How can I create a "subscribe in Google Reader" link?

Glad you noticed! :-) Truth be told, I stole the core subscribe URL from the Official Google Reader Blog. It looks like this:

Right click (or option-click if you're on a Mac) and select "Copy Link" and you'll find that you just grabbed the following URL:

That's for the Google blog. I simply deduced that if I change the feedurl to my own (http://www.askdavetaylor.com/index.rdf) that I'd have a handy subscribe button, and I did.

Now, for the advanced topic, clicking on that link takes you to a page where you'll need to decide whether you want to subscribe through your Google Home Page or Google Reader:

That's nice, but what if you actually want to circumvent this intermediate page and have the link take them directly to Google Reader? Again, we can copy the URL and use that instead.

A quick "Copy Link" reveals that the URL underneath "Add to Google Reader" is:

What does this mean? That you can use this link as a URL just like any other, to create a true "add to Google Reader" button, like this:

And here's how it'd work: Really add to Google Reader.

Hope you find that helpful too!

Update: by now you might have realized that the second step, of trying to bypass the intermediate page, appears to be broken. I've queried the Google Reader folk for some tips, but in the meantime, stick with the basic link format.