RSS

State of the Blogroll

Around every three months I run a link checker on Blogroll.org to see who’s fallen by the wayside or whatever changes there might be via URLs shifting ’n all. It’s how I keep the blogroll fresh and clean just for you!

My observations from these scans:

- An average of one or two blogs disappear completely during each cycle (i.e. their domain no longer works or the blog has been deleted).

- While it’s fortunate to only lose a couple every few months, it’s always sad to see them go and they leave a hole in the blogverse. Like losing friends.

- A large portion of redirect errors come from blogs changing their URLs (i.e. moving to new locations or changing the way they do links, etc.) and forgetting to also redirect their RSS feed. So don’t forget your RSS feed when you change things up, folks!

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“A Gentle Intro to RSS”

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I talk about RSS feeds quite a bit — they’ve been around for decades and are one of the easiest (and best) ways to keep up with your favorite blogs. However, in the zeal of my love for it, I sometimes forget that not everyone knows what RSS feeds are, much less how to use them in the first place.
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Beware Chrome’s follow button?

By now you've probably heard Google's testing an RSS follow button in Chrome that lets readers follow blogs, etc. and read those articles in a new "Following" tab in the browser. At first glance it's great news -- anything that helps readers follow blogs can only help, right? The problem is this is Google we're talking about...
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