Syndication

As a new blogger, I thrive on feedback and encouragement from my readers. I love to see all the different countries people visit my blog from, and simply adore receiving comments on my blog. It interests me to see that I'm on google's first page for people searching on bamboo handled grapefruit spoons and that a japanese chat room has been clicking through to my 'divintiy' post! The silly things that thrill new food bloggers! But all of you must have been there at one time. Do you remember the thrill as you watched your readership grow? Hey, I'm there right now!

I have taken the time in the past few days to get a picture of what people see of my blog through the feed services, and I'd like to share what I've found. It would be a good idea for other new food bloggers to learn the steps to take to make sure your blog looks as good as possible in the syndicated feeds.

For example, I've noticed that many of the feed services cut out most or all formatting. That means that your subsccribers don't see the banner you have designed, your blog's page layout or the formatting of your photos. Your page width may change, italics inserted for emphasis or clarity when using foreign terms might not show up, and recipe formatting might appear to be askew. Embedded instructional photos might float in some random area of the reader screen and your typeface is sometimes changed. What does it mean?

This means that the appearance of your content can really go haywire in the syndicated feed readers if you don't take into consideration a few simple formatting principles like line breaks after photos. I know I am going to be putting some time into making a list of little things I can do to make sure my posts look better in the feeders in the weeks to come.

A friendly note to my fellow foodbloggers: I hope that those of you who subscribe to my full feed from the various services will be kind and click through to my blog if they like what I'm doing that day, at least as a symbolic gesture of support. I know I always do. Hey, if a person clicks on my blog name in their reader to read what I'm putting up, how much more difficult is it to just click through once to my blog? You might even consider leaving a comment. You see, to a new blogger, these visits can mean a world of difference. Thanks!

This Post was written by Lucy Vanel from Lucy's Kitchen Notebook

Who's been getting celebrity spam?

Has anybody else been getting unsolicited emails (with tracking links) from chef Benjamin Christie asking us to visit his posts and comment?

A couple of us down under were wondering if this was a bit spammy as he's using professional emarketing companies to track clicks and is overtly trying to ssell stuff on his site.

This is what Matt said at Abstract Gourmet and I said at Tomato.

What do you think?

[RSS] Reposting, is it annoying?

I try not to have typos on my posts, but sometimes they get past me, and I have to go back and fix them...sometimes more than once. Plus, I sometimes just feel like making changes resulting in my slightly altered post going up five, ten, sixteen times in a short span of time...

My question is for you all who use RSS feeds...

Does my post show up every time I make a change? If I go back six times in an hour, do you get all six versions? Or does your RSS filter that sort of nonsense?

Yeesh. It sure would be annoying to get the same post eleven times in a row!

Just wondering...

Rachael

This question was written by RACHAEL from FRESH APPROACH COOKING

[typepad] About page template issues

So a few months ago I lovingly redesigned my blog on Typepad, using their tools as I am far from proficient in CSS. (My HTML education ended in 1998...) For some reason, though, even tho I have elected to apply the same template to my About page (http://hedonia.seantimberlake.com/about.html), it renders in only two columns, truncating my banner image. I've tried applying the custom CSS directly to the template to no avail, tho again I am rather a CSS neophyte. Little help?


This Post was written by Sean from Hedonia

[Making money] Business 2.0 article

Hi Ev'body!

I saw this article in Business 2.0 and thought I might share...it's about making money from your blog. Granted, a lot of it is pretty obvious, but there is some good info too. Enjoy!



This post was written by RACHAEL from FRESH APPROACH COOKING

When Looking for New Employment...

Has anyone changed jobs since having their blog? Do you tell people about it? Especially if you are in the food service business, as I am, I'm just wondering if anyone has had any positive or negative experiences talking about it with perspective employers.

This Post was written by Lisa from Restaurant Widow.

(Misc) Web Designer Needed

Anyone know someone who is familiar with PHP coding? I need some help with a food-related website, and haven't found anyone who really knows their way around it yet. I'm able to do some stuff myself, but have a list of a few things I can't. Help?

This Post was written by Cate from Sweetnicks.

[Ranking and Search Engines] StumbleUpon.com?

I'm wondering if anyone else has been assaulted by stumbleupon.com. Yesterday, I saw a huge spike in traffic and found that it was all coming from that site. Apparently it is a blog surfing tool that lets members "stumble upon" random blogs and then rank them or comment on them. However, I think the whole thing might be a vehicle to sell bloggers a service where stumbleupon claims to drive receptive web surfers to your site by creating a "campaign." I don't know how my blog got on their radar, but it has been quite annoying. I don't think any of those hits are coming from genuine people. Has anyone else run into this? I'm hoping it will just stop if I don't do anything. Thanks in advance!

This Post was written by Julie from A Mingling of Tastes.

[Photography & Pictures] Black Borders?

Hey S'coolmates -

Does anyone know the name of the freeware that puts black borders around your photos? Someone gave me the name but it was a long time ago and I lost the name of it.

Thanks!

(Misc) Food Blogger MIA

Clare from Eat Stuff hasn't posted since the end of July and her Weekend Cat Blogging event has been passed around to other hosts. E-mail to her has gone unanswered. Anyone know if she's ok?

This Post was written by Cate from Sweetnicks.

Back from the Freakin' Dead

Sam and the people here and a lot fo tinkering and testing has brough Vanilla Garlic back from the grave. Still no word from Blogger as to why the template was erased to begin with, but there you have it.

TO EVERY BLOGGER OUT THERE, PLEASE REMEMBER TO MAKE A COPY OF ALL YOUR POSTS AND TEMPLATE ON A DISK OR PORTABLE DRIVE.

This Shibby Post was proudly written by Garrett from Vanilla Garlic

The Blog is Dead...

Unless someone is able to help. It's gone. Blogger basically said, "Sorry for the freak accident." I tried to repair the template myself, but it's more than I am capable of. As for how the blog is unless someone know's how to do a magic recover with html (i'm more than willing to pay and provide the password/username) Then... that's it. The blog is dead...

I guess I'm going to try and just purchase a space on typepad. That's the only thing I can think of at the moment that I can afford. I have all the old posts saved, but the recovery process is going to be a while...

Any and all advice is welcome. thank you.

This Post was written by Garrett from Vanilla Garlic

MY BLOG WAS DELETED

Does anyoen wknow what is going on? I logged in to look at my blog today, and it was all gone! Just vanished! I looked at the template and it was wiped clean! WHAT DO I DO?!

This Post was written by Garrett from Vanilla Garlic

How do I redirect viewers to my new site?

Dear Fellow Bloggers,

This past weekend, I switched my blog from http://www.avenuefood.blogspot.com to http://www.avenuefood.com, recreating my site with GoDaddy’s Quick Blog. (And I’m glad I did—I'm happy with the site's new look and I haven’t experience photo upload problems like I often did with Blogger).

But to the point: I put a note on my Blogger site, with a link, telling people about the change. My question is this: is there a way to automatically redirect people to my new site when they visit the old, without them having to click on the link? Let me clarify further—is there a simple way to do this? (My technical skills are rudimentary, to state it generously.)

Thank you so much for any help you can provide!

--Sarah

(blogger) Request for help

All weekend when I looked at my blog in Firefox it looked fine. However today at work when I look at it in Internet Explorer it's completely messed up. The post for today (Sept. 5) is fine. Everything after is messed up, with the font being too big on most posts, and even the font title (which isn't even something you can change in Blogger) being too big on some posts.

Whatever it is, it's happening starting with the logo for Festa al Fresco posted yesterday; everything from that point on is messed up as far down as I can see on the main page.

I did notice all weekend when I tried to publish I kept getting an ERROR message and I'd have to hit the back button and publish again.

Anyone who has any suggestions, they will be greatly appreciated.


This Post was written by Kalyn from Kalyn's Kitchen.

Have you been tagged as a Spam Blog?

I have been treated recently to profiling by Blogger. Every time I want to do a new post they force me to do codeword verification because they seem to think that my blog is a spam blog.

I have to now submit my blog for review by someone at Blogger before they release me from the codeword verfication magilla.

Anyone else have this happen to them? I wonder how my blog could possibly be considered a spam blog, boggles the brain.

This Post was written by Nika from Nika's Culinaria

[Comments] Comment notification

Hi Ev'body!

I was leaving a comment on The Wednesday Chef a minute ago, when I was reminded of a question I have for you all...

When I leave a comment (as I am prone to do), is there any way to, uh, sorta, remember where I did that? (Oh dear, that makes no sense. Lemme try again) I just tend to leave remarks/questions all over the blog-o-sphere and might not get back to that site for days/weeks to see if the writer responded. Is there a way to track that/be notified if and when they do respond/comment (even if its not specifically to me?)

Hmmm.

Thanks!

Rachael






This Post was written by Rachael from FRESH APPROACH COOKING


Oh, and as for my last question about saving my blog, thank you all for your responses, I have decided NOT to quit (obviously, to those of you who pop by) but am instead newly invigorated...but have taken your advice on how to archive just in case...xoxoxox

Post Composers

Hello All,

I have been lurking for a little while and finally have taken interest in beating my blog into some form of my idea. Thank goodness my husband has volunteered to do anything HTML related.

I am frustrated by composting my posts in Bloggers composition area. I tried the Qumana. I liked it some but the photos would not attach for me. Right now I am writing my posts in Word and then transfering them. This is ok but I have to manually transfer any links I have put into the post. Is there a better method or program? I like the posting ability from Picassa except it did not transfer my template for truncating posts plus it is a glorified Blogger composer.

I think because of this frustration I hate the way my recipes look. Hopefully ya'll can help me and I get focus on telling my husband what kind of code I want.

Thanks in advance


This Post was written by Chrispy from Experimentation of Taste

[Members] New Pupils invited to join us today:

bake or break
food for thought
veggie friendly
i think food is great
sonoma napa foodie
crumbs
paris breakfasts
flavor junkie
avenue food
gustoso
wit, wisdom & food
the diet cast


Welcome!

sam of Becks & Posh

Blog-O-Holics Top Sites

Hi Everyone,

I found this today - Blog-O-Holics TopSites. It's fairly new and there's only a few blogs on it so far. I just thought that maybe some of you may be interested in joining?




This Post was written by Mae from riceandnoodles.