Lilahpops

Stay up-to-date with your favourite websites by subscribing to them

Back in March I wrote a post on how to add your Flickr photos to your blog feed. During April, I participated in the April Challenge - Entropy at photochallenge.org. The challenge was to take a photo a day for the entire month of April and upload each one to Flickr. I don’t write daily posts here at Lilahpops but for that month my blog feed had new content every single day.

The addition of my Flickr photos has become incredibly useful in providing fresh content more frequently to my RSS subscribers.

But you don’t have a blog?

So, you don’t have your own blog but you read tons of blogs and news sites and other stuff, right? Do you bookmark each site and visit them individually? There’s an easier, faster way and it’s called RSS!

RSS allows you to keep track of your favourite websites at once. You don’t need to visit each site for the latest news, the updates come to you.

How you can subscribe

Check out the video below and see how you can simplify and optimise your web surfing time. And if you are interested in learning about photography make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed.

The video suggests three places where you can subscribe to your faves:

• Google Reader
• Bloglines
• Newsgator

I actually use iGoogle. I love it. Read below (after the video) to see how I use RSS.

How I subscribe to my faves

If you have an Google account and haven’t yet tried it you’ll see the iGoogle option next to your login name. I have six tabs arranged by subject. This is the break down:

• one for various news websites I read (local and international)
• one for web design/development
• one for photography
• one for my Gmail and Google calender
• one for blog writing tips; and
• one for miscellaneous sites I visit.

The benefit is that if you see a headline that catches your eye you can read it right then and there or visit the site for more. If you have regular websites that you visit this is a simple, smart way to surf the web.

For more information about RSS check out:

• RSS Day

This is my entry in the Blog Statistics - Most Popular Project

Tibor has announced the second part of his Blog Statistics Project over at photonovice.net. He asks: what is your most popular post and why do you think it generated so much interest? did it create a lot of discussion in the comments and has it made you change the way you blog, or even how you photograph?

My website is just under a year old and although I don’t receive many comments on my posts, I am finding that web traffic is slowly but surely increasing. It’s true what they say, it won’t happen overnight.

What are my most popular posts?

The first part of the project told me a little about my readers and what you are looking for. So, I checked out my stats again. Not only do they tell me what you are looking for here at Lilahpops, but it seems you might have also found what you were looking for.

For this project I’m focusing on the Top 3 posts. Part one revealed you have been searching for vintage cameras (namely, the Voigtlander) and iPhoto tips. Two of my Top 3 posts are part of my iPhoto series:

Top 3 Posts

• 1. Add special effects to your images with iPhoto
• 2. How to resize an image in iPhoto
• 3. 8 simple steps to add your Flickr photos to your blog feed

Let’s break that down a bit more

Number 3

Not about iPhoto or vintage cameras: this post made the front page of photographyvoter.com; got stumbled; and received links from both Tibor at photonovice.net and Antoine at All Day I Dream About Photography. It got a huge spike in traffic as a result. While this post still receives visits, the interest has leveled off. However, I’ll add here that the readers who visit this page are interested in the content - each reader staying for an average 3:38 mins. It’s not a simple click-in and click-away post.

As an aside, I have to say that adding my Flickr photos to my blog feed has been insanely useful this month. I’m participating in the April Challenge, taking a photo a day and posting each one to Flickr. My feed has never seen such fresh content on a daily basis! I also have picked some extra subscribers.

Numbers 1 and 2

So, the first two posts are from my iPhoto series. The time readers spend on each page is 1:46 mins (Number 1) and 4:35 mins (Number 2) which is quite good considering the nature and speed of ’surfing the web.’

What does this mean?

I can’t say for sure, but when I first got my Mac and began using iPhoto, I didn’t find many tips and tricks out there. Possibly I wasn’t looking in the right places. So I started writing some. It seems that there was a bit of a gap in this area.

Does this change the way I blog? The consistency in my popular posts (not just the Top 3) does encourage me to write similar ones in the future and continue the iPhoto series. Does it make me change the way I photograph? No. But I do store my photos in iPhoto. And I ensure that I use it (even though GIMP is my new editor of choice) often to see what post-processing possibilities it has. And then I write about them.

What are your most popular posts? Get your entry to Tibor at photonovice.net by 9 May!

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about my blog’s statistics for a project being run by Tibor Radványi over at photonovice.net. This project turned out to be the push I needed to sit down and analyse my web stats in detail rather than do a frantic count of page views, as is my usual way. It’s odd that I hadn’t taken the time to do this for myself because I constantly analyse web stats at work. I suppose I spend my available time writing content for my website rather than doing necessary behind-the-scenes checks on what’s working and what’s gotta go.

So, as a result of participating in this project, I discovered the direction in which this website is heading. Which has to be a good thing, right? Rather than continuing along the road in which I thought it was heading, I now know the sorts of posts people are stopping by to read.

I have to say I admire all the bloggers who set projects for their readers. I mean, you might have a good readership, but will everyone participate? I have started participating in projects but there are many that I have simply watched from the sidelines. What value can I bring? Well, you can bring a lot of value to a project just by participating! Tibor hasn’t had a huge response to his first project, so I’d like to ask if you have been analysing your stats of late please check out his project and see about submitting a late entry.

If you’d like to be involved check out the project guidelines for the next installment or contact Tibor at photonovice.net.

Here are the entries:

Now … on to the April Challenge!

Tart up your blog’s feed with some Flickr photos

Do you use Feedburner for your blog’s RSS feeds? I set up a Feedburner account when I first started Lilahpops but I hadn’t spent much time learning the ins-and-outs of it. A couple of days ago I decided to check my subscriber count and have a bit of a look around. I found this neat optimisation solution which lets you splice your Flickr photostream into your blog feed.

See the screenshot of my feed below. It’s quite easy to see which ones are my website posts and what is streaming from Flickr. As the focus of my website is photography I thought this was quite a neat trick:

Wanna try it?

This is a very simple process:

• 1. Login to your Feedburner account and select your feed link under Feed Title
• 2. Select the Optimize tab

Look down the left-hand column at the items under Services. There is a tick next to each service you have applied to your feed. In my feed you’ll see I have BrowserFriendly, SmartFeed and Photo Splicer working so far:

• 3. Select the Photo Splicer option
• 4. Choose Flickr from the Photo Service (Flickr, BuzzNet or Webshots are available)
• 5. Type in your Flickr ID … don’t know it? Pop over to BigHugeLabs and do a quick search on your username
• 6. Choose how many photos you want included in your feed (mine is currently set to 5)
• 7. Click Activate

which will change to:

• 8. Click Save and your done. You can de-activate your selection at any time.

These are the settings I used:

The update to my feed didn’t change immediately but it didn’t take very long either. Now you have a nice visual treat for your subscribers!

I have to thank Iain from The West Ring for asking me how I got my Flickr photos into my blog feed and giving me the idea for this post.

Have you got any other Feedburner tips? Let me know in the comments.

Related posts

• What my blog statistics reveal about you
• My Flickr collection is now organised
• Flickr is the key to my social photography experience

This is my entry in the Blog Statistics - Search Terms project

Tibor Radványi at photonovice.net is running a new project, calling for photographers (professional, beginner, or enthusiast) who run blogs/websites to reveal the search terms that are being used to reach their websites. What weird, wonderful, or even [audible gasp] photography-related terms are being used to find your website? I can only imagine the types of search terms Tibor is receiving to have created this project!

The project does raise a few interesting questions about you guys: how do you search the web? what are you looking for? do you find what you are looking for? more specifically, do you find what you are looking for on my website? Viewing statistics can be incredibly addictive, especially when a site is new and slowly gaining traffic. But what do they really mean? I decided to dig a little deeper than usual to find out. I will, however, focus on only the search terms for the purpose of the project.

What are you looking for?

I was quite surprised to see that the search terms in my blog stats are very consistent. Most of my readers are searching for iPhoto tips and information about the vintage camera, Voigtlander Vito BL. This is a good sign because:

• a) I have a few posts on these topics;
• b) I am writing content that you are interested in;
• c) we share a common interest in photography.

I discovered many variations on the following terms (I have linked back to the relevant posts/categories):

• “vintage camera“;
• “voigtlander bl“
• “voigtlander vito manual;
• “resize image iPhoto“;
• “iPhoto editing“;
• “special effects on iPhoto“.

Over and over, variations on these themes.

Any oddities?

As I mentioned, the search terms are very consistent (can’t wait to see your results, Tibor!). Apart from the visitor who was looking for “homemade pergolas” (I did mention a pergola in one post) which is not all that photography related.

My favourite search term is in French. Again, looking for iPhoto tips: “resizer une image dans iphoto”.

Oh, there were a couple of searches on my name…no, it wasn’t me ego surfing!

How do you search?

One thing I found interesting, other than consistency of subject, is how search terms are phrased. The majority of search terms are prefaced with “how to…”, such as “how to lower resolution in iphotos for email”; “how to add colour in iPhoto”. I found this curious at first, but on reflection, I believe I search the same way. After all the usual reason we search is to find out how to do something, right?

What do these searches say about you?

Well, in regard to all the iPhoto search terms, I can see I am in the company of fellow Mac users who enjoy editing photos and sharing them. And some vintage camera hobbyists, as well. Very cool! My recent introduction to GIMP, however, doesn’t reveal what platform you use in the search terms (ie Windows or Mac) but we are interested in the same things. So, please let me know in the comments what other posts you’d like to see here at Lilahpops.

If you are interested in participating in the project the deadline is 21 March 2008.

Related posts

• Results from the Shoot Yourself photo project