Now that we’ve been at this travel blogging thing for a couple of months, it occurs to me that many of you are probably still checking the blog manually (daily, of course) to see what’s been posted. This works just fine if you’re only checking the Travel Log page, but there are also comments being added all the time (and not always to the most recent blog post), there’s the upcoming Books journal page (available Real Soon Now™), and we’ll add other pages in the future that you might like to follow without having to scour our entire website to see what’s new.
Enter RSS feeds. I know from checking our website stats that some of you already know about RSS feeds, but for those of you that don’t, they’re a very handy way of letting our website (and zillions of others) notify you whenever there’s fresh content to read, rather than you having to check for changes manually. Most major websites (including all of the big news sites) offer RSS feeds for their content, and Squarespace, our blog hosting service, offers RSS feeds for blog pages as well as comments. You can find the links to our RSS feeds at the bottom of the right-hand column, below Fun Facts, Countries, Tags, and our new Search widget.
Depending on your operating system of choice (Windows, Mac, iPhone, Android, etc.), there are many different ways to subscribe to an RSS feed and read the latest posts. I’ll cover the most basic ways on Windows and Mac, along with a really handy option for turning RSS feed updates into emails (a lot like the emails you get from Facebook when someone comments on an update you’re following, you get tagged in a photo, etc.). If any of you have more experience following RSS feeds, please feel free to post a comment with suggestions for everyone else!
Windows
If you click on an RSS feed link in Internet Explorer on Windows (XP, at least), it shows you the latest updates to the feed, and it gives you the option of adding the feed to your personal list of feeds to follow. Below are a couple of quick screenshots (click on a thumbnail to see the full-size screenshot):
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That’s an improvement over checking multiple pages or sites manually, but it’s still one more place to go to see the latest and greatest.
Mac
On the Mac, both Safari and Mail allow you to subscribe to RSS feeds. If you already use Mail to read your email, then probably the simplest thing is to also use it to follow our blog and comments feeds. Updates show up there just like email messages (see below):
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To make Mail your default RSS reader:
- Start either Mail or Safari
- Go to the File menu and choose Preferences…
- Click the RSS icon along the top
- Choose “Mail” as your default RSS reader
Once you’ve done that, when you click one of the RSS links on our website (or any other website), Mail opens and lets you name the feed. The feed then shows up under the “RSS” heading on the left hand side just below Mailboxes and Reminders, and it’s updated automatically. The number badge to the right of each will show how many new items there are to read for that RSS feed. You can mark RSS items as read and delete them just like email messages. Very handy! It sounds complicated, but seriously, if my parents can do it, so can you. (Sorry, Mom & Dad.)
RSS Readers
If you find yourself following a lot of RSS feeds and don’t use Mail on the Mac, you can also use one of the dozens of RSS readers/aggregators out there. Google has a web-based product called Google Reader which lets you follow multiple RSS feeds and see the latest updates in one place. I haven’t played with it too much, but it’s free and seems pretty powerful. Copy the URLs for our RSS feeds and add them to Google Reader if you already use it to follow other RSS feeds.
If you don’t already use an RSS reader and you’d rather not run a separate feed reader to follow our blog, you can sign up for a service that turns RSS feed updates into emails. The simplest one I’ve found so far is called FeedMyInbox.com, and it’s free to use for up to 5 feeds. Follow these simple steps to get started with it:
- Copy the URL of one of our our RSS feeds (Travel Log or Travel Log Comments)
- Go to www.feedmyinbox.com
- Paste the URL to the RSS feed in the first box
- Enter your email address in the second box
- Click the Submit button
That’s it! You can follow the same steps to add multiple feeds to the same email address, up to their limit of five free feeds. After that, you have to create a paid account. Once it’s set up, you’ll receive an email every time a new Travel Log entry is posted or a new comment is added (to any blog entry). The free account sends at most one email per-day, but that’s probably fine for most people.
Happy blog following!