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# Links for #UoBSocial blogging session

Wednesday 23 January 2013
Tagged with

- Blogging
- University of Bath
- Research
- Researcher development
- Social media

Here are a few links to things that I mentioned (and maybe a few that I didn’t) in today’s briefing session for University of Bath researchers. Please feel free to leave your own suggestions, or links to your own blog, in the comments at the bottom.

## Reading blogs

Once you start following more than two or three blogs, you might find it easier to use a piece of software called a “feed reader” or “news aggregator” (or other similar terms) to do the hard work and collect all the new posts in one place. Here are a few options:

- Google Reader — web based discontinued — see below
- FeedDemon — Windows (optional sync with Google Reader)
- Reeder — Mac, iOS (Google Reader account required)
- Feedly — Browser plugin, iOS, Android (Google Reader account required)
- All major web browsers now have some sort of feed reader built in too

Technorati and Google Blog Search are good ways to find something to read.

### Update (2 April 2014)

As a few people are coming back here after today’s social media conversation, I’d better mention that Google Reader closed its doors on 1 July 2013, but the other options mentioned above are still good. A couple of other, relatively new, options are:

- The Old Reader
- Feedbin

## Ways to blog

### Hosted

The simplest way to start a blog is to use a service (free or paid-for) which handles everything for you. Here are some examples:

- WordPress.com
- University of Bath blogs
- Blogger
- Typepad

### Self-hosted

If you’re a bit more technical and/or demanding, you may prefer to host your own blog on a server. Here are some examples of software that will help:

- WordPress
- Movable Type
- Drupal

## Other tips

- Create an about page to explain who you are
- Use ifttt (“if that then this”) to push blog posts out to other social media
- And always remember: don’t feed the trolls!