FeedDemon – Adding Subscriptions

So in reviewing my previous posts to see if I missed anything, I realized that I never went over how to add a subscription. This is a relatively easy process and there are a couple of ways to do it.

The first is with the Subscribe button that is at the top of the the Folder List, also known as the Subscriptions section. You can click the button to launch the add screen, or if you click on the down arrow this button becomes a drop down list with several options to help you with adding subscriptions. The first option is a new subscription. When you select this option a new window will launch. There are several ways that you can add a feed with this window. You can simply put in the address (url) of the feed, or just the address (url) of the website that you want the feed to come from or even just a keyword that you are looking for information on and FeedDemon will find feeds that relate.

If you are just adding the address of the feed it is pretty simple. Enter the address in the blank. You can check to make sure you have the right one by clicking the preview button at the bottom right. This will open the feed into another window and you can see the most current posts. If you are satisfied just close this window and select next on the previous one. Then it will ask you which folder you prefer to house your new subscription. Once you select the folder you want it in, select next. You will come to the finish window. From here you can either change the settings of the new feed or just Finish.

If you decided to simply put the main address for the website that you want to add the feeds from FeedDemon will seek that website and identify the top feed available. So if you are adding the Huffington Post, it will select the “All Feeds”, if you are adding MSNBC it will add the “Top Stories” feed. But after that it will basically work the same way by asking you which folder to put it in and then finish.

The keyword search can be interesting. In the blank enter the word that you want to search on, such as snowboarding, and click next. The next window will ask you what search tool to use when searching. These include MSN Search, Technorati and Delicious to name a few. Once you select the search tool you have to select the “Find” button. If you just select next the subscribe tool will take you to the next screen and ask you what folder to put the search tool webpage in. So once you select “Find” the keyword search screen will change from a list of search tools to a list of possible feeds that you can select from. Once you have selected the feed, click next. FeedDemon will ask which folder to put the new subscription in. After picking the folder select next and you will be at the “Finish” screen. Select Finish and your new feed should be available in the folder that you placed it in.

This brings me to the Find New Feeds option. This works very similar to the Keyword search outlined above. The only real difference that I noticed is that it did not ask which tool to search with. When I clicked next it still returned a list for me to choose from and then asked which folder to put it in. This is followed but the option to add a new clippings folder. When you select this option a new window opens. There is a space for you to add the name of the folder that you are adding. You can also make this new folder the default clippings folder so it will be the first option when you are adding a post to your clippings. You can have it synchronize with NewsGator Online so that you can access it at any time. You can also set the folder up to be shared as an RSS Feed. When you select Ok it will add the new Clippings folder to the list.

The next option allows you to setup a new Watch. This is basically a keyword search. Once you enter the watch, FeedDemon will scour the net looking for posts that relate to your search criteria. The last item will import feeds. This is a tool that will help you import from an OPML file and setup your folders.

Next time I will get into the Watches, Imports and possibly the ability to send an RSS from your clipping folder.