But for those who are unsure of why anyone would want to. Here are a few reasons:

Recap:

Some people choose to have all of their post viewable in your RSS feeds while others only have the first couple of paragraphs or so. Why would someone do this?

Advantages to Partial Feeds:

• More people click though to your site to read the post, and therefore you get more visitors and theoretically more ad revenue.
• It is easier for the reader to know if they are actually going to want to read the whole article in the first place.

What if your whole server died on you and you lost everything. All those posts, all that hard work. You’d have to start from scratch. No one wants to go through that much stress and frustration. So today I would like to plea to you that you back-up your blog!

It only takes a few minutes once a month to copy out all your posts, a copy of your theme, and uploads to your computer.

There are a couple different ways to do this. The easiest is to simply export out your posts as an XML file. Most CMS’ have a feature in them that allows you to do this. Once you have downloaded this file - keep it safe. It will hold everything. The post content, categories, tags, custom fields and the comments.

If you want to back-up your entire install of your CMS you have to go into your FTP client and select the appropriate folders. For instance, in WordPress, the “wp-content” folder holds all of that data, themes and uploads.

How often should you back-up?

It really depends on how often you blog. I would say every month for a casual blogger, but when you’re invested heavily it might be best to do it every week.

Below are some links to guides on backing up popular CMS’:

• WordPress - Lorelle covers some similar stuff to my post but also focusses on WordPress plug-ins that can do it automatically for you.
• Blogger - The Blogger help centre has a very good article on what to do for those using Blogger.
• Drupal - Drupal.org has a good tutorial on backing up the entire Drupal database.

WPCandy does that and a lot more.

About the Site:

WPCandy was created by Michael Castilla on October 2007, since then it has gone through three different themes. Currently it has two main bloggers, including Michael, and lots of contributing authors. WPCandy is split up into five main categories for you to enjoy:

• Articles
• Themes
• Plug-ins
• Site
• Community

From all of these catergories you can whittle down what WordPress is all about and easily find out the key things that are going on in the vibrant community that makes WordPress what it is.

Why I Like It

I’m by no means a WordPress guru, however I do like to tinker and keep up with what is going on, I find WPCandy is a great source of not only primary information but also tertiary information through the community page so I can keep up with all of the latest developments.

Strangely enough I also go for the ads. WPCandy has some very interesting and relevent advertisers, mainly in the themes realm, who have some cool WordPress related service.

Why You’ll Like It

As I mentioned before, WPCandy offers a great collection of WordPress sites, tutorials and just cool stuff. If you want to find some awesome themes - they review them. If you want to learn how to make some design changes to your blog - they can help. If you want to find your way about WordPress -  they have some resources for that.

From WPCandy has spawned some other very cool services, such as WPCoder that will turn your PSD designs into WordPress themes if you’re looking for a individual look to your blog.

Finally, I would like to wish WPCandy a late 1st Birthday, keep up the great work guys!

In this video I talk about what makes someone a blogger, and what they need to do with their website to make it a blog… and I learn how to say regularly!

The key components are:

• A blogger has an opinion that he wants to share.
• A blogger has something he wants to add to the world.
• A blog should be updated regularly in some form - not a static site!
• A blog should have an RSS feed.
• You can put your spin on topics.

Background

MarsEdit is developed by Daniel Jalkut, though was previously part of NetNewsWire. However after changing ownership a couple of times it landed in the hands of Red Sweater Software and has gone through it’ 2.0 release and a lot of changes.

It’s used by some of the greats in the blogging world, one of them; Shawn Blanc had this to say in his review of MarsEdit:

I finally landed with MarsEdit as my preferred method for publishing. I think I made a pretty good choice too, because the more I use it the more I feel it’s a Mac app which truly is out of this world. (Get it?)

Writing

Setting up your blog with MarsEdit is laughably simple. You enter the name and URL of your blog and it goes out and pulls down all the information it needs. Then you type in your username and password that you log into and you’re set up. I use Wordpress so I’ll be refering to that, however, Movable Type, Blogger, Drupal and many other blogging platforms are suppported.

The interface for MarsEdit is very simple, like most Mac applications. You have a small amount of buttons along the top varying from “New Post” to the search box, a new feature of the 2.0 release.

However most of the fun starts when you create a new post. There is, in fact no WYSIWYG editor built into MarsEdit. Some would say that this is a flaw, but I think it’s a feature. You don’t have to mess around with any formatting as you jump between views. It’s just simple text and there is nothing that the WordPress interface might not misinterpret as I found it often does when writing posts in their WYSIWYG view.

One problem that I have encountered is that there are just to many pop-up windows. I think that the Media uploader would be better suited as a drop down menu instead of an extra window.

Of course for the less code savvy (if you can call html code) along the top right hand corner there is a drop down menu with some of the more popular code snippets such as blockquotes, h1, h2 etc. Of course you can edit these and ad your own if you find yourself using any particular tag a lot of the time.

All from within the MarsEdit interface you can add tags and categories - change the post status. It is little things like this that sets this app apart.

Conclusions

MarsEdit is a fantastic bit of software let down by a couple of weaknesses in the UI. If you’re running Windows have no fear as Microsoft has Windows Live Writer for you and another WYSIWYG editor on the Mac is Ecto.

MarsEdit can be purchased for $29.95 from Red Sweater Software. There is also a free trial so you can become addicted.

The Vision

Who, What and When.

These are the three aspects that are very important for any blogger. Who is your blog aimed at, what will it be based upon and when will you take the time to work on it?

Try picking a niche so that you can cater for their needs. By doing so you can keep them interested on a post by post basis. If you suddenly do a post completely off topic then they might feel alienated. Remember, if you do find another topic that doesn’t fit with your current blog, there is nothing stopping you from starting another!

You’ve also got to consider that your niche of choice perhaps, might already be blogged about and therefore it may be very hard to penetrate that area. You have to come to the decision early on if you can take on these blogs. Normally through some innovation or just going that one step further. If you can’t come up with anything; move on. I have found myself pouring over this one blog post idea when I could have simply moved onto the next. Quite often, I’ve found my second idea to be the best as I’ve already worked out all the possible ideas from the first.

It’s a great idea to state from the beginning how many posts you intend to do. By doing this you are making a commitment to your readers that, if you want them to take you seriously, you will uphold. Most readers don’t like erratic posts; if you decide five times a week: Stick to it! It might also help you to tell everyone that you want to do X number of posts. Then they will (hopefully) complain when you don’t meet that target.

Always ask yourself: Where do I want to be in a month, two months, even a year. If you set yourself targets and push for them they don’t seem so far away. In the next post of this series I’ll be talking about that in greater depth.

This is the first of my by-weekly video posts!

I explain all the details in the video but I’ve summarized it below:

• Once every two weeks
• Under five minutes
• Nothing fancy, just raw content
• Find them on Blogging Adventure on the secondary column - I suggest you click through to see it bigger.
• Videos will be on Viddler and YouTube.

I have comprised a list of ten Wordpress plugins that I feel every blogger should have in their arsenal. Feel free to add any that you think I’ve missed in the comments.

1. Adman

Adman allows you to place ads in your blog without having to go into the php and find the right spot. You have the choice in having the ad appear before the first post, after a post and within the post.

One of the super cool things about this plugin is that it can calculate the best spot to place the ad when you want it in the post. Though if you want it in a certain place you can specify with a tag.

2. Ajax Comments

Ajax Comments is a very simple, but very useful plugin. It adds some AJAX voodoo to your comments system so that they are published without having to refresh the page.

This plugin may be considered more of a luxury than a need, but it makes your site run that bit slicker.

3. All In One SEO Pack

If you’re not on Google, you don’t exist. Just about everyone uses Google and if you want to make your blog that much easier for people to find; then you’ll install this plug-in.

Basically, All In One SEO Pack gives you a form to fill in within Wordpress to make your site more attractive to Google’s bots. Such as keywords and page headers. In the first month of installing it on my personal blog I jumped a page in Google’s results.

4. Maintenance Mode

If you ever want to have a tinker around with your website for a bit without having the whole web being able to see the changes you are making, I highly recommend Maintenance Mode. This plug-in allows all the visitors who come to your site to be met with a page displaying that the site is not currently available.

You have a lot of options with what the page can look like, but you are given a template which you can fill in that documents the amount of time you expect the site to be inaccessible.

5. No Self Pings

I love this plug-in because it solves one of my pet hates which is when you link to a post within your blog and it pings it within the comments. This can be especially frustrating if you have linked to one post several times. It starts to look a lot like spam.

By using this plug-in you simply remove the clutter sent from other posts within your blog.

6. Related Posts

If you want to keep your readers attention then this plug-in is a must, most people place it in the sidebar or below the post. It will display some posts that relate to the topic that was just blogged about. If they were willing to read to the end then they probably want more.

I’ve found the plug-in to be accurate nine times out of ten, but sometimes a really random one is thrown in there. There is even the option if you don’t have any relevant posts to display random ones so there isn’t a blank space.

7. SRG Clean Archives

I’ve never really been a fan of the default Archives page that comes with Wordpress so I had a look around and SRG Clean Archives seems to be the best.

It elegantly displays the posts by month and allows each month to be collapsible. Very slick!

8. What Would Seth Godin Do?

If you’re very keen to increase your subscriber count. It basically uses cookies to recognise new users and if they are so display them a message of your choice. Normally suggesting that they subscribe to the blog. However, I have seen a few just saying “Hi” and hoping they enjoy the blog.

There are loads of options varying from the placement and the overall design of the message.

9. Wordpress Automatic Upgrade

I’m lazy, very lazy and I don’t like messing around with stuff I don’t understand. Wordpress is one of those things. So to solve this problem, I’ve enlisted the help of Wordpress automatic upgrade which takes you through the upgrade procedure and never makes you leave the Admin panel.

All you have to do is click through a couple of messages telling you what it’s doing, and if you want download a back-up file.

10. WP Contact Form III

If you want an easy way for people to contact you without having them use email then this would be a great plug-in for you.

WP Contact For inserts a form wherever you specify, whether it be on a post or a separate page. You can setup a special question to stop spammers getting to you as well. For instance; I ask people “What colour is snow?” and the contacter has to put “white” for it to get to me.

The Question For You:

What Wordpress plug-ins do you use on your blog?

Feedburner has received much praise for its massive feature set but also criticism for its sometimes unreliable stats recording.

In this article I will be looking at some of the more interesting and popular features of Feedburner, but also the inevitable handicaps that a service is its scale naturally has.

Fantastic Features

• Easy set up - I wish most web services were so easy to configure. Once you have signed up for an account you simply put in your website URL on the front page and press next. You then, simply put in a couple of extra bits of information about your feed and the feed URL. That is how easy it should be to set up any web service you want to use.
• In for the long run - As I mentioned previously, Feedburner was acquired by Google not to long ago. Luckily for all its users, as if it were to go away so would all your subscribers. Now that they are owned by Google, we can we sure that the feeds will be accessible for a very, very long time.
• Adsense Integration - If you want to earn some money off the lazy lot who don’t bother to come to your site then Feedburner has a tool for you that easily ad a couple of adsense content and image ads. 
• Its Free! - Best of all you can get everything that Feedburner offers without spending a dime. Though this wasn’t originally the case, since the Google purchase all the pro features are available to you.

Possible Problems

• Dependence - If you start to get a lot of people subscribed to your feed and Feedburner does something horrible that you don’t agree with, (like put in their terms of use that they own all your content) you are still kind of tied into the service unless you don’t mind leaving your readers out in the cold.
• Unreliable stats - One problem I hear all the time from people using Feedburner is that their stats don’t always make sense, or sometime they drop to zero every so often. If you need really reliable stats for advertisers etc, this might be a problem, even if it doesn’t happen very often.
• Web UI not great - When I say “not great” I mean it isn’t as good as it could be. Sometime things don’t seem to be in the right place or are not entirely obvious. There is some room for improvement here, some novice users might find it a bit hard to get their heads round at first. That said, there are some great guides to Feedburner out there.

From the horse’s mouth

Blogging Adventure uses Feedburner and so does my personal blog. For the year that I have been using it, I have had relatively little issues with the service and plan on using it for the foreseeable future.

The features that you’ll find me using are the email subscriptions, Feed ads and the chicklets.

If you’ve never used or heard of Feedburner before I recommend that you check it out and see if it can enhance your website or blog.