Burning Updates
So I've finally gotten around to one of the things on my "To Do" list that has been there for approximately forty bazillion years: I looked into Feedburner.
What is Feedburner? Well, it's basically a way to trick out your RSS feed and make it more useful. :) I originally wanted to use it to stick some ads in my RSS feed, but they are currently not accepting new applications (as I found out after 45 minutes of digging around their entire site.) I'm a bit annoyed to discover this but, ultimately, it's okay for the moment. My whole goal when I put ads on my site was to cover the costs of hosting my own blog. Since I was trying to reduce expenses and bring in more cash, I just couldn't justify the cost of hosting my own blog, so the ads I've got up now cover my blogging costs every month and assuage any guilt I might feel over the (small) amount I spend to host it.
So what does this switch to Feedburner mean for you, gentle reader? Well, a couple things:
First, and most importantly, if you subscribe to my RSS feed: you will most likely not need to do anything. After digging through Feedburner's (rather pathetic, actually) help section, pulling out several fistfuls of hair and then creating an indefinite loop of redirects (which rendered my blog's homepage inaccessible for a short time) I was able to set up the re-directs to the new feed. This means that the majority of you won't need to do anything: the feed you're currently using should be fine.
For those of you whose feedreaders don't seem to be picking up any updates, you'll need to update your RSS links and resubscribe to the blog. The new link is over there on the side bar under "subscribe," or you can click here. My apologies in advance to those of you that this is affecting: definitely not my intent but hopefully this will only need to happen once. (It's looking like this might be the case with Bloglines.) On the upside, resubscribing shouldn't take more than a minute!
And, for those of you not interested in RSS, my "switch" to FeedBurner has also allowed me to offer email subscriptions to my blog's content. That link is also on the sidebar under "subscribe!" or you can click here if you don't feel like scrolling all the way down. :) It, too, is a super-quick and painless process.
For those of you who are bloggers and potentially interested in burning their own feed, below is some more info I gathered in getting this set up.
"Burning" your feed offers some advantages in addition to those noted above, including the ability to gather statistics around the total number of visitors to your blog, number of subscribers and other kinds of "interesting" data. It also pings a variety of weblog aggregators (like Bloglines.com and Technorati) when you update your blog in order to help people find your content through searches and the like. So that's all good too. I've been rather lazy over the last couple years from an "attracting new readers" perspective: I've either been too busy or too exhausted to blog regularly or go out and hustle up readers. I think I did pick up a number of new readers as a result of my MS diagnosis but that wasn't exactly intentional. :)
The only thing I dislike about Feedburner thus far is that it's been hard to find specific information I'm looking for. Explanations are not as clear as they could be and information isn't laid out in the most user-friendly, easy-to-find way. If you're willing to stick it out, though, eventually things start to make sense. And if you want to sign up and can't make heads or tails of the service? Shoot me a mail and I'll try to answer any questions I can. (Cuz, you know, I'm now so extremely experienced and knowledgable! HA!)
Anyway. Ahem.
So that's about it from me tonight, folks. It's suddenly quite late, and I'm tired and my silly thyroid meds still haven't kicked in 100%, which means I'm a bit grumpy. I'm headed to have 4th of July luncheon with my mom's side of the family tomorrow, and then am (hopefully) going with a friend to an organic herbary this weekend. I hope everyone's weekend is enjoyable and includes time to relax and experience a bit of gratitude for what we have - even with GWB in the White House and gas at $4.25/gallon. (Definitely on my list of things to practice this weekend!)
Happy Birthday, America! (And hooray for 3-day weekends!)
