Your "feed address" is...

I hope you enjoyed the presentation, and that you've had a chance to play with your new blog a bit. There's lots to learn, and it can be frustrating at times, but things will become easier with practice.

The whole concept of the blog feed, rss, and subscribing can be confusing - please take a look at the previous post and the accompanying video and links, and you'll be on your way!

Someone in class asked what the "feed address" (or feed URL) for their blog is. On blogger, your blog's feed address is http://YOURBLOGADDRESS.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
So, if your blog's URL is http://thehappylibrarian.blogspot.com, then your blog's feed is http://thehappylibrarian.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
Please note that your blog's URL is NOT (necessarily) the same as your Blog's NAME. Remember, your blog's name is changeable; the blog's URL is the name you chose and clicked the "availability" link to make sure that URL was open and available for you to use. If you are unsure of your blog's URL, log in to Blogger with your gmail username and password, and in your dashboard click on the "view blog" link. Your blog will load, and the URL will be displayed in the address bar.

It is a good idea to know what your blog's feed address is; however, if a person wants to subscribe to your blog, most of the popular aggregators will be able to "discover" the feed address and add it (subscribe to it) from the blog's URL alone. So, don't worry too much if at this point the feed concept is still a little hazy.

RSS? Feeds? Huh?

Click To Play

The folks at Common Craft made a great little video that goes over the basics of RSS. If you need a feed reader I recommend starting out with a web-based service like Bloglines, Google Reader, or My Yahoo (each has a different style - you'll probably like one of them).

Welcome to Blogging 101!

Welcome to the Blogging 101 blog!

This blog was created as an addendum to my Blogging 101 presentation at the Rhode Island Library Association's 2007 Conference, and chances are if you are reading this, you attended the session. Or, maybe not. Maybe you heard about the blog at RILA and figured you'd check it out because you didn't attend the session. Whatever - it's all good.

I created the presentation, and this blog, to help librarians (and anyone else) who are nervous about putting together their first blog using Blogger. The presentation (a class, actually) was very basic, and I hope that over time this blog offers some helpful tips, links to resources, and slightly more advanced content. I am not a Blogger expert by any means! I'm just a librarian with a few Blogger blogs and a desire to help new blogging librarians over the hump.

Please feel free to ask questions in the comments! When time allows, I will try to answer them.
Also, be sure to subscribe to the blog so that you can get automatic updates in your feed reader.

Thanks for reading, and happy blogging!

Hello World!

This is my first blog post ever! Yay, me!
(OK, not really, but it sounded good for the Blogging class.)