Category Archives: blogspot

Missing updates in Dashboard? – Its due to Google Friend Connect ! #RIP #GFC

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Bloggers see the effects of losing Google friend connect.

In November the Senior Vice President of Operations for Google Urs Holze announced Google were spring cleaning, part of this cleaning involved terminating Google Friend Connect for non-blogger sites, such as WordPress. This retirement went into effect on the 1st of March and bloggers that did nothing about it are now losing many page views or unique visits from people that were only viewing from Google friend connect.

Google tried to encourage people to transfer subscribers to Google+ and to create Google+ page but we heard that many didn’t want to have to create more work for themselves and some don’t even like Google+

However, it might be something to think about as the future is clear, with the G+ button having a big impact on SEO and it all being connected with Google profiles, pages and especially business pages, I don’t think its something you want to miss out on as a blogger.

What they didn’t suggest is Google Reader,  many use Google Reader to keep up to date with their favorite blogs or websites.

An easy way to get people to subscribe to your blog/website on their reader is to add a Google+ button to your website – or even better to add the AddToAny: Subscribe Button plug in and with one click you get added to a persons Google reader.

If you have been thinking that you haven’t received some updates in your Blogger or blog spot dashboard then you have probably lost some non-blogger blogs, if you have Google reader you should add them to it, as soon as you can, if you don’t use it, now might be the time.

What is Google Reader.

(Google reader is a Web-based aggregator that reads from Atom and RSS feeds)

Google reader allows you to subscribe to the feeds of all the blogs that you love to read, and updates everyday so that you have the latest blogs sent straight to your feed.

With Google reader you can

  • Sort your Blogs into groups for easy reading by using folders.
  • Read in two views, expanded and list – and if you want to go to the source of the story you click the headline.
  • Easily share with others.
  • Use Keyboard Shortcuts 

You can add people to your Google Reader a number of ways

  • Searching in Google reader
  • Entering the RSS or Atom Feed, which you have find click on the RSS logo on the website
  • Clicking the buttons on a website.
Have a look the buttons on the techieminx main page – I’ve added all three – right at the bottom on the right.
You can even add a plug in on WordPress that shows the latest blogs on your reader.

What is iGoogle

iGoogle is your personalised Google home page for adding your favorite blogs, news sites, weather sites, photos, usually by using iGoogle Gadgets, here you would put anything that is most important to you. You can even add your Google reader to iGoogle.  This is nice to play around with, this is just for you, no one else sees it.

So you would need to put all of you the blogs/websites that you need to keep up to date with on Google reader first.

I love Google but its really not fair that they have crushed people’s hard work by dumping Google friend connect.  I know about progress and that they gave warnings its still heartbreaking to read some of the stories out there in blogland.  Google haven’t actually confirmed if they are going to keep it forever on Blogger or blogspot by the way – so if I were you I would be prepared and get Google+ and Google reader and encourage others to do the same. Once set up, neither take any time at all, in fact they save time.

I’ve only brushed over the top of these options, if there is anything you want me to elaborate on please let me know.

Hope this helps.

 

How to find an RSS feed on a Blogger Blogspot blog.

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The reason for this post is that I wanted to add someones RSS feed to my new reader and for some reason they don’t have it displayed on their blog and this is how I found it

What is an RSS feed - This is a very detailed blog about what is RSS on Problogger, everything you need to know is there about RSS feeds.

How to find an RSS feed on a blogspot blog.

Blogspot, thought they would make this difficult to find for some reason as,  most blogs or websites you would just type /feed or /rss something like that at the end of the URL but blogger in its wisdom decided to use this….

/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

So all you have to do is just add that to the end of the blogspot url like this…

http://lv-loves.blogspot.com

http://lv-loves.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

This is my cousins awesome blog btw, about love, laughter, movies, books, reviews, and beauty, things she loves basically :)  

You can check that is it correct by typing that into your search bar, if its correct you will see something like this

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?><rss xmlns:atom='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom' xmlns:openSearch='http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearchrss/1.0/' xmlns:georss='http://www.georss.org/georss' xmlns:gd='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005' xmlns:thr='http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0' version='2.0'><channel><atom:id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-821247123802100396</atom:id><lastBuildDate>Fri, 20 Jan 2012 04:09:42 +0000</lastBuildDate><category>Charlotte</category><category>Club Tropicana</category><category>Swoon</category><category>Natalie Portman</category><category>Wuthering Heights</category><category>Edward Cullen</category><category>ITV2</category><category>Eddie Redmayne</category><category>Photo</category><category>90's</category><category>Movie</category><category>The Hills</category><category>Posh Spice</category><category>Take That Reunion.</category><category>Tom Cruise</category><category>Robbie Williams</category><category>Mick Hucknall</category><category>Nanny Pat</category><category>Royal Albert Hall</category><category>Destiny</category><category>dating</category><category>Handsome</category><category>Spice Girls</category><category>Kelly and Jack Osbourne</category><category>Phil Collins</category><category>Celestine Prophecy</category><category>Brother</category><category>New York</category><category>Isabel Losada</category><category>alanis morrisette</category><category>Tulisa</category><category>Wedding</category><category>Christmas</category><category>saggittarian</category><category>Madonna</category><category>josie gibson</category><category>Stephanie Meyer</category><category>Christina Aguilera</category><category>The best thing I never had</category><category>Atomic Kitten</category><category>journalist</category><category>Last Christmas</category><category>Snow</category><category>Love</category><category>Meg Ryan</category><category>George Michael</category><category>Cheryl Cole</category><category>Prince</category><category>girlie</category><category>heels</category><category>Kate Bush</category><category>Victoria Beckham</category><category>Simply Red</category><category>Someone like you</category><category>Kate Winslet</category><category>bloggers</category><category>George Clooney</category><category>Prince William</category><category>Golden Globes</category><category>Fairytale</category><category>NYC</category><category>quote</category><category>John James and Josie</category><category>Audrina</category><category>All the lovers</category><category>The Battersea Park Road to Paradise</category><category>Bridget Jones</category><category>Josh Holloway</category><category>Gym</category><category>Greek</category><category>Blackberry</category><category>Princess Diana</category><category>Princess and the Frog</category><category>DJ</category><category>new year</category><category>Obama</category><category>Grey's Anatomy</category><category>Love.</category><category>N-Dubz</category><category>Reunion</category><category>Marilyn Monroe</category><category>Smug marrieds</category><category>School</category><category>shoes</category><category>blonde</category><category>Kevin Truong</category><category>Rpyal Wedding</category><category>Single</category><category>jennifer grey</category><category>recycling</category><category>Britney Spears</category><category>Sex and the City</category><category>kisses</category><category>paradise</category><category>Top Gun</category><category>Jessica Biel</category><category>Yoga</category><category>McSteamy</catego

That’s all for now.

Hope this helps.