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Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Subscribing to the FamilySearch.org Blog

I got a question in a comment about subscribing to the FamilySearch.org blog. Unfortunately, I somehow lost the comment before I got it published. This is an interesting question. I get email notifications of all of the blog posts because I am registered as a consultant. To register as a Consultant, you have to be one and be able to log in to LDS.org with an LDS Account. If you register, you have the option to add email notifications from your "My Preferences" page of your account settings.

However, anyone can subscribe to the FamilySearch.org Blog with a reader or aggregator program. The question asked whether or not there was a way to subscribe to a specific sub-set of the entire blog. Yes, when you go to the FamilySearch blog, you will see a list of the various categories of blog posts. Each of these categories has a different URL. So, if you subscribe to that particular sub-blog in a reader, you should receive updates only when something is added to that section. Here is a screenshot showing the list of specific blogs:


In some reader programs, such as Feedly.com, you can subscribe to a specific URL rather than through an RSS feed. For information and explanations on subscribing see the following:

You can also search on Google for "subscribing to a blog introduction."

4 comments:

  1. Hi James. Thanks for the response to my question. I use Feedly and the URLs listed on the right side do appear to have their own feeds. Thanks!

    However, but if you type in the URL: https://familysearch.org/blog/en/consultants/ into Feedly, you only get the option for the main FamilySearch blog or feeds from the consultant part of the blog that are 54+ days old. Either FamilySearch no longer has a dedicated RSS feed for the consultants or something is wrong with my Feedly. Since I'm not a consultant, but have responsibility for 5 consultants, I'd like to keep up to date without having to constantly visit the blog.

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    Replies
    1. Feedly doesn't need an RSS feed. You copy the URL for each of the blog posts into the Feedly field from "Add Content" and it monitors the website. Here is one of the URLs as an example:

      https://familysearch.org/blog/en/ceo-corner/

      Here are a few more:

      https://familysearch.org/blog/en/familysearch-affiliates/
      https://familysearch.org/blog/en/indexing/
      https://familysearch.org/blog/en/familysearch-wiki/

      If you right click on each of the links, you get the address for that section. See if this works.

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    2. Yes, you can get post updates in Feedly for all of those subsets (or "categories") of the blog by typing in the URLs into add content into Feedly.

      The URL for the consultants part of the blog is: https://familysearch.org/blog/en/consultants/
      If I view that URL in a browser, it shows me posts as recent as May 2014. However, when I put the URL into add content in Feedly, it only shows me posts as recent as February 2014. Have you tried putting this specific URL into your Feedly? Do you get a different result? Does it show you current posts? Thanks again for your help!

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    3. I don't know how far back Feedly pulls up, but you can go to the blog itself and look for the archives and see as much as they still have online. You can also do a Google search for the posts by looking for the name of the blog and the section.

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