Both of these services still have their quirks, but such is the case with most things in life (and on the web) that are free. Still, i have been using them both for a few days now and together they have already proved to be quite useful. Here’s why..

I’ll start with Montastic, since it’s key feature is simplicity and ease of use.

1. after signup, you just need to click on the link that says: “Add a Web Server to Monitor”
2. then enter a URL to begin monitoring that web server (it takes a few seconds to start working)
3. a green “computer icon” means your server is online (red means offline)
4. optionally, set a “name” for this URL to make it easier for you to identify

that’s it. everything has a nice, clean ajaxy feel. the site is fast and relatively easy to navigate.
you can also get some extra details, like “last monitored” and “status change” by clicking on the “info” link next to the icon for the server you’re monitoring.

both of these services have an email notification system. but, so far, my experience has been that only this one (montastic) actually works. a recent server outage (not this site) proved that for me today. Both of these services also offer alerts in the form of feeds that seemed to work fine.

3 features that make this service unique:

1. they offer a yahoo widget that reports the status of your servers in real-time, right on your desktop
2. the offer a netvibes module which is slick as a brick (it’s not too pretty by it works great)
3. they offer: “the green page” (you’re totally going to have to see this page for yourself to understand)

On to Mon.itor.us – which is a slightly more complex service, allowing for a flood of potential awesomeness and quite a few annoyances as well. Basically, my biggest problem with this service so far is: “It’s Flaky”. By that, i mean, it’s plagued with all the same bugs and buggers that PageFlakes has, even burdoned by the same ajax desktop interface – it seems. Without going into too much detail (ie: constant page refreshes and a login that will never remember you), this would be another example of one of the reasons that i have been a strong supporter of Netvibes for so long.

That being said, Mon.itor.us has a lot of already working features that come packed in with it’s service.

From their site (and because i’m sometimes lazy), here are the ones that stood out the most for me:

• Site performance archive
• Inline site previews
• Personalized pages and tabbed views
• Drag and drop interactive interface
• Todo tasks with notification and ability to add notes
• Support these protocols for testing: http, https, ftp, smtp, pop3, and ping.
• Daily/weekly/monthly uptime reports and statistics

And in case that wasn’t enough for you.. here’s a few more things that i noticed mon.itor.us can do that wasn’t already mentioned in the previous list. These are the real clinchers for me.

6 more features that make this service unique:

1. there’s a cool Google Gadget for this service out there somewhere
2. you can tag each URL / server you are monitoring and then organize / view them by groups
3. you can switch between real-time table, bar chart, and line chart views.
4. view stats for each protocol, snapshots of all your servers
5. view from three seperate geographical locations (US, DE, AT)
6. there’s some javascript code that goes along with the google gadget that will let you put your “snapshot” on virtually any web page

All in all, i would say that it’s a little harder to setup each URL with mon.itor.us, when compared to montastic. But once you get all your servers setup for monitoring, there’s a lot more you can do with them too.

Still, as i mentioned earlier, i was quite pleased with both of these services and will continue to test each one more thoroughly in the coming months.

i wanted to generate an OPML file based on all the different types of feeds offered with the default WordPress installation. that is, every WP site has a “main” site feed (in rdf, rss, and atom), but there are also category (and subcategory) feeds, as well as feeds for each author. There are even feeds for tags if you use the UTW plugin but i won’t get into that now.

i guess i was originally inspired by the relatively new service offered by Grazr. Add to that the cool things you can do with OPMLBuilder and the awesome potential of Share your OPML..

and well, i got to thinking (more like scheming).

hmm, the one thing that i couldn’t seem to figure out was why there didn’t seem to be a way to synchronize the feeds in your OPML file and thus ensure that it is always kept up to date. this would make it more useful to me, but i suspect it would be a lot more useful to others too – who in a shared environment (like on Share your OPML) – aren’t necessarily going to know when you add or remove feeds from this your file. essentially, i wanted to be able to create an OPML file, on-the-fly, based on WordPress categorization that would stay current even after i’ve added or deleted categories.

To do this:

• i created a new WP Template file and called it opml.php
• i used this new template file to create a WordPress “Page” called opml (you don’t need to put any text in this page just use the OPML Template file (opml.php) instead of the Default Template page and you’re good to go)

What it does:

• queries the wpdb for all your WP categories (minus any empty categories – ie: ones without posts)
• excludes any additional categories that you specify (“Uncategorized” is excluded by default)
• creates a “live” OPML file (actually it’s a URL) based on all your site’s categories but you can easily click on “view source” and copy/paste that code into a local text file (save it as filename.opml)

What you can do with this file:

• import the OPML into your favorite feedreader (that supports URL imports)
• create a local OPML file (as described earlier) and import it into your favorite feedreader (that supports OPML file uploads)
• add your OPML to a directory like Share your OPML ( http://share.opml.org/ )
• use your OPML to browse your site with Grazr

How to get it all working:

1. download the new template file from here [ opml.phps ] (right-click and choose “Save Link As..” or “Save Target As..”)
2. rename opml.phps to opml.php and drop it in your template directory
3. optionally edit the template file to manually add more categories to the exclude list* (other than the default “Uncategorized”)
4. create your new WP Page and call it “opml” (you can call it anything but in this case the OPML URL would be http://www.yourdomain.com/opml/)
5. make sure that permalinks are turned on (otherwise i doubt any of this will work)
6. try it out in your feedreader, on Share your OPML, or with Grazr

* the exclude list is just a list of category IDs you don’t want to display and formatted as:
$opmlcatid == ‘1′ || $opmlcatid == ‘2′ || $opmlcatid == ‘3′ || and so on..

Examples:

• you can see it all in action on the Indyish Networking page where visitors can use Grazr to quickly browse the entire site for content, feeds, and more.
• or, embedded right here in this page

Known Issues:

• [ resolved: see comments ] i’m not an expert php programmer but for some reason there seems to be a problem when using Grazr (in “Slider” mode) where if you drill down into the category and subcategory feeds – navigating backwards becomes a bit retarded. it goes back to the wrong category and all you see is a completely blank page. Fortunately, you can just keep clicking backward (or the “home” icon, or the “refresh” icon) to get to the top of the directory and start over. Furethermore, i temporarily worked around this problem by switching the default view-mode in Grazr, from “Slider” to “Outline”

Up Next:

1. i’d like to get it to list all author feeds as well [ Update: this is done. just grab opml-authors.phps, rename it to opml-authors.php, and drop it in your WP template directory. then, uncomment the 2nd to last line of php in opml.php ] *This will only select Users who have the “Author” capability in WordPress. Authors without any published posts are excluded by default. You can also exclude other Authors by manually editing opml-authors.php – similar to the way i described earlier
2. i’d like to get it to list all Links in WP (ie: the default “Blogroll”, and any other link categories you create in the WP backend) [ Update: this is done. just grab opml-links.phps, rename it to opml-links.php, and drop it in your WP template directory. then, uncomment the last line of php in opml.php ] *you can also exclude Link Categories by manually editing opml-links.php – similar to the way i described earlier
3. i’d like to get it to be a simple WP plugin

if anyone has time, and wants to take a crack at any of these (or if you see any other ways to improve upon any of this i’d love to hear about it – leave lots of comments)

Then suddenly, and without warning, the bubble just burst. A shadow of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) swept across the web like an angry storm. There were weeks, even months of confusion and darkness. Many people fell, others were just lost. When all the dust settled, there was only Google.

In the years that followed, we came to rely on Google to help us find the sites we were looking for, the information we needed. Google restored order to the web and led many people back on the path to reason, helping them to see the light. Google just worked, maybe too well, and in that time the web grew exponentially.

But before long, people had found more sites than they knew what to do with. Even favorites and bookmarks were becoming completely unmanageable. Although Google was a great search engine, it could not solve this new problem that was beginning to take form. Soon people started complaining that they were missing out on stuff they really liked, since it was impossible to visit all your favorite sites all the time.

Then something strange happened. The web went into syndication. Somehow, somewhere, someone said, “This is crazy. Let the web come to us”.

This represented a major shift as the emphasis was now on the user, their tastes, interests, and more. Sites that wanted to keep their visitors happy began to syndicate their content as simple web feeds. Users could subscribe to these feeds, and receive instant headlines from all their favorite places on the web without having to actually visit a single website.

As the idea grew to be more and more popular, several standards began to emerge. Today, it is not uncommon to see images, links, and icons for XML, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, ATOM, and RDF. Each of these feed formats provides the same function: they bring headlines to you, instead of the other way around.

Many new softwares were created to help manage all these feeds, and in the end, much time was saved by all. Some people are even going so far as to aggregate their feeds, which is the process of combining feeds from different sites to make a new and sometimes gigantic master feed. You could then group these by topic, instead of having many different feeds from different sites.

Lots of interesting things can be done with feeds like RSS, more and more websites are offering them, and new ways of reworking all this information are being developed every day. Hopefully this article has helped you begin to understand why.

[ If you enjoyed this article, be sure to check back for the follow up entitled: "So you think you can RSS? How." ]

RSS Search Engine Marketing (RSSEM) is a term i keep reading about, and many sites are using rss technology to boost their site ranking. Listing rss feeds on these types of sites has the dual benefits of, additional visibility (on the rss directory), and increased inbound links (higher overall site ranking).

These are a collection of sites that are either directories themselves or provide useful links to site that will list your weblog or rss feeds. Note: most webmasters caution site owners no to submit to too many directories at once, and this may raise a red flag with major search engines like google, and result in some form of penalty which would utlimately affect your site’s ranking. The best advice seems to be to grow your links slowly, intelligently (because we are not robots), consistently, and over a significant amount of time.

Sites with links to directories:

• RSSTop55 – Best Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites is a great site, updated regularly.
• Fagan Finder – Blogs and RSS Search Engines has search engines, reference, tools, and more.

List of Directories:

• 2RSS.com – RSS feeds, RSS directory, RSS software, RSS scripts, RSS articles, RSS syndication, XML, RDF, news.
• Blogdex – is a research project of the MIT Media Laboratory tracking the diffusion of information through the weblog community.
• Feed Shark – Submit your RSS feed for free!
• Daypop – a current events/weblog/news search engine
• Syndic8 – is a directory of thousands of syndicated feeds from around the world.