Can I whine a bit, please?
Why do my fellow bloggers make their RSS feeds so hard to find? As you might guess from looking at my own blog, I prefer to have them right there at the top of the page, with a standardized graphic that can be dragged to a newsreader. But some folks bury them in one of the sidebars, after the first list of 483 links and before the next list of 1072 additional links, and it's a regular link that may not even say anything about "RSS" or "feed." So let me get this straight: you want to make it hard(er) for folks to read your blog on a regular basis, is that it?
I'll admit to a few shortcomings of my own here. I use Blogger rather than Movable Type, which seems to be more popular among the crowd of blogs that I frequent. But I started with Blogger long ago (even if I didn't post much), and that's where my posts are. I could move them, but I'd need a compelling reason. I say this because my biggest gripe with Blogger is that they only support Atom feeds. I realize the Atom folks think they have "a better way," but I tend to prefer changing and improving standards from within, rather than going off and creating what will become the latest and greatest new standard. Or so the authors think.
I try to do things at least similarly to what I've seen elsewhere, for several reasons. 1) I am imagination impaired. I'm a very literal person, and not one of those folks who can say, "Ooh, let's have a sweepy over here, and a bold over there, and we'll use mauve and puce to highlight a delicate ecru," and have everything come out beautiful. I have to depend on the artistic talents of others. 2) I'm a firm believer in best practices, with a splash of innovation. As I wander through the web, I see what I like and what I don't like, what seems to work best for me as a user of a site, and then try to incorporate those approaches that seem to make my life the easiest. 3) Standardization is a marvelous thing. With standards, people know what to expect, how to do things, without having to read a tutorial or make a bunch of mistakes through trial and error.
So anyway, my fellow bloggers, I and I'm sure many others would deeply appreciate it if you'd make it easy for us to find your feeds. Put a standard graphic somewhere above the fold, to borrow a newspaper phrase, and make it a link so I can click-and-drag or right-click-and-copy-shortcut and add your site to my aggregator without spending a grunch of time figuring out how you implemented a feed, or even if you have one at all.
Thank you. And now that you've had the whine, go and get some cheese.
Update:Donald Sensinggets religion sees the light.
