The web team at the College of Charleston added a new feature to blogs.charleston.edu that allows you (and others) to post to multiple blogs by category or tag. This process is one of the features of using RSS ( or “NOT SO” Really Simple Syndication).   Robin Good provides a wonderful article on RSS from top to bottom for the non-technical user at: http://www.masternewmedia.org/content_delivery_and_distribution/rss-really-simple-syndication/RSS-what-it-is-best-uses-applications-guide-20071120.htm

Why Would I Want To?

• I have 3 blogs and I am tired of posting the same content to each of them
• I want to post ALL my content in one place and select which post goes where
• I want other people to contribute to my blog via their own blog/posts

How Do I Do it (on my Blogs.cofc.edu Blog)?

You can enable the plugin in the Dashboard of your blog by selecting Plugins and Activating Feed WordPress. After you have activated the Feed WordPress plugin, you will need to add the website/blog/feed URL for syndication, adding it to your syndicated sources.  For more information on the Feed WordPress Plugin visit: http://feedwordpress.radgeek.com/

Other Useful Uses for Syndication

• Integrate social networking apps  –  for example, what you post on Facebook automatically appears in Twitter
• Gather content from all over the web in one place without having to visit each site individually
• Collect a “Reading List” from the web to feed on your blog as a widget
• Gather multimedia from all over the web on one topic

Once you get the hang of using RSS to gather and read information, you may want start creating your own customized feeds to suit your needs.  Yahoo Pipes is a free tool that allows you to aggregate, manipulate, and mashup content from around the web.