BlogMunch

Tinker here and there…and some RSS troubleshooting

The first thing I do when I came back to BlogMunch is, of course, tinker with the theme. First I upgrade to WP 2.3.3 (Fantastico is still behind times and too lazy to switch to Simple Script). Then I switch to a simpler theme that you are seeing now, Codename “Statement”. Redoable is really a high maintenance theme and also quite a slow theme.

Disable some of the plugins that I am not interested anymore, like Adsense-Deluxe+, Extended Live Archives and Gregarious.

Write out yesterday’s post and publish it.

Here’s the thing about changing to a new theme. There are snippets of code you need to remember to add in. Like FeedFlare code, Goggle Analytics code and Similar/Related Post php callup. Not only do you need to remember to put all these code back, also you have to remember where to put them. I wonder how some blogs can change theme every month or so.

Troubleshooting begins…

That’s when I went back to my Google reader to see if my new post came up so that I can check everything is working properly. Nope, no new post. I then subscribe to the blog original feed at http://blogmunch.com/feed to see if it work. No luck there too. So both the feedburner and blog feed doesn’t work.

Log into feedburner to check feed status. Apparently, I have an error within the feed.

Source: http://blogmunch.com/rss2

   1. 
   2. <br />
   3. <b>Warning</b>:  Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/blogmunc/public_html/wp-content/plugins/illacrimo/functions.php:24) in <b>/home/blogmunc/public_html/wp-includes/feed-rss2.php</b> on line <b>2</b><br />

There are three extra lines on the feed xml file. Send my feed through the Feed Validator and confirm this error.

The first thing I do is to delete the illacrimo theme that might be causing the error. No luck there.

Then I download all my WP files through ftp to find the feed file so that I can delete these three lines. Not right either.

Search about this error on Google. Someone reported that to solve this error, you need to delete all extraous spaces before <?php and after?>.All my php files seems fine.

The answer is actually staring in my face. If you read carefully, the problems lies in the plugin section. I only though illacrimo as a theme and didn’t know it adds some plugin too.

Well, after that it si quite simple. I delete everything about illacrimo in the plugin and all my feeds works fine now.

This teaches me not to overthink things sometimes. Keep.It.Simple.Stupid. KISS

3 mistakes I WANT to make as a beginner blogger

There are dozens of postings about blogging mistakes to avoid when starting a blog. I have made quite a number of them especially on content writing. But I believe some mistakes needs to be made. The experience you earn will let you understand each topic better and imprint them permanently in your mind.

Not moving to a self hosted server
Or this could be translated as using a free host account like Blogger. I am quite surprised that one of the top mistakes various bloggers say they made when they start blogging is not moving to a self hosted server. I start this blog on Blogger. It takes so little time to set up and create your first post. I understand that if you are serious about blogging, eventually you should move to your own domain and paid hosting. But between thinking up ideas, creating contents, social networking, template meddling, there are just too much for a beginner to handle. I would suggest staying in free hosting for at least 3 months to learn the ropes, then decided if you want to go for paid hosting.

Spending too much time with blog templates
I spend a lot of time at the start meddling with my template. Its really fulfilling if you have only have basic HTML knowledge and want to learn more. You learn how to insert pictures and align to wrap around your text. You learn how to add social networking buttons like Digg, stumbleupon to your page template. All these I learn while meddling with my template.

Monetizing the blog from the start
I believe in if you want to do something, do it right from the start. Yes, you will “frighten” away some of your potential readers who are adverse to ads on a blog. But you are going to turn away more of your subscribers if you add in ads in the future. When you do it right from the beginning, any subscribers will know what they are in for and avoid further misunderstanding in the future. Earning some petty cash right from the start doesn’t hurt either.

To read more about mistakes by bloggers, here is a list compiled by DailyBlogTips.com.

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