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.

What differentiates a bulb from a perennial plant is that the nourishment for the flower is stored within the bulb itself.…There is something miraculous about the way that a little grenade of dried up tissue can explode into a complete flower.

~Monty Don in The Complete Gardener pp. 142

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.