After reading an article on skelliewag.org called 10 steps to building a killer feed Collection I got to thinking about what sorts of extra feeds I should be subscribing to. The 10 points are listed below, but if this topic interests you I suggest you go and read the details of each point.

1. Subscribe to every good site you share a niche with
2. Subscribe to every bad site you share a niche with
3. Subscribe to quality sites linked to your niche, but not directly part of it
4. Subscribe to good lifehack and productivity blogs
5. Subscribe to good blogs about writing
6. Subscribe to content way out of your niche
7. Subscribe to sources of great writing
8. Subscribe to relevant search results in Digg and del.icio.us
9. Subscribe to the Digg front page
10. Subscribe to your own feed

The two points which I wanted to have a closer look at were 8 and 9. I guess I am a bit slow on the uptake on this one, but until now I had never considered subscribing to the feeds on social media sites like digg. However, I can see an upside to knowing what people are currently digging being delivered to you so this is something which I am now doing also.

Subscribing to search results to get an idea about new and poplar posts with in your niche is also a great idea. As Skelliewag puts it:

Popular results show you the content currently making a splash in your niche. You can analyze what made it successful and try to adapt the principles to your own writing.

The key advantage of subscribing to social media feeds is that it will give you a heads up on what is working, so you can take that onboard and use it to boost your own success. I guess the only down side is over cluttering your feed reader inbox. However, using a popular reader such as Google reader and managing your folders well should sort this out.

After recently going through the process of setting up WordPress and this site, I feel I have learnt certain things that may help other WordPress users. This article is a report of my experience.

1) You can post to WordPress using Windows Live Writer offline blog writing software. The software at first glance appears to be just for Windows Live Space blogs, however, you can easily use it for self hosted WordPress blogs. It has the added advantage of posting plug-ins, Automated pinging (sends pings to blog search engines when you post), and because it is offline software there is no page loading waiting time, so writing blogs becomes much easier. There is a beta version 2.0 of the software here: Windows Live Writer 2.0 Beta

2) In WordPress 2.2 widgets are now standard. Widgets are a form of plug-in that are easy to install and use, they tend to require no understanding of any web programming to use. If you are using version 2.2 of WordPress you can access the widget panel under the presentation tab of your admin dash. If you are using an older version you need to install the widget plug-in. The theme you are using must also be compatible for widgets to work.

3) You can organize posts and articles on your homepage/index page using category groups instead of just listing them in reverse chronological order like a standard blog. My homepage is organized this way. Using this method you can organize your WordPress like like a news site or magazine. Investigate yourself using Max.limpag.com

4) You can insert plug-in and php code into Wordpress 2.2′s widgetized sidebar using this plug-in code : Exe PHP. This is particularly useful for adding old plug-ins that don’t have widget alternatives. Install the widget above, then use it to execute the php code that runs the plug-in that you want to use… simple right?

5) You can have Feed Burner manage your rss feeds instead of using the standard WordPress feeds. You only need to install this plug-in: Feed Smith. For more top wordpress plugins check out shankrila or blogigs for some Adsense Optimized WordPress Themes.