I just recently ventured into creating my own website again. There is something about doing it that is so fulfilling for me. Over the years, I have learned a lot about websites by creating them, and have found what should and should not go into it. Now, don’t let me mislead you: I am no pro at this by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, when you start talking about coding, you lose me right away. But, what I have started to learn more and more about is using the amazing resources that are out there to help you create your own site. I am finding that you really don’t have to know how to code to help you come up with a decently good looking website.
Take for example, the app that I am reviewing today called Feeder Ninja, which does something so simple in nature, but yet can come in very handy when you are creating your own site. Feeder Ninja takes your social media feeds and creates an embedable window that you can insert into your website. Again, simple in nature, but they make it so easy to do and it looks very professional.
Creating Your Own Feed
When you first get started with Feeder Ninja, you can select what kind of feed you want to create. You can select between Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and an RSS feed to use. Once you select the one you want you then have some settings to tweak to make it your own.
Selecting a feed to create
You can change a variety of things of the look and feel of your feed so that it matches how you want it to look. The width and height can be manipulated to ones that will fit your site. You can also change the feed style, where there are two free choices to choose from, and a few other premium ones, which I will talk about more later.
Editing your feed’s appearance
There are also a variety of colors that you can choose from to make your feed stand out. Again, if you stick to the free plan, you can either choose between black or gray and if you upgrade to a paid plan you get a lot more to choose from. You can also create your own custom color if you so desire. Lastly, you also have the option to insert some kind of background for your feed. You can insert an image url or use the paid plan to upload your own picture.
Choosing your color and background image
Using your Feed
Once you are finished designing what your feed is going to look like you are now ready to insert it into your website. Feeder Ninja gives you some code that you need to insert into your website in order for it to show up. This is where, if anything, you need to know a little bit about where to put this so it will show up properly on your site. Lastly, once your feed is inserted into your site, Feeder Ninja gives you stats on how many people viewed your feed.
Meets a Need
When I first started to peruse through Feeder Ninja, I felt that this is great for those people that want a simple and easy way to insert their social or RSS feeds into their site. I know that there are plugins you can use through WordPress that do the similar, if not the same thing, that Feeder Ninja has to offer. But, in my opinion this app is for those that may not use WordPress or those that just want an easy way to create something like this.
In my experience, sometimes WordPress plugins can be frustrating to use, especially if you are not one that has the patience to find what will work for you or tinker with the code to make it your own. With Feeder Ninja, it literally took me less than 5 minutes to create a good looking feed for my social networks and it just works, which is something that I can appreciate.
Conclusion
Feeder Ninja is a great web app to use to create good looking social feeds for your website. I would love to see them add more social sites in the future like Instagram, Flickr, Google+, etc. If you want to unlock more features, they offer a paid plan which is $4/month or you can also pay for the year or for life if you choose to.
For what it is worth, if you are a WordPress user, you could probably save some money by searching for a plugin that does the same thing as you could possibly get more bang for your buck. But, if you don’t want to fool around with plugins or you are using a different platform, then go and check out Feeder Ninja for yourself and see if it will work for you.