What is RSS?
Okay, I’m finally facing the music, and the song is titled “RSS.” I’ve been largely ignoring the existence of this internet technology as I’ve been blogging and creating blogs for others. I still believe it is a technology used by relatively few, “tech-savvy” folks, but spurred by a recent request to add it to a client’s blog, I have finally learned how to implement it. And in it’s most basic form, it’s pretty darn easy.
For those of you who don’t know what RSS is, it stands for Real Simple Syndication, and is a technology which enables users to see the latest headlines, blog post titles, and sometimes excerpts or full articles, from their favorite sites without actually visiting each site. This is accomplished by “subscribing” to a site’s “RSS feed” using an RSS-capable browser or a special software program.
To demonstrate, I have created an RSS feed for my blog, and made a video showing how I subscribe to that feed in an RSS reader (see list below). The steps are as follows:
- If I want to subscribe to this feed, I would first click on the “RSS feed” link in the sidebar.
- In most browsers, a page will display asking what program or website you want to use to subscribe.
- I use “Net News Wire,” so I select that from the list and it pops up, asking if I want to subscribe to my blog. I click Subscribe.
- My blog is added to my list of subscriptions, and my five most recent blog posts are listed and, if I haven’t yet red them, marked “unread”.
- If I click on each one and read the excerpt, I can decide which I want to continue reading. If I want to read the full article. I click on the title and the article is loaded in my default web browser in the background.
You will see that if I post a new article on my blog, go back to the RSS reader, and click refresh, that latest article will appear at the top of the list, unread.
Why subscribe to RSS feeds?
Using RSS comes down to convenience. Rather than having to go to many individual websites to see if there’s anything new and interesting I want to read, I have all the new headlines from any site I want come to me.
It also makes it easier to keep track of all the interesting sites you find on the web. You’ll likely forget to visit a site you stumbled across two weeks ago to see if there’s anything new there, but if you have subscribed to the site’s RSS feed, your feed reader will remind you and keep you up-to-date.
Why broadcast an RSS feed?
As a blog owner, you may think you’d rather have people come to your site to read your posts. Having designed your blog, I feel that way too. But providing an RSS feed is a good way to remind readers of your site, and keep them constantly updated on what you’re posting. In a future article, I’ll be looking at whether to provide titles, excerpts, or full posts in your feed.
If you’re interested in adding an RSS feed to your blog, please contact me.
RSS Readers
RSS readers (sometimes called aggregators), come in all kinds of shapes and forms, from online tools, to components of web browsers and email programs, to stand-alone software. Below I’ve listed a few examples of each.
Online readers
Web browsers with built-in RSS readers
- Safari
- Firefox
- Internet Explorer 7
- Flock
Stand-alone programs
For more information
- Wikipedia’s RSS page
- YouTube video on RSS
- NYTimes article on RSS
- Article on Feedburner/Google about RSS technology