Introduction

Blogging is not only about writing, it is also about reading, blogging is a lot about interaction.

We used to say:

I write, because I like, and I do not care if someone read my blog or not.

Well, that is usually not true, we do like being read, and most of our readers are other bloggers, so if someone wants to be read, he for sure has to read other’s blog, and interact with them.

Reading Sources

Common Sources

In order to read viral posts the best sources are:

Those are my favorites, of course there is Reddit, I visit those sites from time to time, in order to see what is trending on the Internet, at least on the Internet’s little corner I care about. Of course depending on your particular interests you may want to explore

The list can go, and go, with Android centric, iPhone centric and so on.

Private Sources

Well, they are not really private, but not as visited as the ones above, and we all have our list, these are some examples of the so-called blogroll

Tools

From the previous section, It can be inferred that there are two categories of sources, the known one (from your blogroll), and the unknow one (from the common sources). And these two categories need a different approach.

RSS reader

In order to read articles from the blogroll, we the bloggers use RSS readers, some say RSS is dead, I do not think so, and I expect all blogs to have RSS and also expect that all of them publish the whole article in those feeds.

The tool I use to consume articles from my blogroll is Miniflux, I have installed it on my server, I run Ubuntu so it was as easy as:

sudo apt install miniflux

Well, actually not that easy, here is a good guide. Once installed there is a centralized place that can be accessed from any device to read. There are of course other options, clients for iOS, for Android, but I prefer to be able to access the articles from any device, and of course I prefer to host it myself.

In the past I used to use TT-RSS, but I prefer now the fresher look of Miniflux.

Read it later

For the other type of articles, the ones you stumbeupon while browsing reddit and its cousings, there are also a lot of options, I have been user of Pocket and Instapaper, both are good services and they are here since 2008 more or less.

I prefer now a self hosted service, so I have installed Wallabag, once again is not that complicated, and you can installed it directly on your server, or using a Docker container, I have gone with the latter, maybe less efficient, but simpler and less pollution on my server.

Time to read

Ok, we now have the sources and the tools, but we still need the time to read. You need to find your best moment of the day to read, of course it is impossible to read all that is written, but I try to read at least four to six articles a day. I mostly do early in the morning, and late at night

I take notes of the topics I may write about later, or if I will write a reply post, and send a webmention.

Another consideration I have is what I am going to read first. Well since my enrollment in this community, I read my blogroll first, and interact with the authors, mainly on Mastodon, in the old days I used to do the same, with some fellow Linux Bloggers, most of them does not blog anymore.

I now realize we were not blogging we were writing guides or how-tos, but I use to read their posts none the less.

Final Words

There is a lot of people following the 100DaysToOffload route, but do not forget to read, do not forget to interact with other writers, do not forget to send webmentions if you have them implemented.

Reading is as important as writing, maybe more, just like listening is a lot more important than talking.