A Guide to RSS Feeds

RSS Feeds, what are they?

No doubt you have heard about RSS feeds, RSS or have seen this icon on many of your favorite websites.
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. RSS allows users to subscribe to their favorite websites and be notified of new updates.

It can be a pain and time consuming to check out all your favorite sites, to see if new content has been added or subscribing to many different email newsletters. Subscribing to the RSS feeds of your favorite sites will bring all the sites updates into one easy to read place. It is like a newsletter that is constantly updated every time there is new information on your subscribed sites.

More and more sites are publishing RSS feeds such as blogs, forums, eBay searches, news sites and many more.

To start with, you need an RSS news reader, (a.k.a. aggregator or feed reader). An aggregator/feed reader/news reader is a little like an email client. Instead of emails it receives small parts of web pages from your subscribed sites. The news reader is the piece of software that will store all your subscriptions, checks when they are updated and package them up nice and easy for you to read all in one place.

There are many feed readers available and most are free, some web based, part of your browser or downloaded to your computer. My personal favorite, and the one I use every day is Google Reader. It is web based, so there is no software to download and you can access your feeds from any computer. You will need a google account, but most of us have one of those already. Best of all, it is very user friendly.

How do I know if my Favorite site publishes RSS feeds?

Many sites have RSS feeds these days, and finding them has been simplified by a universal icon. You may see it in different colours or sizes, but they all represent the same thing. If you are using Firefox, it has been made easy for you to see if the site you are looking at has an RSS feed. In the URL box it will display the feed icon there.

How do I subscribe to a feed?

Clicking on an RSS icon or link in Firefox for the first time, and you will be asked which feed reader you would like to add to. Select Google Reader, tick the box and Firefox will remember your chossen feed reader. You will then just need to click Add to Google Reader button and you are done! It’s that easy. You can arrange your feeds into different folders and categories.

Filed Under: Internet