Duncan Riley> The debate on RSS advertising is emerging again following recent trials by Google Adsense at entering the RSS advertising market, most notable the testing currently taking place across Jason Calacanis’ WeblogsInc Network.

Blog God Dave Winer stands in one corner, arguing against advertising in RSS feed on the basis that it spoils there usability and appearance, writing that “Basically it’s bad economics to spoil a good thing for a couple of incremental bucks today, for zero total bucks later. I get branded a “utopian” for this, which is the way it goes.”

In the other corner Jason Calacanis of WeblogsInc argues that the ability to display RSS ads allows bloggers and content providers the ability to provide free full feeds, where as previously there was a reluctance to do so, and that the inclusion of the ads also restrict the growing practice of content stealing using RSS feeds.
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Darren Rowse at Problogger has a great post on something that most of us don’t normally give much thought to, and that’s getting some more juice from the old material.

His tips include Related Articles, Deep linking within posts and Site Maps and Highlighting Categories. The Problogger site itself features highlighted posts in the top left corner which Darren has previously written drive a lot of multiple page views. Innovative ways of keeping visitors.

Duncan Riley> One of the hardest things in entering into the DIY blogging sector (MT, WordPress etc) is finding a web host that meets your expectations and budget.

There are literally thousands upon thousands of hosts offering millions of packages, and the worst thing is that there is no easy way of bench marking what one host offers to another: they all speak in their own terminology and provide a variety of information.
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One of the most frustrating things when considering installing new blogware is literally the fear of the unknown, basically, despite the different things written about one piece of blogware or another, until you actually get to play with the blogware itself, you have no real idea what your getting yourself into.

In the old days an installation was the only way to pursue the matter, but I’ve recently discovered a great site that runs demo versions of blogware and other content management systems (many of which also do blogging) so that you can literally try them out before you install.

OpenSourceCMS has by way of explanation: “This site was created with one goal in mind. To give you the opportunity to “try out” some of the best php/mysql based free and open source software systems in the world. You are welcome to be the administrator of any site here, allowing you to decide which system best suits your needs.” And that is exactly what its good for. There seems to be a fairly strong user community as well with a rich variety of comments and rating provided on the various offerings that can also serve as a guide when your considering your next blog install.

Duncan Riley> Welcome to guides, the new category here on The Blog Herald that will now include all of the good stuff: tips, advice and the highlighting of the people and places to help you with your blogging. Sure, there’s been plenty of this before, but its normally gone under the comment category. Comment will now be exclusively for rants and opinion pieces, whilst guides will be where you can find some help and guidance in the wide world of blogging. I’ll also be looking at going back over some old posting to re-categorise them as well to make them easier to find.