WordPress Posts
3. What’s Coming Up
4. What Is An RSS Feed?
5. CashTactics CPA Marketing Series – Nothing Held Back

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