Google Reader provides you with a nifty tool to help you do this. With the “Share” feature of Google Reader, you can easily syndicate a list of articles that you recently read and found interesting.

Get a Google Account: Start Reading

If you don’t use Google Reader – or another feed reader – start using one. Until you use RSS feeds on a daily basis, you’ll never know how wonderful they are, and you’ll never know how much your readers may come to rely on them.

Once I decide I like a site, I generally read it through Google Reader. If an article is interesting, I’ll click through to the site and comment on it. Other than that, I rarely go back to the site. Without the RSS reader, I’d probably never return to the site at all.

An RSS reader is a great way to collect relevant readings into one location – so you can sit there with your cup of coffee and read all of the new stuff out in the blogosphere. You can then decide what is important enough to comment on (on someone else’s blog) or respond to (on your own blog).

Share Items – Creating Your Own Feed

With Google Reader, there is a cool “Share” feature. At the bottom of the article you are reading, there’s a list of options – “Add Star,” “Share,” “E-mail,” and “Mark as Read.”

By choosing the “Share” option you are adding that article to a publicly viewable list. That list also generates its own RSS feed – which makes it easy for you to syndicate the feed on your own site. By doing so, you provide your readers with a list of articles that you recently read and found interesting.

It’s a more targeted and stable than a standard RSS feed that just shows every headline from a given website – which will hopefully make it more useful for your readers.

Grab the Widget, Style Yourself

This feed is available in a standard rss xml file. You could use SimpleXML to parse the feed and display the information yourself. Or, you could use the ready-made widget that Google provides.

The Google widget uses Javascript to access the information while your page is loading. This potentially stops your page from hanging if the Google server is not responding – the rest of the page can load while the RSS feed is updated. You can find this widget by clicking on the “Your shared items” link in Google Reader and clicking on the “put a clip of your shared items” link.

The only problem is that the pre-designed styles don’t offer you a lot of options for making the list blend in with your site’s theme. My suggestion would be to select “None,” for the color scheme. You may also want to leave the title blank, and add your own title to the feed.

If you do this, the feed will be generated with the following HTML. Note: This example uses the “Show item sources” option.

<div id="readerpublishermodule0" class="reader-publisher-module">
  <ul>
    <li>
      <a class="i" title="Good for Hunters, Bad for Druids" href="http://4thehorde.wordpress.com/2008/04/25/good-for-hunters-bad-for-druids/">Good for Hunters, Bad for Druids</a>
      <div class="s">from <a href="http://4thehorde.wordpress.com">For the Horde</a></div>
    </li>
    <li>
      <a class="i" title="Bornakk: Druids Not to be &quot;Big Green Blobs&quot;" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Er/Resto4Life/%7E3/279629927/">Bornakk: Druids Not to be "Big Green Blobs"</a>
      <div class="s">from <a href="http://www.resto4life.com">Resto4Life</a></div>
    </li>
  </ul>
  <div class="f"><a href="http://www.google.com/reader/shared/user/18391951200330501918/state/com.google/broadcast">Read more...</a></div>
</div>

By taking a look at this example HTML, you can easily style the widget yourself.

The entire thing is contained in a div with class “reader-publisher-module.” Each headline is contained within its own “li.” If you use the option to display the source of the article, it’s in a div with class “s” inside the list item.

My one gripe with Google Reader is I can’t create multiple shared lists. For example, I’ve divided blogs I read into ones related to web development and ones related to World of Warcraft. I’d love to be able to create a shared article list for each topic, so that I can syndicate each one on a different website.

If you want to see this in action, check out my World of Warcraft blog, Rolling Horde. It’s on the right hand side, in the middle column, underneath the recent articles.

To use Google Analytics, you need to place some javascript on your website. A commonly asked question in forums is, “How do I add Google Analytics to my WordPress template?”

Where the Analytics Code Goes

When you sign up for Google Analytics, Google provides you with a short piece of javascript to place on your site. The code should look like this.

<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-2894597-3");
pageTracker._initData();
pageTracker._trackPageview();
</script>

According to Google’s instructions, this needs to be placed at the very end of your site – just before the closing body tag. To do this, we need to find the closing body tag on the WordPress template.

Look In Footer.php

As we previously discovered, a WordPress template is made up of a series of files. Three basic files – header.php, sidebar.php, and footer.php – help build the components of the page.

If your WordPress template follows normal conventions, the closing body tag should be in the footer.php file.

Go to your themes directory of the WordPress installation, navigate to your current theme, and open footer.php. You should see something like this at the end.

<?php wp_footer(); ?>
</body>
</html>

Add a blank line before the closing body tag. Simply copy and paste the javascript code that Google provides on that blank line, save the file, and you’re good to go.

I found some very useful resources for dealing with JS, AJAX, and DOM, so I thought I’d share them for any other eager learners.

Getting Started with AJAX

The first place I stopped in my quest for knowledge was the Mastering Ajax series of articles at IBM’s Developer Works.

I read through the first half of the series. Articles 1, 2, and 3 give a pretty good overview of how to create and use an AJAX request. The later articles introduce the DOM and provide a good overview of how to work with the AJAX response and edit the existing web page.

After reading the first two articles, I was able to re-craft the examples and create some basic AJAX-driven forms of my own. It wasn’t anything exciting – but the concept was easy enough to master.

Although you can get by without ever working directly with the AJAX request object, I agree with the author of this series of articles. It’s best to learn to do something the hard way first – then you can take shortcuts.

AJAX the Easy Way – Prototype.js

Later in the weekend, I set about creating my first real AJAX application. My Digg WordPress Plugin uses AJAX to check the Digg API for info on an article after the page has loaded.

I tried to rework the code that I’d built with the Developer Works tutorial, but I ran into a problem when I had to make more than one request. I knew I had to make extra instances of the HttpRequest object, but I was having trouble getting the code to execute the way I wanted it to. Admittedly I’m a JS newbie – the first Javascript I ever wrote was the code from the first AJAX tutorial.

I found a great solution though – prototype.js. This is a javascript/ajax framework that makes it much simpler to work with the base AJAX class.

This made it much easier to create multiple instances of an AJAX request class and have them simultaneously fire off and handle requests. It also handles some of the browser compatibility issues. I like to do things on my own, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be using prototype.js from now on for any AJAX projects I work on.

DOM: Document Object Model Resources

Once I got a hang of sending and processing requests with AJAX, I had to turn to DOM to edit the page. After reading through the Developer Works tutorial and fiddling a bit on my own, I found this surprisingly easy.

If you’ve got an understanding of OOP and XML, the DOM should be pretty straightforward for you. However, there are a decent amount of methods/properties you’ll run into. I found two great references that I’ll be using for a while until I get more familiar with the DOM methods/properties.

howtocreate.co.uk has a compact list of pertinent methods and properties. It’s not explained very well, but it’s good for looking up a method quickly. By contrast, Javascript Kit has a thorough reference of methods and properties with explanations. It’s a bit more verbose, but a better choice if you haven’t got a clue how a method works.

Working with JS, AJAX, and DOM is pretty simple – especially if you already know a scripting language like PHP. So don’t wait any longer – go out and add to your repertoire.

As others have pointed out, this can be counter-productive. People don’t like to read articles that have just one Digg – they seem unpopular.

So here’s a solution: use the Conditional “Digg This” WordPress Plugin to only show the Digg Badge for articles that have a certain number of Diggs.

Why Shouldn’t You Show the Digg Badge on Every Article?

It’s easy enough to plaster the Digg Badge in your template or use a plug-in to add it to every post. Most of your posts aren’t going to be popular though. You’ll get at most one or two Diggs… nothing to write home about.

When a user opens your article, he or she might be impressed by “100 Diggs.” He or she definitely won’t be impressed by “1 Digg.” That’s a hint that your article wasn’t anything special – so why should the reader keep going?

Using the Plugin to Only Show the Badge on Popular Articles

The Conditional Digg This plug-in was designed to address this issue.

All you need to do is download the source code, upload it to your plugins directory, unpack the tar.gz, and click “Activate.” You don’t need to modify any settings or insert anything into your template. It’s all automated.

How Does It Work?

The basic concept behind the plugin is this:

• Load a story in your WordPress Blog
• Check the Digg API to see how many diggs the article has
• If the article has 10 or more diggs, show the badge…
• Otherwise, leave it alone.

Originally, I coded the plug-in to use a php function to access the API and check the number of Diggs each article had as it loaded. This worked perfectly – but it took a while. Sometimes, the API is slow to respond. If the API took 8 seconds to spit back a response, that meant your page would take 8 extra seconds to load up.

Even if the API was responding quickly, this was a problem for the front page and category pages. At best, the API takes about .25 to .5 seconds to respond – and with 10-15 checks on a page… you’re still waiting a good long time for the page to load.

Load First, Check the API Later

The solution I came up with was to use some nifty AJAX to perform the API checking behind the scenes.

The plug-in creates an AJAX request for each article. It sends information to a php script which accesses the Digg API behind the scenes. The page loads up instantly and AJAX will quietly do its thing. When the response is ready, it’ll change the page to include the Digg This badge if necessary.

So, the next time you want to display a “Digg This” badge on your article, think about how many diggs your article has already. Or, use the Conditional “Digg This” WordPress Plugin to automatically add a badge to your popular articles.

There is a ton of cool stuff you can do with this. Basically, you send a request to the Digg server and it sends back whatever kind of information you want – category names, recent diggs, recent stories, archived stories, etc. You can read through the API to see everything you can do.

For now, we’ll focus on one nifty little trick – grabbing a random story from a given topic.

Digg API Basics: How It Works

Before we can build our script, we need to know the basics of how the Digg API works.

Your script sends an HTTP GET request to the Digg server. This has three major parts. If this is valid, the server sends you a response in one of several designated formats. You can then parse it into use-able information and display it on your site.

The basic parts of the request are…

• Base Digg URL: http://services.digg.com
• An Endpoint: i.e. /stories/topic/programming – this determines the type of information you’re getting back
• A query string: i.e. ?count=5&offset=20

For this tutorial, we’ll be working with the “Programming” topic because, well, it works with my site. You can look at the list of topics on the API page and tailor this to your needs.

Therefore the URL we’ll be accessing is: http://services.digg.com/stories/topic/programming

What Goes In the Query String

To go along with this, we’re going to have to build a query string. There are a few required elements (appkey, type) and some optional ones that we’ll also use (count, offset).

“appkey” is basically an ID tag associated with your application. Digg uses this for statistical purposes. You can set this equal to the URI of your website.

“type” describes the type of response you’ll get. There are four response types, of which two are applicable for use in a PHP script. We’re going to focus on the XML response and use SimpleXML to parse the information. Therefore type should be set to ‘xml.’

“count” tells the server how many stories we want to fetch. “offset” tells the server how many stories to skip before it starts fetching them. The “offset” is going to allow us to fetch a random story.

Building the Query String

So how do we build the query string? First, we need to turn each of our values into a parameter in the format key=value. The value must also be url encoded. Here’s how we do that in php.

$appkey = 'http://www.earn-web-cash.com';
$appkeyParam = 'appkey=' . urlencode($appkey);

We can then string together all these variables with ampersands (&) in between. We then place a ? in the beginning of the query string, attach it to our URL, and we’re good to go.

I wrote a short function I use to automatically build the query string from an array of values. I create an empty array, store the value with a key equal to its parameter name, and then pass it through the function. The function returns the full query string for me to use.

// Example array:
//    $params['appkey'] = 'http://www.earn-web-cash.com';
//    $params['type'] = 'xml';
 
function buildQuery ($args) {
  $query = '?';
  foreach ($args as $key => $val) {
    if ($query != '?') {
      $query .= '&';
    }
 
    $query .= $key . '=' . urlencode($val);
  }
  return $query;
}

One other minor task we need to do is set up a “user_agent” for PHP. The Digg server wants to know who’s accessing it, so you need to define a “user_agent” value for your instance of PHP with the ini_set command. You can call your application whatever you want, but it usually follows the format – Name/Version.

ini_set('user_agent', 'RandomDiggStory/1.0');

Firing Off the Request and Getting a Response

We should now be able to send our request, get a response, and use some information.

To get a random story, we’re actually going to have to send two requests. The first is going to allow us to find out how many stories exist in the topic. The second will actually fetch a random story.

To find out how many stories exist in the topic, we’re going to create our request with the following information. The appkey doesn’t matter, the type will be xml, the count will be 0, and the offset doesn’t matter.

Once we build the entire url with the query string, we open that location with simplexml_load_file – and the response will automatically be placed in a SimpleXML object for us.

$params = array();
 
$params['appkey'] = 'http://www.earn-web-cash.com';
$params['type'] = 'xml';
$params['count'] = 0;  //  We don't need an offset for this one
 
$query = buildQuery($params);
$url = 'http://services.digg.com/stories/topic/programming';
$reqUrl = $url . $query;
 
$xml = simplexml_load_file($reqUrl);
$total = (int) $xml['total'];  // Need to typecast, or it'll be an object
 
echo $xml->asXML();  // Look at the source code to see what you fetched

The last line (echo $xml->asXML()) isn’t necessary – it’s just to give you an idea of the information you just fetched. It isn’t a whole lot – but we didn’t ask for a whole lot.

The piece of information we wanted was the total number of stories in our topic. That’s the ‘total’ attribute of the ‘stories’ element. We fetched it with $xml['total'] and stored it in the $total variable.

Last Step: Fetching the Random Story

With this information in hand, we can craft a new request and get our random story. You can copy and paste the same information we used before, but make these changes to the $params array.

$params['count'] = 1; // We want one story
$params['offset'] = rand(0, $total);

By generating a random value for offset between 0 and the maximum, we’re effectively choosing one random story from the available list.

Now run the script again. At the end, $xml should have one random story stored in it. The story information is stored in the story child element, and we can access some of the information like this.

echo $xml->story['link']; // the URL
echo $xml->story['submit_date']; // timestamp when it was submitted
echo $xml->story->title;
echo $xml->story->description;

If you browse through the source code of the xml you outputted, you’ll find all of the essential information about the story. Now you can format it nicely and add it to your website.

In case you ran into trouble along the way, here’s the complete source code of the script. You’ll need to go in and change the topic to your desired topic and set your own appkey, but otherwise it should be all set to go.

Why? I was able to work in a few nice backlinks to my site and my articles. I’ll earn some cash if it gets traffic of its own.

How Does Squidoo Work?

Squidoo is another writing site online – with a bit of a twist.

Squidoo isn’t about articles… it’s about “lenses.” Each lens is a mini-website. It’s longer and more in depth than an article – but it’s only one page.

You add all the content you want about your topic – writing, pictures, polls, link lists, etc – and hope users come a knockin. If you do get traffic, you get a portion of the advertising revenue.

You can eke out a few extra bucks by including items for sale on your lens – like books at Amazon.com.

Why Did I Write a Lens at Squidoo?

I’m pretty sure my lens (XML Through PHP) isn’t going to make a ton of money. That’s no reason to scoff at the idea, though.

The lens I created was (as you might have guessed from the title) about XML and PHP. In the past week or so, I’ve written three articles here about working with XML. Do you see where I’m going with this?

The lens is an overview of working with XML. Three parts of the lens are hooks to get the reader to come read an article here about a particular application of XML in PHP.

In writing this lens, I accomplished a number of tasks. I created a useful online resource – it should be educational for someone that’s new to working with XML and PHP together. I created some advertisement for my site – any readers of the lens should be enticed to click on one or another of my links. I also improved the SEO of my site by including five targeted backlinks from the lens to content on my own site.

You Should Join Too!

I don’t see any reason not to join Squidoo and make a lens or two about your niche.

You can create optimized links to your site and also capture some extra search engine traffic and direct it back to your site. There’s a decent referral system in place – you get $5 if a referree makes $15. You can also diversify your online writing portfolio and make a little more loot every month.

So head on over to Squidoo, sign up, and write your own lens.

There are plenty of places to look for free backlinks – some of better quality than others. One trick you can use to build up a decent collection of backlinks is to regularly post on forums in your niche.

Not All Backlinks Are Created Equally

Before you go about posting on every forum you can find, understand that not all backlinks are of equal value.

Some forums (as well as blog comment areas) use the rel="nofollow" attribute in links. This means that Google (and possibly other search engines) ignores the link when crawling and calculating search engine placement.

Some other search engines – like Yahoo – may still count these. There’s no certain way to know how valuable they are, so I wouldn’t just ignore them. However, if you have a choice you should steer your time and effort to forums where the links you create do not contain the rel="nofollow" attribute.

Where Do I Put the Links?

On most forums, it’s considered bad form to just run around posting links to your site. Be sure to read the rules for the forum. Some forums may allow you to link to your site if the article directly relates to a question someone else asked.

However, there are two places you’ll generally be able to put backlinks.

In your profile, you should be able to set a “Homepage” value. Always do this. On some forums – like Programming Talk – each post contains a link to your homepage by your name.

You can also create a signature. This appears at the end of every post you make, and it is typically considered ok to place self-promoting links here. Some forums will have special rules about this – so be sure to read them.

Once you place links in your signature, make them count. This is a great place to start doing SEO. If you already have a link to your homepage underneath your name, I would use the signature to link to some deeper pages – like content categories. Give the links targeted text (like “PHP Tutorials” or “Web Design Tips”).

A Few Forums to Start With

Since you’re a webmaster, you’ll always find something interesting to talk about on webmaster forums. Here are a few well-trafficked forums that I frequent.

• DaniWeb – I think signature links here are rel=nofollow, but it’s a good forum
• Digital Point – Lots of traffic, and links are followed
• Programming Talk – Decent traffic, and links are followed
• Site Point – Lots of traffic, and links are followed

Start Posting!

What are you waiting for? Get out there and start posting!

If your website isn’t about websites, then you should probably search out some other forums based on your niche as well.

Forum backlinks aren’t going to make your website a success by themselves, but they are a good stepping stone to better SEO. You can use them to quickly build up backlinks for a new site until you start getting better backlinks from other sites.

I started a (now defunct) website last year, powered by WordPress. It never got too popular, and in the beginning I was excited every time I got a “New Comment” or “New Trackback” e-mail. Then I realized they were mostly all spam.

A few minutes ago, I checked my e-mail and had a spam comment in my inbox. I thought, “Ahh, here comes the spam.”

When I logged into the dashboard, I spammed the comment and was about to move away. Then I happened to look at the dashboard again – and I remembered that I had set up Akismet this time around.

I just added the widget to the left sidebar because I was so impressed. Akismet apparently blocked 84 spam comments – and this was the first one that got through. I’d say that’s pretty impressive.

If you’re running a WordPress blog, or something else that uses comments and can utilize an Akismet plug-in, do so. There’s nothing more frustrating than wading through spam comments and trackbacks all day long.

Akismet is apparently pretty effective at cutting them down. A few of them might sift through, but you can never get rid of all the spam. So be happy if you can eliminate 84/85.

You can download the Akismet plugin for WordPress, but all new builds come with Akismet pre-installed. All you have to do is fill in the Akismet API number – which you can get for free with a WordPress account.

Happy spam-free comment logs.

You can test how your site displays in a few browsers – for example, I often check mine out in Windows IE, Ubuntu Firefox, and Ubuntu Opera. But how am I going to check it on Mac browsers like Safari?

Enter Browsershots.

The premise is very simple. You check off a list of browsers and platforms, enter your website’s url, and click submit. Then the servers open your site, take a screenshot, and upload the display to Browsershots.

You can then view the screenshots and see how your website appeared in those browsers. You can check out some sample displays for an education related website that I created.

Your options are pretty extensive. At the moment you can choose from 36 Linux browsers, 12 Windows browsers, and 4 Mac OS browsers.

After you submit your request, you need to wait until your website comes up in the queue. Each server (factory, as they call it at Browsershots) has its own queue. A lot of the servers will be done in a couple of minutes, but some queues can be one to two hours long.

One of the downsides to the site is that your request will expire in 30 minutes. The completed screenshots will stay up there, but if you have any requests left in the queue they will be canceled.

You can refresh your request by clicking a button, but if you get stuck in a 90 minute queue you’ll have to remember to refresh your request several times.

All in all, very useful tool. I plan to use it to test out any future design projects. So the next time you want to see how a foreign browser would display your site, head over to Browsershots.

I’m sure we’ve all faced this problem at one point or another – how do we get sample HTML to display properly, without being rendered, so that users can view it? Moreover, what’s the best method of doing this?

I first struggled with this when I was writing for another site (Associated Content). Because they filtered out a lot of html tags, it was pretty tough to find a way to get it to display properly. The only method I could get to work reliably was to pad the tags with spaces, like < html >.

Not the best method, but thankfully there are better ways to do it on your own site.

The basic trick is to convert all of your < characters into < and > characters into >. Want to go do all that by hand?

I didn’t think so. I tend to do it by hand if I’m just typing one or two tags, but for a full-fledged example it’s much easier to have a script do the work for you. So I built a tool to do just that.

Head over to the HTML Encoding Form, copy and paste your sample code into one textarea, and press submit. The HTML will be escaped for you, at which point you can copy and paste it back into your tutorial.