The WordPress.com Reader: Follow Your Feeds, Discover Great Reads
As you may have heard, Google Reader is shutting down on July 1. As readers ourselves, we understand the importance of a go-to space on the internet for your daily feeds and regular reads — and a place to discover new finds. If you’re looking for a new reader (or are not using it already), we hope you’ll take the WordPress.com Reader for a spin. Check out what you can do:
Import your subscriptions
The WordPress.com Reader can import and export OPML, so you can transfer subscriptions over from another feed reader. Google Reader users can import their subscriptions directly from Google Reader into the WordPress.com Reader. Visit the import page to get started:
Google Reader users will be asked to select the appropriate Google account (or sign in with a different email address) and grant WordPress.com to access it. For those importing from another feed reader, click on Choose File and then select the OPML file.
Follow non-WordPress.com sites
In the Reader, you can keep up with your favorite blogs in our community, the editors’ picks on Discover, and blog recommendations — but you can also follow non-WordPress.com sites. In the box on the top-right of the Reader, click on the Edit link next to Blogs I Follow:
On the Edit Blogs I Follow page, enter the URLs of sites you’d like to follow, one by one, in the field at the top:
And voilà! You can follow your favorite sites, on WordPress.com and elsewhere, all in one place.
Personalize your Reader with custom topics
In addition to keeping up with your regular reads, you can follow specific topics to see what WordPress.com users are writing on the discussions du jour. The cloud of popular topics offers a bird’s-eye view of what our community is publishing — what’s hot and happening now:
We encourage you to go further — to be your own curator — by following custom topics and reading the stuff you’re curious and passionate about. In your Topics box, located on the right, you can follow Google Glass to compare commentaries on the controversial eyewear. Or nostalgia for evocative personal essays and memoir. Or behavioral economics for the latest takes on psychology and choice.
To add custom topics:
In the Topics box, enter a topic in the field, then click on the “+” symbol:
Or, explore the Topics page, search for a topic (such as Cognitive Science), and click Follow at the top.
We hope you dive in to the WordPress.com Reader and use it to follow your favorite stuff across the internet!
WordPress.com News 
Because iGoogle is also shutting down, can the importer be tweaked to also accept the iGoogle XML export?
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It seems your reader presents feeds in order of creation. I have my feeds in GReader categorized by a topic. I would like to be able to see those topics in WReader. If you can’t do that, I will have to use another RSS feed reader.
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I came to WordPress.com Reader when I learned that Google reader was closing and find that I much prefer the layout here. It’s an altogether more enjoyable experience. I have now transferred completely and am blogging via WordPress.
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That is great — nice to hear you prefer the layout here.
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Thanks, this sure helps overcome some obstacles for us, bringing friends in from outside of WP is awesome!
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Excellent overview and update….thanks
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This is very helpful! Thank you.
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I was really hoping this would be a possible replacement but it offers very little of the functionality of Google Reader (e.g. organising feeds into folders, keyboard shortcuts). Shame.
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I’m also disappointed in the lack of functionality in the areas the previous poster mentioned. Also, I don’t see where I can shrink the footprint of the display. I’m testing a variety of readers to find one that operates seamlessly across multiple platforms, and provides space-saving ‘at a glance’ headline views of the 40+ feeds I follow. Maybe that provides some ideas for future updates to your platform.
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I switched a while ago when hellocotton shut down and like it as it is easy to comment on all blogs. I just find that non wordpress blogs take a bit longer to appear.
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You blast an email advert for your Reader. I bite. And none of your links actually lead to your Reader. Not promising on any level.
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Hi there — the post links to the Reader in the first paragraph (http://wordpress.com/#!/read/ ) and to various parts of the Reader throughout the post. Let us know if you have more questions — thanks!
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You’ll also need to be a logged in user of WordPress.com to access your Reader.
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Whoa! I didn’t know we could follow non-WordPress blogs in our reader. Sweet!
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It’s a great feature, something I’ll really appreciate when I visit WordPress.com however I couldn’t find the feature in the iOS iPad app.
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Hi there — when you open your WordPress.com iOS app on your iPad, you should see “Reader” at the top of the “drawer” feature on the top left: http://cl.ly/image/0V0e0l201s1h
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Indeed, the reader is there and works great, I was actually refering to the Edit Blogs I Follow feature which I couldn’t find.
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Hi there — when logged in, visit this page. You can also access this page by clicking the “EDIT” link next to “Blogs I Follow” in the top right box of the Reader: http://cl.ly/image/1J3C3c2i0432
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Not impressed with the reader. The WP app leaves so much to be desired and when I view it in Safari on my iPad the page reloads so darn often I lose track of where I was. If the reader had some sort of mark read function where it would only show unread items (and allow access to previously read items), then WP might be a contender. I tried using it awhile ago before I gave up and had to delete the 100+ feeds I had imported. Nightmare.
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I have already been using the WordPress Reader, which is quite organized and user-friendly. Thanks for this information.
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Sorry guys but your reader just doesn’t compare to Google Reader or even Feedly (what I am now using as my replacement) – how can I know what I have already read? How can I organise and separate my design blogs from my sewing blogs, etc…if you can add these things I would happily swap over so that I only need to go to one site for all my blogging needs.
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There’s an orange notification specifying new posts each time you open your Blogs I Follow stream in the Reader so you know what you haven’t read. At the moment, you can use the “My Activity” stream on the right to pull up posts you’ve commented or liked, but not organize your reads in “Blogs I Follow.” The Reader continues to evolve, so thank you for the input and suggestions.
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Thanks for the great overview of the Reader. I use the Reader for the blog feeds that I follow but did not know of all the ‘extra’s that the Reader has to offer. I will be doing a little Reader Research over the next few days to customize my feed.
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Is there a way to organize the blogs that appear in our reader into topics or categories?
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Currently, no — you can use the “My Activity” stream on the right to pull up posts you’ve commented or liked, but not organize the reads in “Blogs I Follow” at the moment. The Reader continues to evolve, so thank you for the comment/suggestion.
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Thank you for all this! So I can have only one reader for everything. I’ll need to understand how it works, but I like to have my reader on the same platform of my blog.
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I use the Reader everyday and I love it. I love being able to find posts about basically any possible topic I can think of. Instead of just reading “Comics” I can filter that even further to “Batman”. I love it!
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Indeed — you can follow all sorts of topics and get specific. We talk a bit about making the Reader your own over on the Daily Post, too.
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Just perfect. Thanks.
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Do custom topics look for content among non-WP blogs?
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At the moment, your custom topics pull tagged content from WordPress.com posts.
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I had no idea that I could follow non-WordPress feeds using the WordPress Reader. Thanks for posting this!
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This is how indie I am; I never knew what Google reader is, though I have 2 Google accounts. I think You tube is the only place I use it. Left blogger for WP also.
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Google Reader may be shutting down, but WP appears to be here for the long run!
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I like the idea of this, I normally get all my information from my rss feeds. I’ll have to give it a try.
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