Part 3: Keeping up with the blogs you read

In my last post I tried to explain how you can keep up with blogs that you read. In this post I'm going to show you how to use Bloglines (a web-based news aggregator) to subscribe to the blogs you read.

1. Go to Bloglines.

2. Create an account. This is free. Use an id/password that you can remember. You'll be sent a validation email that you need to reply to before your account is activated. 'Tis a matter of a moment...

3. Once your account is activated you can start adding feeds. Click on the ADD link (top left corner of the side bar).

4. Enter the URL of the blog you want to subscribe to. At this stage you can create a special folder if you want to organise your blogs a bit, but you can do this at a later stage if you want. Click on the subscribe button.




5. You'll often be given a choice of feeds. Pick one of them. I usually go for the atom version, which is the top one in this picture. Scroll down and click on the subscribe button.












Your newly subscribed feeds will turn up in the side bar.
As you see from my picture, I've organised my feeds into a bunch of different folders. Those folders contain a range of different blogs. The ones in bold have some feeds I haven't read yet. By expanding the folders I can see who has made a new post, and I'll be able to read it by clicking on the name of the blog. The post will be shown in the right hand frame of your browser.






Sometimes I find pictures don't show up in the post. I'm not sure why that is (maybe because I'm using Firefox) but in any case I can click on the Blog Title at the top of the page and go directly to the blog and see the pics.




I hope this series has helped at least one person! :-)