How-to: subscribe to all the TWD blogs

Let me take a moment to revel in my first staff post… aaaaahhhhhhh

Ok now on to business. I know that some members have expressed an interest in trying to streamline reading TWD blogs. If you are like me and try to hit up every blog every week, its very time consuming to read each blog since we have members from different time zones, who like to post at different times during Tuesdays, post late, or skip the particular week etc etc.

Myself (Clara from I♥food4thought) and fellow TWDer, Shari from Whisk: a food blog, have been working on her blogroll idea for the last 2 weeks to make it as easy as possible for all techie levels to understand. Let’s all pause and give Shari a *golf clap* right now. Do iiiiiiiiit. LOL

Now without further ado…

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Don’t wanna miss any content from all the Tuesdays with Dorie bakers?

To subscribe to all the current TWD blogs—

1. Click the link. (http://www.bloglines.com/public/TWD-blogroll)

2. In Bloglines, click Export Subscriptions. (It’s below the long list of TWD members.)

3. Save the attached file somewhere on your desktop.

4. In your reader, import the subscriptions. (Since there are different readers, you’ll have to follow the instructions provided by your reader on how to import subscriptions.)

If you want to import to bloglines:
1. Log into your bloglines acct
2. Edit
3. Import subscriptions

If you want to import to google reader:
1. Log into your GR acct
2. Manage subscriptions (left column, scroll towards the bottom)
3. Import/export tab
* Just an FYI, if you import to GR all your TWD subscriptions will be mixed in with your current subscriptions. Since I have multiple gmail accts, to keep TWD separate, I use a different gmail acct/google reader and import to that one instead of my main one *or* another idea would be going through them one-by-one and putting into a TWD folder that you can create yourself.

EDIT: Shari via comments says she’s now separated the TWD blogs export link into its own folder so that should avoid mixing with your current subscriptions when you import to your reader! w00t! Shari rocks :)

At this time we only have problems with adding Helen Brain since there seems to be no feed available. Helen, I think you’ll have to fix that on your end.

We tried to check the TWD bloglines list many times but if we have missed your blog, please let us know and we’ll add you ASAP!

Also… Don’t worry! We haven’t forgotten about our new members! Shari has graciously offered to provide a bloglines export link at the end of the week that I will post within the new members post so that you will be able to add new members before the Tuesday posting day. Another *golf clap* for Shari!

Any questions and/or suggestions, please feel free to comment! We’d love to hear what you think! :)

Additional helpful information after the cut.

What is subscribing?

By subscribing to the content in a blog (called a feed), you are notified of new information when it’s posted. This means that content is delivered to you as it becomes available. It’s supposed to be simple: RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary.

What is a reader?

A reader is a central location that collects all the information from the various web sites you’ve subscribed to, like a personal newspaper. Readers have a variety of names: feed readers, feed aggregators, news reader, or aggregator. Wikipedia lists all the different feed readers at this link.

Client readers versus web-based readers

There are readers that are applications on your desktop (called a client application) or there are web-based readers. Popular desktop readers include Amphetadesk, FeedReader, and NewsGator. Popular web-based readers include Bloglines, My Yahoo, and Google Reader.

Benefits of subscribing

You’ll be able to quickly click through the different TWD blogs to find out how they fared on this week’s recipe. You won’t have to open new tabs or windows unless you want to see the post in the original blog. If you want to comment, some blogs require you to be viewing their original blog (not in a reader).

You can keep up-to-date with all the posts of TWD bloggers.

If you want to see only the TWD post, you can mark all blogs as read the day before (in your reader). Then, any new posts are marked as unread. This makes it easier to view the participants for the week.