How to Get Started with RSS Feeds

– Posted in: Recommended Links
2 comments

I have just read the best tutorial I have ever seen on getting started with using RSS feeds by subscribing to them through Bloglines. I have long advocated using a feed reader (which is what Bloglines is) to keep up with the many gardening blogs that are out there now, but I always felt I lacked a very easy, non-intimidating way to help people get started. This tutorial is it. It has plenty of screenshots and clear directions, and the absolute minimum techno-babble. One thing it doesn’t cover is how to import an opml file. (An opml file is a collection of feeds.) After you master bloglines, you can import the feeds for all the garden blogs listed in the sidebar from here.

And now I have an embarrassing admission: my own feed isn’t working at the moment. (Scratches head, shrugs shoulders) What can I say? I’m working on it. I’m also working on a post–well, more like an essay–that I started more than a week ago. Please be patient with me.

About the Author

Kathy Purdy is a colchicum evangelist, converting unsuspecting gardeners into colchicophiles. She gardens in rural upstate NY, which used to be USDA Hardiness Zone 4 but is now Zone 5. Kathy’s been writing since 4th grade, gardening since high school, and blogging since 2002. Find her on Instagram as kopurdy.

Now, the digging and dividing of perennials, the general autumn cleanup and the planting of spring bulbs are all an act of faith. One carries on before the altar of delayed gratification, until the ground freezes and you can’t do any more other than refill the bird feeder and gaze through the window, waiting for the snow. . . . Meanwhile, it helps to think of yourself as a pear tree or a tulip. You will blossom spectacularly in the spring, but only after the required period of chilling.

~Adrian Higgins in The Washington Post, November 6, 2013

Comments on this entry are closed.

bill April 27, 2005, 8:19 am

Did you get it fixed? I am subscribed to you and I am reading you in Bloglines. It notified me that you had a new entry by bolding your name in the sidebar.

But when I type in the URL of your feeds I don’t see anything in the browser the way I do when I type in my own.

When I unsubscribed and then resubscribed to you it recognized your feeds.

I am not smart enough to deduct anything from this collection of facts.

M Sinclair Stevens April 26, 2005, 9:47 pm

One of the things I noticed about Bloglines is that it doesn’t show a post has been updated. Since I cycle through my blog posts in keeping with the seasons, Bloglines doesn’t really reflect what’s new on my blog. It seems to recognize only completely new entries. I don’t know if this is a problem with me or with it. But I must have some readers via rss who think I never update my blog.