What RSS Is And How It Helps You

You may have heard of RSS, or an "RSS Feed" before.  Or perhaps you've seen the RSS icon / logo before (see below) and wondered what thats all about.  I hope to explain a little about what RSS is and how it can help you whether you are a content consumer or a content producer.

RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication".  RSS is a file format used to publish frequently updated items.  It started over 10 years ago when a popular portal site, My.Netscape.com, asked those submitting news stories to submit them the particular file format.  When others used the same RSS format for news items to go on the site, it became easy for the portal site to aggregate the news items and post them on their site.  Today, many websites that have a lot of new or frequently updated content have an RSS feed creation system already programmed in.  This helps others read what you say easily and get a notified instantly when there's new content on your site.

How do you tell if a site has an RSS feed?  Some sites will have a link that says something like Subscribe To This Page.  Others will display the orange RSS feed icon on the site.  Most sites with an RSS feed will show the orange RSS feed icon in the location bar of your browser.  Here's a sample from the danemcoweb.com website:

Clicking on the orange RSS feed icon to the right of the website address will give you the web address of the RSS feed so that you can put it into your RSS feed reading software.

Those that want to receive an update when there's something new to read will use an RSS feed reader software.  There are hundreds of RSS feed readers out there.  Here is a list of three free & popular RSS feed reading software packages:

• FeedReader.  Windows desktop software, easy to use.
• Google Reader.  This one is web based.  You go to the Google Reader website, give it web addresses for your RSS feeds, and it will do all the rest for you.  It can even recommend other feeds based on your interests.
• Feed My Inbox.  If you prefer to follow RSS feeds via e-mail, or be updated via e-mail when there's something new to go read, try Feed My Inbox instead.

Most Danemco clients' blogs have RSS feed capabilities.  There is also RSS feed capabilities for our podcast system and events calendar system. Enjoy reading others' blogs and news feeds via RSS!

If you are a content producer (such as you write a blog or produce other things regularly), make sure your website has RSS publishing capability.  It will help others keep up with you.  It will also help you "broadcast" (syndicate) your content to others easily.  For example, I use my RSS feed for this blog to update my Twitter and Facebook Fan Page status.

Comments

• I have been a bit behind the times, but I have recently learned how to use RSS more to my advantage. I have started to pull feeds of some interesting sites into my Google Reader. It saves me time and helps keep the content specifically on what I want to know about.
  by Jon C. on 15 February 2010 at 9:27 p.m.

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