You must have noticed something new here?

The new elegant design of this blog is because of my decision to shift to one of the most powerful theme framework for WordPress – the Thesis.

This is just one of the new changes on this blog in a series of many which are coming very soon.

Though there has been a substantial drop in my site’s visitors owing to this new changes but I am ready for this.

The prime reason I change from my old theme (Lemon) to Thesis is that Lemon is no longer supported or developed by its creator. In fact he has even removed the page for this theme.

So from a stable old theme to a new ever growing theme framework ! This is my blog.

I am also looking for a new header which can truly reflect my style of writing here.

I am now a Thesis Developed License holder and my next venture is to start exploring this mesmerizing theme.

This is not a theme per s. It is a theme framework . It simply means that it has unlimited design options to create power websites (like these)!

Keep reading !

Hello everyone,

As you must be aware that the Indian Blogger.Com blog (the one you are reading right now) has a collection of useful articles on India, its life in general, its economy and other relevant Indian things.

This blog is basically a reflection of my thought on various things which happen in India – be it economy, the terrorist attacks, the cricket, movie or what not?

However, of late, I am finding myself extremely busy in my other offline and online activities which leave almost no time to read contents about India.

As such whenever I come here to write something, I get a big blank from my mind because it just can’t think as to what to write about India when, honestly, I, myself, am no so updated about latest happenings in India.

I believe that an honest reflection can only come by getting involved into the things.   When you are no longer in touch, you start loosing the edge over your subjects.

This is what I am facing right now. In my desperate attempts to establish, maintain and promote a collection of niche websites I own, I am finding it extremely difficult to write quality stuff here on this website. This has resulted into a sense of guilt inside me.

An extremely demanding offline job is also taking its toll my online activities.

As such I have two options with me:-

(1) Either to stop posting on this blog and let it be in a hibernation mode with a tiny hope that in a not very near future, may be I will be able to write India specific articles on this blog.

OR

(2) Till such time I find time to write my India specific posts, I change the topic of this blog and start writing on topics related to my other online activities so that this blog can survive. There are many other topics on which I can write without getting a guilt feeling of not knowing them well.

I am not decided yet. However, some friends have suggested that I should use the option (2) to let this blog survive instead of sending it in a long hibernation mode.

I will write more about it in my next post. Meanwhile I am open to all suggestions.

Hello all,

For the past one year, I have been able to just write a few posts on this blog. Yet the good thing is that I am still getting regular visitors for my some good written articles of past.

My project for which I stopped blogging, unfortunately, had failed miserably. Apart from monetary loss,  I lost thousand of productive hours and peace of mind.

In fact I also lost PageRank of this blog.

When I left blogging, this blog was having a healthy PageRank of 4.  Now it has come down to a  PR 2 Blog.

Well I read somewhere that :

” What you are left with is more important and valuable than what you have lost”

While trusting my faith on this great saying, I hereby start my new innings as a blogger here

So I am back. Permanently this time !!

This is for all those who read my blog and expect atlest some sort of fresh posting on regular intervals.

Presently, I am busy completing an online project relating to a new website I’ll be launching this year. As such my whole energy is being invested into this project and as a result I am not finding any time for reading or writing.

So there may be some delay in returning to a regular blog schedule.  Please bear with me if you can

I shall be back soon.

Eklavya

After taking a break of almost 22 days, I am here again to one of my favorite online activities – blogging. As mentioned in my earlier post, I had taken a break to proceed on the holy pilgrimage of Shri Sai Baba at Shirdi, Maharashtra. It was a long cherished wish  of my wife ( who is a ferver devotee of Sai Baba) to take our one year old son to Shirdi for the blessing of baba. So We proceeded on 16th morning for Manmad (the near by Rly Station to Shirdi) and reach there on 17t morning. Apart for a darshan at Shirdi, we also visited Shani Singnapur, Nasik (Tryambkeswar & Panchwati), Aurangabad (Ellora and Ajanta). We caught the return train from Jalgaon on 21st and reach Delhi on 22nd. I shall soon write a detailed post of journey.

During these 22 days, many events of national importance happened. India won 3 Medals at the Olympic (which includes its first ever individual Gold Medal), Parvej Musshraff resigned from the post of President of Pakistan, the Northern part of Bihar witnessed one of the worst and savaged floods of India ever, the Government announced 6th Pay Commission for its millions of employees and India finally broke the nuclear aparthied and was entered into the group of Nuclear Supplier Clubs without signing CTBT ot NPT (a great achievment by any standards).

I would surely liked to blog on these interesting issues. However, owing to some very busy personal work, I could not start my blogging activities early. I hope to cover these topics in my subsequent posts.

I also got an invitation from Indiblogger.in for a blogger meet which was held in Delhi yesterday. Though initially I planned to go there to mingle with fellow Indian (and especially Delhi/NCR) bloggers, I could not find the time for this meeting. Probably next time, I will attend this meeting.

As you can see this blog has very limited activities these days. I am facing time crunch that has almost crippled the availability of quality time . I am seriously thinking to try some sort of outsourcing to ease this time crunch. Meanwhile, I have also thought about the direction I should give to this blog. For this, I have decided to ask my readers what kind of topics they want to read on this blog? I can write on a number of topics such as technology, topics related to politics, economy, sports, society or movies etc.  I can also write exclusively on ‘make money online’ or tips for web designing, Search Engine Optimization, web site promotion, various web scripts , tips & tutorials for webmasters etc.

I request to kindly suggest me on which topic do you want me to write? Should I stick to one main topic or should I keep writing articles on as many diverse topics as possible. I think some suggestions from readers like you will help me decide the main theme of this blog on which I’ll write most.

After I wrote my full RSS feed post where I explain why & how you can ensure a full RSS feed for your blog, one of my friend told me that despite installing the full text feed plugin, his blog is still getting truncated at the point where he used <!––more––> tag. I got confused as to why it was happening. One reason that I found that it may be due to a cache issue and probably it’ll take some time to be full reflected in the RSS reader. However, on checking with another RSS reader, I still found his feed truncated.

So I searched Google for an answer..and found it

It’s very simple.

Just go to the Reading Option of your wordpress blog and in the Syndication feed option, choose ‘full text’.

See this screenshot :

Doing this will ensure a full RSS feed of your blog post.

I have also found a very effective video tutorial on this. Here is this video for all the newbies among you :

I hope you liked it.

If you are blogging, you must be aware of RSS. (If not read this). I have a list of my favorite blogs in my RSS reader and I read them regularly. However, it is a little annoying to see that many bloggers (probably unknowingly) allow only partial feed of their blog post in RSS reader. Though their main intention is to prompt the reader to actually visit their blogs (for seeing advertisement or whatever reason), it acts as a big turn off.

Take my case itself. Owing to lack of time, it is not possible for me to visit each of my favorite blogs separately in my browser. I prefer to read them in my reader so that I can go through them quickly and grasp all the relevant posts.

Man do I read them? No. I don’t read any post from start to finish unless of course it has some exceptionally unique content. I just scan most of the posts quickly to have a general idea of what is being written in these blogs.

So when I came across a post which is incomplete owing to partial feed, I prefer to ignore /pend it for future reading (i.e. for reading in spare time). And to tell you the truth I seldom or never have spare time.

The end result: I leave all the incomplete post.

Do you know that many of us blogger don’t know that the WordPress truncates your feed’s content anywhere you insert a <!––more––> tag ? This is particularly true for those bloggers who are still using WordPress 2.1 and have not upgraded their blog. So all of your RSS subscribers who read your blog in their RSS reader (like me) will only see a partial post and, in order to read your post completely, they will have to actually visit your blog in their browser.

Well many loyal readers will come to your blog. But if some of them are like me (hard pressed for time), they will simply postpone reading your post till they complete other posts. Simple.

In fact this blog was also a victim of this partial feed. When I saw my blog’s feed in the RSS reader, I realized that all my posts where I used the <!––more––> tag, had been truncated and were only partially visible in the RSS reader. It was a big embarrassment to find that my own blog was a victim of this partial feed syndrome.

So what is the solution? A very simple one really.

Upgrade your WordPress blog. It is said that the WordPress 2.5 will rectify this ‘more’ tag error and allow full feed. But it appears that WordPress 2.5 is yet to be released.(version 2.3.3 is the latest version till date). So here is the another solution which I am using myself on this blog.

Just install ‘Full Text Feed‘ plugin in your blog. Activating this plugin will ensure that your blog will display it’s full RSS feed in the RSS reader even if you have used the <!––more––> tag. I have become a huge fan of this plugin. Thanks a lot to Ronald Heft, Jr. of Cavemonkey50.com who developed this great plugin.

This plugin is a must have plugin.

Now open your RSS Reader and check whether your blog is displaying full RSS feed or not. If yes, great! If not, please understand that this is costing you visitors. Go and install the ‘Full Text Feed’ plugin. It will be a great help to your loyal readers J

If you have spent some time on Internet you must have heard about this three letters word : RSS. If you already don’t know about this useful tool for efficiently browsing the web, here is a simple introductory article which will explain everything you need to know about RSS .

OK let’s start !

What is RSS anyway ?

RSS is an acronym for : Really Simple Syndication

It is also known as : Rich Site Summary

Some people also called it : Really Simple Subscribing.

In simplest terms,

“RSS is a simple and efficient way to keep in touch with a website without actually visiting it “

Yes. To keep in touch without actually visiting !

Now what does that mean ?

Let us understand it by an example.

Suppose you are planning to set up a small garden in your house and you are in need of good information on gardening. You search the Internet for some good websites on gardening and come across a nice website with excellent contents on gardening. You find that this website has a huge collection of Gardening tips such as : How to choose the best saplings, best gardening tools, places to buy good composts, water schedule in different seasons and precautions in Gardening etc.

You realize that this informative website is filled up with so much useful information on gardening that it is impossible for you to read all the information in one sitting. So what will you do?

If you are web savvy, you will simply add the site to your favorite folder. You will bookmark the site so that you can read it later whenever you want.

Adding a website to your Favorite (in Internet Explorer) or Bookmark (in Mozilla Firefox) folder is the most preferred method to revisit a website for future reference.

However, this excellent method has some flaws in it. Extending the same example of Gardening tips websites, suppose, instead of just one website, you came across five or six excellent websites on gardening and you want to read all of them. The only solution is to add all these websites in your favorite folder so that you can select and read these websites one by one from your browser’s favorite folder. Right?

However, as you read these websites on gardening, you will find that many of these websites keep adding new articles and tips about gardening on regular basis. So in order to keep in touch with all the latest additions on these websites, you will have to visit them regularly through your favorite folder.

However, as you regularly visit these websites, you’ll also find that not all of them get updated daily. Most of them follow an infrequent updating schedule; some are updated in 2-3 days, some in 4-5 days and some on weekly/monthly basis. As all these websites are updated by their owners depending upon their own convenience, it is not possible to know exactly when a site will be updated. So you are left with no choice but to check these websites daily by actually visiting them in your browser.

Well, if you are passionate about Gardening and have lots of free time, you can afford to actually visit these important websites on Gardening on daily basis. However, practically this approach is not always possible.

What if, in addition to Gardening, you are also passionate about Home Decoration, Fishing and Muscle-Building? Can you really afford to visit all your favorites websites on Gardening, Home Decoration, Fishing & Muscle Building daily and keep track of their latest updates? Though it is always possible to do this, practical realities of life do not allow so much browsing time to most of us. We all are busy in our lives and, owing to time constraints, it is not possible to keep a track of all our favorite websites on daily basis by actually visiting them in our browser.

So what is the solution?

One solution is to subscribe to the newsletters of these websites. You must be aware that many websites publish a weekly e-zine or newsletter that contains a summary of all the latest updates made on the website .

This newsletter is sent to the subscribers on daily/weekly basis. This newsletter can be subscribed by readers using an opt-in form and every subscriber gets a copy of the newsletter in his email. So if you subscribe to the newsletter of the websites of your choice related to Gardening, Home Decoration, Fishing & Muscle Building, you can be in touch with the latest updates on these websites through their newsletter. This method is much better than daily visiting the websites using the favorite folder of your browser. As you need to check only your inbox, this results in a quick reading of all the updates.

Subscribing to newsletters/e-zines of your favorite websites is an excellent way to keep abreast with the latest updates on them. However, this method also has some flaws which can make it a bit complicated & annoying in the long run.

First of all you have to disclose your email address to the website owners for subscribing to their list. Though in a majority of the cases, the email is not disclosed to third parties, you never know when and how your email can reach to spammers which may flood your inbox with shit. The element of email misuse is always there when subscribing to a newsletter.

Secondly, as you keep subscribing to newsletters of your favorite websites, slowly you will realize that everyday your inbox is getting filled up with emails from these websites and it is taking a substantial part of your time to segregate the mails that really matters. If you are a professional and work online, a constant flood of regular emails even from your favorite websites will soon starts irritating you. Further, the task of opening every email, reading it, deleting it or shifting it to another folder will be a time consuming process in itself. If you subscribe to a list of more than 10 newsletters, you will always be involved in managing your emails. Further, if you take a break from your online activity for some time (say to spend your vacation), you should be ready to find an overfilled inbox of unread emails when you return.

In short, subscribing to newsletters of your favorite websites can also become an unmanageable task.

So is there any solution to be in touch with your favorite websites in an efficient and time-saving manner ?

Here comes the RSS.

The solution to the problems being faced by regular readers of a website in keeping abreast with its latest activities lies in a powerful technical facility known as RSS.

What actually happens in RSS is that whenever a website updates itself by means of producing an article/news item, it simultaneously produces a document that contains in itself the summary of all the updates made on the website. This document is in the form of an XML document. The ‘XML’ is a specialized language of web (similar to HTML language) which can be accessed by specialized softwares (knows as RSS Readers) that reproduce it in a readable language for the end user. The summary of the updates written on the XML document is known as a ‘Feed’. This XML document usually has an .xml extension.

So whenever somebody wants to keep in touch with the latest updates being made on a website he simply subscribed to its RSS feed. Subscribing to an RSS feed is as simple as copy & paste. You just need to copy the address of the RSS feed of your favorite website in your RSS reader. Now whenever you want to know whether any new updates has been made on a website, you only need to check it’s RSS feed in your RSS reader. If there have been any update, the same will be reflected in the feed. Simple

This way you can easily know whether a website/blog is being updated or not without actually visiting it.

RSS has some very significant advantages over the other two methods of keeping in touch with a website (i.e adding a site in the favorite folder or subscribing to its newsletter). You don’t have to save the file in your browser’s favorite folder and visit it regularly to check any new updates. As and when the site is updated, you can read it in the RSS reader. Further, you don’t have to disclose your email address to subscribe to the ezine of the site/blog. You only need to add the address of the RSS feed in your RSS reader. This ensures that you’ll never need to worry about receiving unsolicited mails in your inbox.

Let me elaborate now a bit on how to use an RSS reader. As I already explained above, an RSS Reader is a specialized software which interprets the RSS feed (written in XML language) and present it in a readable form to end user. Though there have been many online/offline RSS reader available, one of the best RSS readers is Google Reader which is fast, free and extremely reliable. There is nothing to download as the Google Reader is online. You only need a free Google account to use their reader. Just go to Google.com/reader, login into your account and add your favorite feeds. After adding the RSS feed, you will be able to read them in the reader easily. They will be listed in the form of a list just like emails in your inbox.

Alternatively here are two excellent offline RSS software which you can download and installed in your computer :

Alnera Feed Buster ( Paid $19.95)

RSS Reader (Free)

Currently a majority of all websites/blogs are coming up with their RSS feeds. If a website is not publishing its RSS feed, by all yardsticks, it is going to be obsolete very soon as RSS is slowly taking a center stage in the ways people surf the net. Everyday more and more are people are choosing RSS as their preferred way of surfing the net. And why not ? It is such a great time saver and helps us browse so many websites so quickly.

Almost all the blogging platforms of today (like WordPress, Movable Type etc) have an inbuilt feature of creating an RSS feed automatically every time the blog is updated. So the blogger does not require to create an RSS feed separately for his blog. He only needs to keep blogging as always and the feed will be created on its own.

How to find the address of any RSS feed ?

If you want to subscribe to the RSS feed of a blog, look for the following orange icon :

This orange icon has become the standard symbol of RSS and whenever someone needs to subscribe to the RSS feed of a blog/website, he only need to click on this icon to find the feed address.

For your kind information the RSS feed of this blog is :

http://feeds.feedburner.com/theindianblogger

Initially, reading various websites through their RSS feed in an RSS reader may appear a little odd to you. However, as your regularly use your reader, you’ll find that it is the fastest and the easiest method to keep in touch with your favorite websites/blogs. In our ever increasing busy life, RSS is a big time saver. If you are a heavy net surfer, you’ll soon be addicted to your reader.

So here was my attempt to explain the concept of RSS in a simple language. I think this is all you should know to have a general idea of what RSS is all about. I have refrained from explaining the technical details of RSS as I don’t think you need to know every internal part of a Car to drive it.

I would love to have your suggestions/comments on this explanation. If there is anything which needs more explanation or something which I have not covered here, feel free to mention that in your comments.

Hi friends,

You must have noticed that site has changed and except for basic theme, all the designing & images have disappeared. Actually  I am in the process of shifting my blog to a new host. All the files will be restored soon.

Till then kindly cooperate