Blogging with Bloglines

You've already seen Bloglines (www.bloglines.com) in Chapter 2, "Grabbing RSS with Readers," where it was used as an RSS reader. But as you can gather from its name, you can use Bloglines to create your own blog as well. In the main Bloglines page, sign in or create a new account and then click the My Blog tab and click the link on the right to set up your "clip blog" (Figure 5.26).

Figure 5.26. You need to set up a clip blog in Bloglines.

What's a clip blog? It's a blog you create from the good stuff you read in the blogs on Bloglines. You simply "clip" text and add it to your blog. Enter the user name you want to use for your blog, the blog's title and description, and select the privacy setting (Figure 5.27).

Figure 5.27. Enter the standard information for your new blog in Bloglines.

After filling in that information, save your changes. In the new page that appears, click the My Blog tab to display your new blog (Figure 5.28).

Figure 5.28. Your new blog displayed in Bloglines.

The new blog is available at www.bloglines.com/blog/rssmaniac. There's nothing in it yetso to add a post, click New Post to open the post editor. You can choose from various font options for your new blog (Figure 5.29).

Figure 5.29. Bloglines lets you select the font, font style, and font size for the new blog.

After you've entered your new post, scroll down, click Publish to Blog and then navigate to the URL of your new blog (Figure 5.30).

Figure 5.30. Your new blog in Bloglines.

Bloglines' RSS feed

To subscribe to your blog's new RSS feed, click the Sub button on the left.

To read your new feed from Bloglines itself (Figure 5.31), just subscribe to the feed as you would any feed using Bloglinesgo to the Bloglines main page, log in if necessary, and click the My Feeds tab, followed by the Add link.

Figure 5.31. Read your new blog using RSS in Bloglines.

How do you clip news items and add them to your blog? When you see an RSS item you like, just click the Clip/Blog This link at the bottom of the RSS items (Figure 5.32).

Figure 5.32. You can also read other RSS items in Bloglines.

When you click the Clip/Blog This link, the RSS item opens in a new window (Figure 5.33).

Figure 5.33. It's easy to clip an item in Bloglines.

After you click Publish to Blog, a confirming message appears in the current window. Close that window and click the My Blogs button in the main Bloglines window. The newly-clipped item will now appear in your blog (Figure 5.34).

Figure 5.34. Here's the clipped item as it appears in your Bloglines blog.

To add some text to the newly clipped item, just click the item to open the editing window (Figure 5.35).

Figure 5.35. Edit a clipped item in your Bloglines blog.

Make the edits you'd like, then resave your blog. When you go back to your blog, you'll see your comments added to the newly clipped blog item (Figure 5.36).

Figure 5.36. You can comment on a clipped item in your Bloglines blog.

This new item will also appear in the RSS feed for your blog (Figure 5.37).

Figure 5.37. Here's the final version of the RSS feed for the Bloglines blog.

The final RSS 2.0 feed for your new blog looks like this:

     <?xml version="1.0"?>     <rss version="2.0">     <channel>     <title>Steve's News</title>     <link>http://www.bloglines.com/blog/rssmaniac</link>     <description>News from Steve!</description>     <language>en-us</language>     <webMaster>[e-mail]</webMaster>     <item>     <title>Think Away the Pain</title>     <description><P>Are you trying to shovel too much snow too? </P>   <P>Take a look at this item on handling the pain.</P> <P>URL: <A   href="http://www.bloglines.com/preview?siteid=262&amp;itemid=5102"   target=_blank class=blines2 title="Link to another page in this   blog">Think Away the Pain</A> </P></description>     <pubDate>Wed, 21 Dec 2005 13:30:16 GMT</pubDate>     <guid>http://www.bloglines.com/blog/rssmaniac?id=2</guid>     <link>http://www.bloglines.com/blog/rssmaniac?id=2</link>     </item>     <item>     <title>Steve shovels the snow</title>     <description>It snowed once again. Time to shovel!</description>     <pubDate>Wed, 21 Dec 2005 12:37:11 GMT</pubDate>     <guid>http://www.bloglines.com/blog/rssmaniac?id=1</guid>     <link>http://www.bloglines.com/blog/rssmaniac?id=1</link>     </item>     </channel>     </rss> 

Each time you clip an item and put it in your blog, a link appears to the source blog, and it seems that would be the perfect place to use the RSS 2.0 <source> element. However, as you can see by looking at the RSS feed for this blog, that source information doesn't appear in the RSS feed.