A blog, short for web log, is a series of articles that are written by the bloggers of the blog. They appear in reverse order, meaning that the last article written is at the top.

This last-in, first-out (LIFO) arrangement has the advantage of having the most recent, up-to-date entry appearing at the top when someone comes to first visit the blog. After the most recent is the next most recent entry, and so on until you get to the beginning. The disadvantage of this arrangement is that people may not ever see the first entry, which is often a welcome message describing what the blog is about.

This can be handled by having a page referenced at the top of the blog that is about the blog. On this blog, the page is called “About“.  It is practically identical to the Welcome message that is at the bottom of the blog.

If you are still with me and know what I’m talking about, then there is more to consider. The older a blog gets, the more entries there are, naturally. For very old and active blogs, that would mean that the page would be enormous.

This is handled by only showing the most recent blogs on the front page of the blog. Typically this is ten. There is usually a link above the first entry that lets you click to the next page of ten and so on until you get to the first page. At the bottom of the first page is the very first article or entry.

Just like there is a link at the top of each page to let you go to the next page, there is a link at the bottom to let you go to the previous page.

On any of these pages full of blog articles, blog software also allows authors to display just the top of each article. Readers who want to read the whole article should click on the article title or a link that offers to let them read “more”. In this mode, you see the whole article by itself along with any comments that have been made.

Now you know how to read the blog on its own page but what if you want to do more than read the articles that are there at the moment you visit the site? What if you want to know when new articles are added? What if you want to follow several blogs and know when any of them have new entries?

What you need is an RSS aggregator. RSS is a technology that allows web developers to publish changes in their web site to a feed that can be read by other programs. An aggregator will let you subscribe to these feeds and monitor changes to many web sites in one easy interface. I use FeedDemon and Google Reader.

FeedDemon works on Windows-based platforms. If you are likely to only read blogs on your Windows computer, then FeedDemon is good. If you might be reading it from a computer, a laptop, and/or a smart phone, then Google Reader lets you read the same set of feeds from anything that can connect to Google.

If you want help subscribing to this blog through an aggregator so you can keep up with what goes on here, I’m available for advice. Contact me through the contact form at rexgoode.com.

Stephen Rex Goode, BSW