SOS for RSS

Are you confused about Bloglines and RSS? Are you having difficulty adding a feed when you click on the orange button?

Here are the basics.

An RSS is a feed from your favorite website or blog (not all websites or blogs have one). This feed will tell you about all the new things that are added to your favorite sites since you last clicked on the feed in your bloglines account. So, you could track the NY Review of books and Publishers weekly. Each week, the new stuff would appear in your bloglines account.

Next is how to subscribe.
If you are in Bloglines, you can search for your favorite website in the box on the right.

Once you identify the site you would like to add, look around for anything that refers to RSS or Feeds. You might have to use the search box on the site to find it. (Or, it might not have one)

The feed buttons look like this but are smaller so you may have to hunt for them.

Or you might see something that says add feed to bloglines or another RSS reader.

Even if you are within the bloglines screen it may be complicated to add the feed. Many internet service providers have RSS readers built right into their software (e.g.,newer versions of Explorer and FireFox). So, you may get a dropdown list so you can select the reader you want to add it to.

If you are not in bloglines when you come across a website with a reader you want to add, it is a little more complicated. You can add a "subscribe with bloglines" button on your favorites tool bar. Then when you are on the page with the feed, just click "sub with bloglines" and you are done.

If you aren't allowed to add to your favorites list, then you can add a feed by going to bloglines and clicking add at the top of the left hand window in bloglines. Then put in the URL of the feed page (it may end with "feed.xml").