RSS
If you'd like to subscribe to my blog, you can do so via an RSS feed.1
What is an RSS feed?
An RSS feed is a feed of webpages curated by yourself, that is updated in real time. It's sort of like building your own social media or news feed, but without any algorithms or engagement mechanics. Most feed clients will have notifications whenever a webpage you are subscribed to updates.
RSS feeds fell out of fashion with the advent of centralized social media, which automatically serves content to its users. They are regaining popularity now due to mounting concerns over centralized social media as well as the growth of the decentralized indie web (which Bear Blog is a part of!).
If you've started exploring independent static sites, alternative forms of news media, personal blogs, etc, an RSS feed is a convenient way to collect websites together in one place, allowing you to receive updates from different webpages without having to manually visit each site.
To follow the RSS feed of my blog, simply copy this RSS link: https://blog.xavierhm.com/feed into any RSS reader of your choosing. I use Thunderbird on desktop2 and Feeder on Android mobile.
Alternative subscription options
Mastodon
I automate my blog posts to my Mastodon account via Mastofeed so my Mastodon followers can see when I've made a new post. My Mastofeed posts are always tagged with #blog and #blogging. To quickly search for my blog posts on Mastodon, simply put from:xavier_hm@sunny.garden #blog into the search bar.
You can also subscribe to my blog via email. This puts you on a mailing list I use to manually send new posts. For more on how email subscription works on Bear Blog, click here.
This page was inspired by Sylvia's RSS page per ReedyBear's blog post on the subject.↩
I run Linux Mint 21.3 and downloaded the Thunderbird system package; the download on the Thunderbird website is a newer release. This is fine if you're on Windows or MacOS. If you're running Linux, it's best to check in your distro's software manager or repositories for a Thunderbird system package.↩