How to: Google Reader

I've been meaning to start posting more often about things other than what we did this week or what pictures I took. One thing I thought I'd do is post a handy tip about blogging, photography, digital scrapbooking, etc... useful stuff that some of you are also interested in or might find useful.

So tip #1 : Using Google Reader

(This is for anyone that follows more than one blog)

If you are a blogger/blog reader/ blog stalker and you don't use Google Reader, you are missing out on a way handy tool. This is a must have. It's a feed reader, and not the only one out there, but in my opinion it's the best one to use. It's probably the most popular these days.

Reader allows you to keep track of new posts on the blogs that you read, putting this all at a glance in a simple format. It will keep track of what you have/ haven't read on each blog and allow you to organize your blogs in a way that works for you. Now I know a lot of people have a blog full of links to other blogs, or a sidebar that shows the most recent posts for each blog that they read. But this is better, I promise. Try it, you'll like it. Bottom line: It's a HUGE time-saver for blog surfers. It helps to makes your time online more productive.

I've written this little tutorial with screenshots and arrows pointing to where to click. Hopefully this will make it easy to understand and set up. 

It's super easy to get set up. If you have a google ID (blogger) you just use that to log in at http://reader.google.com

This is what that screen will look like the first time. After that, if you have it remember you (or already have google remembering you for gmail, blogger, etc) then it will just come up.

When you first log in, your screen will look like this. Click in the upper left the button that says  +Add a subscription then type or paste the url address in the box that somes up. Hit enter or click Add.

The blog will come up like this. If you want to be able to scroll through all the posts from a given blog in Reader--under the blog title in your preview pane, where it says Show: you can click all items, or to only see the new posts that you haven't read, click  x new items. This will be the selection for all of your blogs until you change it.

For a blog post to be marked as read, you just scroll down past it.

Once you have a subscription, you will see it like this in your browser. Your preview pane will show the most recent post first, and as you scroll down you can read the blog posts.

To organize your blogs, you can click on Feed settings below the blog title, and click on an existing folder or create a new one by clicking on the last option New folder. You won't have any folders until you have created one by putting a blog in it. The folders are actually more like tags than folders. You can tag something to be in more than one folder. For instance, I could put a photographer friends' blog in a folder called "Photography" and also "Favorites". 

All of your blogs will come up listed with the title that the blog owner has given the blog. If you want to rename that- maybe the titles bug you or are too long- or you just prefer to have them listed by name, you can click on Feed settings and click Rename subscription.

So once you have added all of your blogs, it will look a little somethin' like this when you log in. You will see all of your blog titles on the left and on the homepage you'll see previews of a few of the most recently updated ones in your preview pane.

If you click on the blog title on the left, it will bring that blog up in the preview pane. The blog title on the left bar will be bold if there are new posts and the number of new posts will be in parentheses. To have a post marked as read, you have to scroll completely down past the end of the post in the preview pane.

To see the whole blog, that's easy too. Just right click on the title at the top of the preview pane, and click Open link in new tab or Open link in new window, whichever you prefer. You will have to do this to comment on the post or see the blog's design/sidebars.

The one exception to all of this: Private blogs. They will not show new posts or allow you to read within Google Reader (someday hopefully they will add this feature). But, you can still add them to your list of blogs. The posts won't come up, but you can click on it on the left bar, then right click the header at the top and open the blog. This allows you to keep them on your radar as well. (Maybe set up a folder for Private blogs to check periodically for new posts).

I hope this helps. I know that a lot of times, either I don't know about something or it seems more complicated or intimidating than it is, so I don't try it. I've been using Google Reader forever, but when Dave first told me I should use it, it took me forever to actually do it, and I regretted not setting it up sooner, because it's awesome.

Please leave some feedback if you try this. Let me know if my instructions make sense or not, and if this was helpful. Let me know if you want to see more, and feel free to give suggestions for future tips :)