(For more resources on WordPress see here.)

Feedburner Feedsmith

By Steve Smith & Feedburner (http://feedburner.com/)

• Why it’s awesome: Never having to worry about nefarious uses of your RSS feeds
• Why it was picked: Built by the Google crew at Feedburner
• Manual Install URL: http://www.google.com/support/feedburner/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=78483
• Automatic Install search term: Not available
• Geek level: Webmaster
• Configuration location: Settings | Feedburner
• Used in: Feeds

Many times, hosting your own RSS feed can wreak havoc on your server without you ever knowing it. Due to RSS’s out-of-sight-out-of-mind style, you often forget about it completely. Using Google’s Feedburner is one way to ensure that a swarm of subscribers won’t bring your server to a crawl. Feedburner acts like a conduit to your RSS feed by delivering the feeds from Google’s servers instead of your own.

Not only does Feedburner offload your server traffic, it also gives you an amazing view of what people are doing with your feed. The stats alone are worth signing up.

Burning your feed

Submitting your feed to Google will take only a few minutes, but the rewards are long lasting.

Create a Google account

You will need to have a Google account to leverage Feedburner. If you do not already have an account with Google, you can sign up at https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount

Verify your blog’s feed URL

Each WordPress blog comes with RSS feeds enabled. To access your feed, go to http://yourdomain.com/feed/

Burn your feed

Now we must set up a new feed to burn by visiting http://feedburner.google.com and adding our feed to the Burn a feed right this instant input box.

Name your feed

Once you have added your feed, you will need to name the feed and create a URL to use it. Your feed title should be something descriptive about your blog, as this is what all of your RSS subscribers will see as the title of your blog.

Configuring WP-Feedburner

Now that you have your feed hosted on Google, we can finish the process of setting up WP-Feedburner. WP-Feedburner’s configuration is located in Settings | WP Feedburner.

Your feed should now be officially set up to redirect to your Feedburner feed. To make sure everything is working properly, visit http://yourdomain.com/feed/ and check that the URL gets redirected automatically to the Feedburner URL that you set up earlier.

SendIt

By Giuseppe Surace (http://www.giuseppesurace.com/)

• Why it’s awesome: Send e-mail campaigns for free
• Why it was picked: Easy to set up and free

WARNING: This plugin is still in the beta stage, but the majority of the functionality works great.

• Manual Install URL: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sendit/
• Automatic Install search term: SendIt
• Geek level: WP Ninja
• Configuration location: Top Navigation Newsletter|
• Used in: Newsletters

SendIt has more potential to change the way you communicate with your readers than any other plugin mentioned in this book. SendIt was originally written in Italian, and every once in a while, you will stumble on to a few words that are yet to be translated. However, besides the occasional Italian noun, SendIt is very straightforward and makes running multiple newsletters as easy as managing your blog.

SendIt overview

Unlike other plugins, SendIt is a fairly large plugin with multiple configuration pages and areas to set up, tweak, and perfect.

• Newsletter: Compose and send your newsletters from the Newsletter section
• Manage subscribers: Add and remove e-mail addresses from a given newsletter
• SMTP settings: If you are planning on using SendIt to send to more than 600 subscribers, you might want to consider setting up an external SMTP server for sending your mail. Otherwise, you can leave this section alone
• Newsletter settings: Find, delete, and edit newsletters
• Import emails from comments: Quickly build e-mail lists from everyone who has commented on different blog posts
• Import emails from WP Users: Quickly build e-mail lists from other writers, users, and administrators on your blog

Creating your first newsletter

For the purpose of this example, we will create a Geek Newsletter for our blog readers to subscribe to.

1. Start by visiting Newsletter | Newsletter Settings.
2. Click Create New List.
3. A new list will automatically be added to your Available Lists grid.
4. Select Edit from the newly created list.
5. Define the From e-mail address, newsletter name, and the header and footer for this newsletter template. The header and footer will automatically be applied for each e-mail you send from this mailing list.
6. Click Save.