Alaskan Artist Blog - Elise Tomlinson

Replies: 16 Comments

on Thursday, March 9th, elderberrystudio2000@yahoo.com">Jackie said

E: Uhhhh...what's an 'RSS feed'? Dohhh... :blush:

on Thursday, March 9th, Elise said

If you create an account in a news reader (such as bloglines) you can add "feeds" from all of your favorite blogs, or any website that has content that is updated regularly that has the little orange XML logo (see to the left in my nav bar) or sometimes it says RSS, either way, you click on that button and a new window opens with some code on it.

You would go into your news reader (bloglines), click on the link to "add feed", then copy and paste the URL from that code page that opened up...into the form for adding a feed.

What happens then, is you can add as many feeds as you like and go to just one page and see all of the blogs/sites that you visit regularly, with the most recently updated showing up at the top. (or you can customize your display however you like).

RSS allows you to "subscribe" to various blogs and other websites. I have a free account with bloglines. One of the feeds you can sign up for is called "Artist" and it has about 5 or 6 cool sites, one of them is for current exhibition opportunities. And now, you could also subscribe to my blog.

Whew, I'm not sure I explained that very well. Also, I'm not sure that my feed is working very well. I'll have to do some testing on it, but it works OK for a start.

on Thursday, March 9th, marja-leena said

Great, I love the RSS! It saves a lot of time checking if your favourite bloggers have updated. I added your feed to my reader and it appears there ok, but the text area only says Thursday, March 9th where it should have at least two lines of your entry.

on Thursday, March 9th, Elise said

aha! Thanks Marja-leena...I'll look into that, may I ask which reader you use?

on Thursday, March 9th, marja-leena said

I use NetNewsWire Lite (for Mac?) which is a free download.

on Thursday, March 9th, Kasia said

:cry:Computers are not my forte! When I click the orange button -what exactly should happen? How can I add your feed to my reader?Help!

on Thursday, March 9th, Elise said

Hi Kasia, what reader are you using? Usually you click on the button, a new window opens, you copy the URL from the new window and then paste it into your reader after clicking on your "add new feed" button.

That's how it works with most readers anyway.

on Thursday, March 9th, Elise said

Oh, and thanks for letting me know which reader you use Marja-leena, I'm not familiar with that one and I don't have a Mac but I'll try to fix it cuz it's probably doing the same thing on others.

grrr... this is why it's taken me so long to do this...it's never as easy as you think it's going to bel.
:cry:

on Thursday, March 9th, Cody said

If you have extra money to expend, then you should give FeedDemon a try. It's definitely the best reader for keeping track of dozens of websites (not just blogs) as well as podcast downloading, atleast in my opinion.

on Thursday, March 9th, Cody said

on Friday, March 10th, marja-leena said

I understand your frustration as I'm not technical either, I get help from the geeks in my life! NetNewsWire Lite is available for PCs too I'm sure. The site helps you intall it, then it's really easy to add new "subscriptions" like yours: hold down the control key (Mac), Hold down the cursor on the RSS symbol (these vary a lot) to open a menu & select "copy link". Go to the reader's top menu bar and click on the Subscribe button & presto! - it appears in your list. The odd type of RSS (Atom? I don't remember) is not recognized by my version of reader, I'd probably need the higher end paid version but only a few sites amongst my reading list have that. I've got 120 feeds on my list!! Good luck, Elise and Kasia and others interested in this real time saver!

on Friday, March 10th, subi said

Hi e,-!

I responded to you at the baby blog! (finally) but please email your addy so I can send you some copies and let me know how many you'd like...to keep or give to friends, or whatever! :rolleyes:

on Friday, March 10th, ann said

Thanks for adding the RSS feed! it will make things a lot easier for me if this works, as I check 99% of the blogs I read through bloglines.

I was able to add you to my bloglines feeds. But it only says Thursday, March 9, with no summary or real title for this entry. There may have to be a couple of entries before I can say for sure that it really works.

on Friday, March 10th, Elise Tomlinson said

Hey Cody, I've looked at FeedDemon and it has a lot of cool features but I can't afford to pay anything.
:(
And Marja-leena, thanks for all the info. I haven't tried too hard with this, I'm usually pretty technically saavy only I use Greymatter for my blog, an application that isn't really being supported anymore, so I've tried to find a workaround for creating my feed.

I've actually used a news reader for years but it's easier to subscribe than to create a feed if you're not using a prepackaged product like blogger. Thanks for letting me know how yours works, it seems fairly consistent that the summary and headline aren't displaying for anyone.
:confused:
And Subi, hey, my mailing address is listed on this site (shocking!)
309 D Street
Douglas, Alaska 99824

I don't want to be greedy but could I have 3 copies?

And Ann, thanks again for the info, without doing a second post there's no way of knowing if it will even update, so, I'll try and fix this today. Some of you may have to re-subscribe afterwards.
:(

on Friday, March 10th, subi said

will get those in the mail tomorrow! i love how the cover looks!!!! thanks again sooo much!!!
xoxo.

on Friday, March 10th, Elise said

Thanks subi!

BTW, do you instant message? I have an IM account with Yahoo now, my username is elisetomlinson (original eh?)

Anyway, let me know your id if you have one and I'll add you to my firends list.

My sister and I have been doing the voice over IP thing and it's a lot of fun, we even conference called/chatted with my grandma in Nebraska!

03/09/2006: "RSS Test"