How To Bring Your Blog Into Your Website

Author: Barbara King

How to bring your blog into your website Well, Why would you want to do this? Content, of course. You've probably being writing stuff in your blog for months, hoping that others would read it. I use my blog to advertise new merchants, specials, coupons and sales. I've been archiving my blog entries for months. There is a lot of content there and you can use it to your advantage. Search engines love content, so here is how you can add content that you probably had not even thought of.....your own blog.



Let's get started. Just follow these simple steps one by one.

You are going to set up a blog. If you already have one just follow along, and if there is a step that you have not previously done, then do it as you come to it.

• Go to http://www.blogspot.com and sign up for a new account.
  Blogspot is a free service, and they host the blog on their server.
  
  
• Give your blog a name. Make a note of the name for later use. One point here, you might want to give it the name of your website minus the www. or use your major keyword.
  
• Navigate to settings and then choose "Site Feed"
  
• Check and make sure the "Publish Site Feed" option is "YES"
  
• Copy the site feed URL to your clipboard or notepad,(you'll need this information in a few minutes.)It will look something like this:URL http://amomsshop.blogspot.com/atom.xml
  It will have the atom.xml on the end of it.
  
• Save the Settings
  
• Navigate to the "Posting" and create your first blog.
  
• What should write about, type a few paragraphs about your website and it's theme. Work in a reference to each page on your site that you want indexed. Remember to type them as real links (Hyperlinks) with exact URL of the page, and you can tell a little bit about that page if you want to.
  
  You don't know how to do a hyperlink? It goes like this:
  
  

  <p><a href="http://www.amomsshop.com.com" target="_blank">A Mom's Shop </a></p>

  just replace the amomsshop.com with your URL and the A Mom's Shop with the typed out name you want for your site.
  
  
  

• Publish your blog by hitting the "Publish" button.
  OK, We are not quite thru
  Take a deep breath and we will continue.
  
  
  In a previous post I should you MediaScooper.com, Today I want you to see another similar tool:
  Feed2JS This one has a Validator, so you know if the link is good. It says Enter the web address of the RSS Site Feed. Paste your blog URL into this block. You can hit the validator button if you want.
  Now there are other variables you can choose.
  • The number of items to display, 0 will show everything.
    
  • Show/Hide Item Descriptions... n=-1 will bring the entire article..this is the one I choose. After, all we are after content.
  • Use HTML in the item display...I choose "yes"
  • Show item posting date..it's up to you..I leave it off.
  • Show items in a new window...I choose "No" because I just selected to bring in the whole article instead of clicking away from my site.
  • UTF-8 Character encoding...I don't know what this is,..so I leave it alone.
  Now, Preview the Feed...You will be able to see your data from your blog. Now. Generate JavaScript..will open in a new window. Copy and Paste this code into your web template. FTP it up to your server, and each day you when you update your blog, it will be automatically updated within your website when someone opens that page where you pasted the script.
  
  Bookmark the Feed2JS site, cause you will probably want to use it often. There are so many things this can be used for. In yesterdays example, of bringing in the news feeds to your site, you can use Feed2JS instead of Media Scooper. Here you have the option of validating the feed before you make it live on your site.
  
  You can actually download this code and install it on your hard drive, if you are confident enough about installing it. The download and installation instructions are right there. A community college developed this program for it's use and decided to make it public.
  
  Are you beginning to get the idea of how useful RSS Data Feeds can be. I used RSS data feeds and perl scripts to create the flower shop, candle shop and the Easter shops within my mall.
  
  I hope you have enjoyed this article.
  
  Barbara King
  Mom's Who Sell Network
  Direct Sales Connection.com
  A Mom's Shop Online Shopping Mall