I recently wrote about how you can use Google Reader’s “share” feature with FeedBurner to create a “Reading List” feed of items your audience might like to read.

One inkBlots reader asked if the same can be done with Bloglines. The answer is “sort of.” The difference with Bloglines is that you can’t provide the 3rd-party feed item itself, you can only provide a link (and your own commentary) to the item. If that’s not a problem, then here is how to do it:

Bloglines: Publish to Blog

If you want a Bloglines-managed Reading List, you will need to create a microblog within Bloglines itself. (Yes, they do that.) This microblog will then be the source of your Reading List.

1. Go to your Account settings and select “Blog Settings”. The “username” is going to be part of the URL for your blog. In my case, I chose “inkblots-reading” as an analog to the Google Reader example I wrote about a few days ago.Check the “Yes, publish my Blog” radio button and save the blog settings.

   After you save, return to the blog settings page to see the URL for your new blog. This is where your items of interest will be published. For example: http://www.bloglines.com/blog/inkblots-reading

2. Get the RSS feed URL your new blog. This part is really easy. Just add “/rss” to the URL of the blog itself. Like so: http://www.bloglines.com/blog/inkblots-reading/rss
3. Follow Step 3: Use FeedBurner to publish your Reading List from the Google Reader Example. This will help you get your Bloglines blog feed nicely polished.
4. When you are in Bloglines and spot an item that you want to put on your Reading List, use the “Clip/Blog This” link, then select “Publish to Blog”.)As I mentioned above, here is where we encounter a major departure from the Google Reader example. In Google Reader, sharing an item in the way I prescribed will include that actual feed item in your Reading List. In Bloglines, you’re providing a link and some optional commentary to that feed item. So your audience will need to follow the link in order to read it.The advantage, of course, is that you’re doing this as an integrated part of your own Feed Reader, rather than playing the cut-n-paste game with your main blog engine.

Splice The Reading List

Another interesting thing you might want to consider if you’re using Bloglines as your feed reader and FeedBurner as your blog feed host: Splice your Clip/Blog items directly into your main feed, rather than have a different Reading List feed. Since you’re technically not including the reading items, but rather a link+commentary to them, it may make sense just to include the Bloglines stuff in your main blog feed.

To do this, go over to your blog feed in FeedBurner and open the Optimize Tab. Use “Link Splicer“, select “Bloglines Clip Blog” as your link service, and enter your bloglines username. Once you activate Link Splicer, any new Clip Blog item you add in Bloglines will be spliced right in to your FeedBurner-hosted feed. Easy enough!

Hope this helps!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 1st, 2006 at 17:38 and is filed under syndication, bloglines, rss, inkblots. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.