Reading & Subscribing to a Blog - the Basics
A blog (short for weblog) is like an online journal. It can be about anything the blogger (blog author) wants to write about -- politics, golf, the Beatles -- whatever interests the blogger might have. I have a genealogy blog and I'll be using it as an example throughout this article. You can read my blog here...
Genealogy Roots Blog
The latest entry (blog post) is at the top followed by a few previous entries. You can read older posts by looking in the archives - see the links in the sidebar on the blog's homepage.
But what if you don't want to visit a blog every day just to see if there are updates? And what if you want to keep up with more than one blog? Almost all blogs have a "feed" that allows you to subscribe to the blog and be notified when it's updated.
Subscribe to a blog's feed (sometimes called an RSS feed)
Ack! This sounds complicated. Ok, it is a little techno geeky, but it's actually kind of simple. Just think of the title of any blog post as being like a newspaper headline. Using a thing called a news reader (or feed reader) you can be notified whenever your favorite blog is updated. Then all you have to do is click on a blog headline that interests you to read that specific blog post.
There are four basic kinds of news readers: (1) a software program you install on your computer; (2) web-based online readers like Bloglines; (3) good old fashioned web browsers that have feed readers built in - like Firefox; (4) online portals like MyYahoo or Google that let you set up and customize feeds from news sources and blogs.
Some popular news readers are MyYahoo, Bloglines, and Firefox's Live Bookmarks.
Here's where to go to set up my blog's feed in your news reader...
Genealogy Roots Blog Feed
When you get there you'll see a bunch of logos and news readers to choose from. For example, if you use MyYahoo, click on the MyYahoo logo and my blog's feed headlines will show up on your MyYahoo page.
Sometimes you may see a blog with a "subscribe" link or a feed link that takes you to a page full of gibberish. What you're seeing is the blog's raw feed data - pretty much useless to us mere mortals, but useful to a feed reader. You can usually copy and paste that feed URL into your news reader, which will then show you something more readable.