Just a few days ago, I scarcely knew what Bloglines, RSS, and Atom were. I’d heard of them but hadn’t bothered to pay much attention until Tiff and Julie prodded me. 
Now I don’t know what I’d do without Bloglines. I’m so in love I’ve made these little buttons, which you may feel free to use on your own blog.
(Colors based on the AtomEnabled logo.)
(Color and style of these two are based on one of the buttons available from Bloglines, but smaller.)
The reason I’m so in love with Bloglines is because it allows me to keep up with more blogs in less time. Much less time. I signed up only just this weekend, and already I’m reading and commenting in blogs I haven’t had time to visit in quite a while.
Bloglines makes reading blogs relaxing and fun, which is what it should be. No more clicking through my whole blogroll to see if there are any new posts. I’m utterly awed by how easy and perfect it is.
The only catch is that in order to add a blog to your Bloglines, it has to have a site feed, such as RSS or Atom. I found that some of my favorite blogs don’t have a feed. Wah! I’ll still have to check those manually. (My own blog didn’t have a feed until this weekend. What can I say? I was clueless.)
Most blog services, such as Blogger, TypePad, Blogdrive, etc. will publish an RSS or Atom feed for you, but you may need to make sure you have that feature turned on. Here’s the link for Blogger users. Whatever blog service you use, there should be info in their help files about site feed.
9 responses so far ↓
1 Jenn // Oct 5, 2004 at 4:34 pm
I had bloglines, but stopped using it because now I mainly read crochet blogs, and most weren’t feed enabled. But now that you mentioned this, people are picking it up, and I’ll have to start again.
This topic inspired me to check out blogger’s feed set up, and now I have mine up and running :) sans pictures though :(
2 Brenda // Oct 4, 2004 at 3:13 pm
I just started using Bloglines a couple weeks ago, and agree, it’s great! I’m reading way more blogs now too. So glad yours is now feed enabled.
3 Julie // Oct 4, 2004 at 3:55 am
I love bloglines!! But you already knew that!! :+: I don’t know how I managed without it. Really, I don’t have a clue.
4 Tiff // Oct 4, 2004 at 10:31 pm
I love the buttons you’ve created. :) I would never get all of the blogs read that I want to without Bloglines :) hmm.. I think they should start paying us for our shameless plugs!
5 Leisel // Oct 5, 2004 at 1:07 am
Oh, thank you so much for posting about this. I hadn’t heard of bloglines before, and it’s absolutely fantastic! No more going through my large list of blog links just to go “nope, nothing new here” with most of them.
Woo-Hoo!
And of course, since I only have to visit sites I KNOW have new stuff, I can have more sites on my list :)
THANKS AGAIN!
6 boredelf // Oct 11, 2004 at 10:29 pm
Since you mentioned feeds…
I’ve been reading our site for a little while off and on. I use Feed on Feeds to read all of my blogs, but its automatic feed finder thingy doesn’t find one for your site. Do you have a feed I can use to keep up with yours? email is a fine way to respond if you do.
Thanks,
Jessica
7 Rebecca // Oct 6, 2004 at 5:06 pm
thank you donna UGH! something else i have to figure out *sigh*
;-P
i’ll get mine whatevered as soon as i can
8 Chie // Oct 4, 2004 at 1:54 pm
Thanks for this info! I can definitely use this. :)
9 Jenn // Oct 5, 2004 at 6:56 pm
Well, this was all new to me. I *think* I’ve got it set up but not 100% sure. I’ll have to play around a bit more to see how it all works. Looking forward to a great new way to keep up on everything though! :D
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