Well, things are beginning to change around here. And more changes are on the horizon. I've opened an Amazon shop, begun to create series badges, widened my text column to accommodate larger photos, changed the layout, and I've "optimized" many of my popular posts. Fancy stuff, huh? Let me tell you, the learning curve is steep my friends. I'm still working on a new masthead and "look", and few other things, but most of you will be happy to know that the poll was a blow-out and I'll be sticking with The Toby Show as the name of the blog.
One of the more important things I've done so far is worked on my RSS Feed. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. That's right, The Toby Show is now syndicated! See, for those of you who didn't know, you can get a subscription to a blog, just like a magazine and an RSS feed is what makes that possible. You subscribe to a blog's feed and then you read it through a feedreader.
If it feels like I'm speak Swahili don't glaze over yet, I've linked to 2 great articles below that do a much better job of explaining what subscriptions are and how to use them. Feeds are really handy if you follow more than a couple of blogs. You don't end up forgetting to check all your different bookmarks or wasting time checking ones that haven't even updated. With a feedreader, you go to one place, all your blog feeds are organized there and you can quickly see which blogs have new posts.
If you want to know more about RSS check out these 2 informative and well-organized articles:
Subscribing to Blogs 101: the Why, the How and the Where by simplemom
What is RSS? by Darren Rowse of ProBlogger
"Great, lovely, thanks for all that info Jonah Lisa, now how the hell do I do it here."
- SUBSCRIBE VIA RSS - You can subscribe to The Toby Show's RSS feed by clicking this
icon (the correct term is a "chicklet") wherever you see it. That's the standard RSS icon. It will connect you to a page where you can choose from one of many feedburners to get your feed through--Google & Bloglines are the biggies. Here on The Toby Show you'll find that orange RSS icon in the sidebar near the top of every page. I've also peppered them throughout the blog, down at the bottom of some of the more popular posts, and if your using a newer search engine, like FireFox, your find an RSS icon in far right of the the url address bar.
- SUBSCRIBE VIA EMAIL - If you don't want to use RSS you can still subscribe to my feed via email by clicking this
icon wherever you see it. You'll be directed to a form where you can enter your email address and you'll be sent each day's post that way. The "Get Email Updates" icon is also in the sidebar near the top of every page.
- SOCIAL BOOKMARKING - Some of the more popular social bookmarking sites are Digg, Delicious and
StumbleUpon. When you bookmark one of my posts through one of them you have a way of finding it
(and all the other cool sites and pages you find out there) later when you need it but you also spread the word to other people about The Toby Show. And that's a good thing in my book. Up at the top in the sidebar is this
button. Click that button and you get an extensive choice of social bookmarking sites to share the site or post with. Currently at the bottom of every post, where the category of the post is listed, are links to "DIgg This" and "Save to Delicious" but I'm working on getting the all-inclusive Bookmark Button down there instead. We'll see.
- BOOKMARK IN YOUR SEARCH ENGINE - If all this is just too fancy and not the way you roll, then you can always just bookmark the site or any page on the site in your search engine while you're browsing. Easy Peasy.
There's also a shiny new button to email me directly at The Toby Show at gmail dot com. I'd love to hear from you. ANd now that I'm getting all fancy, I'll try to reply to all comers.
So, now you have no excuse! It's all here at your disposal. Gimme some love out there! DIGG it, Stumble on it, Twitter it, tell others how Delicious it is, comment or email when you can and...
