The whole world is into RSS these days, and I’ve been very slow to get into it. When I listen to an album, I like to read the liner notes and get a feel for it. When I go to all of the “Blogs on the Radar,” I like reading each of the entries within the format and context of the host site. To me, the site’s fonts, colors and images are a part of the experience. The last time I checked out RSS readers, they would simply pull entries from the blogs, but the format would be stripped down text similar to an e-mail.

Times have changed.

Because the number of blogs that I follow is on the rise, going to each site is getting to be a little more time consuming. I didn’t want to download another program just for newsreading, so I looked into using the “live bookmarks” feature of Mozilla Firefox. I’m a big fan of Firefox, but I can say that the live bookmark interface leaves a lot to be desired.

Then, I remembered that Mozilla Thunderbird has a built in newsreading feature that I was completely ignoring. I followed the instructions to set up Thunderbird as a news reader and added all of the blogs listed under the “Blogs On the Radar” heading on the right. It took me all of five minutes.

When I log in to check my mail, Thunderbird now pulls updated pages in the format that I would see when I visit the sites directly. And I no longer have to waste any time checking sites that aren’t updated. Thunderbird only pulls sites that have been updated since I last checked in. That’s what I’m talking about: Same experience, less time.

Now, to my point: While I was trying to add all of your blogs to Thunderbird, I noticed a lot of you don’t feature a single link on your sites that point to your feed. And if the link was available, a lot of the time I had to hunt all over the place to find it. If you feature a link that reads “RSS” or “ATOM” that points to your feed, that’s a good start, but when people read on the web, they are hunting for information and tend to scan more than they read.

The information that I was hunting for was the color orange: that is the color that people are trained to look for when looking for an RSS feed. If I couldn’t find orange, I looked for “RSS” at either the top off the page, the bottom of the page, or at the top or bottom of your side column. If I still couldn’t find it, I made some educated guesses on what you’re feed might be.

Should guesswork really be a factor for someone trying to become a loyal reader of your site?

I’m a self admitted nerd, so I know that if you publish to blogspot.com, your feed is most likely “http://yoursite.blogspot.com/atom.xml”, but what about non-nerdy people like #1GF!? Are you actively making it easy for non-geeks to read your site? I might’ve done a little digging to get you into my reader, but others might just give up and move on.

If you have your own site, download a free feed icon from somewhere (I used feedicons.com) and feature it prominently next to a link that points to your feed (or feeds). If you don’t have your own site or can’t host images, put an easily identifiable “RSS” or “FEED” link on your page in prominent spot. If you’re a Blogger user and you’re still wondering what in the heck I’m talking about, check out Blogger’s Syndication Help for more information.

Why not make it easy for other people to enjoy your site as much as I do?

(If you want to set up the link and have no idea what to do, drop me a mail. I’m always glad to help.)

Posted in Geeky