What is BlogFodder?

BlogFodder is an announce-only mailing list, and the website you're looking at now. Every day there is a one-way mailing that contains some text that might inspire a weblog post. It's like a creative writing asignment. Only there's no grade, and you don't actually have to do anything. That text shows up on this site (and in the RSS feeds) the next day.

Do you have RSS feeds available?

Yes, two for the fodder: RSS 0.91 and RSS 1.0.

And two for recent trackbacks to the site: RSS 0.91 and RSS 1.0.

What is a Trackback?

A Trackback is a way to link posts across sites. If you write something on your weblog that is somehow related to something I posted on my weblog, you can send a Trackback that will automatically add a reference to your post on mine. That way other people visiting my site will know that you've posted something related.

How do Trackbacks work with BlogFodder?

If a BlogFodder inspires you to post, you can let others know with a Trackback. Copy the TrackBack URL from the email, and paste it into your weblog tool as you post. If your weblog tool doesn't support auto-Trackbacks, you can use the form linked from the bottom of each individual BlogFodder entry on the website.

Why not enable comments for each BlogFodder?

This site is about weblogs, which are naturally distributed. This experiment is designed to get people thinking about things to post to their own site. It'd be great to hear from people who don't have weblogs yet, and their take on the fodders. But I wouldn't want anyone to post their thoughts as a comment at this site instead of to their own weblog. If you'd like to participate, start a weblog! (Then trackback related posts.)

How does this all work under the hood?

The site is managed with Movable Type using MySQL, and some extra scripts for good measure. It's all running on a FreeBSD server at TextDrive.

Who set this up?

pb set up the mailing list and site. Matt helped with some ideas and words of encouragement.

Where can I get more information about weblogs?

I know a good book on the subject. ;)

Where do I ask questions that aren't frequently asked yet?

You can send additional questions to pb at blogfodder.com and I'll try to answer them!