I've never run a blog, until a few days ago smarter people convinced me to add one to my site. I've applied a theme I'm pretty happy with, except for RSS - anyone know where to find a good icon I can legally use for that?

When you add sites to your blog roll, there's a field letting you add an image. Is it polite to grab one from the other site and use their bandwidth, or to download and perhaps change them yourself? WP doesn't size them, so if I use images in my blog roll, I would need to make them all the same size. I realize that's up to the individual site owner, but I wonder what the norm is?

Any other advice to someone who's only started his first blog a couple of days ago?

There are plenty of RSS images out there. I think you can safely use the majority. Sign up for FeedBurner if you haven't since they have some nice subscriber tracking. They also have the basic icons you can use. If you do an image search for RSS icon at any of the engines I think you'll find a lot. I grabbed a few, but in the end settled on one of the ones FeedBurner provides.

I never even noticed the images thing for the blogroll. I'm not sure I've ever seen them used either. If you're going to use them I think taking a screenshot of the home page or blog home page would be fine to use. I doubt most webmasters would be upset. I wouldn't use their bandwidth though. That's not polite. You could probably use their logo too.

It obviously depends on the individual so you can always ask first, but I would think most people would be fine with you using a small image since it also means a link in your blogroll.

I think using images in the blogroll would help set mine apart, especially from what you've written. A screen shot might not be a bad idea. I was going to use a photograph from Zemostock for their blog.

I know using someone else's bandwidth is usually frowned on, although personally I would much rather someone hotlink my images than download and republish them.

What's FeedBurner? I signed up; mine is http://feeds.feedburner.com/FineArtPhotographyBlog, since I've learned your advice is always spot on ... but what is it?

FeedBurner creates an easy way for people to subscribe and gives you an easy way to track subscribers. They also have some nice tools you can use. One you commonly see is the widget showing how many subscribers a blog has. It's usually a thin colored rectangle displayed at the top of the sidebar.

I like the ability to track subscribers. It's good to know how many people are reading your blog.

If and when you get enough subscribers FeedBurner also lets you sign up for their advertising program through the feed.