What’s a feed and how do I use it?

I guess since one of my goals was to have 50 subscribers by my 6 month anniversary, it might be good for me to explain what a feed is and how you, a regular Joe, can use it. After all, you can’t help me meet my goal if you don’t know how, now can you?

First of all, a “feed” is a file that contains my posts. This file is special. It contains certain tags to let “feed readers” read my posts for you, so you don’t have to actually come to the site to see my content (although, if you want to comment, which we encourage, you do have to come to the site). Without going into a whole lot of detail, these “feed readers” periodically check this file to see if there is any new content for them to show you. If so, it tells you, and you can open up the post in your “feed reader” and read it. It’s sort of like email, but it keeps track of new blog posts instead of emails.

So, why would you want to use a “feed” instead of just coming to the site? Simple. If you read a lot of blogs, it can be a pain going to each one of their sites and checking to see if they have any new content. This can take up a LOT of time. I am approaching 20 blogs that I read daily, and it would be incredibly difficult and time consuming for me to check each site manually. So, I pull up my feed reader and see who has new stuff. I then open up the new blog post right in the feed reader, which saves me even more time.

What feed readers do I recommend? Glad you asked.

I generally recommend either Google Reader or Bloglines. But if you would rather have a “program” on you computer that does this instead of having to sign up for an account at the two previously mentioned sites, you can always just use FeedReader. It’s sort of like Outlook or Outlook Express, only instead of managing your email, it manages all your blog feeds.

Google Reader requires that you have a google account (if you have a gmail account, you’re all set), and Bloglines does too.

Once you have a feed reader, you’ll want to copy the following address, http://www.feeds.feedburner.com/blognrcharlescom into wherever your particular reader asks for it (it’ll say something like “feed location” or “feed URL” or “add subscription”).

That’s it! You now have officially added my feed. Now you just have to use it! Trust me, it will save you time. Plus, now you can start adding other blog feeds that you like. Before you know it, you’ll be reading 10 blogs in the time it took you to just read 1 the old-fashioned way.

By the way, check out my new, and extremely large, Feed button on the homepage. Hard to miss, huh?

Of course, you can always just use our email subscription and receive daily updates of all our new content.  I’m thinking about running a contest soon with this.  Let’s just say, there may be a pretty cool prize in store for one lucky email subscriber :-)  I’ll keep you posted.

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