I’ve installed two more updates to the SHINE blog in recent days and wanted to make you aware of them.
The Save Button
You may notice now a Share/Save button at the bottom of posts and comments. This button allows you to easily share items you see on the SHINE Blog by posting them on social networking sites like Facebook, emailing them to a friend, or adding them to your bookmarks.
Comment Subscription Options
Now when you post a comment on the SHINE Blog, you will have the option of indicating that you would like to be notified by email if someone else comments on that post.
Both of these items are designed to be ways to help you connect with the SHINE Blog. Let me know of anything else you would like to see added here.
March 14th, 2009
Posted by
Glenwood Presbyterian |
SHINE Blog Tips |
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Now that things on the SHINE Blog are heating up, I thought it would be prudent to give everyone some instruction on how to make sure you don’t miss what is going on here. How are things heating up? Well, if you have missed the last several months, here’s what been happening on the blog…
1. The SHINE blog contest reached a conclusion – or did it? The solution was reached by Rob Smith, but never posted here. That may change soon.
2. We have been posting recordings of our Sunday sermons from Pastor Charles and Pastor Vernon.
3. We’ve just recently started our downpour series including daily study guides and recordings of the SHINE messages.
All in all, its a lot to keep up with. How do you know when something is posted to the blog? There are two main ways.
Subscribe By Email
The simplest way is to subscribe with your email address to receive daily notifications of posts to the blog. Look on the right side of the page. Do you see the box entitled “Email Updates?” Simply enter your email address and follow the instructions and you will receive emails on days where a post is made – if there is no post that day, you get no email. It’s that simple!
There are a couple of disadvantages to this, however. The emails go out once a day, so the post may already be a day old before you receive the notification. In addition, you won’t receive an email when a comment to an existing post is made.
The best way to subscribe to the SHINE Blog is through its RSS feeds. What is an RSS feed, you ask? RSS stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’. Many people describe it as a ‘news feed’ that you subscribe to.
I find the ’subscription’ description helpful. It’s like subscribing to a magazine that is delivered to you periodically but instead of it coming in your physical mail box each month when the magazine is published it is delivered to your ‘RSS Reader’ every time your favorite website updates.
How To Use RSS
1. Get an RSS reader. The first thing you’ll want to do if you’re getting into reading sites via RSS is to hook yourself up with an RSS Feed Reader.
There are many feed readers going around with a variety of approaches and features – however a good place to start is with a couple of free and easy to use web based ones like Google Reader and Bloglines. Either one will do if you’re starting out (I use Bloglines) – as I say there are many others to choose from but to get started either of these are fairly easy to use and will help you work out the basics of RSS.
Both of these feed readers work a little like email. As you subscribe to feeds you’ll see that unread entries from the sites you’re tracking will be marked as bold. As you click on them you’ll see the latest update and can read it right there in the feed reader. You are given the option to click through to the actual site or move onto the next unread item – marking the last one as ‘read’.
The best way to learn how to use either Google Reader or Bloglines is to simply subscribe to some feeds and give it a go. Both have helpful help sections to get you up and running.
Note: other options to tracking websites that you might already be familiar with include using pages like MyYahoo, MyGoogle and MyMSN.
2. Subscribe to the SHINE Blog with RSS Once you have an RSS reader, you are ready to subscribe. Look on the right side of this page just below the calendar. See the two subscribe buttons? Click on one and then select your RSS reader from the menu – its that simple! Then click on the other subscribe button to also follow the SHINE blog comments from your RSS reader.
The big advantages to using RSS are the ability to follow comments and the fact that now you can add to your RSS reader any other pages that you like and subscribe to them! Many pages have RSS feeds and most have buttons like the one you see on the SHINE blog page to make subscribing easy. I’m currently tracking 32 different blogs and pages with my Bloglines account.
I would encourage all of you to subscribe BOTH with email and through an RSS reader. The blog is a good way to encourage community and interesting discussions among our church members and others. As always, let me know if you have questions or don’t understand something. I’ll be glad to help you out!
March 11th, 2009
Posted by
Glenwood Presbyterian |
SHINE Blog Tips |
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