For Your Family Story: Subscribe

What Does Subscribing Have To Do With Kissing?

So, what do I mean by subscribe? Well, if you like what I have to say on my blog more than once or twice, then you can subscribe for free [my favorite word] to my blog so that you don't ever miss what I have to say. I mean, you can try and manually keep up with my blog, but what if "life happens" and you forget to check my blog? [As much as I don't like to think of you forgetting about me, it could happen.] Or what if, say, you have quite a few other sites "bookmarked" or "favorited" and you can't find my blog in that long, long list of bookmarks or favorites? Then it's time to subscribe.

There's this thing called RSS [Real Simple Syndication] which is usually indicated by a funny looking orange image with some curved lines and a dot. Really, it's just a fancy acronym [and phrase] that means that some magical computer thing is going on that can tell when I post a new blog post, and if you have subscribed to my RSS [which, by the way, sounds a little funny as I type this out...], then you receive an update in an RSS reader or by email, whichever you prefer. Like magic. Once you sign up, you don't have to do anything else. [I love computer magic.]

Now, I mentioned that you'd need a RSS reader if you don't plan on receiving my new posts in your email. 'Cause, really? Isn't your email inbox full with enough stuff already? Besides you might find some other blogs that you'd like to keep up with as well, and that's gonna get a little messy in the old inbox. It'd be much better to receive all your subscriptions in one spot for easy reading. Kind of like a magazine where you've cherry-picked all the authors that you like, and then when you have some down time, you can read them all. In one spot. Now, wouldn't that be nice?

I agree. It would be nice. So you have to decide on a RSS feed reader. The most popular is Google Reader. It comes with some features, and is pretty easy to use. Another good one is Bloglines. I've used Google Reader for a while now, and I like it. I've since added a Feedly plug-in to my Firefox browser to make my Google Reader look more like a magazine. But that's just me getting fancy. You don't have to do that. [But it is cool looking.]

No matter what, the choice is yours. I just thought I'd let you know you have some choices and what some of them are. And now you know what all those references to RSS [not to mention all those funny looking orange images with the curved lines and a dot] are. So, why do I like to subscribe to RSS feeds? Well, it's really rather simple. I like to subscribe to RSS because I definitely like to KISS [Keep It Simple Stupid].