There are thousands of new blogs being added every day. There are tens of thousands of sites that publish content worth looking at. How does one keep on top of it all? Smart pastors keep on top of it via a RSS reader.

A RSS reader is a piece of software or a web application that allows you to read the content of a web page without actually visiting the web page. (We prefer the web application as we can read content on any computer and do not want to bog down our computer with extra applications when we do not need to.)

A RSS button generally looks something like this orange image below. Any site that publishes content with this button is capable of being read via a RSS reader. It also might be a small link labeled RSS, subscribe, or XML. RSS and XML are both kinds of feeds that any reader can manage.

Some sites will only post a “partial feed.” They do this because they would like for you to click through to their web site to view the advertisements that are contained on that page. The majority of blog and site readers prefer a full feed for it allows you to look at the content of a site without actually visiting the page. If a partial feed is all that is published, to view the entire content you would need to click on the heading of the story or use a keyboard shortcut (more on that in a minute).My personal favorite is Bloglines. I have chosen this one because of the speed one can navigate through hundreds of posts in a single sitting.

One gaining in popularity quickly is Google Reader. Google Reader has amazing features that will likely make it the reader of choice some day, but for now it remains to slow for my use. However, if you are not a power browser and are only looking at a few sites (not
the hundreds that I monitor) Google Reader may be your best option.

On both Bloglines and Google Reader, you are not bound by the speed of your mouse skills. One can type ‘J’ and you will jump to the next post. If you become a speed reader and have gone to far, typing ‘k’ will take you back. If you want to view the post in its context on a web page, type ‘v’ and you will have a new tab (assuming you use Firefox) open up with that particular post or article.

Now that you are familiar with RSS readers and have signed up with a service, why don’t you click on that button in the upper right hand corner of SmartPastor.com that says subscribe and make that the first site you subscribe to!