If you’re very new to the world of RSS, then trying to understand what a feed is can be quite difficult.. Basically, all it means is “new news” or “update on site” and this new news is “fed” to your news reader. I find that calling them feeds confusing – at least at first.
What is RSS for?
Well, RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. That probably doesn’t tell you anything if you’re new to this.
In the past, you usually saw “subscribe to our mailing list” notices on people’s sites. You got an email when the site was updated. Now, since browsers support feeds – which are basically just an .xml document on my server – it means webmasters can keep visitors up-to-date with what is happening on the site – whether that be news, new downloads or just special notices that the webmaster would like to post. If a site has an RSS feed, you are able to subscribe to it, either using Internet Explorer 7 (6 doesn’t support it), Firefox, Opera or any other modern browser. Alternatively, you can use other means of accessing your feeds (remember – feeds are basically new news) like on your MyYahoo page – which isn’t bad, MSN, Bloglines, Netvibes – which also seems to be pretty good and many more. This means you can see what is new on the site with a news reader without actually having to visit the site. It’s kind of like subscribing to a newsletter that comes per email or a newspaper. You get the latest news delivered to your doorstep – so to speak – and all in one place. Ultimately, it saves your time.
Every site with a feed will have (or should have) a link prominently placed, so you can will spot it almost immediately. If a site has coded their page properly – that is, if they are not using blog or cms software and they are making their own, the RSS icon will also show up either in the address bar (Firefox, Opera) or in the toolbar (IE7) which you can click to get to the feed aswell. There are many ways to Salem. *Oo*
Most of the time, the feeds are just short intro passages of the update or a short paragraph, sometimes with an image, sometimes not. The great thing about them is, when you open your news reader every morning (like I do), you can see which of your favourite sites has an update. You can read the feed and then, if you want to, you can visit the site. It’s all a matter of minutes to see what has been updated and you don’t need to visit every site to see if there is something new. For instance, I subscribe to CNN, BBC, The National Geographic, NASA, Slashdot, Photoshop blogs and many more. I have all the news on one page. It’s such a time-saver. I wish more sim sites had them because I visit so many. I’d subscribe to my faves in a heartbeat!
I personally use Bloglines as my news reader. Here is a screenshot of what it looks like from the “inside”.
As you can see, behind every site’s feed link in the left-hand panel, there is a number in brackets. If there is no number, there are no new news items in that site’s feed. Easy.
If you would like to try Bloglines out or any other news reader that is not your browser’s integrated reader, you need to sign up for an account there. Once you do, every feed link you click on will open up a new browser window with your news reader asking if you would like to add the feed. Check the desired options and that’s all you have to do. How easy is that? =)
Tags: rss
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