New to Community - Techie Stuff

Hi, I'm new here and I'm just trying to make sense of a few things. I'm not sure if this is the right place to post but I keep going around in a loop

1) Can I pull my blogs RSS feed in anywhere to my profile.  It would make a lot of things easier.  

2) Is thee a way to customize the profile in any way

3) I run a small IT web student network and it's built on NING software, I'm curious what this is built on so I can find out more info on using it effectively.

4) There is an API key, where can I use this and what apps are available.

5).  Often when I click on various hyperlinks, it doesn't change pages.  Is that normal here.

Thanks kindly

Tony Hogan

Re: New to Community - Techie Stuff

Hi Tony,

I can't help you with the tech stuff, but you might get a quicker response if you
post your questions to Gaia Support

The team is off for the weekend, so if someone doesn't respond tomorrow,
you should get a proper response on Monday.

You can customize your profile page by going to UPDATE just below
your name in the left column.

Here are some links you might find helpful too.

Welcome to Gaia! It's nice to have you with us.

Ladybear

Re: New to Community - Techie Stuff

Thanks Ladybear  (Ladybear, it's quite a funny name, it made me smile)

Re: New to Community - Techie Stuff

I am looking forward to more answers.  These are a couple of web tools I use:
Every time you post something to your blog, you should go to www.pingomatic.com and send a “ping” (a notification) to all the blog search engines, which is what brings traffic to your blog to read your new article or post. Writing a regular blog post and then pinging the search engines is a great way to get out promotion, and it’s free.

Compile a list of email addresses of customers and prospects, and compile an email newsletter to them. Get on one of the online email services like Aweber.com and they have templates for HTML newsletters that you can use that look great. Once again, ask them for more business, ask them for referrals, comment on something in your industry, give some tips, remind them that you exist.

Get on Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn. Post updates on what you are doing with your business. These don’t have to be “Buy my new _____ now, click here” type messages, but can be more subtle, like “I am consulting with a new client today on how to expand his business.” On most of these sites it is wise to also sprinkle in some personal stuff, such as “Just got back from a great weekend in _______.” 

Observe what other people do on the site. Of course it also helps on these sites to have lots of friends or followers, so you have to spend some time developing that too.

Re: New to Community - Techie Stuff

This is a great post KES.  I actually teach Mailchimp as part of an IT course, it's similar to Aweber.  Yes I'm familiar withy Pimgomatic
I find Limkedin is good for more professional sort of stuff, Blogcatalog is powerful.  And I never said this, but in the past I've shouted other people in their shout boxes (set to public) and added a url and it has been spidered by google.  Or here's a cool idea, optimizing the side bar in a blogger blog, it will staty in the search engines forever.
cool

Re: New to Community - Techie Stuff

Thanks Kathy, simple but powerful stuff that even I might be able to cope with!! LOL!!!

Gratefully,
OM Bastet

Re: New to Community - Techie Stuff

~KES! This is such a great post in GN's New to Gaia! room! Thank you for the links.

Re: New to Community - Techie Stuff

it has been spidered by google.  Or here's a cool idea, optimizing the side bar in a blogger blog


Would you be willing to explain both those verbs??


Learning curve junkie,
OM Bastet

Re: New to Community - Techie Stuff

I have heard that you can't optimize a blogger side, but I don't believe anything I hear.  The way to test how your templates are cached by google is to test with a new template, minimal content.  It's really quite simple.  Add a tiny bit of content in your profile, a tiny bit of content in the side bar, get it into the search engines as quick as possible by posting the links into some sites the google rates highly such as Wordpress Blogs, (make sure you TAG your Wordpress properly), Digg, Stumble etc 
When it is spidered by google, check what it is reading by looking at what the search results.  Google this ”acoustic guitar blog”, I've updated it only a couple of times in a year and it still maintains its presence.

As for the Blogcatalog thing, … exactly as I've already said.  Up until recently, google would spider the shoutboxes (message boxes).  I don't want to start a fashion, I have a good relationship with Blogcatalog, they are the absolute best social network on the web for general stuff.

Re: New to Community - Techie Stuff

Tony,

It's a the bottom of your settings page:

API Key

Use your API key along with your email address to access personalized RSS feeds, data portability and other advanced features on Gaia. If you don't know what those things are, you probably won't need this key. But here it is in case you do!

Now to learn what that means ;-)

Re: New to Community - Techie Stuff

Tony! I'm sorry for the delay; let me try and answer these. :)

1) No, unfortunately we don't have the ability to link up external feeds to Gaia blogs. (It's partially intentional, as Gaia really is meant to be a community of engagement and connection, and entries that originate outside the site don't foster that as easily. That said, it's definitely something we've considered, so thank you for the nudge.)

2) No, and although some people do add in images or links, we're a little more facebook-y than MySpace. We're hoping to have drag and drop widgets at some point, though, just so people can arrange their profiles to their liking.

3) Gaia is built on Gaia software. The whole site was hand-coded by our own small (and wonderful!) team of Ruby-on-Rails developers, so there's nothing else like it in the world. Your best bet for effective use is exploration, asking questions here, and taking advantage of the FAQ and support areas.

4) No API key (yet?)

5) I don't think it's normal, but I'm not sure quite what you're asking. Do you have an example? It's true that some of our links have 'inpage' options–they'll expand a form or act more as #anchors. Does that help?

Please let me know if I can answer more questions. I'm glad you've joined us and I'm hoping you'll stick around to help us improve. :)

Re: New to Community - Techie Stuff

thanks for your response, Tony!!

Blessings, OM Bastet