Ihsan

Muslims are blogging everywhere! Blog Reading Made Easy: A tutorial

From photography, to artwork, to social and cultural activism - Muslims bloggers seem to be everywhere these days, representing a wide diversity of views on just about everything. No gatekeepers of opinion can hold back this flood of views and perspectives.

You got something to say? Just sign up for a blogger account, start writing - if you are consistent, and write daily, or atleast a few times a week, you’ll soon be getting all kinds of visitors from everywhere.

However, the decentralization of blogs is also a weakness, in order to check out a blog you need to either visit the bloggers’ website, or try to figure out how to operate one of those RSS readers. As a result, many blogs go unread, because folks just don’t find it convinient to click through their list of bloggers (usually a blogroll on their own, or someone else’s blog).

BUT help is on the way --- if you follow the simple instructions given below - you’ll be able to enjoy 30+ Muslim, and Muslim relevant blogs in just a few minutes. And you won’t have to visit each of the bloggers website to see if they’ve written something new. All you need is the opensource web browser Firefox and the extension Sage.

The 30+ list of bloggers are by no means exhaustive, there are many many more out there... But this will give you a starting point - and you can then add whatever blogs you choose! (If you wanna see your blog included in this list --- just drop a comment --- with your blog url...)

Yes, You FOX Newsies ---You are not being paranoid! Muslims, are everywhere!

First (Step 1) download this OPML file (right click - "download or save link as").

This OPML is a listing/directory of 30+ Muslim blogs, save it somewhere on your desktop.

For those of you familiar with OPML, no need to read further, just import it to your RSS reader - and start enjoying the growing Muslim World of bloggers.

(For the latte sipping Harvard/Ivy Leaguy type Neo-Orientalists (Muslim and not-Muslim) academics who have their microscopes attuned on Muslims these days... You can even do your Phd thieses on "How To Read The Muslim Blog (Mind)" -)

Rest of you, read on...




Step 2 - Download and install the open source web browser Firefox (“Better than Internet Explorer by leaps and bounds” )

Step 3 - Go to the “Sage Extensions for Firefox” website --- and click on “install now” --- you will probably have restart Firefox to complete installation.

Step 4 - Next, from your Firefox “Tools Menu” click on Sage


Step 5 - Sage should appear on the left hand side of Firefox - Click on Options and click on OPML export/import





Step 7 - Select “Import OPML”







Step 8 - Browse to the muslimblogs.opml file you downloaded earlier, and follow instructions to import the file into Sage.





Step 9 - Click on OPML Import - Muslim Blogs - and you’ll see a list of 30+ Muslim blogs

Step 10 - Click on “Check feeds” and voila ---

Step 11 Click on a feed and read the blogs --- some of the feeds may only have a headline, and if you wanna read more just click on the heading - and it’ll take you to the web site -- where you can read and comment to your heart’s content (bloggers have their own rules, ideas about the kind of comments they’ll tolerate --- so be respectful!)





Step 12 Enjoy! And if you have questions --- just lemme know in the comments section! And stay tuned to this blog for updates to the Muslim Blogs OPML file - if you wanna see your blog included in the next directory update --- juse leave your blog in the comments section.

posted by redwood at 6/23/2005 12:14:00 AM