AUTHORS ELECTRIC HOW TO DAY - RSS Feeds – How to find your RSS URL - Chris Longmuir
Authors Electric recently dipped a toe into Triberr. This
was followed by screams of anguish about the mysteries of RSS, and how to find
the correct URL to enable the RSS feed.
So, first of all what is RSS, and what is it needed for.
Well, I’m no expert, but I’ll share what I know.
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and is an easy way
for web sites to share headlines and stories from other sites. For the purposes
of Authors Electric it is needed to ensure that the members who have signed up
for Triberr, can share their blogs with all the other members and their
followers.
It is immensely time consuming to search for and visit each
blog in turn by traditional methods using search engines, however, by using
Triberr, the blogs come to the members through this portal reducing the need to
go searching for them. By visiting Triberr once a day, or once a week, or
whatever schedule suits, you will find all the other members blogs are gathered
together in a list. This list can be inspected so that members can choose the
blogs that interest them and be taken there immediately with one click of the
mouse, or they can simply share them. But in order for this to work, Triberr
has to know where to find the blogs, and that is what the RSS feed is for. Once
you have found your RSS feed URL, it needs to be added to the blog details
under My Blogs in your Settings, on the Triberr site.
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| My Blogs in Account Settings |
This is the point some people give up in despair because
they don’t know how to find their RSS feed URL.
How to find your RSS
URL
1. The easiest way is to look for the RSS icon on your blog.
It is an orange square with a white dot in the lower left hand corner, and two
white curved lines above it. Click on this square and it will take you to a
page which is completely white and will say in the top left side, “Not Found”,
however, if you look in the address line of your browser you will see the RSS
URL. Copy this URL and paste it into the Blog Details in Triberr. You’ll
probably have to click +Add Blog to get the proper place to paste your URL
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| RSS Button |
2. If you don’t have the RSS icon on your blog page then all
you have to do is add a little bit onto the end of your blog address:
Wordpress - the
extra bit is /?feed=rss2
So if your blog address is http://blogname.com/ you would
add this extra bit to make it http://blogname.com/?feed=RSS2
One website I consulted said that all you need to add onto
the end of your blog url is /feed/ which would make the address http://blogname.com/feed/
I haven’t tried this one though so not sure whether it will work.
Blogger – the
extra bit is /feeds/posts.default?alt=rss
So if your blog address is http://blogname.blogspot.com you
would add this extra bit to make it http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss
You would, of course substitute your own blog name for
“blogname”.
Once you have copied your url from your blog and pasted it
into Triberr, there is a button to test the feed. If you have done this
successfully all your new blogs will appear in the other members live stream so
they can visit or tweet it.
You must then assign your blog to a tribe. To do this click
on the “Assign Tribes” button which sits immediately below “Blog Details” and
next to “+ Add Blog”. A window will open and you simply click the down arrow of
the tribe you want to assign your RSS feed to. You are only allowed one feed to
a tribe. If you only belong to one tribe and only have one feed this is not a
problem, likewise if you belong to several tribes but only have one blog RSS
feed you simply assign that blog to each tribe. However, if you have more than
one blog you need to think which blog you want attached to which tribe. Once
you assign a specific blog to a tribe you cannot change it for 30 days. If you
look at the diagram you will see I have my own blog assigned to “Love a Happy
Ending” and “Red Herrings”, but I have assigned the “Authors Electric” blog to
the tribe of “Authors Electric”. This means my own personal blog will not
appear in the “Authors Electric” tribe stream for sharing.
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| Assign Tribes under Blog Details |
The other place you can add your RSS URL is your Amazon
Author page. Go to Amazon Author Central, but it must be Amazon.com not
Amazon.co.uk, once you are there you can add your blog feed to to your author
page using the same RSS feed you used for Triberr. However, for some reason the
UK site does not have the
facility to add a blog it must be the US one. The blog feed goes on your
Profile page.
I hope that this information is helpful to you.
Chris Longmuir
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