A Really Simple Guide to RSS Feeds
It occurred to me that some of you might be reading this blog but haven’t yet subscribed. (that means you, Mom!) I love the convenience of reading all of my blogs with a feed reader. It lends organization to the massive amounts of info that we are exposed to on a daily basis. In short, I am a true believer in RSS. So I wrote this guide to turn all of you into true believers, as well.
What is RSS?
RSS is basically a system that allows the content on a website to be easily syndicated. RSS actually stands for Really Simple Syndication.
The first thing you need to do to take advantage of RSS is to choose a feed reader. What is a feed reader, you might be wondering? In very simple terms, it’s an application that collects a group of feeds of your choosing, and presents them to you in an organized manner. I use Google Reader and Bloglines. Either one is a great choice to start with.
To get started, pick out some blogs that you like. (Can’t think of any at the moment? You can always start with PixelRN.)
Go to bloglines.com and create an account.
Once you are logged in, make sure the tab that says “Feeds,” is active.
Click on “Add.”
Type in the blog URL and hit “Subscribe”
It couldn’t be any easier.
In some cases it might give you multiple feeds to choose from. I usually just choose the one with the most subscribers or the most recent date, but if you’re still not sure which one to pick, click on “Preview Feed” and you can make sure it is the right one.
Also you can find the feed link on any blog by looking for the RSS symbol, or looking for a link that says, subscribe. If you right click on the link, you can then paste it into the “Add” field in bloglines and you will be subscribed.
Bloglines is great because you can just type in the blog address, rather than the feed address (which is different) and it automatically finds the feed for you.
So that’s it! Every time one of your blogs or sites is updated, it pops up in your bloglines sidebar. You can then read the content directly from Bloglines, or click through to the blog to read it.
Still not convinced? Here’s the best reason to use feed readers: When you are at work during a very quiet, very boring night shift, it is so much easier to catch up on your nurse blogs if you are using Bloglines or Google Reader.
I hope you have found this helpful. If any of this was confusing, please let me know in the comments section and I will try to clarify as much as I can for you.
I'm a part time 
Thank you for this. I read a ton of blogs and was vaguely aware that RSS could probably help me do that more efficiently but was too lazy to actually read up on it to figure out how (and how to subscribe). Apparently I was waiting for someone to spoonfeed it to me.
I’m working a lot of holiday-adjacent days in the next week that will probably be very quiet–it’ll be the perfect time to do this. Thanks again!
Nurse Betty — December 20, 2007 @ 2:48 pm
Pixel………..I love you! From your post I was able to add a google feed to my site that really works!!!!!
Maybe tomorrow I’ll try bloglines. I’m so darn excited. Thank you so much for taking the time to explain things to me.
By the way, you are the first person to be listed on my google site since you told me I could start with you.
MyOwnWoman — December 21, 2007 @ 9:36 am
…and because you’ve been so nice; please go to my blog and see that you’ve been tagged to write three things that are important in writings; then pick three others and share the tag!
MyOwnWoman — December 22, 2007 @ 9:58 pm
Beth - Thanks so much for this. I have not tried it yet but I will - Merry Christmas - Gina
gina — December 23, 2007 @ 10:47 pm
I might be interested in acquiring a text link back to my site from your blog. Please email me at Sharon.Friedman@Webonomix.com
Sharon Friedman — December 30, 2007 @ 12:40 pm
Ahhh! thanks so much for posting this! I’ve linked from my blog to here to give my readers some info about feeds that I just couldn’t get my head around.
cheers
Bronnie
http://www.healthskills.wordpress.com
Bronnie Thompson — January 2, 2008 @ 3:42 pm
[...] on over to her blog and read this if you’re not quite sure what RSS is all about. I hope it all makes sense - and if not, what [...]
RSS feeds for nontechno-freaks « HealthSkills Weblog — January 2, 2008 @ 3:50 pm
Embarrassingly enough, I didn’t have Google Reader, thanks for the help! Now I’m almost too up-to-the minute on everything…
Katie Bee — January 2, 2008 @ 4:42 pm
[...] reading through this great post about RSS feeds at PixelRN and following a thread at NursingVoices about new bloggers I decided to [...]
Guide for the New (and old!) Nurse Blogger » NursingBytes.net — January 4, 2008 @ 7:55 pm
Hey Beth! Finally got around to posting about your post! Thanks again….
http://nursingbytes.net/index.php/2008/01/04/guide-for-the-new-and-old-nurse-blogger/
emily — January 4, 2008 @ 8:14 pm
[...] to my blog using the RSS feed above. And if you’re not sure about RSS - head on over to PixelRN’s blog for a Really Simple Guide to [...]
Did you find him? « HealthSkills Weblog — January 10, 2008 @ 1:37 am