Reading forums and blogs in Thunderbird

Since we're moving from mailinglists to forums, the biggest concern people raise is that they now miss the convenience of just getting all new posts in the mail.

If you use Thunderbird as a mail client, this does not have to be a problem at all.

Here's a mini how-to:

1. In Thunderbird, from the Tools menu, choose 'Account Settings...'.

2. Click the 'Add account' button, and choose the 'RSS News & Blogs' option. If you do not see this option, your version of Thunderbird probably is outdated. In this case, it's advisable to upgrade to the latest Thunderbird.

3. Next you can give the account a name. It doesn't really matter what you choose here. If for example you want a separate account for the Achievo forums and blogs, you might name it 'Achievo Forums & Blogs'.

4. After you created the account, on the left, in the folders pane, you should now see the newly created account. Click the account with the right mouse button, and choose 'Manage Subscriptions...' from the menu popup.

5. Click add, and in the feed url, enter the RSS feed you want to add.

The following feeds are available for achievo.org:

• http://www.achievo.org/forum/rss.php
  The forums (all in one feed)
• http://www.achievo.org/forum/rss.php?f=[forum_id]
  Feed per forum (you can get the forum_id's from the forum urls)
• http://www.achievo.org/blog/feeds/index.rss
  Blog feed (all blog entries)
• http://www.achievo.org/blog/feeds/categories/2-Tips-n-Tricks.rss
  Blog feed (only Tips 'n Tricks)

Repeat step 5 for any feed you want to add. Usually sites that offer RSS feeds have either an 'RSS' or 'xml' link or button, which you can use to discover the url for the feed. In the case of the Achievo blogs, there are small 'xml' buttons on each page that represent a feed.

6. When you add a new feed, there's a 'Show the article summary instead of...' checkbox in the dialog. If you enable it, the items from the feed will be displayed as plain text. You might find this useful for news and blog feeds, since you will get all text without formatting. For forums though, it's easier to disable the checkbox. This will show the forum inline, and makes it possible to use the reply button and other options directly from the forum page.

7. Once you added the feeds, you will see a folder for each feed you added. You can read them as if it were mail; it keeps track of what you've read and what you haven't, and you can delete entries to the trash folder.

Neat huh? Thunderbird rules..

More info:
MozillaZine Knowledge Base
A more elaborate howto by Ron Miller