What is RSS?

RSS = Really Simple Syndication - otherwise named “news feed” or “RSS feed”, it is all the same thing.

What is RSS? This is something we often asked ourselves when starting out. Later on we were then asked what it is by friends and visitors. After explaining it a few times, we thought it would be worthwhile explaining it publicly. Hopefully you won’t be asking the same question after reading this.

Yes but… what is RSS?

RSS is a new type of technology which is being used by millions today. Before RSS came into the picture, one would have to bookmark any interesting websites. If you wanted to find out if anything new had been added to your chosen websites, you would have to go to your bookmarks and manually go through website.

If you have a number of websites you wish to visit daily, it takes quite a long time and you can end up missing new news - it’s just slow!

However when you subscribe to a websites RSS feed via Google, Bloglines, Yahoo! etc, all you need to do is go onto your RSS Reader, which will have updated news from all your chosen websites.

To put it simply - you subscribe to something with a snazzy name (RSS feed), and when you want to find out what’s new on the websites you subscribed to you just check out your RSS reader.

That’s all fine but… what’s wrong with bookmarking?

1. If you bookmark a lot, it can be pretty slow because you don’t know if the website has been updated and also whether you’ve read through what is currently there!
2. When you want to check up for updates you do the work. You locate the bookmark, click it, go to the website etc. It’s slow!
3. You can miss information when manually checking websites and that is boring.
4. If a website does not update regularly then you keep checking back - again, more effort and a waste of time.

Fair enough… but what are the pros of RSS?

1. You see your chosen websites updated news all on one page.
2. The reader tell you which of your chosen websites have been updated.
3. You can see your chosen websites which have not been updated.
4. It saves you time by subscribing to RSS feeds and not bookmarking lots of websites.
5. It’s not hard to use… you just need to know how.

Right! How do I do it?

• 1) The first step is getting an RSS Reader, I use Google Reader it’s simple to use… all you need to do is click on the link below and sign up - it doesn’t cost anything, to get one you just need your email address.

(However as I mentioned earlier there are other RSS readers like Bloglines etc I would suggest you start with something easy and simple like Google Reader, I have found it’s the easiest to use.)

Click here to get Google Reader here, or maybe continue reading first to get a full understanding…

• 2) Once you’ve got Google Reader, the second step is subscribing to your chosen websites RSS feed. You can give it a go now and go to this link, where you will see our updated news page. Subscribe to our RSS feed. Once the page loads, you will see our news feed. At the very top, highlighted in cream you will have the subscription option: you will see a drop down menu, select Google and hit the subscribe button - you may want to tick the box which says “Always use Google to subscribe to feeds” as it will automatically do this for you in the future on your computer.

When you subscribe to a couple more feeds you’ll begin to see that a reader works in the way that an email system does.

What I mean is, that if you haven’t read a new article on your reader, it will look unread, much like an unopened email. If you still get a bit stuck, you can easily email us with your questions, or take a look at Google Reader’s help page.

Wait! How do I actually find the RSS Feeds?

It’s actually very easy. A lot of optimized websites will ‘advertise’ their RSS Feed, but others won’t - so if they don’t, there’s always a way of doing it through the browser or reader.

Just don’t forget that a lot of RSS feed icons do go crazy in how they’re designed. See the example below!

Subscribing to RSS Feeds via your Google Reader

As you can see above, I’ve coloured parts of my google reader… if you want a closer look, click on the image, you’ll see it full sized.

• Orange: A list of news articles.
• Greeny/Blue: All the RSS feeds I subscribe to.
• Pink: If you click this box, you’ll be able to enter the URL of a website (www.letters-to-you.com) and if there is an RSS feed, your reader will find it.
• Purple: Your reader navigation, which includes starred items, all items etc.

Check out your reader, take a closer look and literally just play around with it, you’ll be surprised how easy it is to use.

Subscribing to RSS Feeds via your Browser

Many good Internet browsers (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari etc) actually locate the feed and allow you to add the feed easily by “clicking a button”, if you look at your address bar (see below), on the right you will likely see some type of RSS button. Bearing in mind that they do differ on different browsers. Below are two images; one in Firefox and the other in Safari.

All you really need to do is click on the feed button, and you’ll be able to subscribe to this feed.

RSS in Plain English

A Video ‘tutorial’ from ProBlogger - one of the easiest ways I learned about RSS Feeds.

RSS In Plain English

Good luck and happy subscribing!