From roots-in@roots-l.rootsweb.com Mon Jul 24 01:44:02 2006 Received: from mail.rootsweb.com (mail.rootsweb.com [192.168.65.34]) by admin.rootsweb.com (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id k6O7i2jb025584; Mon, 24 Jul 2006 01:44:02 -0600 Received: from roots-l.rootsweb.com (roots-l.rootsweb.com [66.43.16.22]) by mail.rootsweb.com (8.13.4/8.13.4) with ESMTP id k6O7hvEN027933 for ; Mon, 24 Jul 2006 01:43:57 -0600 Received: from roots-l.rootsweb.com (roots-l [127.0.0.1]) by roots-l.rootsweb.com (8.12.10/8.12.10) with ESMTP id k6O55cFI013028 for ; Mon, 24 Jul 2006 01:05:38 -0400 Received: (from roots-in@localhost) by roots-l.rootsweb.com (8.12.10/8.12.8/Submit) id k6O55bTh013027 for roots-approved@rootsweb.com; Mon, 24 Jul 2006 01:05:37 -0400 Received: from lists5.rootsweb.com (lists5.rootsweb.com [66.43.27.41]) by roots-l.rootsweb.com (8.12.10/8.12.10) with SMTP id k6O1iPFI012626 for ; Sun, 23 Jul 2006 21:44:25 -0400 Received: (from slist@localhost) by lists5.rootsweb.com (8.12.8/8.12.8) id k6O4MYhZ027930 for roots-in@roots-l.rootsweb.com; Sun, 23 Jul 2006 22:22:34 -0600 X-Envelope-From: paperangels@gmail.com Sun Jul 23 22:22:33 2006 Received: from mail.rootsweb.com (mail.rootsweb.com [192.168.65.34]) by admin.rootsweb.com (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id k6O4MXjb027921 for ; Sun, 23 Jul 2006 22:22:33 -0600 Received: from nz-out-0102.google.com (nz-out-0102.google.com [64.233.162.193]) by mail.rootsweb.com (8.13.4/8.13.4) with ESMTP id k6O4MRp1014544 for ; Sun, 23 Jul 2006 22:22:27 -0600 Received: by nz-out-0102.google.com with SMTP id 4so414272nzn for ; Sun, 23 Jul 2006 21:22:28 -0700 (PDT) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition; b=mUu1y8e6IOxzAqLWGeeb2bANzw0isRLswe6G+HotIaDx0bvT+Mz5QwbGYY6hkm+FryUBgZxwyiRm5iC3MgC7J8746G89MQJIfwzRT6xEL4Ut3rbb7qqTBAZl64CHs1BulV34LW9ct83x0Ft47pq81z/ZkSKMqWnDB2jPTo7FHiY= Received: by 10.65.116.7 with SMTP id t7mr2825627qbm; Sun, 23 Jul 2006 21:22:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.65.35.12 with HTTP; Sun, 23 Jul 2006 21:22:28 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2006 22:22:28 -0600 From: Joe To: ROOTS-L@rootsweb.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.52 on 192.168.65.34 X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.52 on 192.168.65.34 Sender: roots-in@roots-l.rootsweb.com Subject: [ROOTS-L] Reading & Subscribing to a Blog - the Basics Reading & Subscribing to a Blog - the Basics A blog (short for weblog) is like an online journal. It can be about anything the blogger (blog author) wants to write about - politics, golf, the Beatles - whatever interests the blogger might have. I have a genealogy blog and I'll be using it as an example throughout this article. You can read my blog here... Genealogy Roots Blog http://genrootsblog.blogspot.com/ In my blog the latest entry (blog post) is at the top followed by a couple of previous entries. You can read older posts by looking in the archives - see the links in the sidebar on the blog's homepage. But what if you don't want to visit a blog every day just to see if there are new posts? And what if you want to keep up with more than one blog? Almost all blogs have a "feed" that allows you to subscribe to the blog and be notified when it's updated. Here are two ways you can subscribe to my blog... 1. Subscribe to a blog's feed (sometimes called an RSS feed) Ack! This sounds complicated. Ok, it is a little techno geeky, but it's actually kind of simple. Just think of the title of any blog post as being like a newspaper headline. Using a thing called a news reader (or feed reader) you can be notified whenever your favorite blog is updated. Then all you have to do is click on a blog headline that interests you to read that specific blog post. Some popular feed readers are MyYahoo, the web-based Bloglines, Pluck (which works with IE), and Firefox's Live Bookmarks. http://my.yahoo.com/ http://www.bloglines.com/ http://www.pluck.com/products/rss-reader.html http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/livebookmarks.html (If you have the Firefox web browser, Live Bookmarks is fairly easy to use: go to a blog's homepage and click on the orange logo on the right side of Firefox's address bar.) Here's where to go to set up my blog's feed in your news reader... http://feeds.feedburner.com/genealogyrootsblog When you get there you'll see a bunch of logos and news readers to choose from. For example, if you use MyYahoo, click on the MyYahoo logo and my blog's most recent feed headlines will show up on your MyYahoo page. Sometimes you may see a blog with a "subscribe" link or a feed link that takes you to a page full of gibberish. What you're seeing is the blog's raw feed data - pretty much useless to us mere mortals, but useful to a feed reader. You can usually copy and paste that feed URL into your news reader, which will then show you something more readable. 2. Subscribe by Email If you want to subscribe to my blog by email go to the webpage below, enter your email address, then click the "subscribe" button... http://genealogyroots.googlepages.com/email You should then receive an email with a verification link. Click on that link and you're all set. Then you'll start receiving copies by email of any future blog post that I write. Each email has an unsubscribe link at the bottom if you no longer want to receive the emails. Easy! Way easier than all that feed stuff I wrote about just above, right? :) But... Unfortunately, not all blogs offer an email option. But... Here are some other cool genealogy blogs that do offer email subscriptions. Megan's Roots World http://www.megansrootsworld.blogspot.com/ Randy's Genea-Musings http://randysmusings.blogspot.com/ Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter http://eogn.typepad.com/ Look on the right side of those blogs in the side bar for their email subscription boxes. ---- A slightly more detailed version of this article can be found at: http://genealogyroots.googlepages.com/blog_subscriptions If you find this article useful, feel free to share it with any genealogy forums or newsgroups you are subscribed to - please leave all of the text and links intact. Thank you. Happy searching and blog reading. Regards, Joe