Dear brand new blogger, I see you there, on the other side of the computer screen. Your blog to do list is a mile long. You’re overwhelmed at all the things you are supposed to do to make your blog the best it can be before you release it to the waiting world. You are…
Did you know that Gmail updated their DMARC policy in June 2016? Did you know that this effects you if you’re using an @gmail.com address to send emails through somewhere like ConvertKit, MailChimp, or Mad Mimi? Many bloggers were unaware that the DMARC policy existed–let alone applied to them–until they saw a warning in their…
I first began budgeting a year ago. EveryDollar was the tool I chose, not just because of a friend’s recommendation, but also based on the simple fact that it is Dave Ramsey’s budget tool. The availability of a mobile app, plus a free version of the program itself, made EveryDollar seem like an ideal choice…
Choosing an email service provider can be daunting–whether you can’t stand your current service and are anxious to move elsewhere or you’re just beginning to build an email list and don’t know where to start. Regardless, you’d like to choose the perfect solution from which you’ll never have to move. I’ve spent the last five…
My husband and I are the kind of self-employed entrepreneurs who have a lot of little income streams that, as it were, flow into larger tributaries of income. As much as this helps our savings account grow a bit bigger each year, it can make our bookkeeping a lot more difficult. (Ideally, to continue the…
Three months after receiving our undergraduate diplomas, we got married with not a care in the world. Except for that giant pile of student loan debt. And the impending cost of the master’s degree my husband had to take a week off from just so that we could go on our honeymoon. Did I mention…
Sitting in front of the roaring fire, a large picture window showcasing the snow covered trees outside, Tim and I huddled together on the couch. We had finished dinner on this weekend alone at a friend’s cabin and instead of cuddling up with good books or whispering sweet nothings in each other’s ears, we were…
I’ve given up on new year’s resolutions. Instead, I spend all year searching for the perfect apps to keep me more organized in the next year. Here are four perennial favorites that have literally saved my sanity this past year. These are the apps I put on my friends’ phones. These are the services I make…
In my search for the perfect solution to common RSS feed challenges, it was the beauty of Mad Mimi’s RSS emails formatted for “clean display” that finally gave me the inspiration. I’d spent hours trying to customize my MailChimp RSS campaigns to include a featured image along with the excerpt, but to no avail. (Then there is the constant frustration of extra-wide post images making the MailChimp email body drastically wider than the email header.) And even if I could get my emails to look how I wanted them to (just like Mad Mimi’s!), that still left the question of my RSS feed. That’s when I realized the solution was to start at the source and customize my WordPress RSS feed.
But customizing my WordPress RSS feed was a lot harder than it sounded. Until WordPress developer Robin Cornett took her plugin Send Images to RSS and made version 3.0 rich with all the features I’d hoped for an in RSS plugin–and more!
Here’s how to know Send Images to RSS is for you, and the details on how I set it up to create a beautiful custom RSS feed summary.
I’ve been in a quandary about partial feeds versus full feeds ever since I knew what an RSS feed was. As a reader, I liked the ability to consume an entire post from within my feed reader or email inbox, especially when I didn’t have an internet connection at home. But as a blogger, I wanted to get readers to my site, where they could comment on posts, and of course, click on affiliate links and generate ad impressions.
But wait, what is the difference, you ask? WordPress offers two default options for displaying your RSS feed: summary or full text.
The truth is, I don’t like either option. But there’s an alternative.
Converting readers to subscribers isn’t always easy. If content is king, then having a fabulous freebie to offer your email subscribers is surely the queen. But what you really need is a court jester or two dancing around on your blog, inviting your visitors to subscribe. Preferably, you’d name them Jester A and Jester B and…
It’s all fine and good to declare blog commenting alive and well. But how can we give the comment section on our own blog a shot in the arm? We’ve heard the usual suggestions time and time again: write good content, ask questions, be real, be controversial, be sure to reply to their comments, as well…
The End.
The End.