Friday, February 08, 2008

Keeping Up with Comments

I want to share with you a tip that helps me keep up with the comments across all the posts I've made over the past three years.

Much of the action on The Splintered Mind occurs in the comments section. This section is home to some of the most insightful, thought provoking comments I have read on any mental health blog, proving that my readers are, in my opinion, a cut above the rest. I am constantly amazed, intimidatingly so, by the wisdom that some people share with me as they deal with their own issues. None of us are the same. We all have different ways of coping. Mine involve no meds, some involve all meds, and others involve a balance between the two. Comments are for the most part upbeat and positive, but never sappy. There are some great conversations happening in there that you may not be aware of.

The problem is, of course, that nobody has time to reload old articles over and over again hoping to find a new comment to respond to. That's why I use a dedicated comments RSS feed. Here is the magic URL:

http://thesplinteredmind.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/full

You can plug this feed into a dedicated news feed reader or a news feed reading site like Bloglines and Google Reader. However, if you are running a modern browser chances are that your browser is capable of subscribing to feeds as well.


Safari on OSX:

Click on this link: feed://thesplinteredmind.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/full, and then click on the plus symbol:

Subscribing to comments in Safari p.1

You'll be prompted to add the feed to your list of bookmarks.

Subscribing to comments in Safari p.2

I would recommend placing it somewhere in your Bookmark Bar. This will show a count of unread comments whenever the feed is updated. I've placed mine within a folder within my Bookmark Bar, and a day or two of blog activity looks like this:

Subscribing to comments in Safari p.3



Firefox: coming later today


Flock:

Click on this link: http://thesplinteredmind.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/full, and then click on the Subscribe button:

Subscribing to comments in Flock p.1

This should automatically add the feed to your list of feeds in the sidebar on the left.

Subscribing to comments in Flock p.2

In my case, the feed was added without the feed title. This is a simple matter to correct. Right click (or Control-click for some Mac users) on the blank titled feed and select "Edit".

Subscribing to comments in Flock p.3

Then add a spiffy new name.

Subscribing to comments in Flock p.4



Internet Explorer 7: Since I don't have this installed in Parallels at the moment, it'd be great if a reader could supply a few steps.





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