RSS Answers

I blogged a couple of posts ago about subscribing to RSS feeds, publishing to RSS feeds and turning your email option on for when you leave a comment. You can read about that here.

I noticed a couple of comments about how to do the "RSS thang" (well, not in those words, but I thought it was a snazzy term), so I thought I'd try to give a little more info about it.

Publishing to an RSS feed in Blogger:
Sign in to your account.
Click on the "settings" tab.
Now click on the "Site Feed" sub tab.
Set your "Allow Blog Feed" setting to either full or short.
Click the "Save Settings" button at the bottom of the page.

Doing this will allow readers to subscribe to your blog. If you chose "Full", your entire post will appear in the reader's feed-reader window. If you chose "Short", the first few sentences of each post will appear and the reader will have to click on the title of your blog or post in their feed-reader to actually visit your blog and read the entire post.

I apologize, but Blogger is the only format I am privy to. Click here to find out more about other types of blog hosts.

Subscribing to a feed-reader or aggregator:
I, myself, subscribe to Bloglines. It is a super easy service to use and I highly recommend it. It is free to sign up to Bloglines. Once you do, you can use the "Easy Subscribe Button" which essentially saves a page in your browser's Favorites list called "Sub with Bloglines". When you are on the main page of a blog you want to read again and again, all you have to do is click on the Favorites menu in your browser, click on "Sub with Bloglines". If that particular blog publishes to an RSS feed, you will be given one or more options for which feed to subscribe to. Click on one of the boxes to check it and scroll down and click on the "Subscribe" button. The site will automatically be added to your list. Whenever the blogs in your list post a new post, it will appear in boldface.

The following explanation of feed-readers/aggregators is from Blogging Basics 101:

An aggregator is a blog feed. It allows you to see when a site (blog, vlog, news site, etc.) has been updated. It alleviates the need to constantly check that site for updates manually.
Some of the more well-known aggregators are Bloglines, Google Reader, and NewsGator.

I hope this came out the way I think it did. If you have any questions about the details, please email me or leave a comment. I'll try to help you out the best I can. You can also visit Blogging Basics 101 for more great tips and explanations. They often give directions for Blogger and Typepad.

Happy Blogging!