So now that you know what Google reader is & how to use it, I’m going to walk you through some steps on organizing it to make it work for you.
First of all, I use Mozilla Firefox, so I have add-ons GALORE. And one of them is Google Redesigned, which makes all of the Google stuff I use (gmail, reader, calendar) this dark gray/light gray combo.
But for the sake of the tutorial, I’ll turn it off. Just for y’all.
I think the most important thing to do is to organize your subscriptions into folders. At the very bottom left of your screen is a tiny little link in blue that says “manage subscriptions.”
When you click on that, you’ll see all of your subscriptions listed alphabetically.
Go to your first subscription :: on the far right side is a button that says “add to a folder.”
I’m assuming that we’re starting from the very beginning, so you’ll want to click on that and select “new folder” :: then, name the folder whatever you want. You can see that I have mine split up into various categories.
Then just keep going until you have them all done! Now that you have them organized, there are various things you can do. For instance, if you only have a few minutes to sit at the computer and want to read just your friends’ blogs, you can click on the “friends” folder and have just those blogs listed for you.
Now that you have them all organized into folders, the rest of the organization is just personal preference.
By default, the reader opens up to the “home” page. I prefer it to open up to show just my new items in a list. I’m all about using it to save time, so I don’t want to have to click around 42 times to get to where I want to be.
Step 1: click on “all items” {on the left side of the screen}
Step 2: click on “list” {on the right side of the screen}
Step 3: click on “# new items” {on the middle-left of the screen}
That view will basically show you what you haven’t read, yet, in an easy-to-read list format.
This is what I prefer to see when I open my reader :: if this is what you want, you can save it as your start page.
Step 4: go to “view settings” and click on “set as start page” {this is located right above your feeds}
And there you go!
I also like to have as little on the page as possible so that I can just read blogs. So I minimize 2 of the boxes on the left side of the page.
All you have to do is click on the “-” sign …
So while there are other things you can do in Google reader, that’s how I use my reader. It’s all about personal preference here.
Please let me know if you have any questions, comments or suggestions!
