How to subscribe by RSS

Subscribing by RSS is an easy way to keep track of blogs you like to read.

Using RSS is one of those things that is quick and easy to do and makes life easier when you are used to it, but seems very strange and different—and daunting— when you haven’t done it before.

So I thought I’d put together some instructions for it.

Google Reader
When you subscribe to a blog, you will be using a RSS reader. There are lots of different ones, but I am going to suggest you use Google Reader… because everyone is familiar with Google, and it’s the one I use, so I will know what I am talking about!

When your reader is set up and you have subscribed to one or more blogs, you will get blog posts appearing in the reader as they are published.

You can save the reader as a bookmark or favorite, and check it now and again. I have a gadget on my iGoogle search page that tells me if any new posts have come into my reader, so every time I arc up Google to do a search I am told of any new posts that may have arrived.

The text, links and images in the post will show up in both the reader and gadget, but they won’t have the formatting of the original post, so won’t look as pretty. You can read them on the iGoogle gadget or in the reader, or click on the link to go to the actual blog. I tend to have a quick look at posts in my iGoogle gadget, then go to the blog if I want to read the whole thing and leave a comment.

So here goes for how to do all of the above (and a bit more):

Step 1: Setting up your reader with it’s first subscription.
1. Click on the words next to the RSS icon on my blog… this will take you to a FeedBurner page (if you are doing this on another blog and it doesn’t take you to FeedBurner, see Step 2 below). On the top right under “Subscribe Now” you will be given a choice of readers—choose the Google one.
2. On the next page click on “Add to Google Reader”.
3. This takes you to a Google sign-up page, so you can sign in to use the Google reader. If you already have a gmail address, you can sign in. Otherwise you will need to create a Google account… everyone should have a gmail account! It’s one more username and password, I know, but it’s worth it.
4. Sign in, and you will be taken straight to your new reader. A couple of little introductory “helpful” windows later, you will be looking at my blog’s posts in the reader.

Step 2: Blogs that don’t send you to FeedBurner
1. Set up Google Reader first - perhaps using my blog
1. Click on the RSS icon on the blog without Feedburner. You will be taken to a page that has the blog feed’s web address up in the top of your browser. It could be something like this, for example:

feed://somethinglikethis.wordpress.com/feed/

2. Highlight and copy this address, and paste it into your Google reader where it says “Add subscription”, on the left.

Step3: Accessing your reader
Your reader, or the information in it, can be accessed in a number of ways.
1. Bookmark or favorites it.
2. Set up iGoogle to give you more options. To do this, go to your reader, then click on “Web” on top left, to go to a standard search page. Then click on “iGoogle” on top right. Customize your iGoogle page (make sure you choose a theme!) You can then:

• Find the reader under “more” on top left.
• Add a reader gadget to your iGoogle page. Do this by going to your Google reader and clicking on ‘Home’ on the top left. You will probably see an invitation to add the reader gadget to your iGoogle on the right - if not, do a search for “Google Reader” on iGoogle in “add stuff”.

3. If you use an internet cafe’s computer or any other shared computer, you can log into your Google account to access your reader—more practical I guess if you already use gmail.

Step 4: Organizing your reader
I put new subscriptions into a favorites folder, and also set the iGoogle gadget to only show the favorites. After some time if I don’t keep looking at that blog so much I move it out to the general list. To put blogs in folders, in the reader click on “Manage subscriptions”, right down on the bottom left. Once folders are set up, you can simply drag blogs around in the list on the left, in the main reader view.

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That’s it… happy reading!

Comments are open for any further suggestions anyone would like to make.