Welcome Bloggiesta participants! I’ll be working today and tomorrow, and you know how I don’t like to do much on Sundays, so I can’t join you for the blog improvement fun, but I’m thrilled to be hosting this mini-challenge, and I hope I’ll be able to put some of these ideas into practice on my own very soon.
(Whew! That was one heck of a run-on sentence, eh?)
The Challenge: Clean Up Your Feedreader!
If you’re like me, you subscribe to more blogs than you can keep straight. You love some of them, you skim some others, and you might even mark some as “read” without even glancing. This mini-challenge is all about organizing your feedreader to make it work for you.
It doesn’t matter which reader you use—Google Reader, Blog Lines, Feed Demon, whatever—just take some time to clean it out, straighten it up, and start blogging smarter, not harder. Some suggestions:
- Go through your subscriptions and unsubscribe from blogs you don’t read anymore.
- Use the “trends” tab in your Google Reader to clean out dead and inactive blogs
- Look at your categories or folders, and re-evaluate. Make changes if your categories aren’t working for you.
- If you don’t have categories or folders yet (I’ll confess that I’ve been meaning to do this forever and can’t seem to get around to it), take some time to break the blogs you read into groups that are meaningful for you (Favorites, Authors, Local, Blogging Tips, Books, Politics, etc.).
- Take a page from Natasha’s book and, whenever you add a new subscription to your reader, rename the subscription and add the blogger’s name in parentheses. For example: The Book Lady’s Blog (Rebecca)
- If you use Firefox and Google Reader, check out this fantastic plug-in that will allow you to view blog formats through your reader and comment without opening a new window. I *heart* this one.
- After you’ve cleaned out the junk, take some time to catch up on reading posts that have been backing up. You know you have them, and you know how scary it is when that number gets really high. Think about how nice you’ll feel when your reader is cleaned out and cleared!
And those are just a few ideas!
The Follow-Up
Natasha is running giveaways associated with the mini-challenges, so when you’ve completed this one, come back and leave a comment, or if you blog about the Bloggiesta and this mini-challenge, come back and leave a link so you can be entered in the giveaways.
I’d also love to hear any advice or ideas you have to share about how you organize your feedreader, pros & cons of different readers you’ve tried, etc.
The Bloggiesta runs from 8am today (in whatever time zone you’re in) to 8am Sunday. Since I’m in Eastern time, and I know some of you are way out west, I’ll leave this post stuck to the top of my site until noon on Sunday. Comments will remain open throughout the weekend so you can report back whenever you’ve completed and recovered from all this bloggy goodness.
What Else?
If cleaning out your reader gets you all hot and bothered and leaves you wanting more, visit these other amigas for more mini-challenges:
Ole!
Filed under: Blogging | Tagged: bloggiesta, Blogging, book blogging events, books, clean up your feedreader, mini-challenge
I love this challenge! I will certainly join it since I had already plan to update my reader during the Bloggiesta!
And that plug-in looks amazing, I’ll have to add it to my googlereader! Thanks!
I saw this first on BethFishReads and then popped over here. Oh how I wish that I could join…but I’m in the middle of a website design and am facing down a brutal book deadline.
Will be cheering everyone on in absentia!! Go Team!
All best, holly
http://www.wondersandmarvels.com
Hi! I’m not participating in Bloggiesta but I just wanted to drop in and say that these are some great ideas! My feedreader is sadly neglected and I’m definitely going to try to put some of these tips into practice over the next few days. Great post!!
I’m cleaning up my google reader as we speak. I did a purge of feeds I really don’t read last week, so this should be a breeze!
What a great idea.. I need to do this too.
Adding folders was already on my Bloggiesta to-do-list, but I used the inactive function and cleaned out a lot of blogs. Many hadn’t been updated in December of last year! I also added that preview plug-in, and I’m excited to use it! I think it’ll make commenting so much easier.
[...] more here: Bloggiesta Mini-Challenge: Clean Up Your Feedreader! « The Book … Tags: a-wonderful-post, algorithm, and-tomorrow, change, for-the, google, mini, online, orm, [...]
Thanks Rebecca for a great challenge! It’s perfect!
This is a great post! I didn’t know about the trends tab and found the info there so helpful!
Those are great ideas! For me, I’m keeping them because I’m compiling a huge list of book bloggers for (hopefully) easy reference.
I’ve been putting off trying google reader, perhaps I should rethink this.
But I really like the feed reader I use with IE. I have folders for each “category” as I read book blogs, writing blogs, news feeds, etc.
I also like that I can make folders such as: Reviews A-d or Writers F-H. That way when I click on a folder, it never produces a list that I have to scroll through. This way I don’t miss reading a feed because I forgot to scroll down.
I’d definitely encourage you to try out Google Reader. You can create the same kinds of folders to make your blog reading as efficient as possible.
I’ve been wanting to add that comment feature in my reader for ages. I installed Grease monkey, but can’t seem to get anything to happen after that. :/ I’m also going to go in and unsubscribe to the blogs in my reader that user partial feeds. They’re just wasting space in there now. Thanks for the great challenge/information!
I just worked on this one. I went through my starred items and cleaned them out, and categorized some new subscriptions. I had never used the trends tab before, thanks for the tip!
I just cleaned up my google reader about two weeks ago, BUT I did download the plug-in for Firefox. Looking forward to seeing how that works.
That plug-in is fantastic! Thanks for letting us know about it. I’m working on cleaning up my reader right now.
[...] now working on this fabulous mini-challenge, cleaning up Google reader. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Weekly Geeks – [...]
I just finished doing this! I stopped following a few sites I was no longer interested in, and I started following a few that caught my interest!
[...] The Book Lady’s Blog: Clean up your feedreader. This is something I’ve been thinking about doing – I even posted about blog overload recently! My plan is to borrow an idea that Beth F. suggested to me: place the blogs that I am subscribed to in alphabetical folders. [...]
[...] The Clean up your feedreader challenge at The Book Lady’s Blog. I have a separate Google Reader account for Muse in the Kitchen, and it’s a real mess. I’m going to go with alpha folders and see if that helps things a little. [...]
I feel out of the loop – I don’t have any blogs that I have in my readers. I just have them bookmarked and stop by once or twice a week.
Using a reader makes it so much easier! When new posts are added, they appear in your reader all in one place. You never have to hop around to sites looking for something new or be disappointed when it hasn’t been updated.
This is what I was doing!
I’m in on this challenge
xo, Ella
I never knew about the trends tab in google reader, but it looks pretty good! Personally, I use bloglines (though I’m scouting around as I have some issues with it) but I keep backups of my subscriptions in google reader, so I used the trends tab there and then unsubscribed in bloglines. I’ve cleared out a good few – thanks for the tip!
Updating the google reader was a good idea. Mine wasn’t too bad but it needed a little house cleaning.
http://blondierocket.wordpress.com/2009/06/19/bloggiesta-update-3/
I’ll have to start adding the author name to the ends as well. Great idea!
Thanks.
Just finished cleaning my Google Reader feeds! Updated my Mini-Challenges post – I’ve listed what I did. It took me a while, but I got it done and everything looks much more organized!
Thanks for this challenge! I actually just moved all my subs over to Google reader and cleaned it up in the process. Found so many great new sites with this Bloggiesta that I did more adding than subtracting.
Great challenge. I did some clean-up work by getting rid of blogs that haven’t updated in over a year. I also moved around my folders a bit.
This was pretty easy for me. I’m constantly adding and deleting feeds from my google reader. But, I didn’t know about the plug-in. That’s awesome!!
You can add folders and such in Google Reader?! Wow, who knew? Obviously not me.
So, I’ve chucked a few and added categories and I’ve got it just about all cleaned up!
Thanks for the great challenge!
WOW. I didn’t realize how in need my reader was of a good cleaning! i went from almost 400 blogs to 209! A ton of dead blogs.. It looks so much better!
Oh, I so needed this! Categories! Who knew?
[...] Rebecca at The Book Lady’s Blog – Getting out from underneath the feed reader. [...]
What a fabulous suggestion it is to put the blogger’s name as part of the feed title. Thank you so much for the suggestion.
I’m actually pretty particular about my feed reader already so I had a category/folder structure in place. I refined it a bit to break out a few genres where I have blogs that are specific to one genre as compared to a genearl fiction vibe. I also went through and added names (where possible ) to the titles of blogs.
Now I can cross feed reader clean up off my to-do list.
Great pointers! I hadn’t thought to put the blogger’s name in parentheses, but this is helpful for the blogs that I have just started reading where I might not know the name of the blogger. Also, folders!!! They are a MUST for organization!
Thanks Rebecca!
Thanks for this challenge, I finally got all my blogs read. I love the suggestion about adding names to the feeds. I’ll have to do that another time I do a big read cleaning since, in my excitement to read everything, I forgot about it.
Awesome. Thank you!
I really needed this mini-challenge, my Google Reader was getting out of control. I was surprised at how many inactive blogs I removed. I got rid of over 20 blogs that haven’t updated since January.
Love the suggestion to add bloggers’ names beside their blog title — it makes the blogosphere much more personal. Thanks for the plug-in as well, I have a feeling that will be very useful for me!
I wasn’t able to participate in Bloggiesta because I’m visiting my brother this weekend (typing this from his house actually) but I am going through Google Reader right now and doing a bit of sorting. Thanks for the ideas. I like the 5tha nd 6th ideas!
Got my book and writing blog feeds all tidied up too. I never thought to use Trends to see which blogs were inactive! I ended up sorting everyone into alpha ordered folders, which makes me feel very organized. Added a whole bunch of feeds tonight visiting other bloggiesta blogs, but made sure I added them to the right folders. Feeling very accomplished about that LOL
This is a great challenge. I finished and feel so much better about my Google Reader. Here’s my post: http://classicvasilly.wordpress.com/2009/06/19/bloggiesta-begins/
[...] in. To the blogs I’m new to, I added the blogger’s name. This mini-challenge hosted by Rebecca at The Book Lady’s Blog took me almost three hours. It was a lot of work but no longer will I be wasting time scrolling [...]
Thanks! My Bloglines account is looking much cleaner. Great mini-challenge. Now, back to the Bloggiesta!
Hi Rebecca,
As I stated at my blog, I am new to Google Reader. I’m still learning, but your info and Google Help, I got all my stuff into folders. So much easier to read now. Thanks for the info! Mine is posted at my place, Just Books.
Sherrie
I did your mini challenge and am using the feed reader you recommended – NICE! Thank you. I have reformatted most of my blog during this challenge so cleaning out my rss feed was easy.
Thanks for the challenge!
http://bookjourney.wordpress.com/
[...] Rebecca at The Book Lady’s Blog – Getting out from underneath the feed reader. completed [...]
That was fun, I actually never took the time to learn how to use my Google reader. Thanks for all the Suggestions!
Here is my post;
http://trinsnook.blogspot.com/2009/06/how-messy-is-your-reader.html
I went through mine and deleted ones that I never read anymore. I also added a bunch that I’ve been meaning to follow. I love the idea to put names in (). Going to do that now too.
A few months ago, I went from 300+ books blogs to just 30. I’ve been adding them back in since then. Thanks for this reminder to keep it cleaned up. I do find that folders helps me a lot!
I loved this mini challenge! I learned so much about google reader by taking the time to poke around and check things out. Here’s my post: http://nanscorner.wordpress.com/2009/06/20/bloggiesta-mini-challenge-clean-up-your-feedreader/
I just cleared it out for the thrid time. Wee. A clean GR makes me happy.
I just finished cleaning my Google Reader! I didn’t erase that many blogs, but I added that list I had of new blogs, added the names of the bloggers to most feeds, and made a few categories. It took me hours but it’s done now!
Phew, this is the first thing I’ve done for Bloggiesta today that was a success. All my other endeavors have gone awry.
Anyway, I created folders for all my blogs and deleted some I don’t read or don’t enjoy reading anymore. I didn’t download the plugin yet. I am still deciding what I want to do with my browser.
This mini-challenge was perfect for what I hoped to achieve! Really I just wanted to clean out inactive subscriptions, add some new ones I’d found and catch up. But I followed some of the tips you provided and I’m very pleased with the results. I added folders to separate bookish blogs, local news/interest and a folder just for challenge posts to make it easier when updating. Another great tip was the one about renaming subscriptions and adding the bloggers name – this was great for those blogs that I remember the people rather than the blog title!
Thanks for the awesome mini-challenge
My Bloggiesta Update #1
Great mini-challenge (although if you saw my Google Reader, you wouldn’t think it was so mini ;o)). All done now though! I cleaned out all the inactive subscriptions, added names (that was a great idea!), and read the outstanding posts (and commented on quite a few of them). And I’ve updated my progress in my bloggiesta post.
Great idea Rebecca! I’ve been working on my for the past two days off and on. I went from almost 400 feeds down to 226. I went from over 10000 posts to 1648 and hope to finish that tonight. Don’t think I’m crazy, I’ve been gone for a week on vacation
I’ve updated my progress on my blog too 
I needed to work on this anyway
. I found the Trends page in Google Reader, which helped me delete about 35 inactive feeds. I reorganized my feed folders – I’ve used folders for ages and couldn’t manage without them! – and unsubscribed from about another 20 inactive, duplicated, or rarely-read feeds while doing that. I’ve barely had time to READ any blogs today, but I can catch up on that later, I hope!
Thanks for the mini-challenge!
I just finished cleaning up Google Reader – really needed to do that; got rid of a folder w/blogs I never read…thanks for this challenge.
shelcows AT gmail DOT com
Thanks for the hints of inactive and trends in Google Reader. It didn’t take out much, but anything is a help.
My reader was getting out of control, to the point where I spent a good deal of time just skimming. Due to time limitations, I had to get rid of anything that wasn’t an absolute favorite. I found one way to cut down on the noise was category feeds, “top stories” and the likes.
I cleaned out my Google Reader, added categories (I may have to tweak those) and added bloggers’ names in (in parentheses, as suggested by Natasha). The latter is a brilliant idea!
And of course I added a bunch of new blogs to my reader…
I’m so glad I did this. I got rid of inactive blogs, created category folders and organized my blogs. Thanks for hosting this mini-challenge.
I have never really used Google Reader to it’s full potential. I took your challenge as an opportunity to learn more about it and work on it! Thanks for hosting this mini-challenge.
[...] at The Book Lady’s Blog challenged us to clean up our feed readers. I went in and deleted several blogs which are no longer [...]
Great challenge – I updated feeds and read some blogs…more tomorrow as well! Details on my latest post on my blog!
[...] did some mini-challenges, too! 1. Clean Up Your Feedreader @ The Book Lady’s Blog Deleted 30-ish blogs. I am now subscribed to a nice round 100! Reorganized my folders. I think [...]
Wow…this took me so much longer than I thought it would! However, the fact that there wasn’t a stitch of html involved made me smile!
Yes, html has driven me a bit batty at this point.
Anyway, here’s the link to my post where I discuss finishing up this Google Reader Challenge: http://mjmbecky.blogspot.com/2009/06/bloggiesta-update-2.html
I actually don’t have that many subs in my feedreader; I was thinking of adding more. But I did add the Greasemonkey app which is amazing. Thank you, Natasha!
That is a fabulous idea with the author names. I went through my feed reader and cleaned it up. I know have folders! Imagine that. Of course I added a bunch of new blogs from Bloggiesta!
YAY! I did get the chance to organize my feed reader a bit this weekend. I’m usually pretty organized with my heirarchy and folders to begin with but I did add a YA and a Romance folder for niche blogs. I also really liked the suggestions to add the blog owner’s name to the feed title. I try to personalize as much as I can and this will allow me to do so easily until I get to know people.
Thanks for a wonderful challenge Rebecca this was extremely useful.
[...] Rebecca at The Book Lady’s Blog: Getting out from underneath the feed reader. Unfortunately, I did this as one of my first tasks [...]
[...] The Book Lady’s Blog: Clean up your feedreader [...]
[...] We only completed one mini-challenge, too, unfortunately: The Book Lady’s Blog: Clean up your feedreader. [...]
[...] Bloggiesta Mini-Challenge: Clean Up Your Feedreader! [...]
This is so useful!
I usually use Safari but have tried to switch over to Firefox to be able to install the greasemonkey. Couldn’t do the next step though – something isn’t working.
I’m going through my subscriptions though and deleting the ones that I usually skip over.
Thanks!
[...] huge thank you to Natasha at Maw Books Blog, Rebecca at The Book Lady’s Blog, Beth from Beth Fish Reads, Jill at Fizzy Thoughts, Emily from Emily’s Reading Room, Deborah from [...]
[...] The Book Lady’s Blog – tidy up my feedreader. Started but having trouble installing the plug in to Firefox. Will have to work on this. [...]
I can’t believe I forgot to state that I completed this challenge! I cleared out my Google Reader on Saturday, and now Monday morning there are already 500+ new posts! I’ll thank the bloggiesta for that
Lots of posts about status updates!
[...] had no choice but to start, and now I subscribe to almost 300 blogs and have even hosted a “Clean Up Your Feedreader” challenge for Natasha’s [...]
[...] topic came up during Maw Books Bloggiesta with a Clean Up Your Feedreader mini challenge by Rebecca (The Book Lady’s Blog). I found that post quite helpful, so I urge [...]
[...] do I need to clean up my feedreader! Rebecca has got an excellent post on how to get things under control and I’m going to take full advantage of [...]
Well, I’m not exactly finished organizing my folders, but the con of it is it won’t let me add more folders. I only added to folders then the thingy got stuck or something.
Hey, thanks for the tips on how to do this stuff. I did delete my old blogs I don’t follow.
Hurrah I completed this challenge for Bloggiesta 2.0. It’s pretty nice seeing the feed reader go from 360 blogs to 306 and also seeing everything nicely labelled.
Thanks for the tip about the inactive blog, that saved a lot of time!
[...] * Cleaning up my Google Reader. I’ve used the service for over a year now and my account is really kind of a mess. (Hosted by Rebecca at the Book Lady’s Blog.) [...]
I’m happy to say I finished cleaning out and reorganizing my feed reader today! I think I dropped 30 blogs that were inactive or ones i always skimmed through, and I got it all neat and tidy.
I’ve never used the trends tab, but it was usefull. I unsuscribed to some of the blogs that I was following.
I remember doing your challenge last time, but boy did I need it again this time around! I didn’t used Trends last time – what a handy little thing. Thanks for helping me clean things up.
I feel so much better now that the feed reader is clean. Seriously, it’s like a weight off of my shoulders. I wound up leaving around thirty comments on posts all the way from the beginning of December! Yikes!
- Katie
[...] Rebecca from The Book Lady’s Blog inspired us all to clean out our feed readers. It took me nearly an hour! [...]
[...] up, cleaning out the reader. The Book Lady’s Blog is hosting a mini-challenge to clean up your blog reader. I use Google Reader, and currently [...]
I blogged the challenge, blogged my progress, and completed it… lol… does that give me extra credit
Here’s my link, btw… I’m going to bed now :-p
http://thekoolaidmom.wordpress.com/2010/01/09/bloggiesta-progress-update-3/
I’m all organized now! Thanks for the tips
http://readinginthenorth.blogspot.com/2010/01/bloggiesta-what-i-did-day-1.html
I really needed to pare down my list and tweak the folders. Thanks for the challenge. All done!
[...] my Google Reader with Rebecca’s mini-challenge on how to get things under control. That’s the first thing to get [...]
Yay! Yay! Yay! I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am that I finished this. I went from over 350 subscriptions to just around 250 and they’re all nicely organized now. Thanks so much for getting me in gear!
Just got done cleaning up my subscriptions and starred items in google, it was kind of sad to see how many excellent blogs weren’t updated anymore. Oh well. Thanks for hosting this challenge!
Woo! This was on my to-do list anyway! I’ve been debating about whether to switch from Bloglines to GoogleReader, but I think I’ll stay with what I have. It’s easy for me to use, and sometimes, I feel extremely ant-Google.
So, my challenge has been to go through my folders and do some moving around of blogs. I even deleted two folders! Ouch. But it does feel better to have things more organized now. 
Let me just say, it’s a good thing I left the tequila out of my Bloggiesta. The amount of information that I’ve received, just on my first mini challenge is staggering and tequila would not have helped my reeling mind.
I didn’t know that I didn’t know anything about feedreaders or RSS because I didn’t know there were feedreaders or RSS. And this is just my first mini challenge. In fact, it’s a flashback mini challenge. If they are all this educational, I may not get into the new challenges until next Bloggiesta. I have a lot to learn.
Ole!
Ah, this was like giving me permission to unsubscribe to some blogs. I always feel guilty when I do that but tonight I really cleaned it up and read everything that was out there.
I worked on this challenge-it was so helpful and much needed! Thanks for hosting it!
I’ve been meaning to do this! I was too new the last time to really clean them up well, but this time I ousted 150 blogs! Hurts to do so, but must be done.
How sad, I didn’t even know I had google-reader! My bad, as my kids would say! It’s a wonderful little tool! I cleaned up my list and added a few more to it!
Thanks!
My Google Reader needed some serious love, and this was perfect. I went through my book blogs and added the blogger’s twitter name in parentheses. I was amazed how many blogs I didn’t associate with someone I converse with on Twitter. Thank you!
I just went through and did this challenge again. It was a good reminder and a good spring cleaning!
[...] my Google Reader with Rebecca’s mini-challenge on how to get things under control. That’s the first thing to get going! Yay! I did [...]
Great tips! I did some housecleaning… and will definitely keep these ideas in mind to keep my reader organized better!
Great tips! I have gotten my reader organized and taken out some the older blogs. I am down to 246 from 588!
Thanks for the motivation. I deleted blogs who hadn’t updated in many months and rearranged a few categories. I also read some posts to pare down the unread count.
[...] Bloggiesta Mini-Challenge: Clean Up Your Feedreader! [...]
Never knew about the trends tab, so thanks for the info! Very helpful, as I got rid of several subscriptions that haven’t posted in months. Still playing with categories, but it’s much more managable now. Thanks!
[...] my Google Reader with Rebecca’s mini-challenge on how to get things under control. And boy did it help! My GR is amazing [...]
I totally do this on a regular basis. Great advice though!