RSS FEEDS

Some of you may be wondering what an RSS feed is? RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. At the top of my page you will see a bubble for RSS. It is a way for readers to subscribe to the blog. It puts a link in your browser to my blog every time I update my blog it will update in your browser. Afton it is an orange icon that like the one in to your left.

Blogger already has an atom feed at the bottom of each post. But RSS is preferred by most bloggers. With blogger you can have both allowing your readers to subscribe in the way that is convenient for them.

Many different RSS feeds are available but FeedBurner seems to be the most popular, and it is what I use. You can use a a standard orange icon or a badge. But if you look you can find other icons I have customised mine to fit my blog design.

One Feedburner account can cover feeds for multiple blogs, I have 14. RSS can also be implemented with social bookmarking sites like stumble on. I use it with my Facebook. It also works great with My Blog Log

Feedburner has many options for publishing your feed. Many things I would have never thought of. Often times your readers will not be knowledgeable about web trends and will not understand RSS. Feed Burner has a nice subscribe by email option that has helped some of my readers to subscribe.

Having an RSS feed available will increase your traffic and help bring readers back. It took me a while to figure it out and get it right. But once done it's done, no need to update it all the time.

Amanda at Blogger Buster wrote a good how to article about adding RSS that helped me a lot. I have also added a Google Presentation with some You Tube videos that help to explain RSS.

CHANGING YOUR DASHBOARD

The default version of the Blogger dashboard is very limited. It lacks some a few features. But there is an alternative the in draft dashboard. This is a feature the blogger team created as an experimental type of dashboard. Here bloggers can try out new features that the team is thinking of adding to the default blogger dashboard.

What are some of extras can you get here?

• 1. Star post ratings.
• 2. In line comments for your post
• 3. An improved search box
• 4. Better post editing

Some features that first appeared in Blogger in Draft and are now default included:

• 1. Polls
• 2. Scheduled posts
• 3. Blog list
• 4. Video upload
• 5. Feed subscription

With the Blogger in Draft dashboard you can be months ahead of those who use the default dashboard. I have made the switch and never looked back. Now I have first access to the next idea that the Blogger team comes up with.

Here is how to do it:
1. Go to Blogger in Draft
2. Check in the box that says: "Make Blogger in Draft my default dashboard" It looks like this:





That is it! Next time you go to your dashboard it will be the Blogger in Draft dashboard with much more features. Enjoy!