My Studies on Aggregating Bloggs

RSS

Just to quickly start things off, in the simplest sense, every blog out there, has this thing called an RSS Feed (Really Simple Syndication). These "Feeds" are generated in blogging platforms for easier access to their posts. For example, this blog has its own RSS feeds page, which reader services like Yahoo Reader, Feedly, and others can access and show you the feeds (Google Reader used to be a main candidate but was discontinued sometime in June). It goes something like this:

Post ➡ Feed ➡ Reader ➡ You

So that's how it goes, your post becomes a feed, then goes to the reader, then it becomes accessible to you (With a link to the original post).


IFTTT

What is "IFTTT" you may ask? Well, if any of you have seen the recent bookmark Steven had posted on Diigo, it speaks about this service. IFTTT ( if this then that) Is a web service that provides an online trigger. As they explain here, IFTTT very simply allows you to create recipes with certain premises.

Let's say, I wanted a post from my own personal blog on Blogger to appear on my Feedly as a new feed.

After creating an account on IFTTT's page, and you select "Recipes" you come to this page:

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Afterwards, you come up to the famous statement "if this then that" and you select "this"

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Here you have a WIDE range of options of services to choose from, some even going into the iOS services

However, to be able to use one for the iOS service, you would need to install their app, they give you a download link for it.

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But for me, I'll be going with Blogger.

It will then Prompt me to activate the "This" Command

It then takes you to a prompt to sign up your account, but since SUNYIT doesn't support Blogger, I need to use my personal account.

After you select which blog you want, you then get this:

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Now you should have this:

Of course continue to the next step as instructed, and you will be asked what will the trigger from Blogger be.

I'll go with any new post. Then it'll take you to the "that" part.

Now, the list won't be as huge as the first one, because now it's only services compatible with Blogger. Let's select Feedly now.

Then the same thing, you activate the trigger by going to Feedly's service and logging in.

Now you come to setting what will Feedly do.

Then you come down to adding these things called "Ingredients" since the post will appear in Feedly, there are some customization features that you can edit.

For me, what I will do is add the "Post title" and the "Post URl" so when I go to Feedly, that's what I see.

Then you very simply create the action, and boom! you have your recipe.

And you'll be able to edit, see, and either disable or enable them in your recipes window. They do however have a 15 minute interval, so you'll need to be patient.

So, to test this out, I made a post on Bloggy me:

15 minutes later, I see this on my Feedly:

And there you have it!


So then, the formula we would need to complete a junction Blog, would be to have this, several recipes linked to everyone's blogs, and all going to the same Blog, thus, making a post for every new post you guys make! Brilliant isn't it?

Well, that's all I have for now. The studies have been great!
Thank you for reading.