"I just can't wrap my head around this whole RSS feed thing," I declared in a most frustrated manner.
"Oh?" inquired Dr. Campos.
"Yeah," I replied, "for something that is supposedly "Really Simple Syndication," it just doesn't seem that real, simple or syndicated."
"Why not?" continued the Socratic Dr. Campos.
"Well, if it was really simple, I would have figured it out by now. And syndication doesn't make sense. Before syndication, comic strips appear in one newspaper, but after syndication they are in the newspapers of a hundred different cities. Even without syndication, our website can appear in monitors in every city."
"So you've struggled with the theory before trying it?" reflected Dr. Campos.
"That's the gist of it," I said.
"Have you tried the alternative?"
"Er, you mean NOT struggling with the theory before trying it?"
"Sometimes you think forwards, sometimes you have to work backwards, and sometimes you think without any order at all," Dr. Campos began opining. "If forwards doesn't work, let's try backwards. What is the end product we desire?"
"I don't know." I said, not knowingly.
"Well," he instructed, "find a popular blog."
Google found me the President's blog. And there was an orange button labeled RSS. I clicked it, and after a bit, found out how to open it in iGoogle. I found another blog and another orange RSS button. I clicked it, and now I had two blogs in iGoogle. We did this for a total of 10 blogs. Not really, it was more like 3, but 10 makes for a better story.
"Oh," I said, "so instead of going to 10 different websites to read 10 different blogs, I just need to go to my RSS reader (like iGoogle) and I could read all 10 blogs from one webpage. That really cuts down on the URLs I have to type."
"So?" prompted the returningly Socratic Dr. Campos.
"So I just need to find a way to put an orange button on our site, to make it easier for the readers to follow my blog."
Dr. Campos continued in the Greek tradition, this time, stoically.
"I'm beginning to suspect, Dr. Campos, that you already know how to set up a wordpress blog with an RSS feed, and you're just watching me struggle because it amuses you."
"You're half right," smiled Dr. Campos, "but I will explain the other half in a different blog post."
Okay, he didn't actually say that. But it is what is going to happen in reality.So after Dr. Campos's guidance of what RSS is, I was able to search for "RSS button" then "RSS chicklet" and ultimately the "Feedburner Plugin" which got me the orange button to make it easier for you readers to stay posted on my blog happenings.
As for the other half of Dr. Campos's motivation for watching me struggle, well that is a story for another day. I will admit that my struggles with setting up (and promoting) this blog have really made me "take ownership" of it. I'm beginning to suspect that Dr. Campos is much smarter than he lets on.
