Primer on Bloglines

A fair number of people have come back asking about Bloglines… I thought it was better to put a primer on setting up & managing a Bloglines account here, rather than mailing it to everyone one by one… Please do keep in mind though, that this section will seem fairly simplistic to the techies out there…this is a tech-phobe writing for other tech-phobes…suggestions for improvement invited! Getting Started Go to http://www.bloglines.com/; create an account...then set up feeds as follows: You'll see something like "Subscribe with one click from your browser toolbar". This should allow you to add a shortcut called "Sub with Bloglines" to your favorites folder. Then go to the website you want to set up a feed from, and click on "Sub with Bloglines". It'll show you all the feeds from the website, select the latest one (I found atom feeds to be better than RSS feeds, but you might like to play around a bit) & click OK. ALTERNATIVELY: Look around on the chosen website for a link saying RSS or XML. Usually this is an orange box. Their also might be a link saying "subscribe to feed", etc. Right click on this link, copy shortcut, go to your Bloglines account, click "Add", paste the link in the box & click OK. ALTERNATIVELY: On some websites, e.g. New York Times, etc. you can also get their OPML file, save it to your desktop; then just add it to your “Add” box in Bloglines, then click OK. You'll see the feed links; delete the ones you don't want. You can also move them to other folders, etc, by using the “edit subscriptions” tab on the top right, or by using the “Edit” button (top left, next to “Add”) You might have to play around a bit on Bloglines before you are fully comfortable, but it does ease the problem of visiting all your favourite websites one by one. To Start With: You can view my subscriptions on http://www.bloglines.com/public/indianinuk. You'll see a tab at the very bottom, saying "export subscriptions", on clicking which you can view the OPML file, save it... then just add it to your “Add” box in Bloglines, and click OK. Once you've exported my OPML file to your Bloglines account, you might want to delete/modify/reorganise quite a few feeds. But it should help you get started. Further: You can set up your options, so that it only shows you the updated feeds...makes it a whole lot easier to manage... you can always view all your feeds by either clicking on “Show All” or using the “Edit” button. Plus, if you choose the option to make your blog public on this one, then you could send me the link to your subscriptions later on...will help me add feeds...(I know, I know…shameless, aren’t I?) One more thing: If you want to share your subscriptions with others, please keep them "Public"; else others will not be able to view it... (hmmm… good idea to click off "Public", if you have subscriptions to "naughty" feeds...;-)) Hope this helps. Do comment on whether this was useful, and also as to how this article could be improved upon. Happy feed-gathering!