How to Be A WAC Groupie, Or Three Easy Steps to Following this Blog >Kella Hammond

Click on the tutorial below for a video of the directions in this post.

1. Subscribe to an online content aggregator (Really Simple Syndication [RSS] reader) such as Google Reader, Bloglines, Netvibes, Newsgator, My Yahoo, or Atom. These free and fairly simple feed readers check your favorite blogs, web sites, or other routinely updated online content daily and place all of the information you choose to receive in one easy-to-use, accessible, and private place. I love Google Reader because I don’t have to spend time visiting each and every web site I’m interested in; the information comes to me. Remember when news services (you know, like newspapers... poor old dinosaurs… a student of mine last semester laughed at me when I told him I had majored in journalism as an undergraduate [true story]) subscribed to syndication services such as United Press International, Reuters, or the Associated Press? The RSS feed reader follows the same premise—you subscribe to the information you want to follow by adding URLs to your feed reader and then the reader brings that information to you in one centralized place.

Additional resources you may find handy if the idea of an RSS reader is new to you:

• “How to Use Google Reader” by Andy Wibbels: http://andywibbels.com/flash/google_reader.htm
  
• Common Craft’s “RSS in Plain English" by Lee LeFever: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU

2. Follow the Writing Across the Curriculum blog by clicking on the “Follow” button on the right hand side of the site. By following our blog, you’ll not only join a diverse community of scholars, professors, writers, and thinkers, you’ll also get a chance to show public support of the Writing Across the Curriculum initiative and the ideas on this blog. Lastly, when you follow the WAC Newsletter blog, you also automatically import your blog subscription into Google Reader, one of the RSS readers I mentioned above.

3. Simply enter your e-mail address in the “Subscribe Via Email” form on the Writing Across the Curriculum blog and you’ll receive an email from us whenever we update our content. As they say at FeedBurner, “No new content, no email for you.” Period.

STEP 1: Enter your email address into the appropriate form [found on our blog].

STEP 2: Check your email to see if you received the subscription request.

STEP 3: Click on the URL link in the subscription email request from FeedBurner to activate your subscription.

Hello there,

You recently requested an email subscription to Writing Across the Curriculum Newsletter. We can't wait to send the updates you want via email, so please click the following link to activate your subscription immediately:

(If the link above does not appear clickable or does not open a browser window when you click it, copy it and paste it into your web browser's Location bar.)

STEP 4: Bask in your confirmation glory! [And then our updated content comes to you.]

And as always, if you have questions about how to get the most out of your Writing Across the Curriculum blogging experience, don’t hesitate to let us know. We’re happy to help!

Kella Hammond is a resource specialist in the Writing Center.

Did you know...

Kella walked a half marathon [13.1 miles] on a sprained ankle in October 2008 for the Nike Women’s Marathon in San Francisco, California? She doesn’t recommend this practice, but she did think the buffalo at the Golden Gate Park were totally worth the price of admission and the ice bath she took afterwards. Seriously, buffalo rock.