Bloggers can now offer email subscriptions and monitor RSS feed stats through FeedBurner.  Details on setting up subscriptions for member blogs can be found on the support forums .

Visitors can now subscribe to a site wide feed, by RSS or via daily email alert.  Just go to the New Posts pag, and choose which delivery method is best.

You might have noticed a ratings widget below posts on some of the blogs. We’ve been picked to test Outbrain’s blog rating system in the Wordpress Multi-user enviorment.

This is exciting because all the ratings are networked across blogs and blogging platforms, from blogger.com to self hosted wordpress blogs all over the internet.  They’re in Beta testing right now, so a public listing of blog posts isn’t available quite yet.  We, as a community can get in on the ground floor, which will be hugely benificial in terms of traffic for all the blogs using it once the system is opened up to the public.

Using the Outbrain plugin is not required, but is strongly encouraged as it should prove to be a great promotional tool & helps our bloggers keep track of what content their readers like most.  To install the plugin, just go to “Plugins” from the admin panel and activate it.

A heads up to the community, the Google Adsense ads program is fully functional so bloggers can now place their own Adsense ads on their blogs. Hopefully it will be worth some beer & gear money. Here’s the tutorial, and post any problems encountered to the forum.

TO CLARIFY: These are users ads, not for the benifit of OutdoorsBlogger, and are optional.  You place your own Adsense code, and get your check from Google.  We’re not placing ads on everybody’s blog, period.

Installing Google Adsense on OutdoorsBlogger

Normally we don’t promote anything on the main ODB.com blog, but this once it appears that a good cause and mutual benefit shall override.  Let me introduce The Outdoor Bloggers Summit, an organization of outdoors writers across the web promoting conservation, outdoors sports, and even an annual meeting for outdoors bloggers across the globe.

From The Outdoor Bloggers Summit mission statement:

• Support conservation efforts and positively portray the value of outdoor pursuits
• Encourage and support the efforts of existing outdoor bloggers
• Offer incentive and support for new bloggers who might wish to blog about the outdoors
• Unite the voices of bloggers so we can speak as one about critical issues that effect outdoor pursuits.
• Provide a clearinghouse for information about outdoor pursuits

How can you support The Outdoor Bloggers Summit?

1. Post about The Summit, and introduce your readers to what they’re all about.
2. Add the “I support The Outdoor Bloggers Summit” badge on your blog.

  OutdoorsBlogger writers can add the badge to their blog roll by taking the following steps:

1. From the blog roll menu, click “Add a Link”
2. Fill in the name attribute, put ” http://outdoorbloggerssummit.blogspot.com/ ” in the Address field (without the quotes).
3. Lastly, open the advanced dialog below.  Fill in Image Address field as ” http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g221/huntwriter/OWOV/sum_bu1.jpg ” (also without the quotes) and click add link.

OutdoorsBlogger is proud to be featured over at Blog Network Watch.  BNW is the biggest, baddest industry blog for blog networks & blog hosting, and getting mention on such a site will prove invaluable as our community grows.