This turned out to be a pretty simple request thanks to the folks at Feedburner, the company that handles my RSS feeds.

To subscribe, just place your email address in the form at the top-left. You will receive a verifying email which you must answer, then you will be all set. The system will send you a copy of any new posts in HTML format. They will be sent at about 6-9 AM CST. No posts? No email.

Prefer a direct link to subscribe? Click Here

Some Blogs add new content (articles) every day. Others maybe once or twice a week or sometimes less often. So the question is whether there is a way to keep up with the blogs you like to read without having to go to that Blog to see if there is anything new. If you have a list of maybe 8-10 of your favorites, that can be time consuming. Well there IS, and this article will teach you how to do it in almost no time, and the good news is you already have everything you need to set it up!

The KEY to all this is RSS or Really Simple Syndication. It is likely that you have seen a link or maybe a graphic on many web sites and Blogs that looks like this or maybe this . Sometimes is is a text link that says: Subscribe to my feed or Subscribe to my Podcast. When clicked, all of them will provide a special web page that is kinda nasty looking, but is not there for you to read. It is there for a news reader to read and THIS is the key to keeping up to date with as many Blogs as you like in one centralized location.

Every time the blogger adds an article, this RSS FEED page is updated. The article’s title is shown and also an excerpt from that article, usually the first 4-5 sentences. They are links, so when clicked, they take you to that Blog or to that article, your choice! Now you have an easy way to see who just blogged something and you can then go to their blog to read the whole article!

Nearly all blogs create this RSS feed automatically. There are also companies like Feedburner who take the RSS feed created by the Blog and make it pretty. They ALSO provide a central link to that RSS feed. I use Feedburner and you can take a look at what appears there by clicking here or here. There are two as I publish two blogs.

OK… so how can you use these RSS Feeds to create a summary of all the blogs that interest you. To make this simple, as promised, I am going to use Yahoo or to be more accurate My Yahoo. Why Yahoo? No reason at all. This whole process is available on Google, My AOL, MSN, NewsGator and others. I happen to use My Yahoo so that’s what you get!

We are going to create a one page location where you can follow two of my Blogs and two others that I like to follow. This post is also available as a downloadable .PDF if you wish to have a printable copy. Click here to download.
You will need a Yahoo login before you can do this. It is painless, but required by Yahoo to use the My Yahoo feature. I am going to presume you have one or will make one for use here.

Here are the steps:

1. Login to your My Yahoo. I use their three column format.

2. On the right side, below the advertising, you will see a link: Add New Page Click that link.

3. On the next page, just below the Yahoo Banner, you will see a link like this: Add Content Click that link.

4. On the next page, you will see a box labeled Find Content and a click box labeled Find. Do NOT click that box! Instead, look just to the right and you will see in really tiny print: Add RSS by URL. That is the one you click!

5. On the next page, you will see a location to enter the URL (page address) of the RSS for the blog that interests you. How do you find that URL? You go to the Blog of interest and look for that little graphic or any of the text links I gave above and you click on that link. THAT will tale you that nasty looking page I mentioned. You then just COPY and PASTE the URL into the box pn the Yahoo page and click ADD.

So, let’s say you want to add the RSS for The Real Costa Rica Blog. The RSS page is: http://blog.therealcostarica.com/wp-rss2.php so you copy and paste that URL to Yahoo and click Add.

6. On the next page, you verify the information is correct and click: Add To My Yahoo.

That’s it! When you return to your My Yahoo, the Blog Title will show and the last serveral articles and dates will be show right there! When the blogger adds a post, the RSS is updated and so is your My Yahoo. When they Post, YOU know it right away.

Now some variations.

Variation 1.

We will next add the Blog Costa Rica Jones. On HIS blog, the RSS link is called: Subscribe to my podcast. BUT, when you click it, you are asks to DOWNLOAD the page. That is NOT what we want! We want the LINK to that page. How do we get it? Simple! Right Click on the link Subscribe to my podcast and select “Copy Link Location”. This may vary by browser, but this is what Firefox uses. Now PASTE that link into the Yahoo page as I described above, click Add, then on the next page click Add To My Yahoo. You’re done!

Variation 2.

We are now going to add an RSS feed to My Dos Colones, another blog I frequent. On his blog, the RSS link says: Subscribe to my Feed. When you click THAT link, you get to his Feedburner page for his Blog. We discussed Feedburner above. That link actually shows his RSS feed all pretty and formatted, but the URL for THAT page is what we will copy and paste into Yahoo. You could, of course, right click to Copy Link Location as we did in variation 1 above.

You can now follow all of the above steps again to add blog after blog to your My Yahoo. When done, you will have a collection of all your favorite CR blogs in one handy location.

And now the cool parts!

Cool thing 1.

My Yahoo will allow you to add these RSS feeds from ANY web site, Blog, newspaper, whatever! Just look for the graphic on any web site and you know you can add that content to your My Yahoo.

Cool thing 2.

Many sites now offer an instant, one click graphic that when click, automatically add that content to your My Yahoo. Here are two examples: For Hisfault – Rants from the Tropics look for this: Now when you click THAT link, it instantly adds the RSS feed for www.hisfault.com to your My Yahoo. you need do nothing! Here is one for The REAL Costa Rica Blog that works the same way:

On various blogs, you may also see: , , and others. These are automatic, 1-click links to add the RSS to the reader specified. In fact I will be adding them to my blogs very soon. All work the same way.

At any time, you can now quickly easily add the RSS feed for thousands of blogs and web sites. Also, if a blog becomes inactive or you lose interest, you can just click the little X and Yahoo removes it from your page.

Here is a link that shows you a screen print of my personal My Yahoo and exactly how this whole thing looks when finished. I have maybe 20 links, but the screen shot only shows the first three.

RSS is really easy an now you can make use of it too.

RSS Links used in above examples:

The Real Costa Rica Blog

http://feeds.feedburner.com/therealcostaricablog

Hisfault – Rants from the Tropics – Costa Rica

http://feeds.feedburner.com/hisfault

My Dos Colones

http://feeds.feedburner.com/DosColones

Costa Rica Jones

http://costaricajones.blogs.com/costa_rica_jones/rss.xml

and a couple more to play with!

http://www.abroadincostarica.com/index.rdf and

http://jacquelinepassey.blogs.com/blog/rss.xml