Using Feedly To Read Your Favorite Blogs

As you may have heard by now, Google has announced that it will discontinue Google Reader on July 1st.  This news has reverberated throughout the internet and people are scrambling to find another RSS reader service to replace Google Reader.  I have personally tried out three services:  Feedly, Bloglovin, and The Old Reader, and my personal favorite is Feedly by far.  So let’s take a look at using Feedly to read your favorite blogs (which I hope includes the Listgirl blog!).  ;)

Feedly has web-extensions for Firefox, Chrome, and Safari web browsers.  It also has a free app for iOS and Android devices.  I first used the Feedly app on my iPad and LOVED the interface for reading blogs.  You can choose between many different views and the way the photos and text are presented is simple yet gorgeous. 

This is my blog on my iPad, using Feedly app to read it.


It is extremely easy to migrate over to Feedly from Google Reader.  All you need to do is sign-in to Feedly with your Google account.  Right now Feedly syncs with your Google Reader.  Feedly is working on a solution called Feedly Normandy so that your RSS subscriptions are seamlessly transitioned over to Feedly after Google closes the door on Google Reader in July. 

Let’s take a look at the Feedly interface, using my account as an example.  On the left side are the blogs I’ve subscribed to, and the categories in which I put them into.  All your folders (tags, categories) in Google Reader are imported over, so you don’t have to re-organize all the blogs you read.  If you’re like me and subscribe to a ton of blogs, this is definitely awesome.  Part of the reason I didn’t like the Bloglovin interface as much, was because when I imported my blog subscriptions over, they were just in alphabetical order and I lost all my categories!  Yikes. 

This first view is called “Magazine” view.  It shows some featured posts, plus posts by date underneath that.


There’s a “titles” view, which is more condensed.  This is the most similar to Google Reader.


There’s a “Mosaic” view, which shows more post on the page lined up, with one photo and a snippet of the post.


There’s the “Cards” view, which I think sort of looks like Pinterest pins, which I like.


Lastly, there’s the “Full Article” view, which shows the full blog post.  In all the other views, you would click on each post you want to read and it would pop up as a floating window.


I’ve set up my Feedly account so that when I first log into my account, it shows me in index of the blogs I subscribe to, organized by my categories that I had done in Google Reader.  From there, I can click on a blog to see the most recent posts.


One thing I like about my organization is that I have a category called “0_DailyReads”. Those contain the blogs I most frequently visit. I rotate blogs in and out of there periodically. Have this category helps me to hit my current favorite blogs at a glance when I’m really busy. So if I have 15 minutes of spare time, I can just hit my favorites in this category. This screenshot shows various blogs in my “0_DailyReads” category, in the “Cards” view in Feedly.


I hope you enjoyed this overview of Feedly.  You have until July 1st before Google Reader goes away to make a choice in regards to which RSS reader to migrate to.  Feedly is my personal favorite. :)