Posts Tagged ‘rss reader’

18
Mar

RSS: Eat your own blog/site feed (Part III)

   Posted by: Ryman    in Geek Alert, Net Escape

Continued from part II.

Either if you are a Pro or a Newbie blogger you should subscribe to your own website’s RSS feed. What you see in your web page, is usually not the exact replica on what other people see if they are subscribed in your RSS feed. Here are a list of what I’ve observed in some sites and blogs since using a feed reader for almost a year.

Why is it necessary to subscribe to your own blog or website?

  • Image wraps. The text wraps on the image perfectly on the site itself, but when viewed on a feed reader, the text has an uneven flow on the side of the image. There are usually two ways to use IMG (image) wrapping; (1) using a CSS and CLASS to define alignment, and (2) directly inserting the ALIGN tag on the IMG itself. If you use the CSS method, the output on the feed reader is usually messed up because the reader doesn’t call the external CSS of your site. If you directly place the ALIGN tag on the IMG, this will result in a favorable output. I’ve seen a lot of feeds from popular websites that have a messed feed output.
  • Messed up script codes. I’ve seen this a couple of times. There’s that time when a blog owner try to liven up his/her feeds by adding a little more info at the end of the feed posts. So what does he/she do? Add scripts and additional codes at the footer of the feed. And sometimes, just sometimes, the code spreads out like an error message, for days. It’s a common rule for web developers that when you are coding for a website, you usually check the output in Internet Explorer and Firefox (which has the same output as the rest of the other browsers. Opera, Safari). It must look good in both browsers. So if you are adding codes and scripts on your site feed output, remember to check them in a feed reader (Google Reader, Bloglines).
  • Hotlink protected image. I fell for this mistake twice, the first time I didn’t realize the problem. If you use a CPanel on your web host, there’s that feature to have your images protected from hotlinks. Generally if you protect, let’s say all JPG images, when another person directly link to that image in your host, it will not show up on his/her end. The protected image format will only show up on the websites you “allowed” it. Usually the only allowed site is your domain, placing any other domain on the “allowed” list will let them steal your bandwidth. There are mixed reactions regarding this problem. One, is that, when you hotlink protect your images and your domain is the only thing in your “allowed” websites, then the image will not show up on a feed reader. A solution to this problem is to add the reader in question to your allowed domains, like adding Google Reader. But what if I’m using a different feed reader? You might as well add that one, and add all the other feed readers on the list. There are still some sites on my feed reader that falls to this problem. I have two options usually for this; (1) if I find the article/post interesting, I click the link to go to the site itself to view the image, and (2) if this goes on, like for days or weeks, I hit the unsubscribe button.
  • More tag. The more tag lets you break your post if it is too long. The broken part is usually hidden unless the viewer click on the post tile (direct post link) or click the “read more” link. In blogging etiquette, the use of more tag is essential if you have a post that is too long. Bloggers often use this for many reasons.
    1. For directing page views and traffic to their sites. If I’m reading a good article on my feed reader and I hit the “more” link to continue reading, I usually end up on the site itself. Bloggers use this to gain page views for their site, since a user visiting the site itself counts more than someone who is reading its contents in a feed reader.
    2. Giving a slice before showing the whole cake. Usually a good introduction and a single photo is enough to tempt the reader to click the “more” link. Bloggers, write a short intro about the topic of the post, and sometimes a short paragraph detailing the rest of the article. This is a good practice because it doesn’t flood the reader with too much info. The reader has a choice to continue reading (click the read more) if he/she finds it interesting or just leave the post alone. Since it’s just a summary, he/she didn’t waste a couple of minutes more. I use this technique in my babes portal category. Two advantages are: (1) less bandwidth consumption since the rest of the photos doesn’t load unless the reader is interested to continue reading the whole post, and (2) the page load is quicker.

    Like the hotlink problem, I usually unsubscribe from blogs that uses this too much. It’s too much of a hassle to go out of the feed reader to visit the site itself. And that’s the reason why we use feed readers right? To let the contents of the site visit us, not the other way around.

  • Content cutting. In Wordpress, and some other blogs (?), there is an option to automatically cut your post after a certain number of words to give a brief summary. This is good, but quite irritating and I’ve unsubscribe to more than a dozen of blogs because of this reason alone. Not unless you count your words every time you create a new post, you wouldn’t know in what part the cut will happen. The end result? The reader is confused because he couldn’t read the rest of the post’s introduction. Don’t use this please, just use the “read more” function.

Now you might be wondering why I didn’t use the “more” feature on this long post. I could have, but even if the reader of this post is interested of not. I just don’t want to interrupt his/her reading, I don’t want that to happen to me. I’m guessing after the first two of the list above the reader, if not interested, could have skipped this post. But since you’ve already reading this part of the post, then that means you are one of the interested readers.

That’s another reason why I always use lists (bullets) in my posts. It’s easier to read and easier to skip the post if the reader is not interested.

Remember, the reason why you should subscribe to your own feed is to see what the others are seeing. So if there is a problem in the feed, you can correct it quickly. It had saved me during the hotlink problem I encountered. When I read the feed of my own blog, the images where not showing up, but when I look at the website the images are just fine.

My tip: Don’t do to your feed what you don’t want to see in someone else’s.

Tags: , , , , , ,

No Comments
13
Feb

RSS: Getting all the news and blogs in a single place (Part II)

   Posted by: Ryman    in Geek Alert, Net Escape

Continued from part I.

When you subscribe in a RSS/feed reader for the first time, it will usually show the first 10 latests posts by default.

Using the browser to subscribe

Subscribing to a RSS feed is easy, now that most latest browsers support it as well. Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer 7, Opera, and Safari (Mac) all has different methods of subscribing to RSS via their product. In this example I’ll show you what it looks like in Mozilla Firefox (since that’s the only browser I use). Take note that Mozilla Firefox also has a built in aggregator, and its called Live Bookmarks.

  1. First go to a site that shows a RSS icon on the far right of the address bar. It can be a news site or a blog.
  2. Click the RSS icon. Yes it is clickable, and it is the same for other browsers (?). After you clicked on it, it will show you a page that looks like this. Select Live Bookmarks.

    Click on the subscribe now button
  3. You will notice that if you added it to your Bookmarks Toolbar Folder, it will show you a Live Bookmark of the recent posts at the site you subscribed.
  4. So that’s how you add RSS to your Mozilla Firefox browser. But I don’t really recommend using this one because; (1) you cannot access it in any other location except on the computer you added it; (2) it becomes really messy if the entries get too long.

Subscribe to Google Reader

  1. First go to a site that shows a RSS icon on the far right of the address bar. It can be a news site or a blog.
  2. Click the RSS icon. Yes it is clickable, and it is the same for other browsers (?). After you clicked on it, it will show you a page that looks like this. Select Google.

    Click on the subscribe now button
  3. Then on the next page, you can either choose Google Homepage or Google Reader. The homepage is good when you have a few RSS feeds that are composed of news because it will look pretty much like a newspaper. See iGoogle. But I recommend you use Google Reader specially if you will gonna add a lot of news and blog sites. It is much organized and getting around is easier.
  4. Next login to your Google Account. If you have an account in one of Google’s services like Gmail, Orkut, ADsense, Bookmarks, Notebook, Analytics, or Blogger you can use that to login to Google. If you don’t have a Google account yet, just create a new one.
  5. After you logged in, you will arrive inside Google Reader and the blog/site you subscribed to is now live inside your reader.
  6. After that you can assign it to a folder (tag) so that your feeds are organized. You can see some of my subscriptions here and here. This is what my Google Reader now looks like, since I’m subscribed to 205 sites, more than 1,000+ new entries arrive each day.

Another way to quickly add a feed to your Google Reader is by clicking the Add Subscription.

Other RSS/feed Readers

If you don’t want to use Google Reader as your RSS aggregator, you can use other popular services provided by other companies. Wiki has a list of other RSS aggregators for you to use.

Another RSS aggregator I use is the client-based FeedReader. It is a free, open-sourced, feed reader you can install to your PC. You can read the feeds while online, and you can also read the already downloaded feed while offline.

Other popular RSS aggregators that are web-based:
Bloglines
Netvibes
My Yahoo!
Live.com

How about you what is the feed reader you use?

Next, I will post a list of sites and blogs I’m subscribed to. Maybe you’ll find something interesting to add to yours as well.

This is just part 2 of a series of posts. Visit here regularly for the continuation, or check your feed reader.

Tags: , , , ,

No Comments
4
Feb

RSS: Simply addictive (Part I)

   Posted by: Ryman    in Geek Alert, Net Escape

Before we get started, I’d like to ask you the following questions first:

  • Do you like reading other peoples blogs?
  • Do you regularly visit news blogs everyday to get you updated on what’s happening?
  • On a single day, you visit a blog site as much as you visit a social networking site?
  • At least one of your friend owns a blog site?
  • Do you wish that the information you want comes to you instead of searching for it?

If most, or all, of your answer to the above question is yes then welcome RSS to your browser. But first, what is RSS? According to Wikipedia:

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. An RSS document, which is called a “feed,” “web feed,” or “channel,” contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner that’s easier than checking them manually.

The image above is the logo for RSS. When you visit a website, a blog, or blog site that has an icon like this then you can subscribe to its RSS/atom feed. This blog site (my personal blog) has an RSS feed. If you are viewing this on Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer 7 (or newer browsers) you can see the orange RSS icon that is usually located on the right side of the URL.

Not to be confused by a websites favicon. The favicon of a website appears on the left of the URL while the RSS icon appears (depends on the browser) on the right. Here is an example to know if a website has an RSS feed. The screenshots below are from Mozilla Firefox browser.

On this site the site’s favicon is the head of a phoenix (on the left) and the RSS feed icon on the right.

On my other blog site (tambayan.ph) I used a red RSS icon as a favicon (on the left), and the regular (orange) RSS feed icon appears on the right.

Take note however that there are sites that don’t have an RSS feed on them. In short you cannot subscribe to its feeds, well not directly anyway.

What is subscribing?

Subscribing to a feed (RSS or atom) means that you load a website’s feed into an aggregator. Some also calls it “RSS reader” or “feed reader”. When you subscribe to a feed, the new posts of a blog site automatically comes to your reader, instead of you going to the website itself, thus saving you time. If you are visiting, for example, 5 blogs/sites per day just to see if they have a new post, it is time consuming because you have to open the websites every time you want to check for new entries. But if you subscribe to the 5 blogs using your feed reader, you will have to visit only a single site, then all new posts (if any) from those 5 blogs will automatically come to you, instead of wasting time visiting and checking the source website every time.

Currently I have 205 subscriptions in my RSS/feed reader (I use Google Reader). That means I’m subscribed to at least 205 blogs, blog sites, and websites. The topics ranges from computer related blogs to entertainment. I’m also subscribed to blogs related to gaming, anime, media, technology, gadgets, trivias, computer security, news blogs, and of course my friends blogs. Recently, I removed at least a dozen or so blogs from my subscription because; (1) they are not updating much, and (2) the topic they post are of little interest to me.

RSS readers (subscribing to a feed) makes it easy for you to get updated on what ever is happening everywhere. Whether it’s a news of event from the other side of the world or the latest rant of your friend, RSS feeds make it easier for you to receive that news in a single web page. But I have to warn you though, RSS reader is really addictive. The first time I used it, I found myself reading for more than 5 hours and that was when I was only subscribed to at least a hundred feeds.

Next, I will discuss on subscribing to a reader. But if you are already reading this post in a feed reader then good for you. (^_^)

This is just part 1 of a series of posts. Visit here regularly for the continuation, or check your feed reader.

Tags: , , , ,

No Comments
Back to top