What is RSS?
RSS stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’. Many people describe it as a ‘news feed’ that you subscribe to. RSS is a technology that provides you with a method of getting relevant and up to date information sent to you for you to read in your own time. It saves you time and helps you to get the information you want quickly after it was published. Millions of web users around the world use RSS technology to keep track of their favorite websites.
In the ‘old days’ of the web to keep track of updates on a website, you had to ‘bookmark’ websites in your browser and manually return to them on a regular basis to see what had been updated. But the problems with bookmarking are:
- You as the reader had to do all the surf work
- It can get complicated when you are trying to track many websites at once
- You miss information when you forget to check your bookmarks
- You can end up seeing the same information over and over again on sites that don’t update very often
Well, RSS technology changes everything.
Maybe the ’subscription’ description will be helpful. It’s like subscribing to a magazine that is delivered to you periodically, but instead of it coming in your physical mail box each month when the magazine is published it is delivered to your ‘RSS Reader’ every time your favorite website updates.
How to use RSS?
Get an RSS Reader - The first thing you’ll want to do if you’re getting into reading sites via RSS is to hook yourself up with an RSS Feed Reader.
There are many feed readers with variety of approaches and features - a good place to start is with a couple of free and easy to use web based ones like Google Reader and Bloglines. Either of these are fairly easy to use and will help you work out the basics of RSS.
Both of these feed readers work a little like email. As you subscribe to feeds you’ll see that unread entries from the sites you’re tracking will be marked as bold. As you click on them you’ll see the latest update and can read it right there in the feed reader. You are given the option to click through to the actual site or move onto the next unread item.
The best way to learn how to use either Google Reader or Bloglines is to simply subscribe to some feeds and give it a go. Both have helpful help sections to get you up and running.
There are two places to look for a site’s feed:
1. On the Site
2. In Your Browser
On Site Subscription
Over the last few years you may have noticed a lot of little buttons and widgets appearing on your favorite sites and blogs. Little orange buttons, ‘counters’ with how many ‘readers a blog has, links called RSS, XML, ATOM and many more. They come in all shapes and sizes. Here are few examples:
There are so much more - but when you see any of these buttons or anything like them, it means the site you are viewing almost certainly has a feed that you can subscribe to. In most cases it is as simple as either copying and pasting the link associated with the button into your RSS Reader, or clicking the button and following the instructions to subscribe using the feed reader of your choice.
Browser Subscription
Many internet browsers nowadays have the ability to find and subscribe to RSS feeds built right into them. When you surf to a site you can usually tell if it has an RSS feed by looking in the right hand side of address bar where you type in the site’s URL.
Here’s how it looks for Dermorae when you’re using Firefox:
To quickly and easily subscribe by clicking these icons, you’ll want to set up your browser to do it with your feed reader of choice, as by default they will probably subscribe you using the in-browser reader. You can do this by going to the ‘preferences’ to your browser and choosing ‘Google Reader’ or ‘Bloglines’ etc as your feed reader.
Once you’ve done this and have subscribed to a few feeds, you’ll begin to see unread items in your Feed Reader and you can start reading.
Email is an Option when you don’t want to use an RSS Reader
Many sites also enable you to subscribe to RSS feeds via Email. Usually they got a field where you can enter your email address and get a daily email with a summary of the latest posts. You can unsubscribe at any time and your email will be kept private and not used for any other purposes than to send these daily updates.
Here’s a simple video explaining RSS.
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