Web Marketing Pro Blog

Using FeedBurner and RSS Autodiscovery Tags

Mark McLaren — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 07:33:34 +0000

If you use FeedBurner to create a custom feed for your blog, you need to change the autodiscovery tags in the HTML section of the blog template or theme. Here’s why.

FeedBurner makes a special URL for your RSS/Atom feed that people can use to subscribe to your blog content, or to receive your posts as an email message. FeedBurner also gives you the ability to track the number of people that subscribe.

The special URL looks something like this:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/[your blog name] or
http://feeds.feedburner.com/WebMarketingProBlog

The latter is the FeedBurner feed URL for the McBuzz Web Marketing Pro Blog. If you click on the “Subscribe” link in the sidebar to the right, that’s the URL that will appear in the address window of your browser. FeedBurner then shows you a page that gives you options as to how to subscribe to the feed.

The HTML tag for the “Subscribe” link looks like this:

Subscribe

You can put this link anywhere in your template, and people will be able to click on it and subscribe to your blog.

The problem is, most browsers have an “autodiscovery” feature for RSS/Atom feeds, AND most blog templates have standard HTML tags in the section of the page that facilitate this. Putting your new FeedBurner link in your blog’s sidebar does not change the tags in the section of the page. In most cases, you need to do this by hand.

Here’s what the old RSS/Atom feed tags looked like for the Web Marketing Pro Blog:

I replaced these with the following:

Now when a browser autodetects my blog’s feed, it finds the right URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/WebMarketingProBlog

You can check to see if the old tags are still in your template by using View > Source or View > Page Source in your browser while you are on one of your blog’s pages. Look for something like the three link tags above.

If you use TypePad, here’s a discussion of what to look for and change:
http://snurl.com/2eiyh [groups_google_com]

And, if you use the Firefox browser, you can click on the orange RSS symbol in the address window to see the feeds that are being autodiscovered. If more than one feed is detected, Firefox should show you a dropdown menu with each of the options.

In the case of the three old feeds for the Web Marketing Pro Blog above, Firefox showed an option for each feed: RSS 1.0 (.92), RSS 2.0 and Atom. If only one feed is detected, you need to check your browser’s address window for the feed URL after you click on the orange RSS symbol. If you see your FeedBurner URL, you’re set. If you see something else, you need to change the tags in the section of the page.

Clicking on the RSS link (circled in red) in Firefox will show you which feeds are being autodiscovered. If only one feed is being autodetected, you may need to look in your browser’s address window to see the URL after clicking on the link.

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Upgraded to WordPress 2.5 — Whew!

Mark McLaren — Thu, 22 May 2008 07:38:53 +0000

I’m happy to report that the Web Marketing Pro Blog now runs on WordPress version 2.5. Soon I will be able to say the same for the main McBuzz Communications website and blog.

This is the third 2.5 upgrade I have done. All have gone smoothly. Within the week, I will be making a video tutorial that walks through the steps.

It’s definitely one advantage of hosting your blog/website on WordPress.com that you don’t have to worry about things like upgrading the software. But there are many more disadvantages. For example, check out the nifty “Share This” button at the bottom of this post. This is a great “Web 2.0″ feature to add to a site, and because it’s a WordPress plugin - one of the best - it takes all of 5 minutes to install. On WordPress.com-hosted sites, you don’t get to install plugins.

If you are interested in upgrading to WordPress 2.5, or you have already done so and would like to share your experiences, please post a comment.

Thanks for visiting the Web Marketing Pro Blog!

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VerticalResponse Email Marketing on Facebook

Mark McLaren — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 00:03:27 +0000

I received a snappy-looking email update from a company called JointContact a minute ago. Checking the footer, I found “Powered by VerticalResponse”. McBuzz is always looking for good ways to reach customers and we advise our customers about how best reach out to customers of their own. VerticalResponse looks like a good candidate.

I bring this up for two reasons:

1. Email marketing is not dead. Done right, with an easy double opt-in and an equally easy opt-out, it is actually an essential part of any good web marketing strategy.

2. Facebook is another great way to reach new and existing customers. VerticalResponse tells how in this post on their blog: Facebook - How Do I Love Thee?

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Web Marketing Pro Blog — Do as I Say…

Mark McLaren — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 22:19:31 +0000

It has been far too long since my last post here on the Web Marketing Pro Blog. Not a blogging strategy anyone should try to emulate! The Facebook conference (Community Building in the Age of Facebook) mentioned in my last post was excellent. Many of the new things McBuzz has in the works center around the great stuff I learned there — with guidance and inspiration from the awesome group of web professionals I met. To see who I’m talking about, go to the Seattle Facebook Event website.

Running two blogs under one domain as we do with the main McBuzz Communications site and the Web Marketing Pro Blog has been a worthwhile endeavor, one that I’m about 99% sure I will not continue when mcbuzz.com gets its next revamp.

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Seattle Facebook Event - Community Building in the Age of Facebook

Mark McLaren — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 18:51:51 +0000

Does it seem like everywhere you look right now someone is talking about Facebook? I’ve seen reports about Robert Scoble taking over Facebook. Scoble is someone to take note of, whatever he is up to. Here Scoble offers a video of Steve Broback talking about a Seattle Facebook Event called Community Building in the Age of Facebook. Scoble uses video all the time on his blog and elsewhere. More and more, this is going to be how people blog and put information up on websites. And Scoble likes Facebook. So we should keep an eye on Facebook.

Scoble thinks Facebook is hot because it is much more of a “media channel” than a blog. I’m still getting my head around this. Here’s a good rundown of Facebook for Professionals in the meantime.

What’s your point?! you ask? Mark McLaren and McBuzz Communications will be attending the Seattle Facebook Event. Very fired up about it. Check it out!

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Sketchcast: New Web-based Communication Tool Lightly Rocks

Mark McLaren — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 15:12:00 +0000

Description: Mark McLaren of McBuzz Communications LLC shares a new free Web-based tool called Sketchcast that can be used to create presentations - with audio and video - in minutes and then publish them on the Sketchcast website and on your own website or blog.

Watch the short presentation above. This Web-based communication tool is fast, free and fun. The reasons I say Sketchcast lightly rocks are these:

Sketchcast presentations contain no keywords or tags that search engines can read. Although you save time creating Sketchcast presentations and posting them quickly, if you want search engines to index your creation, you still have to write keywords and/or tags and work them into your post somewhere.
You can’t insert backgrounds, so you can’t give tutorials using screen captures in which you talk about and draw over top of web pages, software programs or other materials.
You can’t splice one presentation to another.

No doubt, they will be expanding Sketchcast’s capabilities in the future. I’m looking forward to seeing where this goes! Here’s a more thorough introduction by Sketchcast’s Rich Ziade:

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WordPress Search Form (searchform) Results - Problem Fixed!

Mark McLaren — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 15:34:03 +0000

If you use WordPress, you may have discovered a problem with search results on your website or blog: a search using the search form (a.k.a. searchform) on an internal page generates either no result (the page does not change) or a “Page not found” 404 error. Fortunately, I can no longer demonstrate the problem for you on this website, because I found and corrected the faulty PHP source code.

Here’s what you will find if you are experiencing the problem: when you or someone else submits a query using the WordPress searchform, that is, you type something into the Search box on your website or blog and click the ‘Go’ button, you see no change in the page or you see a “Page not found” page, and in the web browser’s address window you will find a URL that looks similar to this:

http://www.mcbuzz.com/web-marketing-blog/
about-web-marketing-pro-blog/?s=[search term]&sbutt=Go

The URL shows the page that the search was done from:

http://www.mcbuzz.com/…/about-web-marketing-pro-blog/

which is why it doesn’t work.

The solution is simple. The URL should be:

http://www.mcbuzz.com/web-marketing-blog/?s=[search term]&sbutt=Go

with no specific page in it, just the home page. (On the Web Marketing Pro Blog, the home page is http://www.mcbuzz.com/web-marketing-blog/.)

In your WordPress theme source files, the search

Matt May on Web Accessibility: Do It Right - Keep It Simple

Mark McLaren — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 14:48:03 +0000

Matt May, Accessibility Engineer at Adobe in Seattle, gave a great talk last night on Web Accessibility. The talk was sponsored by Refresh Seattle.

Matt is someone we all can — and should — turn to with questions about Web Accessibility. It’s clear why Adobe and W3C/WAI chose Matt to articulate and evangelize accessibility standards:

Matt really knows his stuff (an understatement).
He makes the material accessible.
Matt is accessible.

A quick glance at the Federal Government’s Section 508 website shows why this is so important: it’s dense as hell, therefore most of us will never read it. Although it’s absolutely clear that Matt could tell you in great detail about many aspects of accessibility, like most Kung Fu masters, he restrains himself.* Here’s how he typically states the importance of accessibility in software and Web development:

Standards-based development is kind of important when it comes to making reasonably-sized sites reasonably accessible.

A mealymouthed stance? No way.

To turn standards into reality, we (and by “we” I mean Matt) must reduce the “oh my god, how will we do it?!” factor as much as possible. Sure, companies that do work for government agencies will try to comply with Section 508 as much as the law requires, which might mean hiring an “expert”. But what about all the other software and web pages out there?

It makes a lot of sense to put the emphasis where it will do the most good: by making reasonably-sized sites reasonably accessible — because that’s a whole lot better than nuttin’, honey. And, by keeping it simple for these sites’ developers and other stakeholders, we stand a much better chance of helping them inspire others to follow suit.

Something else Matt said helped reinforce his position. When asked to recommend a book on accessibility standards, he said he could not — because those on the market devote too much attention to compliance (with Section 508, for example) versus simple ways to achieve more accessibility, more quickly. (He may have hinted that he was hoping to correct the situation himself, I’m not sure. But maybe a book, by its nature, would do less for the cause than newer media in smaller doses, like video or podcasts, along with the Web and PDF.)

Matt will be posting links related to his talk, and I will include those as soon as he does. Meantime, here are some other resources:

Matt May’s blog (views are his own - check it out!)
Web Accessibility Initiative - Quick Tips to Make Accessible Web Sites
Accessibility at Adobe (some good stuff here)
Matt’s profile at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
World Wide Web Consortium Web Accessibility Initiative (W3C/WAI)

*To my knowledge, Matt is not really a Kung Fu master — just in case you were going to refrain from making any negative comments below. Fire away!

Mark McLaren
McBuzz Communications

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McBuzz Communications Not Buying The mcbuzz.com Alexa Ranking T-shirt This Week

Mark McLaren — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 20:49:02 +0000

Here’s a shirt I won’t be buying right away. Alexa.com ranks mcbuzz.com at 8,124,767 on the World Wide Web for number of visitors and page views. Bad? Maybe not. If you consider that some surveys estimate the total number of sites online at around 127 million, mcbuzz.com is in the 94th percentile. Now that sounds pretty good.

Still, the Alexa.com T-shirt for mcbuzz looks like this.

We all know that that 0.00002% figure represents a highly intelligent and discerning group of web marketing professionals and others interested in the field! Still, I guess I will wait a while before buying a shirt.

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Privacy Problems in Internet Explorer - IE6 and IE7

Mark McLaren — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 19:21:44 +0000

These Internet Explorer privacy problems may be old news to some, but they were new news to me. Yet another reason to use the Firefox web browser when given the choice.

Also well worth noting is that anyone using Firefox add-ons IE View or IE Tab may be succeptible to one of the same security flaws (clipboard content theft) while using the Firefox browser on Windows.

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