What You Make of It: Technology Update: Google Reader is shutting down, here's what you can do.

Today's What you Make of It column is a little different than my usual posts about "how to" and "DIY". If you already understand RSS and organizing you may want to skip down a ways for the recent announcement of Google Reader shutting down. For those of you have no idea what RSS is, I'm hoping you will be delighted with today's post.

Blogging and reading blogs can be an overwhelming feeling at times. There is so much content to read, catch up on and only so many hours in the day. If you are like me one blog leads to another blog which leads to another blog and time just flies. 

What is RSS? 
Without getting too technical you can visit this link at Wikipedia for exact terminology and a more detailed look at RSS.

The RSS Reader is the most important part of RSS, it's the platform in which you can organize all of your favorite blogs and even Etsy shops. So when they update, you have all of the new posts and updates all in one spot without having to blog hop and you can even tag them! 

You will first need to have a "reader" account. As of July 1, 2013 Google has announced that they are doing away with their reader.  If that is how you read Vintage Indie, and other beloved blogs, you're going to want to change this soon so that you don't miss out on any of your favorite content. 

Alternatives to Google Reader: 

 Bloglines, Netvibes, Newsblur and Feedly just to name a few. 

 

Once you have a reader of some sort you'll want to click on the little orange round button (shown in the image above). You'll find these all over the web this is the "feed icon". Once you click you are taken to the steps provided in your feeder to "subscribe" to that blog or shop. After that it's home free and you will start feeling less overwhelmed with keeping track of websites & blogs! Click this link to add Vintage Indie in your reader now! 

 

Help! I don't want to have to subscribe to every feed all over again. I have a help for you, but please keep in mind some feeds may not completely transfer over, especially your starred items.  

Google Reader Export:

1st Go to your Google Reader account. 

2nd Find the round button on the right where the settings menu is located. 

3rd Click on Reader Settings

4th Click the link that says Export your information, download your data through Google Takeout. 

5th Follow the prompts to download the file to your computer. Extract your files and save to a location you will remember. 

6th Open up the extracted files and look for the Subscriptions XML file. This is the file you will click on to import your feeds into the new reader of your choice.  

You should be all set to go with most if not all of your feeds transferring to your new reader. 

 

Good luck! 

 

xoxo VI 

Comments

[Lin]

Thanks, V. So appreciated.

Lin