Subscribe

My Site Feed: http://randyhoyt.com/feed/

Many web sites produce a file called a “site feed”, in addition to their regular web pages. This file contains information about when a site has been updated, usually with a list of the most recent posts to a site. Instead of you frequently visiting a large number of sites individually, a computer program called a “feed aggregator” can regularly check a large number of site feeds and let you know if anything has been added. This video provides an entertaining overview:

There are quite a few feed aggregators available. Google offers a service called Google Reader that allows you to access site feeds from Google’s web site.

1. To get started, visit google.com/reader and log in. You can use a Gmail account to log in, or you can sign up for a new Google account.

2. Once you are logged in, you will want to subscribe to a feed. Click on the “Your subscriptions” link and then on “Add a feed”.

3. Type the web address below into the “Feed URL” box to subscribe to my site feed …

   My Site Feed: http://randyhoyt.com/feed/

   … and click “Preview”.

4. After you view the preview, be sure to click on “Subscribe”. My site will then have been added to your subscription list.

In the future when you visit Google Reader, it will check my site feed to see if any new content has been added. If so, the new content will appear in your reading list automatically.

Of course, you wouldn’t use Google Reader to keep up with just one site. Many sites offer site feeds, like CNN, USA Today, ESPN, Digg, and many others. To find these feeds on your favorite sites, look for phrases like “RSS feed”, “XML”, or “Syndicate this site” or for the official orange feed icon.