Spice Up Your Blog

How To Put Rss Feed Options Below All Your Blog Posts

2010-03-19T20:22:00.004Z

In a post from last month we looked at a few ways of spicing up you Rss feed options and in particular the Subscribe by Email option.That post showed you five different options and styles you could use instead of the default feedburner Email subscriptions form.If your not totally sure how Email subscriptions work you can check out this post on setting up Email subscriptions for your blog : Maximize Feedburner Email Subscriptions.

In this post i will show you how to offer readers the option to subscribe to your blog under every post.By placing the Rss options under every post in your blog you are sure to see the subscriber count raise.You can use the default Feedburner Email form or link below your posts but i would recommend going to the post i mentioned above and choseing from one of the - 5 Stylish Feedburner Email Subscription Forms.Adding the form below your posts couldnt be easier.

Put Feedburner Email Subscription Form Below All Posts

This tutorial will show you how to place the Email form code below the posts - to find out how to get the code needed check out the links above.

Step 1. In your Blogger Dashboard click 'Layout' > 'Edit Html' > Tick the 'Expand Widget Templates' box

Step 2. Find The Following Piece Of Code In Your Blogs Html :
(Click 'Ctrl and F' for a search bar to find the code - More Info)

<data:post.body/>

The <data:post.body/> code may be in your blogs html twice if so it the second one you want.

Step 3. Place the code for your Email subscription box Directly Below / Under <data:post.body/>

Once in place you can save your template and the rss subscriptions option will be below all your blog posts.

Remember you can get all these tips sent directly to your email and stay a step ahead.Its a quick and easy service Provided for Free by Google.Just fill in the Email form below the post.
If you need extra help on this or any tutorial just leave a comment, I love comments and feedback so this Blog is Do-Follow - when you comment here it helps Your Blogs Google rank !

You can further spice up the appearance of your Rss feed by checking out these 65 Awesome Rss feed images and Icons.

Further help is only a comment away.

Add A Feed Icon Beside Your Labels And Give Every Category It's Own Feed

2010-02-02T02:29:00.003Z

Recently we have been talking a lot about Rss Feeds, Email feeds and Feedburner.In this post we will stay on that subject, the trick i cover in this post has a few purposes but the main purpose is to give readers of your blog the option to subscribe to a category you write on as well as subscribing to your entire blog.Every label on your blog has its own feed by default but there is no easy way for people to access it.Once you have made this change every label in you labels list will have a feed icon beside it.

You can see the effect used in my labels in the sidebar, i have titled my labels list 'Recommended Categories'.If you click any of the icons you will go to the feed page for that category and will have the option to subscribe to all posts i write using that label.

As well as giving the option to subscribe to a single category, i think the icons look great and enhance the appearance of your label list.To that end i will show you how to change the feed icon image from the one i use and i will give you some samples.

Here is a screenshot of the result :

This tutorial involves replacing a section of code and although it's only a small section make sure your template is backed up in case you go wrong, click the 'Extra Help' link at the top of the post to see how.

Adding the icons

Step 1. In your dashboard click 'Layout' ► 'Edit Html' ► Tick the 'Expand Widget Templates' box

Step 2. You now have to find a small section of code in your blogs html.
Dont worry i will walk you through the process.

Here is the section we will be replacing :

<b:loop values='data:labels' var='label'>
<li>
<b:if cond='data:blog.url == data:label.url'>
<span expr:dir='data:blog.languageDirection'><data:label.name/></span>
<b:else/>
<a expr:dir='data:blog.languageDirection' expr:href='data:label.url'><data:label.name/></a>
</b:if>
<span dir='ltr'/>
</li>
</b:loop>

The best way to find the section is to find the first line of the code shown below :
(Note: Click CTRL and F for a search bar to find the code - For more info on this click the 'Extra Help' link at the top of the post)

<b:loop values='data:labels' var='label'>

Now from the first line you can scan down to locate the entire section.

The section starts with - <b:loop.....
And ends with - </b:loop>

<b:loop values='data:labels' var='label'>
<li>
<b:if cond='data:blog.url == data:label.url'>
<span expr:dir='data:blog.languageDirection'><data:label.name/></span>
<b:else/>
<a expr:dir='data:blog.languageDirection' expr:href='data:label.url'><data:label.name/></a>
</b:if>
<span dir='ltr'/>
</li>
</b:loop>

Step 3. Now you replace the section of code with the code below :

<b:loop values='data:labels' var='label'>
<li>
<a expr:href='data:blog.homepageUrl + "feeds/posts/default/-/" + data:label.name'><img alt='Subscribe To Label' src='http://i941.photobucket.com/albums/ad259/spiceupyourblog/rss-feed-16.png' style='vertical-align:middle;border:0'/></a>
<b:if cond='data:blog.url == data:label.url'>
<span expr:dir='data:blog.languageDirection'><data:label.name/></span>
<b:else/>
<a expr:dir='data:blog.languageDirection' expr:href='data:label.url'><data:label.name/></a>
</b:if>
<span dir='ltr'/>
</li>
</b:loop>

Once you have replaced the code save your template and your feed icons have been added.

Change The Image

Remember you can get all these tips sent directly to your email and stay a step ahead.Its a quick and easy service Provided for Free by Google.Just fill in the Email form below the post.
If you need extra help on this or any tutorial just leave a comment, I love comments and feedback so this Blog is Do-Follow - when you comment here it helps Your Blogs Google rank !

You will notice part of the code above is in Bold, that is the URL of the Feed icon being used which is this :

I have a few different images you could use instead, to use one of the images below just replace the URL in bold with the URL provided below.

http://i941.photobucket.com/albums/ad259/spiceupyourblog/rss-1.jpg

http://i941.photobucket.com/albums/ad259/spiceupyourblog/red-feed-16.png

http://i941.photobucket.com/albums/ad259/spiceupyourblog/16-1.png

For more help with Feeds and using them to improve your blog Click Here.

Thats it have you added the Icons ?

5 Stylish FeedBurner Email Subscription Forms For Your Blog

2010-02-01T01:39:00.003Z

In yesterdays post we looked at the options and settings for the Feedburner Email subscription service.As i said in that post providing your readers with the option to subscribe by Email is not an added extra it is an absolute must.Feed burner help make it easier by providing code for a link or a submission form you can add to your blog.

When you activate the email subscriptions in your feedburner account you have two pieces of code you can add to your blog

1. A link people can click for a pop up window, in the window they can enter their Email and fill the word verification form to subscribe.
2. An Email form, a form embedded on your blog were people can enter their email and when they click subscribe they fill the word verification.

In my experience and from what i hear from most bloggers using the Email form will increase the amount of subscribers to your blog.

Here is the default Feedburner form :

As you can see it is very basic and extremely bland.

The Email form i use is a bit more stylish here is a working example :

Receive The Latest Posts Directly To Your Email - It's Free:

Enter Your Email And Click Subscribe

So in this post i will show you a few different Email forms you can add to your blog.Before you add any form to your blog make sure you have activated Email subscriptions in your Feed Burner account.

Adding the new form

Once you choose the form you want to use copy the code and add it to your blog or replace your current form.

You Must Make 2 Changes To The Form You Pick :

You will see spiceupyourblog in red twice in each code change that to your Feedburner I.D.

Your Feed burner I.D. is the piece that appears at the end of your Feedburner URL.

For example mine is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/spiceupyourblog
If yours was: http://feeds.feedburner.com/myblog

You would change spiceupyourblog to myblog

Here are the forms you can use :

Preview.

Receive The Latest Posts Directly To Your Email - It's Free:

Enter Your Email And Click Subscribe

Code.

<center>
<b><i>Receive The Latest Posts Directly To Your Email - It's Free:</i></b>
<a href="http://www.spiceupyourblog.com/" target="_blank"><img alt="Email rss" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_rKG-ziTSNUQ/TDfmvEtFEdI/AAAAAAAABeY/wVGGf771158/s1600/subscribemail.png" border="0" /></a>
<i>Enter Your Email And Click Subscribe</i></center>
<center><form action="http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify" style="border: 0px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding: 3px; text-align: left;" target="popupwindow" method="post" onsubmit="window.open('http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=SpiceUpYourBlog', 'popupwindow', 'scrollbars=yes,width=550,height=520');return true"><input style="width: 140px;" name="email" type="text"><input value="SpiceUpYourBlog" name="uri" type="hidden"><input value="en_US" name="loc" type="hidden">
<input id="zoosbmt" alt="Subscribe" src="http://i941.photobucket.com/albums/ad259/spiceupyourblog/Subscribe-1.png" class="subbutton" type="image"></form></center>

Here is the same form but this time i have placed text inside the form instead of above the form.

Preview:

Receive The Latest Posts Directly To Your Email - It's Free:

Code.

<center>
<b><i>Receive The Latest Posts Directly To Your Email - It's Free:</i></b>
<img alt="Email rss" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_rKG-ziTSNUQ/TDfmvEtFEdI/AAAAAAAABeY/wVGGf771158/s1600/subscribemail.png" border="0" /></center>
<center><form action="http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify" method="post" target="popupwindow" onsubmit="window.open('http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=spiceupyourblog', 'popupwindow', 'scrollbars=yes,width=550,height=520');return true">
<input style="width: 140px; height: 24px;" name="email" value="Enter Email Here" onfocus="this.value=''" type="text">
<input value="SpiceUpYourBlog" name="uri" type="hidden">
<input name="loc" value="en_US" type="hidden">
<input style="margin-bottom: -12px;" onclick="submit" src="http://i941.photobucket.com/albums/ad259/spiceupyourblog/Subscribe-1.png" type="image">
</form></center>

Preview:

Receive The Latest Posts Directly To Your Email - It's Free:

Enter Your Email And Click Subscribe

Code.

<b><i>Receive The Latest Posts Directly To Your Email - It's Free:</i></b>
<a href="http://www.spiceupyourblog.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_rKG-ziTSNUQ/TDfmvEtFEdI/AAAAAAAABeY/wVGGf771158/s1600/subscribemail.png" border="0" alt="Subscribe Via Email"></a>
<i>Enter Your Email And Click Subscribe</i>
<form action="http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify" style="border: 0px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding: 3px; text-align: left;" target="popupwindow" method="post" onsubmit="window.open('http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=SpiceUpYourBlog', 'popupwindow', 'scrollbars=yes,width=550,height=520');return true"><input style="width: 140px;" name="email" type="text"><input value="SpiceUpYourBlog" name="uri" type="hidden"><input value="en_US" name="loc" type="hidden">
<input id="zoosbmt" alt="Subscribe" src="http://i941.photobucket.com/albums/ad259/spiceupyourblog/Subscribe-1.png" class="subbutton" type="image"></form>

Preview:

Receive The Latest Posts Directly To Your Email - It's Free:

Enter Your Email And Click Subscribe

Code.

<b><i>Receive The Latest Posts Directly To Your Email - It's Free:</i></b>
<a href="http://www.spiceupyourblog.com/" target="_blank"><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_rKG-ziTSNUQ/TDfmvEtFEdI/AAAAAAAABeY/wVGGf771158/s1600/subscribemail.png" alt="Subscribe Via Email" border="0" /></a>
<i>Enter Your Email And Click Subscribe</i>
<form action="http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify" style="border: 0px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding: 3px; text-align: left;" target="popupwindow" method="post" onsubmit="window.open('http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=SpiceUpYourBlog', 'popupwindow', 'scrollbars=yes,width=550,height=520');return true"><input style="width: 140px;" name="email" type="text"><input value="SpiceUpYourBlog" name="uri" type="hidden"><input value="en_US" name="loc" type="hidden">
<input id="zoosbmt" alt="Subscribe" src="http://i941.photobucket.com/albums/ad259/spiceupyourblog/Subscribe-1.png" class="subbutton" type="image"></form>

These are all very basic easy changes but they spice up the look and feel of your blog.If you feel comfortable making more changes you could use your own images and play around with the code some more.

Rss Station

Would you like to have the same complete rss station as i currently use ?

Remember you can get all these tips sent directly to your email and stay a step ahead.Its a quick and easy service Provided for Free by Google.Just fill in the Email form below the post.
If you need extra help on this or any tutorial just leave a comment, I love comments and feedback so this Blog is Do-Follow - when you comment here it helps Your Blogs Google rank !

This is the rss station i am using at the moment, it may have changed by the time you read this.

Included is a Rss feed link, A Twitter Link, Rss Email Form, What is Rss Link and a button to show off how many subscribers you have :

Here is the Preview :

Subscribe To The Latest Tips & Tricks

Follow @PaulCrowePro On Twitter

Receive The Latest Posts Directly To Your Email - It's Free:

Enter Your Email And Click Subscribe

What Is Rss / Feeds / Subscribe ?

And here is the code for the Rss station :

<table><tbody><tr><td>
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/spiceupyourblog" target="_blank"><img alt="Subscribe Via Rss" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_rKG-ziTSNUQ/TDfmvEtFEdI/AAAAAAAABeY/wVGGf771158/s1600/subscribemail.png" border="0" /></a></td>
<td><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/spiceupyourblog" target="_blank">Subscribe To The Latest Tips & Tricks</a></td></tr></tbody></table>
<table><tbody><tr><td>
<a href="http://twitter.com/paulcrowepro" target="_blank"><img alt="Follow On Twitter" src="http://www.thebabycd.com/website/images/Twitter.png" border="0" /></a></td>
<td><a href="http://twitter.com/paulcrowepro" target="_blank">Follow @PaulCrowePro On Twitter</a></td></tr></tbody></table>
<table><tbody><tr><td>
<b><i>Receive The Latest Posts Directly To Your Email - It's Free:</i></b>
<a href="http://www.spiceupyourblog.com" target="blank"><img alt="Email rss" src="http://i941.photobucket.com/albums/ad259/spiceupyourblog/subscribemail.png" border="0" /></a>
<i>Enter Your Email And Click Subscribe</i>
<form action="http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify" style="border: 0px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding: 3px; text-align: left;" target="popupwindow" method="post" onsubmit="window.open('http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=SpiceUpYourBlog', 'popupwindow', 'scrollbars=yes,width=550,height=520');return true"><input style="width: 140px;" name="email" type="text"><input value="SpiceUpYourBlog" name="uri" type="hidden"><input value="en_US" name="loc" type="hidden">
<input id="zoosbmt" alt="Subscribe" src="http://i941.photobucket.com/albums/ad259/spiceupyourblog/Subscribe-1.png" class="subbutton" type="image"></form></td></tr></tbody></table>
<table border="0"><tbody><tr><td><img alt="What is rss" src="http://i631.photobucket.com/albums/uu40/paulcrowe/questionmark.gif" border="0" /></td><td><a href="http://www.spiceupyourblog.com/2009/09/what-is-rss-subscribe-feeds.html" target="_blank">What Is Rss / Feeds / Subscribe ?</a></td></tr></tbody></table>
<p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/SpiceUpYourBlog"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Efc/SpiceUpYourBlog?bg=FF9900&fg=000000&anim=1" style="border: 0pt none ;" alt="" height="26" width="88" /></a></p>

Note. You will need to change the links in red to your feedburner and twitter links, and you can change the text in bold to suit your blog, feed and Twitter accounts.

If you are starting out and dont have many subscribers you may not want the counter displayed, if so remove the this part at the bottom :

<p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/SpiceUpYourBlog"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Efc/SpiceUpYourBlog?bg=FF9900&fg=000000&anim=1" style="border: 0pt none ;" alt="" height="26" width="88" /></a></p>

You should always have the Subscription options near the top of your blog.

What do you think ?

How To Maxamise The Feedburner Email Subscriptions For Your Blog

2010-01-29T21:10:00.003Z

The Feed burner Email subscriptions is not only an awesome tool for your blog it's also a service you Must make available to the readers of your blog.In the next post i will show you how to create a stylish Subscribe by mail form as the default Feedburner form is very bland.Before we Spice up your Email form you should make sure to optimize the options already available to you.In this post we will look at making the most of the service and taking advantage of the options and settings available.

If you don't have a Feedburner feed yet Click Here to see how to get one and how to set up Email subscriptions for your blog.

Lets look at some of the things you can do with your Email subscriptions these are the four settings available and what they offer:

Subscription Management

The subscription management setting is were you get the code for the Email link and Email form for your blog.You can also scroll down to see how many people have subscribed by Email.You have the option to see the Email addresses of your subscribers and see which subscribers activated their subscriptions, when someone subscribes by Email they are sent a confirmation Email if they don't click the link in the Email they wont be sent your updates.If someone has not activated after a few weeks maybe you could send them an email reminder.

Communication Preferences

When someone subscribes to your blog by mail they receive a confirmation link they must click to activate, although feedburner send a default message you can write your own message and make it more personal.
You can also change the subject of that email, its currently 'Activate your Email Subscription to:'Your Blog Name'.
And you can change the address line of the email by default it will be you@youremal.com.

Email branding

Now that your new subscriber has clicked the confirmation link lets look at how you can change the style of the Email they receive with your latest posts.

Email subject line : The subject on the Email they receive will be the name of your blog, so for my subscribers the subject line in 'Spice Up Your Blog'.This can be changed to anything you like, maybe you want to make this more personal.

Logo URL : You can add a logo to the top of the email your subscribers receive.Simply add the URL of an image you would like to use and it will appear in the top right corner of all emails (You can see a preview of my logo below).

Style : You can change all the text sizes and colors, background colors, link colors and more..

The great thing is Feed burner show you a preview of how the changes will look so if you mess it up you wont have to wait for the emails to be sent out before you can fix it.

Here is the preview of how my Emails look, you can see i added a logo to the top right.I made this logo with a signature maker you can too Click Here to see how.

Delivery Options

With the delivery options you can choose when your Emails will be sent.Depending on were you live or were your main audience come from you should set this to the peak time in that area.

Almost 50% of the visitors to this blog are from the U.S.A. so i have my email delivered between 9pm and 11pm Central time.If your main audience is for example Australian then you should set the delivery time to suit.

Remember you can get all these tips sent directly to your email and stay a step ahead.Its a quick and easy service Provided for Free by Google.Just fill in the Email form below the post.
If you need extra help on this or any tutorial just leave a comment, I love comments and feedback so this Blog is Do-Follow - when you comment here it helps Your Blogs Google rank !

This is a quick look at the options available to you with the Feedburner Email subscriptions and you should optimize these settings for you and your blog not presume the default settings cover everything.

My next post will cover improving the default subscription form from the default like this :

To something more stylish like this :

If you need more help with this post or any feedburner settings just leave a comment.

How To Let Feedburner Automatically Tweet Your Latest Blog Posts

2009-12-30T15:00:00.007Z

Most bloggers have Twitter accounts and most bloggers have learned that Twitter can drive traffic to your blog its not a new trick.Connecting your blog with the social networks you use is a great way to get traffic to your blog, Right now Twitter is the 'Hot' social network and traffic flowing from twitter is second to none.But before you run off to start Tweeting your latest posts look at the options.I previously covered using Twitterfeed to connect your blog with Twitter now you can allow Feedburner to connect your blog feed with Twitter.

The Google owned Feedburner has now added the 'Socialize' option.When you activate this option Feedburner will automatically Post your latest posts to your Twitter account.As soon as you publish a post on your blog it will be sent to your Twitter account.

Here you can see Google sent this post to my Twitter account.
Notice the URL is 'goo.gl' and 3 minutes ago from 'Google'.

If you don't have a feedburner account it is advised to set one up for your blog it only takes a few minutes Click here for a previous post on the subject.

This has come about with the launch or pre-launch of Googles new URL shortner Goo.gl

Remember you can get all these tips sent directly to your email and stay a step ahead.Its quick easy and of course a free service provided by Google just fill in the form below the post.

How to set up the service to connect your Twitter and Blog

Go to your feedburner account and select the blog feed you want to allow feedburner to connect.

Click 'Publicize' in the top menu then 'Socialize' in the side menu Then 'Add a Twitter account' as shown in the image below :

Before we finish : If you need more help or have an opinion or suggestion Please leave a comment Below.
To help you this is a Do-Follow Blog leaving a comment will also help your blogs Google rank.

Now a pop up window will ask you to confirm the connection with twitter - allow the connection.

There are more options to edit how you tweet will be posted once your happy click save and your connected.

Follow me on Twitter : @spiceyourblog

Have you been able to connect? Let us know.

How To Add A Recent Comments Widget To Your Blog In Five Clicks

2009-12-08T19:15:00.006Z

In this post i will show you how to add a Recent Comments Gadget to your blogger blog.The gadget will display the comments that have been left on your blog posts.You can customise you gadget to set how many comments to include, display comment author,include comment date.And best of all you have no code to add and you will have the widget on your Blog in 5 Clicks !

Heres how its done

1.Click 'Layout' ->'Add a Gadget' for your blog:

2.In the pop up menu scroll down to 'Feed' and click the + as shown below:

3.Now add your 'Comments Feed URL' to the area provided as shown below :

How to get your 'Comments Feed URL'

Your comments have a defauld feed :

http://XXXXXXX.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default

Just replace the http://XXXXXXX.blogspot.com with your blogs address.

Example my default feed is:
http://spiceyourblog.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default

Once you have added your 'Comments Feed URL' click 'Continue'.

4.Now you will go to the preview page

We Are Nearly Finished - First A Quick Reminder:
If you need more help or have an opinion or suggestion Please leave a comment Below.It also really helps me to get feedback.
This is a Do-Follow Blog so leaving a comment will also help Your blogs Google rank.
OK Back to business....

You can make the following changes to the widgets appearance :

Title=Give the widget a title like 'Recent Comments'
Show X items = How many recent comments to display.
Item Dates=Choose to show date of comment on widget.
Item source/authors=Show the comment Author on widget.

Once your happy with the look of your widget click save.

Your new recent comments widget has been added to your blog.

How To Import Your Entire Blog On To Facebook

2009-12-07T20:10:00.008Z

In this blog post i will show you a great way to put your entire blog onto Facebook.This tip will be automated as soon as you publish a new post on your main blog : Blogger, Typepad, Wordpress etc... the post will be updated on your wall and the post will be available On Facebook.Now your friends can see you posted to your blog they can see the post on Facebook and from there if they wish continue on you your blog.OK we know Facebook doesn't have a Blogging platform like other social networks like Myspace but this can still be easily achieved.

How is it done :

Facebook does provide you with a seldom used feature called 'Notes' and this is what we use to impost your blog.

So here's the steps to set it up :

1.Log into your Facebook

2.In the bar at the bottom of the page click 'Applications'
Then select 'notes' from the menu as in the Image below :

3.You are now on the 'Notes' Page - on the right of the page you will see 'Notes Settings' Choose 'Import A Blog' as in the image below:

4.You are now on the 'Import a Blog' page and ready to start importing your Blog:

A.Type or paste your Blogs feed address into the area provided
(Don't Know Your Blogs Feed Address? See how to get it below the image)
B.Tick the terms and conditions box
C.Click 'Start Importing'

If you have a Feedburner Feed use this if you don't here's how to get your default Feed.

All blogs have a default feed URL :
Blogger : http//YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss
Typepad: http:YOURBLOGNAME/atom.xml
Wordpress: http://YOURBLOGNAME/feed
(Replace 'YOURBLOGNAME')

4.You are now shown a Preview of your blog just click 'Confirm Import'

Now your Blog has been Imported onto Facebook !

Need more help..Have an opinion..Like this tutorial..Use comment's below...Enjoy.

How To Add An Easy Recent Posts Widget To Blogger

2009-12-05T23:59:00.005Z

In this post i will show you how to use the 'feed' recent post widget by Blogger to your blog.I have noticed in the Help Forum a lot of people having trouble with the recent post widgets they are using so this is another option.The widget can be added in a few clicks with no changes needed to your blogs html.

Add the widget to your blog:

1.Click 'Layout' ->'Add a Gadget' for your blog:

2.In the pop up menu scroll down to 'Feed' and click the + as shown below:

3.Now add your blogs Feed URL to the area provided as shown below :

How to get Feed URL

If you have a feedburner feed you can use that.

If you don't you can use the default feed..

All blogs have a default feed here's how to add yours:
http://XXXXXX.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

Change The XXXXXX.blogspot.com to your blog address.

Example my default feed is:
http://spiceyourblog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

Once you have added your feed URL click 'Continue'.

4.Now you will go to the preview page as shown below:

5.You can make the following changes to the widgets appearance :

Title=Give the widget a title like 'Recent Posts'
Show X items = How many recent posts to display.
Item Dates=Choose to show date of post on widget.
Item source/authors=Show the post Author on widget.

6.Once your happy with the look of your widget click save.

Your new recent posts widget has been added to your blog.

How To Add A Stacked Scrolling Recent Posts Widget To Your Blog

2009-11-25T19:11:00.008Z

In this post i will show you how to add a stacked animated recent posts widget to your blog using Google Ajax feed API.The widget is easy to add to your blog and can be placed in your sidebars under/over posts or anywere you can add html/javescript gadgets.In a previous post i covered adding a single scrolling recent posts widget to your blog using the same format Click here for that post

Preview

Heres a screenshot of how the widget looks showing my recent posts :

Demo : Click Here To See A Working Demo Of The Widget

Get Your Stacked Recent Posts Gadget

Heres the steps to add the widget to your blog displaying your recent posts :

1.Click 'Layout'->'Edit html' for your blog

2.Click 'Add a gadget'

3.Select 'html/javascript'

4.Paste the following code into the area provided:

<div id="feed-control"> <span style="margin:10px;padding:4px;">Recent Posts Loading...</span> </div>  <script src="http://www.google.com/jsapi?key=notsupplied-wizard" type="text/javascript"></script>  <script src="http://www.google.com/uds/solutions/dynamicfeed/gfdynamicfeedcontrol.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <style type="text/css"> @import url("http://www.google.com/uds/solutions/dynamicfeed/gfdynamicfeedcontrol.css"); </style> <script type="text/javascript"> function LoadDynamicFeedControl() { var feeds = [ {title: 'Recent Posts - YOUR BLOG TITLE HERE', url: 'PUT YOUR FEEDBURNER URL HERE' }]; var options = { stacked : false, horizontal : false, title : "" } new GFdynamicFeedControl(feeds, 'feed-control', options); } // Load the feeds API and set the onload callback. google.load('feeds', '1'); google.setOnLoadCallback(LoadDynamicFeedControl); </script>

Now you must make the following changes to the code:

1.Were you see 'YOUR BLOG TITLE HERE' in the code above replace with your blog title

Example: Spice Up Your Blog

2.Were you see 'PUT YOUR FEEDBURNER URL HERE' in the code above replace the text with your feedburner URL.

Example: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/spiceupyourblog
(Don't have a feedburner feed? Click here to get one.Its a Google service only takes a few minutes.)

Once you Have made the changes click save and your done !

You can do much more with Google Ajax feed API Click here to go to the Google page.

How to get a Feedburner Rss feed for your blog

2009-09-25T01:33:00.007+01:00

One of the first things you should do when you start Blogging is set up a Rss feed..All blogs no matter what platform have a default feed, for Blogger the default feed is

www.Yourblog.Blogspot.com/feed/post/default

But the Google Owned Feedburner offers so much more and don't worry it is very easy to set up.

Feedburner offer so many extras and as you build your blog you will notice so many areas that Feedburner can optimize your blog, we will also go into how feed burner give you the option to provide a 'Subscribe by Email' as you see on most blogs and also you can add AdSense units to your feeds.

I covered Rss feeds and how to use them in detail in a previous post Click Here to check it out.

Lets get your Feedburner Feed :

As Fee burner is owned by Google you can log in with your google account details.
(same as for blogger ,GMail ,You tube etc..).

Step 1. Go to www.Feedburner.com log in or create an account if you don't already have a google account.

Step 2. You will now come to this page:

Before we finish : If you need more help or have an opinion or suggestion Please leave a comment Below.

Now just enter your blog URL in the space provided :

Example :

http://www.yourblog.blogspot.com

If you have a custom domain :

http://www.yourblog.com

Step 3. Your feed will be created and feed burner will take you through a few steps to get you started, don't panic and think you need to set up everything now as you can go back and make changes.

The one thing you need to set up is the address of your feed, this is similar as choosing the address of your blog and it is best to use your blog address or name.

Your feed URL will be :

http://feeds.feedburner.com/YouPickThis

Mine is :

http://feeds.feedburner.com/spiceupyourblog

Once you feed is ready take some time to look through the options in the menu to: Analyze, Optimize, Publicize and Monetize your new Rss feed.

You can now also change your blogger settings to use your new rss feed as default.

In your dashboard click 'Settings'--> 'Site feed' for your blog to find this option.

Email Subscriptions

You can allow visitors to your blog subscribe by Email.To activate this option you need to go to your Feedburner account and on the homepage click on your feed title.

This will bring you to the Manage feed area, in the top menu click 'Publicize"

In the side menu click Email subscriptions.

Here you can activate the Email subscriptions and get the code for a link or form to put on your blog.For more info on this Click Here.

For more info on getting a Feedburner Feed here is a link to 'Google Help' to set up a feed for :

o Blogger
o WordPress
o TypePad
o MySpace
o Podcasting

That's Feedburner, Did you get yours ?

What Is Rss / Subscribe / feeds?

2009-09-24T03:22:00.004+01:00

What is RSS? This is a regularly asked this question and it might be worth putting together a page to define RSS and hopefully help you on the topic.Do you want to keep up to date with the latest posts on your favorite blogs/websites?We have a number of ways that you can subscribe to this site and receive updates. The main one that our readers use is our RSS feed.

What is RSS?

RSS is a technology that is being used by millions of web users around the world to keep track of their favorite websites.

In the ‘old days’ of the web to keep track of updates on a website you had to ‘bookmark’ websites in your browser and manually return to them on a regular basis to see what had been added.

The problems with bookmarking

You as the web surfer had to do all the work

It can get complicated when you are trying to track many websites at once

You miss information when you forget to check your bookmarks

You end up seeing the same information over and over again on sites that don’t update very often

RSS Changes Everything

What if you could tell a website to let you know every time that they update? In a sense, this is what RSS does for you.

RSS flips things around a little and is a technology that provides you with a method of getting relevant and up to date information sent to you for you to read in your own time. It saves you time and helps you to get the information you want quickly after it was published.

RSS stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’. Many people describe it as a ‘news feed’ that you subscribe to.

I find the ’subscription’ description helpful. It’s like subscribing to a magazine that is delivered to you periodically but instead of it coming in your physical mail box each month when the magazine is published it is delivered to your ‘RSS Reader’ every time your favorite website updates.

How RSS actually technically works is probably a lesson for another day but the key today is for you to understand why it’s good and how to use it.

Let me say right up front that I’m not the most technically savvy guy going around - but even I can use RSS. At first I found it a little strange to make the change from bookmarking to RSS but I found that when I started that I just couldn’t stop.

How to Use RSS

Get an RSS Reader - The first thing you’ll want to do if you’re getting into reading sites via RSS is to hook yourself up with an RSS Feed Reader.

There are many feed readers going around with a variety of approaches and features - however a good place to start is with a couple of free and easy to use web based ones like Google Reader and Bloglines. Either one will do if you’re starting out,as I say there are many to choose from but to get started either of these are fairly easy to use and will help you work out the basics of RSS.

Both of these feed readers work a little like email. As you subscribe to feeds you’ll see that unread entries from the sites you’re tracking will be marked as bold. As you click on them you’ll see the latest update and can read it right there in the feed reader. You are given the option to click through to the actual site or move onto the next unread item - marking the last one as ‘read’.

The best way to learn how to use either Google Reader or Bloglines is to simply subscribe to some feeds and give it a go. Both have helpful help sections to get you up and running.

Note: other options to tracking websites that you might already be familiar with include using pages like MyYahoo, MyGoogle and MyMSN.

Find Some Feeds to Subscribe to - there are two places to look for a site’s feed:

On the Site

In Your Browser

On Site Subscription

Over the last few years you may have noticed a lot of little buttons and widgets appearing on your favorite sites and blogs. Little orange buttons, ‘counters’ with how many ‘readers a blog has, links called RSS, XML, ATOM and many more.

They come in all shapes and sizes. Here are a few you might have seen:

There are plenty more - but any time you see any of these buttons or anything like them it means that the site you are viewing almost certainly has a feed that you can subscribe to. In most cases it’s as simple as either copying and pasting the link associated with the button into your RSS Reader or clicking the button and following the instructions to subscribe using the feed reader of your choice.

Once you’ve done this and have subscribed to a few feeds you’ll begin to see unread items in your Feed Reader and you can start reading.

We Are Nearly Finished - First A Quick Remunder:
If you need more help or have an opinion or suggestion,
Please leave a comment Below,I reply to all comments.
It also really helps me to edit posts and with future posts if you let me know if a tip has worked on your blog.
This is a Do-Follow Blog so leaving a comment will also help Your blogs Google rank.
Ok Back to buissness....

Don’t want to Use an RSS Reader? Email is an Option

If the above explanation all just seems a little too complicated for you then please don’t worry. Many sites also enable you to subscribe to RSS feeds via a more familiar medium - Email.

I know that not everyone is into the RSS thing so at the top of our left hand sidebar there is a field where you can enter your email address and get a daily email with a summary of our latest posts. You can unsubscribe at any time and your email will be kept private and not used for any other purposes than to send these daily updates.

Click here to see the rss page for this website

Still Want to know more? Heres a quick video to help you.

If you have any extra questions drop a comment below.