WPTD: Google Reader as a Blogroll

You may or may not use Google Reader as your primary or secondary RSS reader, but I for one do use it.

I use it as a secondary reader though, it has particular feeds I read in it.

So this plugin lets you port over the subscriptions within Google Reader and displays them as a blogroll on your site. This plugin is a widget.

It’s a simple idea, but great execution and a well done plugin.

WordPress Tip: Verifying Your WordPress.com Blog to Google Webmaster Tools

How can you verify your WordPress.com blog with Google Webmaster Tools?

Here are the steps required to make it happen:

1. Add your site, example.wordpress.com, to your Google Webmaster Tools account.
2. Choose the “upload an HTML file” option
3. Write a new page (Note: Not a post, but a page)
4. Name the page with the code that Google Webmaster Tools has provided for you to call the filename on your site. For example, google55z75fb56f079d62b.html or something along those lines — whatever the page displays to you.
5. Next, click publish.
6. Something to note, the page’s permalink will automaticaly strip out the .html and add a trailing slash, but that’s ok! Google’s spider will still find it.
7. Click “verify” and Google will confirm that your file has successfully been verified

Note: if you have your pages being displayed in your theme and the google file is being displayed as a page, you have this option. Since Google rarely verifies your file to see if it’s still there, you can set it to draft or private so it’s not public. Then, if you need to verify it with Google again, simply re-publish the page and Google will verify it as yours.

If you have any questions, please feel free to post a comment about it.