Thank you for visiting my blog. In case you are new here, you may want to subscribe to the RSS “Feed”.

You will see an orange “button” on the right hand side of the screen. Next to it you see a text link saying: “Subscribe to feed”.

What is a Text Link and what does it do?

• Links are all the underlined words you find on blogs and websites (usually they have a different colour from the main text). In my blog they are brown.
• They take you somewhere else when you click on them.
• They can take you to another page or article within the blog. They may take you somewhere completely different altogether (usually to another blog, another website or a sales page).
• Sometimes you end up on an “Error” page - very frustrating. The link is “dead”.

What is this “feed”? What will it do for me?

There are 3 Ways to keep up to date with your favourite blogs:

1. Check each Blog daily

Let us say you really like what some bloggers write.

There are 10 blogs you love and every couple of days you visit all of them to see whether any new posts have been made since your last visit.

Pretty time consuming, don’t you think?

2. Subscribe to be informed by email

Some of your favourite blogs may have an option to subscribe by email.

You can subscribe to the email updates (and/or the comments updates as well). Every time one of your favourite bloggers publishes something, you get an email. Every time somebody comments on a comment that you made, you get an email notification as (if you subscribed to the comment option).

This method is great if you want to know immediately when something new is happening. Some bloggers will email summaries of their posts to you.

3. Subscribe to the “Feed”

What is a “Feed”?

A feed subscription is a bit like sending money to the bank. Everytime something gets posted on a blog you have subscribed to, it gets dispatched to your “Feed” Account. All the blogs you have subscribed to are listed there. All the posts are listed as they come in - it looks a bit like a bank statement. If you subscribe to lots of blogs, there are ways to organise your feeds.

How do I use the feed?

You go to your feed account. You will see all the headlines and their respective partial or full posts shown below them. If there are any links in the post and you click on them it may take you straight into the actual blog (or to where ever that link may go).

Also, if only part of the post is there and it says (…more) you can click on that “more” link and it takes you to the original post inside the blog and you can continue reading.

You see an interesting headline and want to go straight to the original blog? Either click on the headline itself or the little icon displayed at the end of it (in Google reader it is a little grey circle with two arrows in it) and again you will end up straight in the blog.

All the links open up onto a new page. When you finish you close the page with the little red cross at the top right hand corner of your screen.  You will to straight back to your feed account page and can continue.

Pretty nifty, don’t you think? Saves time and energy and you can see instantly what is new and pick and choose what you want to read.

How do I subscribe to the “Feed”?

• Click on the “Subscribe to feed” link.
• A page will open with a box on the top right hand side.
• In that box should be lots of colourful little icons like My Yahoo, Google, Bloglines etc.
• If no colourful icons appear and it has only one name in a little box, click on the other link that says: “show all subscribe options” and all the little icons should appear.
• The same icons are also available down at the very bottom of my blog page.
• Click on any of the icons you like (I recommend Google, Bloglines or Newsgator - only because they are the least confusing to me!)
• Click on the “Create account” button and fill in your details (usually you only need an email address and a password). Finish the process in whichever way the page directs you. The feed for the blog where you clicked the orange button will automatically be created.
• You are ready to enjoy the benefits of your “Feed”. You can add as many “feeds” from as many blogs as you like.
• Remember: To get started just click on the orange “button”.
• There is nothing to stop you from subscribing to the “Feed” and email notification for my blog.
• There is lots more to know about Feeds. As your feed list grows you may want more tools to organise your feeds, be alerted when a new feed has come in etc. The possibilities are endless.