What’s an OPML File and Why Would I Need One

The analogy would be of a small newsletter to the New York Times. An OPML file pulls together a list of rss feeds from one location and aggregates them for you so that you can share them with others. You can use an OPML file creator, but they are becoming less used nowadays as Bloglines can aggregate feeds and find OPML files for you.

How do I find RSS feeds?

Find a site you like and scroll around the page to find a subscribe button. The format varies. Sometimes you’ll see a lot of code. What you’re looking for is the xml or rss at the end of a string. If you’re lucky, it will show up directly in the title bar, in which case – just copy that into your rss location widget. Otherwise, paste the url of the webpage into Bloglines and the feed aggregator will find the feeds for you with some annotation as to how popular they are and what kind of posting goes on there. You can even see in advance a sample feed posting. It’s a good idea that if you have several rss subsciptions that you limit the number of feeds to 1 or 2 per section.

What are Trackbacks and Why Use Them?

Because of the interactive and collegial nature of blogging, we do want to know who is saying what about something we posted or who linked our thoughts on their blog.  That’s why you should use a trackback rather than just a hyperlink.  You can put a widget on your page to find out where people at your site came from (that is which search term or location they started from) and also their country of origin.  There is a downside to trackbacks though, as they can become a magnet for spammers who want free attention to their sites.  You have the option to use the trackback feature or cancel it, just as you would with comments.