RSS Feeds 101
What is an RSS Feed? The popularity of blogs and other “content fresh” websites has made it difficult to follow all of the new updates from each of your favorite websites. Or has it? Using a technique called Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, fresh content can be automatically pushed to you for your review.
Rather than visit each of these websites daily to see what’s new, you can arrange to have all of the updates consolidated in one location for easy review. Great idea, eh? That’s what an RSS feed can do for you. An RSS feed is an automated list of the new material added to a blog or other website. By subscribing to the feed that the website offers you can have all the latest content delivered directly to you. How easy is that?
We’ve all seen the familiar (usually orange) RSS feed image like the one shown to the right. That image indicates that the content of the website you are visiting is available as an RSS feed. And that means you have the ability to get automated content from that website. Cool.
What? How do I subscribe to a Feed Reader?
There are many feed readers or aggregators available. A few of the most popular are:
Once you have signed up for one of these services, simply go to the website you want to follow and click on the RSS subscribe button. These buttons are usually located prominently on the website page, but can also be found in the address bar of your browser.
After you have your feed reader ready to go, visit your favorite website to see if it has a feed. You’ll see a feed icon in your browser’s address bar like this:
As an alternative,you will often see the familar RSS image link placed prominently on the web page. You can either click the icon in the address bar or the image icon on the page. Either link should allow you to access the feed reader for the website.
It’s really that easy. Subscribe to one of the feed reader services, visit your favorite site, click the mouse on the RSS feed button and let the good times roll. Your life just got simpler. And that’s a good thing.
About the Author
The Amateur Blogger is just that - new to the blogging game, but interested and willing to learn more. In reality my name
is David Zemens. I own a small website development and web
consulting firm called 1955 Design.
If you are so inclinded you can follow the real me on Twitter. You can also follow 1955 Design on Twitter.
I would add a subscribe button in your sidebar or at the end of your post. I think a lot of visitors miss the little rss button in the address bar and this will make you miss out on a lot of subscribers.
But you just gained one more subscriber
Good suggestion Tom. I will try and work on that later tonight, but I am switch my computer from a PC to a Mac today (for the first time) so I might get delayed! Thanks for stopping by and for commenting.
@Tom – StandOutBlogger.com; I added an RSS subscribe image just as you suggested. It’s at the top of the sidebar. Thanks again for the suggestion.
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