Build a Blog

I had no idea what a feed or RSS was a couple of months ago, but you can learn quick. I’m not going to try and explain the technical side to RSS here, I think this entry in Wikipedia puts it better than I ever could. In this article I refer to blogs, but there are some websites that are now offering feed subscription too.

What does Subscribing do for you?
As you surf around the internet you may find there are a lot of useful blogs and information that you would like to follow. So if you’re anything like me you have a long list of bookmarks. Which is all well and good, but you have to keep checking back to see if the blogs have been updated or posted to, and that can become tedious and time consuming.

And that’s where ‘Subscribing to a Feed’ comes in. When you subscribe to a feed you are sent the posts every time the blog is updated, whether it’s by email or feed readers. But the main point is, it keeps everything in the one place so it’s easy to track what the different blogs that you are interested in are doing. You can be reading any amount of blogs through their feeds and every time the blogs are posted to, they are updated in your feed reader. And that cuts out all the surfing around checking all the blogs individually, a great time saver.

So how do I Subscribe to a Feed?
Well on this blog – Build a Blog there are 3 different ways to subscribe:

1. Through the orange RSS icon button. That should be fairly obvious in the top right hand corner of the blog. All you do is click on the RSS icon. This is a universally recognised icon now, so whenever you see this icon it means you are able to subscribe to that blog/sites feed. When you click the icon it will take you to a page with several options on how you would like to view the feed (email, feed readers, embedded widget), and also shows the blogs most recent posts, so all you need to do is pick an option and your away.

2. Via the email subscription box. Fairly self explanatory, just enter your chosen email address (it’s completely safe and spam free) you will receive a confirmation email with an activation link that you will need to click and that’s it. Whenever the blog you are following has new content, you will find the posts from your feed in your inbox.

3. Through one of the feed reader buttons, whichever suits you the best.
Down the right hand side of this blog in the sidebar you will see a list of buttons, Google Yahoo, MSN etc. These are feed readers, and if you click whichever one you prefer it will take you to the feed reader software, where you will receive the feed and view it. There are a lot to choose from out there and most are free. I use Google feed reader, because I already have a Google account, so when I click it, it will log me in using my existing Google account. This is the same with most of Google tools once you have an account you can use the same details to log in to all the tools e.g., Adwords, Adsense, Gmail, Google feed reader etc. A pretty neat feature. Once I’m logged in Google gives me the choice of viewing the feed through the feed reader or adding it to my Google homepage, all you have to do is decide which is best for you. I use the feed reader just because I find it easier to read a lot of feeds using it.

There is not one option that is better than another, it’s just up to you and which one you prefer. All these options on this blog are managed by a service called Feedburner (this is when I subscribed), they provide me with a ‘burnt’ feed. They also provide me with statistics on my subscribers and the site, showing how many people subscribe through which option. From a blog owners point of view it is an essential service to offer to your readers. Making it easier for them to subscribe, and giving them the ability to follow your blog easily, and hopefully become a valued and loyal subscriber.

So if you have found this article or my blog interesting and would like to follow this blog, or you just enjoy it, then please subscribe to my RSS feed and keep up to date!

Thanks

Mandy

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