RSS is great though it is always missing ‘something’. What is that something you ask? Well that is a good question. Everybody has their own wants and needs, and each business has different uses for it. Today we’re going over all the best ways to grab your RSS feeds! Yup, a change for once. Instead of talking about how to give something I’m talking about how to get something! WOOT! I’ll cover web-bases RSS, Windows RSS programs, Linux RSS programs and even Mac RSS programs! Woah, big list aye?  I’ll try to keep it to a list of the best from each. No need to list every single one on this post

Universal RSS programs/services – Web-Based RSS

There are a few web based RSS programs. The best well known is:

Google Reader

http://www.google.com/reader/view/

Google reader is the bes known web based RSS reader. You can add subscriptions from virtually any source, share items via e-mail/twitter/facebook/buzz and heck … you can even make a RSS of your rss collections! Best part of being on your google account is that you have access to it from anywhere you are! All you need is a internet connection.

FeedShow Reader (Beta)

http://reader.feedshow.com/

Feedshow isn’t as popular as Google reader, but it sure is versatile. It’s got a very smexy and VERY simple layout to use. Unlike Google’s interface which is a plugged with this&that google service, FeedShow is simple: RSS feeds on the left, your current feed on the right. Very simple, very fast and efficient!

Bloglines

http://www.bloglines.com/

This one is something a bit different than the rest. Sure you’ve got your share button, easy rss aggregation and all that jazz but that’s not what makes this stand out. Have you ever heard of an Autoblog? No? Well, it’s more or less a blog which writes itself. Bloglines allows you to do just that (up to 10 feeds if I remember correctly). So if you want a self writing, self promoting and self publishing blog this is the way to go. It has a very slick interface, VERY easy sharing abilities and it can even pull information from Netflix! Almost everything is customizable about ‘your’ site, so feel free to jump right in and create your own free RSS based website!

Windows RSS Aggregators

Windows has no shortage of applications. RSS readers is no exception. Probably one of the best and most versatile comes as an actual surprise because it isn’t a stand alone RSS reader. It’s a full blown mail application

Thunderbird

http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/

There isn’t much to say about this. It’s simply one of the best applications out there (for any platform) period. So go check it out at this link.

FeedDeamon

http://www.feeddemon.com/

FeedDeamon is the little (useful) brother you never had. The Genius little brother. Very helpful and very smart!

FeedDeamon not only has Google Reader Synchronization, but it also has automatic keyword tools. It can find feeds given a specific keyword and even do live scans to see if your keyword comes up in any new feed! Pretty cool aye? It also has the ability to share feeds and specific article with friends. Sweet aye?

The interface is rather simple to use and neatly organized. Nothing gets in the way of you and your reading. Which is what puts this rss reader in this list.

Awasu Personl Edition

http://www.awasu.com/

Awasu almost didn’t make it here because it is primarily a paid program. Though the “Personal Edition” is free. It has a very configurable layout with plenty of options. Their website needs some new decoration, but the program does not. It’s rather new age (not completely new though) with more feature than I’m willing to count.

Be sure to download from the “Personal Edition” link in the products page, NOT the commercial paid version! Personal is free!

Bonus mention: Outlook 2007 and newer

In the latest version of Outlook (2010 or Office 11, whatever they call it these days) RSS is built in. The reader is actually pretty darn good from what I hear. You access your RSS feeds ‘just like reading an e-mail’. Or so it says. You can check that you on the MSDN blog post (made two years ago).

Linux RSS Aggregators

Akregator  KDE based and integrates perfectly with the KDE PIM (Personal Information Management) Suite especially with Kontact (the KDE default mail client). Currrently updated to work with KDE4 and updated to the latest QT libraries and function. Simple, clean works well. It’s the RSS of choice for me.

It’s extremely fast, very easy to use best of all free . the layout is very simple: RSS list on the left and article stuff on the right. The right pane is split up into upper and lower. The upper part shows the latest posts from the selected RSS list (or folder) and the bottom pane is the message. This is re-arrangeable.

Other linux RSS readers:

There are plenty of other RSS readers in Linux, each one a bit different to suite your needs. Though Akregator is probably still your best stable choice. I found this link pretty helpful to see what other Linux rss readers are around: ‘My Favorite RSS Feed Readers In Ubuntu’ (not on my blog, external link).

Why don’t I mention more RSS readers here myself? Well, because I have no read interest in other Linux RSS readers. Akregator does everything I’d want it to and more. Plus it’s part of the Kontact e-mail/time-management/to-do-list/everything PIM suite. So it fits nicely into my work flow. Your mileage may vary.

Mac RSS Readers Aggregators

Ah, the good ol’ Mac. There is never a shortage of Mac apps, applets, widgets and nick-nacks. Whatever the program, it’s a Mac program so it’s bound to be every so sexy! (on a side note: wish Linux rss readers were this pretty!)

Today I only present two Mac RSS readers.

NewsFire

http://www.newsfirerss.com/

This is sure smexy there. The program has a VERY very nice interface which is extremely usable, but it doesn’t sacrifice any functionality for just for looks. All the essentials are there and more!

I don’t say much about it since I only used it a little bit. But ever since I used it, I ever only wanted to use this as my RSS reader. So if you got a Mac, get this.

NetNewsWire

http://netnewswireapp.com/

NetNewsWire can be called one of the leader Mac RSS apps, if probably not THE leading app. I can’t say much for this program because we only used it a little bit, but it is pretty damn cool. It’s also build on the Coca (is that what it’s called) interface thingy. So it’s sexy right off the bat. Give it a try!

You can check this link out for more Mac RSS goodness.

Have fun with all this RSS knownledge. Let me know in the comments if you have any other awesome RSS readers you use!

For whatever reason, once in a long while WordPress will just break the RSS feed. Why? God only knows.

Maybe it didn’t like a plugin you just added or it just doesn’t feel like working that day. Whatever the reason, your WordPress RSS feed has stopped working and all hell has broken loose! Many people are dependent on their RSS feed and heck, at the height of this website before the change I had a good 60 people following me on RSS! WOOT! I know that’s not many, but it sure as heck was a traffic kill when the RSS went down!

So if for some reason you get this error when loading your RSS feed in a browser (like Chrome):

wordpress error on line 2 at column 6: XML declaration allowed only at the start of the document

Or it fails to pass the ever vigilant W3C RSS Validator and gives an error such as:

Sorry

This feed does not validate.

• line 1, column 1: Blank line before XML declaration [help]

DON’T PANIC!

There is a simple solution for this. It doesn’t require some crazy plugin. It doesn’t require hiring a super hacker geek to fix it AND it won’t require hours upon hours of Google’ing for the solution.

Now, if you want to try there are a few possible solutions. You can try:

1. Reading this helpful article on the RSS Validator site: http://feedvalidator.org/docs/error/WPBlankLine.html
2. Try the FIX RSS FEED plugin for WordPress (didn’t work for my clients site at all)
3. Paying someone lots of money [like me ] to do it for you.

Or you can simply do this yourself. It’s REALLY really simply and only require one file upload and one line of code. I’ll guide you through the whole process.

1) FIRST. Download the following file. http://wejn.org/stuff/wejnswpwhitespacefix.php.

If you’re a geek you can check it for yourself, but I (Piotr Krzyzek) assure you this file is Virus free. If you don’t trust that file, you can download the exact same file from my server which I won’t change at all. So you can 100% rest assure that this file is safe from my server. You can get it HERE from my server. But if you download it from my server, rename the file from the “.ph” extension to “.php” so that it will work on your server too.

2) After downloading, upload the .PHP file into your WordPress site ROOT directory. This means wherever the wp-config.php file is. Do NOT upload it into the themes folder, NOR the plugins folder. Only the root directory.

If you don’t understand that, it’s ok. Leave a comment or poke me a twitter and I’ll explain it better.

3) EDIT your index.php file and add the following right after the first line:

include("wejnswpwhitespacefix.php");

So at the end, your index.php should look something like this:


<?php
include("wejnswpwhitespacefix.php");
define('WP_USE_THEMES', true);
require('./wp-blog-header.php');
?>


That’s of course a condensed version of the index.php file and your’s will probably have lots of comments and stuff in it. But the important thing is to add the include code right at the top.

After that, poof!

Reload the feed page and/or your site and it’ll magically work!

It did for us!

Let me know in the comments if this worked for you or if you know of any other better solutions!

A short time ago the WordPress people officially launched their latest and greatest implementation of WordPress. WordPress version 3.0 brings many new features and security enhancements … but is it really worth upgrading to?

Well lets ask a few questions first:

1. Is your current WordPress 2.x site working fine?
2. Does WP 3.0 offer something that you REALLY need?
3. Are your plugins compatible with the new version?
4. Do you know what to do if something goes wrong?
5. Are you sure upgrading won’t break anything?
6. Are you upgrading a ‘mission critical’ site?

So what are your answers?

IF your current site is working fine and you don’t need anything that the new version offers … why upgrade? It could possible break a few things (I know it did on my installation) and it’ll take time to fix everything.

If you are wondering what WordPress 3.0 offers, check out their site and articles about it.

A quick overview of the changes:

• They claim it’s faster, so far it feels a bit faster. Don’t know about how it really is though
• They say it has better security. How much better or whats improved? I don’t know either. It all seems the same to me.
• You can create custom menus.
• Easier bulk updates
• Better plugin handling

And that’s about it. Some people said that the new theme was awesome and a great thing … well, do you honestly care about their default theme? Like me, most people won’t care. So it’s not even a selling point.

So in conclusion: do you need WP 3.0? No.

It offers nothing really ground breaking or all that innovative that is worth the upgrade. But if you know it won’t really break your site and you can play around a bit, then sure go again.

The code base is a bit better, and it’s faster (a bit). So go nuts, have fun. But other than playing around, if you have a very active site with many visitors and interactions DO NOT upgrade until your test, test and then test again to make sure it won’t break anything.

How about you? Do you have any experience with upgrading to WordPress 3.0? I’d love to hear your thoughts about it! Let me know in the comments.

I am a big fan of the Disqus comment system. I even had it installed for a while! I love practically everything about it.

It has a great anti-spam feature. Probably the best around, even better than Akismet! It looks beautiful and it’s extremely functional for commenters. Barely any setup on your part either! It really is that cool.

But … even though I can give it a 9/10 awesome rating in just about every area I still had to uninstall and remove it. Here’s why.

As functional as the Disqus Comment system is, it makes customizability in the way that I as a marketer need it. Yeah, this is my personal blog which I’ll post what-nots on, but I still need it to market myself and my services. I need control over every aspect of my marketing and sadly the Disqus system does not allow for that.

There are several key things are need in this new blog design:

• The ability to make DO-follow links in comments
• The control to forward users after they comment on my blog to whatever location I desire
• E-mail options for comments
• Auto-replies
• “Happy” auto e-mails for commenters
• and a few things I probably haven’t thought of yet.

The WordPress comment system may not be all that great, but it is very customizable. With a few handy plugins I’ll get it to where I need it to be.

As of this writing a few of the features listed above aren’t enabled yet, but they will be soon.

I need to set everything up for best exposure and to make sure I don’t annoy anybody too much!

If you used the Disqus comment system, before I’d love to know what you think/thought of it! Did it work out for you? Did you switch back? Let me know in the comments!

… “A man with three butts”.

Well, no not really. But I’ve been thinking lately about my websites goal, aim and purpose. I’ve decided to change things up, and I’m confident it’s all for the better.

The problem is a problem of where I want this site to go. To tell you the truth I don’t know. But I do know I want it to reflect who I am and what I believe in (and love).

My latest posts were all about SEO, business, writing … I tried to have fun with those. But there is only so much I, as a new person in this crazy internet world, can do without growing more as a person and as a business.

Therefore, I believe this website as it is has to come to an end. I’m going to shut down my website and revamp it in a new style and image that will reflect me and who I am.

Don’t worry folks, this post isn’t just a rant about me. I have some good insights which I believe a lot of you can benefit from. So read on to hear the age old wisdom of a young 25 year old man who’s just learning his place in the world. Learn from my mistake so you can avoid them.

When I started my website a several years ago, I made it as a tribute to myself and my soul. It was about me, fun things in my life and to help me connect with my friends. Kind of like a personal Facebook site.

It eventually evolved into what it is today. A hodge-podge of internet marketing, business, some real estate, geek things and just about anything. It didn’t have any definite purpose.

I was wondering why on earth no one signed up for my newsletter, no one commented nor why no one clicked on anything. I was very lost and confused, just like my site.

So I sought the help of some professionals on the internet and I asked them the simple question: What am I doing wrong on my website?

And do you know what they said? They answered with a questions of their own: “What is the purpose of your websites? Who is your target audience?”

That got me thinking a little bit, so I thought. Ok, I’ll make it all about internet marketing! So I changed the name to “Internet Marketing with Piotr Krzyzek.”

And amazing things happened! People where coming to my site. Reading my posts …

And yet nothing changed at all except my logo.

No extra conversions, no better readership. Bleh. I wasn’t happy. I re-organized to be more internet marketing oriented. I was making internet marketing related posts …. And nothing. so I said screw it.

That is where I went wrong.

After the Fab50 call with Connie Green, I began thinking that there might really be something wrong with me site. And it wasn’t just the design nor the article titles. The problem was the Aim. What do I want my website to be?! Connie said I should change the name to something more memorable like Krazy Pete and focus my site.

And you know what? She was right!

Not only do I have a image problem, but a conflict of interests. Yes, plural.Too many ideas and everything that I try to cram into my little site which is branded under my name.

This isn’t PiotrKrzyzekInternetMarketing.com nor IMwithKRazyPete.com … nope. This is a me site! It took a conversation with Jeanne Kolenda for me to really realize this.

I tweeted that I was slightly out of content, and she said: “Why don’t you write some posts taken from your thesis? Everything doesn’t have to be about making money or marketing.”

And she’s right. My site is “MY” site. I’ve written about so many topics here I might as well have called my site PKpedia.com and made it another Wikipedia site!

So, in the future. After I revamp and reload, there will be a brand new me. Brand new website. All about … everything that’s fun and interesting. There will be still a lot to learn, but there will be whole new directions of learning! ……. if that made any sense

To all you #blog30′ers … I wouldn’t have been able to grow without you! Thank you so much for helping me become the man I should be and my site that it should be! Thank you all so much!

My last tip to you all before I shut this site down: Make sure your current site (or any new site) has laser focus aim! If it doesn’t, you’ll end up in the gutter and never know why!

I’ll be back with this site soon!

Let me and everyone else know in this awesome-tastic world what has changed your life around! What changes have you made that made the grass greener on YOUR side for once!

A special something today. I was asked to do a quick video to help people understand Statpress. A plugin for WordPress that gives you statistics and analytics about your visitors.

I talked about several great plugins here in an older post, so that’s where all the confusion came from.

In this video I talk about:

• Quickly what is StatPress
• Which version of StatPress from the WP list is the one you want (big confusion about this earlier
• Detailed overview of what each part of StatPress is
• Understanding Statpress 101

The video is below!

If you liked the video please let me know. I love making them and I know I sure could use the practice. So please leave a comment if you found this video useful.

Also if you’re interested about the site mentioned in the video, my latest product is Quantum Fanpages. All about marketing with Facebook Fanpages at http://www.QuantumFanpages.com. Sign up for my newsletter there for loads of great Facebook marketing material!

Thanks for all the comments and help on my last post title “Best WordPress Stats Plugins“. But there is an update for you all. A great plugin, which not only looks really sweet but also does a lot of neato things.

I didn’t find this plugin. All credit goes to Dave, who created the plugin, and found my blog decided to leave a comment. Honestly not 100% if it was a almost spam automated comment, but I don’t care. This is a cool plugin which I had to make a post about!

It’s called WP-Stats-Dashboard. It does exactly as the name states: It puts WordPress.com stats on your dashboard. But that’s not all. It also has a lot of Social media metric and data. You can link many of your social profiles to it:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn

Also add some other web 2.0 services:

• Digg
• Reddit

Also it can get metric about:

• Page rank
• Yahoo rang
• # of backlinks
• Bing links

and a heck of a lot more.

But I’m not giving this plugin full praise just yet!

This plugin requires a heck of a lot of setup. Not that that’s exactly a bad thing, because there is just so much to configure. Adding all your services and choosing what you want shown. It’s not a problem, but setup PLUS getting the dashboard PLUS little instructions make this a troublesome plugin.

But did I mention is really is sexy lookin? And I mean very sexy! The screenshot on the right is from the authors page. His looks better than mine Bigger numbers.

The biggest problem with this plugin is installtion.

Yes, installing this plugin can be very troublesome.

For me, once I installed it through my blogs interface I got a “file not found error” and a whole bunch of other error related to this plugin.

I quickly found out what it was.

This plugin, for some reason, has trouble creating it’s cache folder. So, what you need to do is once you install this plugin AND IF it gives you trouble: try these steps:

1. FTP/SSH into your blogs/site account
2. Go into the wp-content folder
3. IF there is no “cache” folder … create one. Give it these permissions: 755. If there is, skip to step 4.
4. Navigate into the cache folder
5. There probably will not be a “wp-stats-dashboard” folder. Create it. Also give it 755 permissions.

Reload your admin interface and it should be fine.

My one other problem with this plugin:

Best that I show you first (click on the image to enlarge it):

I’m not sure if in my haste to test it I configured something wrong? Or maybe the plugin is broken? Or does it just need time to work? But most of those boxes have no information in there and I have no clue why.

Oh well. I’ll let it run till tomorrow to see what happens.

So far, I’m liking the metrics this plugin gives and I plan to use it further.

There are a plethora of WordPress Plugins and addons for tracking statistics. This is great because you then get your pick of the litter, but the problem is if you install three different tracking plugins you will get three different results. So what should you do with these choices and discrepancies in results?

Not to worry, I have a few answers to calm your worries. I do not have a definitive answer as to what is THE best stats plugin, but that’s mostly because ‘best’ is very relative in this situation. Though, lets start with probably the best known system: Google Analytics.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics has more or less anything you’d need. It has stats by hour, day, month and year. Keyword tracking, ‘segments’ (for tracking different time periods and improvements in those times), and a heck of a lot more.

There are several plugin that will tie Google Analytics into wordpress. The best known ones are:

• Google Analyticator
• Ultimate Google Analytics
• Google Analytics for WordPress
• WP Google Analytics

So which should you choose? They all do the same basic thing: add google’s code to your blog automatically so you don’t have to. In each of them you will have to configure the plugins. At a bare minimum you will have to add your Analytics Account ID. This looks something like:

UA-XXXXXXX-Y

The 7 x’s are your account number, and the Y is the number of the website attached to your account. So your first website will be -1, your second one added will be -2 and so on. You can find it these numbers at: https://www.google.com/analytics/settings/home

If you’re website isn’t added, all you have to do is create a website “Profile” as Google calls it. There is a button on that home page on the bottom left. It’ll look something like the image on the right.

So which out of the plugins should you pick?

For the easiest choice, pick (what I did) and use: Google Analytics For WordPress. It’s ‘basic’ configuration is very simple. In the image below, you can see both the simple settings, the top potion, and the more advanced settings on the bottom. It’s extremely customizable with click tracking. So I find that very useful. It’s the one I recommend everyone to use.

Here are two great plugins which can help you get a better picture of your site’s visitors. I recommend installing both:

• WordPress.com Stats
• StatPress

WordPress.com Stats

This is one of the simplest looking plugins you’ll ever get.  It connects to your WordPress.com account. This, like the Google Analytics, is all off-site. If you don’t want to deal with Google, this plugin will give you the best overall picture day to day. It’s not as accurate as I’d like it to be. For whatever reason it misses somethings here and there. But it’s pretty good overall and I check it regularly for referrals, keywords and clicks.

StatPress

This plugin is … something different. It gives you such accurate results it’s scary. But, there is a huge problem with this plugin. It’s onsite, which I love, but it’s so un-Godly slow. The website works the same, but loading the statistics view is SO slow I can make myself a cup of tea and it’ll still be loading sometimes. Then again that can be attributed to my slow server …..

It tracks significantly more than WordPress.com Stats does and not as much as Google’s. But it’s more accurate than either.

It’s the best for getting a quick overview of the recent visitors and it’s fun to ‘spy’ on current visitors. The screenshot above is of the landing page. There are other views including an ‘overview’ screen, spy screeen, details …. it really has a lot and it’s fun to check out exactly what users are looking at my site! I highly recommend this one.

Those are the 3 plugins I primarily use. I use all three to get the best picture and just one isn’t good enough. Each has it’s pluses and minuses.

Recently I started using two new services/plugins: So I haven’t really tested either yet, but both seem promising:

• WassUP with VStats (these are two plugins. Wassup is the plugin and service. Vstats is an addon plugin)
  
• QuantCast

WassUP with Vstats gives hourly information and is super fast. Plus it’s rather pretty. Though the interface isn’t as nicely and orderly laid out like StatPress. Wassup With Vstats gives you a great report of the latest visitors, which is nice. But I by default usually want to know more information than just about the last 10 people!

But like I said, I haven’t had time to play with it much yet. I’ll let you all know when I do. So far this plugin sounds promising.

As for Quantcast, I signed up for it today so it won’t really show me much for a few days. They say 4-5 days before anything ‘useful’ shows up. Hm .. ok. But it is #2 in XMarks for “web analytics”. So it should be good. Only time will tell. Also, they have many ‘versions’.

One for Marketers, one for site owners/publishers, and a few others. So far I only signed up for the site owner version. We’ll see how that turns out and then I’ll try the For Marketers version.

If you liked this article then let me know! Subscribe to my newsletter to find out even more information and details!

Most people think “How can I write a good link baiting headline?” That is a good and valid question which you should be asking yourself every time you write a headline.

Think about this though: Once the person has clicked on your link … now what? Of course if you linked them to a sales letter then it’s obvious. But if you’re like me and most of what you write is articles, reports and blog posts then your goal is to drive traffic. And the only way to drive traffic is to have very good link baity text and links.

Now, I have to attest that I am no headline expert and I almost failed high school English … twice. But I can sure as heck spot an awesome written article/post when I see one and analyse it.

So today we have a case study of Martha Giffen’s Blog post entitled: Welcome Back! (30 Day Blog Challenge). Now don’t worry, this isn’t going to be some boring math filled, study oriented thousand page thesis paper.

I’ll go over all the article pointing out the good parts (which you should follow), the bad (stuff you should avoid), and the GREAT (which you should do as well).

Just like trying to pick up a girl at the bar, setup is very important. In her article Martha does this very well.

As you can see, the text is clear and written well. But the important part is she talks about what is in this FOR YOU the reader. It’s not about her, it’s not about Fluffy and his feline adventures … it’s about the reader. How can this article benefit them!

Thus, Step One in a link bait article:

• 1) Talk about how this article will benefit them in a cheerful, happy tone.

Now that you’ve told them that this is about them and for them, you really need to give them a reason to keep reading. This is done here with “you need to stay tuned!”. We’ve seen similar things on tv such as “stay tuned”, “But wait there’s more”, ect…

This anticipation is key as it not only make them want to wait a bit and read further, you are telling them that there is more. Plus if they are excited earlier they will be more excited to know that there is more on the way!

After that is In-You-Face helpful tips and knowhow that benefit YOU. BUT, this we already know. But pay close attention to her article. She does something VERY special.

She ties in a lead, or a sales pitch, into each and every bit. Wow, how powerful is that? He’s giving you help, answering a question (and posing one for you) and offering her assistance. Genius marketing move.

But wait, there’s more!

Something most people overlook.  In this day in age people want and except free things. So give it to them. Plus, what better way to get someone e-mail address than to offer something for free to get it? Pure, pure genius move here:

Everything she offers here is FREE. FREE and more FREE! Now honestly, I was reading this thing and thinking HOLY CRAP. I want! Free?! I’ll give you my e-mail for something awesome and for free!

I’m excited just reading this article as it speaks SO well to me as a marketer. I loved it so much I even wrote this article! And I almost never write about someone else’s articles. That says a lot.

If you’re struggling with your articles and posts, or need more ideas sign up for my newsletter (below or at the top right). I send out tips there which I don’t share anywhere else! (really). Best of all … it’s 100% FREE.

If you’re not 100% satisfied with my newsletter call me and I’ll give you your money back no questions asked!

… Heh, just had to put that in there

There are so many social media ‘things’ we have to manage these days that it can be rather tiresome and painful JUST to get one message out to everyone. Well, when you make a blog post now you won’t have to suffer as much because there is a easy way to have your blog automatically make a Twitter post for you automatically!

This great plugin is called “Twitter Tools”. This is a constantly maintained WordPress plugin which will do just that: make a tweet for you whenever you make a new post.

Not a big deal right, why would you want something like that? Twitter’ing isn’t hard! Yeah but think of it this way: if you schedule a lot of posts are you REALLY going to remember to go and manually make a tweet about every schedules post? Probably not. It’s also great for scheduling posts and tweets when you’re out on vacation so that people don’t forget about you!

In the post you’ll also find small quick tip on how to add personalized tracking to Twitter Tools (which isn’t available by default). You’ll find it at the bottom of the post.

Twitter Tools by Alex King is really a great a nifty plugin because not only can you have automated tweets from your blog post, but you can add a prefix to each tweet (required) and a few other nifty options!

Here’s some things you can do:

• Make a tweet automatically from every new blog post
• Add any prefix you want, even a hash tag
• Create a blog post from every tweet you make
• Create tweets from your side bar stuff (I’m not exactly sure what this does yet)
• Experimental: Make a daily digest blog post from your daily Twitter Tweets
• Weekly twitter digest also available.

quick tip: Currently I have Twitter Tools set to auto post a tweet with the prefix “@JeanetteCates #blog30″ so that any new blog post I make, for now, will automatically go towards the #Blog30 contest.

Interested in Twitter Tools to make your #Blog30 challenge life a lot easier? No worries, installing Twitter Tools is very easy:

1. Sign in to your wordpress admin site thingy
2. Go to Plugins -> Add New
3. Search for “Twitter Tools”.
4. You will find several “Twitter Tools” choices, but select only the one called “Twitter Tools” by Alex King current version (as of this writing) is 2.3.1
5. Click Install on the right to install the plugin and follow the on screen instructions to install the plugin

Now, there are two more major steps to do before you can use Twitter Tools.

• Add your twitter username and password to Twitter Tools
• Enable the blog post to Twitter post setting thing.

You’ll find both of these options under

http://YOURWEBSITE.COM/wp-admin/options-general.php?page=twitter-tools.php

Just copy and paste the “/wp-admin/options-general.php?page=twitter-tools.php” to the end of your site and you’ll get there. Also, you can go through the Admin menu:

• Settings -> Twitter Tools

Enter in your twitter username and password and then make sure you test the login info. This will make sure Twitter Tools can connect properly to Twitter.

After that, this next step is extremely important so don’t forget it:

• Enable option to create a tweet when you post in your blog? SELECT YES

After that all you have to do is scroll down and click “Update Twitter Tool Options”, don’t forget it

One important this is tracking, which is something that Twitter Tools lacks. TT will shorten links for you automagically but it will not track them at all. There are two options to add tracking. Both are plugins:

If you use bit.ly, download the WP plugin:

• Twitter Tools: bit.ly Links

If you Su.pr:

• Twitter Tools: Su.pr Links

For each you’ll have to add your personalized login info for either system.