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How to subscribe to a blog

Using my own blog as an example, natch, I’ve written instructions on how to subscribe to blog feeds

What do I do with that RSS button? Well, you need the “Tivo for web pages,” which is an RSS reader or aggregator. RSS aggregators are tools that manage your feed subscriptions for you so that you can be notified about new content and read it when you want it. This page contains descriptions of the most popular ones. http://blogspace.com/rss/readers

For a Windows-based environment, I suggest SharpReader, which is a separate, standalone application, or Bloglines, which is a web-based application that you access in a web browser.

Here are some sample procedures for adding a feed to my blog on talk.bmc.com, Exploring Routes to Value. The first involves clicking on the RSS button to go to the feedburner page where you can click on the aggregator of your choice. The next two procedures use SharpReader and Bloglines as examples.
Adding a subscription

  1. Click the yellow RSS button located in the right-hand column above.
  2. On the Feedburner page that you go to, select the RSS reader of your choice, and click the button to subscribe to the feed using that RSS reader.

Adding a subscription using SharpReader

  1. Go get the link for the RSS feed by going to http://talk.bmc.com/blogs/blog-gentle/anne-gentle/ and right-click the small RSS button and choose Copy Shortcut.
  2. Launch SharpReader.
  3. Paste the RSS feed URL (http://feeds.feedburner.com/TalkBMC-AnneGentle) into the Address field and then click the Subscribe button. Click for a screen shot.

Adding a subscription using Bloglines

  1. Go to http://www.bloglines.com.
  2. Register for a login.
  3. Get the link for the blog’s RSS feed by going to http://talk.bmc.com/blogs/blog-gentle/anne-gentle/ and right-click the small RSS button and choose Copy Shortcut. You can do a similar procedure for any blog that you read by finding their RSS feed URL.
  4. Once you log in, click the Add link under the My Feeds tab. Click for a screen shot.
  5. Paste the RSS feed URL (http://feeds.feedburner.com/TalkBMC-AnneGentle ) and click Subscribe.
  6. On the screen that follows, you can organize your feeds by using folders for categories. Click Subscribe and the feed will appear in the left-hand column. Click for a screen shot.Edited to add: For even more information about the feeds that talk.bmc.com provides, click on over to http://talk.bmc.com/talkbmcrss/ for a nice succinct page which discusses the intricacies of all our feeds here at talk.bmc.com.