SigFeeder is a fun new way to promote your blog. SigFeeder takes the titles of the most recent entries in your blog and automatically turns them into an image. You have the ability to customize the appearance of that image. You can do whatever you want with the image, but the intention is that you put them in your signature on your favorite web forums so that others reading those forums can see what you're blogging about. However, you can also put the image in just about any web page you can edit, including your MySpace® page. As a SigFeeder image is dynamic and automatically updates to show the most recent things you're blogging about, it will be much more interesting to potential visitors than a static, textual "Check out my blog!" link.

The foundation of SigFeeder's function is a technology called RSS. (Technically-minded folks, know that SigFeeder will work with Atom feeds too, but for the sake of simplicity, let me stick to one term throughout this article.) Basically, RSS makes it easy for one web site (such as your blog) to tell other programs and web sites (such as SigFeeder) about changes that have been made (such as new blog entries). If your blog supports RSS, as most blogs do, then SigFeeder can periodically access your blog's RSS "feed" to see what the most recent posts are. It then uses that data to create an image; this is your "SigFeed." SigFeeder will also give you the code which will allow you to place the image in your signature on whatever web forums you browse. When someone sees your SigFeed and clicks on it, they will be taken to your blog.

You can read more about RSS at this Wikipedia article.

Probably. SigFeeder should work with any blog that provides an RSS (or Atom) feed. Almost all major blog hosting services, such as Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad and Xanga, provide RSS feeds for the blogs they host. (A notable exception is MySpace; their blogging tool does not provide an RSS feed, unfortunately. However, you can host your blog with another service, then place your SigFeed on your MySpace page.) In addition, all common host-it-yourself blogging scripts, such as Movable Type, WordPress and Serendipity, also provide RSS feeds. (If you're using one of these scripts, you may need to activate feeds in the script's configuration settings. See documentation relevant to the script for more information.)

If you're unsure if your blog has an RSS feed, you can have SigFeeder take a look at your blog and see if it can find one automatically. Just enter the address to the front page of your blog and click "Find Feed."

When you configure up your SigFeed, you can choose between two update methods; Scheduled Updates and Ping Updates.

If you choose Scheduled Updates, SigFeeder will check your blog's RSS feed every six hours. If it sees updated content in your feed, it will update your SigFeed. This is the simpler update method, but it has the problem that your SigFeed may not update until up to six hours after your most recent post.

If you choose Ping Updates, SigFeeder will check your blog's RSS feed after a certain web address is accessed, or "pinged." This "ping address" will be specific to your SigFeed and will be given to you when you choose Ping Updates. Some blog scripts can be configured to automatically ping an address when a post is made, but the initial configuration may be a little difficult. To know more about how Ping Updates can be set up, see the Ping Updates help article.

Want to know more about SigFeeder? Check out the Frequently Asked Questions page. If you're ready to get started with SigFeeder, sign up now!