The Featherstone's: Increase Your Blog Productivity

Following these instructions will let you quickly check any number of blogs without the hassle of actually going to the blog sites one by one. This tip requires you to be running Firefox version 2 or higher. The instructions below have screenshots of the 5 very easy steps to set this up. Click on any of the pictures to make them larger.I highly recommend you run Firefox over Internet Explorer due to security issues with IE. Dont bother reading on if you are intent on staying with Internet Explorer. (Internet Explorer 7 has similar features to the ones I describe below but I dont believe Internet Explorer handles these as well as Firefox)

If you want to switch to Firefox or are not running Firefox 3, click here to download it and install it.

After installing Firefox, open the program (you should have a new icon on your desktop)

1. Select View > Toolbars > Bookmarks Toolbar

2. Now go to your favorite blog.. (for example, http://featherstoneclan.blogspot.com)

Any decent blog will have a thing called an RSS feed, forget the fancy explanations but it allows you to quickly check if your favorite blog has any new posts without even going to blog at all

3. Click the Orange icon (The standard RSS icon) and then select "Subscribe to 'blog title' Atom..."

4. This will take you to a screen that looks like the blog but a little more plain. Near the top of this page select "Subscribe Now"

5. In the next screen that pops up, Select "Bookmarks Toolbar" and then hit "Add"

A New link will appear with the title of the blog.

Clicking on this will show you all the recent posts. Any you have not read will have a grey "RSS" icon. If you have already read the post, it will show the icon of the website.

Repeat steps 2-5 for any other blogs you want to add. You can have as many as you like. Now by simply clicking these links you are able to quickly check several blogs and waste very little of your time by typing and endlessly checking blogs.