Drupal and the Blogging Starter Checklist, Part 2

Continued from last time: a look at Rajesh Setty's Blogging Starter Checklist, with a particular eye toward applying its advice to blogging on a Drupal site.

Last episode hit items in the Checklist's first two short sublists. This time, I start tackling the longer and richer "Registries and Directories" sublist. More than last time, it looks like there'll be several items the beginner blogger may not know much about – beginning with me, who's looking at the list with some trepidation. Well, whatever I don't know, it's now time to learn.

Registries and Directories

1. Get a creative commons license for your blog content

Sounds like a good idea! Have I done this? Nope.

If you're a Drupalite like me, you approach every task with a rousing battle cry: "uh, is there a module to do this for me?" That means a quick search on the page http://drupal.org/project/Modules/name .

In this case, it looks like we've got a module called Creative Commons!

http://drupal.org/project/creativecommons

Alas, it's for 4.7, and I have no 4.7 site running to test it. Fortunately, there's a second module, Creative Commons Lite, available for 5.x.

http://drupal.org/project/creativecommons_lite

Download module. Check Read Me. Hmm, looks like it creates a block; fine. Install. Enable. Follow instructions.

And when all is said and done, you should see CC license info to the lower left. Mm, feels democratic!

2. Get a feedburner account and direct feeds through feedburner

Wow, another ready-made module.

http://drupal.org/project/feedburner

Not much in the way of instructions. Install, enable, check Administer.

I'm at a loss here. Seems I need to have a Feedburner account. Who what how huh? I don't know. Let's go check it out...

Okay, I have an account now, and it looks like I can add my Drupalace feed URL to my new Feedburner account, and track my RSS subscribers via the Feedburner website... But is that the point of this all? My module created a FeedBurner admin page, which lets me list my Feed URIs and then "Add Feed Redirect"... but what am I supposed to do here? Anyone got a clue for me?

3. Implement subscription chiclets

Got it! See the "Subscribe" buttons in my left sidebar. That's all courtesy of the FeedButtons module.

http://drupal.org/project/feedbuttons

If you're not be-chicleted, get thee to the module.

Now, the FeedBurner site says something about replacing all my chiclets with a single "do all" button, but I think I'll wait to comprehend the whole FeedBurner thing before playing with that.

4. Claim your blog on technorati

Okay, another service to sign up for. Alas, my attempts to join return only errors when I try to submit a sign-up. Trouble on the technorati server today? I'll try again soon.

In the meantime, I see there's a nice-looking Technorati module to let me add technorati tags to my content.

http://drupal.org/project/technorati

Once I've got this taken care of, I can check out the Technorati Link Count Widget.

http://drupal.org/project/tlc

But before doing any more, I'll admit to confusion again. Technorati is new to me. I've checked out the technorati site before, and haven't found the key item: where's the page describing what technorati is and what it's for? Perhaps the site assumes everyone knows these things?

Can anyone tell me (and other readers): what do I want out of technorati?

Next time

That takes me through... let's see, four out of 25 items. Next time, it's on to item #5 and on – and perhaps with your help, Dear Reader, I'll have the Feedburner and technocrati functions properly set up.