Most of you have probably heard the term, RSS feed. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, although when you first hear it, it sounds like it is anything but simple. Truth be told, it’s not too tough to get feeds from your favorite blogs. Over the next few weeks, we’ll explore a few options for those of you who are interested in getting feeds from this and other blogs. Later, these posts will be saved in a static page that will stay on the site, similar to the About page that you see linked in the sidebar. To begin, I thought we’d start with a look at how you can get feeds through a customized Google search page.
First, if you have an account with Google, you need to log in to it. If you don’t have a Google account, it’s a free and totally painless signup. Just go to http://www.google.com/ and click on Sign in to Google. You’ll see a sign-up box and below it a link to start a Google account. All they ask for is your email address, a password, your location (country only), accept terms, and then just reply to an email they’ll send to confirm your email address. It’s as easy as that! No signing in blood, no clicking your heels, no giving up your first-born child.
So now you have your account and you’re signed in. You’ll see your email address in the upper right hand corner of the Google page. Next to it you’ll see a link for Personalized hompage. Click on that and then on Personalize your Google homepage.
A sidebar wll open and at the very bottom it says, Create a section. In the box provided, enter:
https://blogs.ancestry.com/circle/?feed=rss2
A box will appear and now when you are on this customized Google page, you will see the headlines of the latest posts on this blog. By clicking on the Edit button in that box, you can also adjust the number of headlines that appear.
There are some other cool things you can put on your custom Google page, such as weather forecasts, news headlines, a quote of the day and word of the day.
We’ll add more on feeds in a later post. In the meantime, have a great day!
Juliana
I’ve been using gmail for quite a while and didn’t realize I could personalize a homepage with google. This is great! Thanks so much for these instructions.
That sounds like “My Yahoo” I added your feed the day it came out.
Julia, these instructions may work great for those who have not yet personalized their Google homepage. But if you’re like me and you have already done so, these instructions aren’t correct. I can’t figure out how/where to add your RSS feed. Can you help with this?
Randy: I just added the RSS Feed to my Google home page. To do it, I clicked on “Add Content” (upper left corner of page), then clicked on “Advanced Options” in small font next to the search box in the middle of the page. Then a new page opens with a box titled “Advanced Options” in the middle of the page. Enter the RSS Feed URL there (I copied it from Julia’s article)then click on “Add”. You’re done! I hope this helps.
This great! I just set-up my personal page last night and have a short cut on my desk top to my goggle page. Can I customize 24-7 Family History Circle feed to tell there is a new postings or new articles?
Definitely seems to work for My Yahoo.
just followed the instructions on My Yahoo and added the feed. thanks for the great articles.
To add a RSS feed to your Google email, click “Settings” then “Web Clips” then paste the URL (https://blogs.ancestry.com/circle/?feed=rss2)in the box under the words “Search by topic or URL” – click the “Search” button, then click the “Add” button.
I tried to add the RSS using the instructions given and according to Gene’s comments (#4), but all I could figure out was making it a bookmark on my personalized Google page. I couldn’t find “Advanced Options” anywhere on my “Add Contents” page. Anyway, so I added it as a bookmark and when I click on it there is a LOT of internet code in making it very difficult to read. There’s also no flow or context… I have no idea what the comments are related to. If someone could tell me what I’m doing wrong I’d really appreciate it!
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Apparently, Google has made some changes to their personalized homepages and the above directions didn’t work for me. I was finally able to add the feed by following these steps:
1. While signed into your personalized Google homepage, click add content
2. Click on the small font “Add By URL” next to the search bar
3. Paste the above link into the box that opens for the URL. Make sure you don’t have http:// twice.
4. Click “Add” and wait until you are notified that it was added.
5. Reload your homepage
You can then edit the feed to increase the number of items displayed.
Thank You Very Much For Showing This InfoCan You Look At THis?