Friday, December 28, 2007

Adding a Reader Subscribe button

The reason to add a subscribe button to your site is to
send your new posts right to a reader's email or home page
web site.

Folks come on your site/blog to read, but unless they know that
new content has been added, they might forget to drop by.

I am rather new to Blogger - Blogspot as I have my main
blog at Typepad. The reason being my brother was with Typepad
and he suggested I start blogging nearly 3 years ago.
Blogger and Blogspot are free. In retrospect, I maybe should
have gone the freebee route. I pay something like $49 a year.

Anyway.... my intent of this post is to help folks new to blogger
understand how to set this 'feed' up.

One of the best and easiest free site to use is Feedburner.

Go to http://www.feedburner.com/ to sign up for a new account.

WELL.... don't go there quite yet. First off you will need
to copy the main URL - web address of your blog. Copy
that so it's in your buffer and you can paste it once you are at
the feedburner page.

As an example - Here is the URL to my other blog

http://deb_inside.typepad.com/

You just go to the top of your main blog page and copy the URL.
It's the same URL that you share with others when you are directing
them to your blog.

Now go to the Feedburner site.

Once you are at the site you will see these words:

Start FeedBurning Now. Type your feed or blog URL below

Into the peach colored box, add your site's URL. Hit the NEXT button.

I -THINK- it's at this point that Feedburner will ask
you to create a user name and password. I was doing
this step by step on Feedburner,
to make sure I had it all correct, but it did not ask me
because I am already a member. Just make a user name
and password and be SURE to write
them down for future use. !!!!!!!

A window will come up that says: Identify Feed Source

Choose the second button - You will see your blogs name and then RSS after it.

The next screen will say : Welcome! Let us burn a feed for you.

Scroll down the page just a little and click the Activate Feed button.

It will now say: Congrats! Your FeedBurner feed is now live.

At the bottom of the page it says this...

You have completed Step 1 of 2. In Step 2, you may consider
adding additional free FeedBurner Stats options for a more richly
detailed view of your feed readership.

I did not go on to that step.... but if you want to I'm sure it's step by step.

To add a feed or subscribe button to your site go to -
http://www.feedburner.com/

In the upper left corner you will see a blue link that says:
My Feeds - Click on that.

A page will open up where you see - Feed Title - and the
name of your blog. Click on the name of your blog.

The next page that opens up will have 5 tabs. Go to publicize
(click on the gray publicize tab)

In the left column under SERVICES - you will see email sububscriptions
click on that. Scroll down the middle of the page and you will see the words...
Use as a widget in ------------- There will be a drop down box that allows
you to choose Blogger. Then hit the GO button beside the drop down.
You will then need to click on the SAVE button at the very bottom of the page.

CONGRATS you have now added a button to your blog for email subscriptions.

NOW...... to add the second way for folks to subscribe... STAY WITH ME...
You are doing GREAT !!!!

On this same page under SERVICES.... look for the words :

Chicklet Chooser --- Click there.

When the new window opens up you will see a list of buttons.
ALREADY there will be a check mark - (tiny green circle) in the
first space. It will have an orange square button with white markings
on it. It says --- Subscribe in a reader.

Scroll down the page and near the bottom of the page locate the
drop down menu where you can pick - Blogger.

It will say ---- Use as a widget in -------------- Hit the Go button

A page will pop up that say.... Add Page Element

On this page - JUST CLICK the blue Add Widget button.....

and then it will be added to your blogger page.

IF anyone is confused, or needs a little help in
setting this up on their blog, please drop me
an email and I would be more than happy to
help you out.

AFMomDeb@aol.com




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