RedWood Review

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. RSS is a web content format which, when used with an RSS aggregator, can allow you to alert users to new or exciting content on your website.

RSS enables users to avoid the conventional methods of browsing or searching for information on websites, because the content they want is delivered directly to them.

Using RSS files, you can create a data feed that supplies headlines, links, and article summaries from your site. You can use RSS feeds from other sites to provide your site with current news headlines. These techniques let you draw more visitors to your site and also provide them with up-to-date information.

The kinds of content delivered by a web feed are typically HTML or links to webpages and other kinds of digital media. Often when websites provide web feeds to notify users of content updates, they only include summaries in the web feed rather than the full content itself.

The XML code for RSS describes a new type of Web information called a “news feed.” The feeds can contain a summary and links of the new content on a Web site or anything else a creator desires to share. A company may publish an RSS feed that contains news of its latest products, for example.

Web sites that update their information regularly (like blogs and news sites) increasingly offer RSS and/or Atom versions of their content as a way of making life easier for their readers. If you notice a web site has a little orange button or a piece of text that says “XML”, “RSS” or “Atom”, those are links to an RSS or Atom feed. A feed is a constantly updated RSS version of one (or more) web pages, which you can subscribe to using a “newsreader” or “news aggregator”. If you use a newsreader to subscribe to RSS feeds from your favourite web sites, you can spend twenty minutes reading all your favourite news sources in one place, instead of thirty minutes flipping from one site to the next.

To start using RSS, you need a special news reader or aggregator that displays RSS content feeds from web sites you select. There are many different news readers available, many of which are free of charge. Most are available as desktop software that you download and install on your computer. Several Web-based news readers are available as well.

Just like you might subscribe to the magazines or cable TV channels that interest you most, RSS allows you to subscribe to web content - be that news headlines, weather reports, podcasts or blog posts - and have that content delivered to you. No more visiting twenty different websites to check if they’ve been updated - with RSS, you are notified the minute new material arrives that might be of interest to you.

If you click on the RSS button you can subscribe to the feed in various ways, including by dragging the URL of the feed into your news reader or by cutting and pasting the same URL into a new feed in your news reader. Most sites that offer feeds use a similar orange button, but some may just have a normal web link.

Some browsers, such as Firefox, have plugin programs that allow you to read RSS feeds from right inside the browser. Sage is one such extension, and it is so simple to install and use, that if you’re just getting started with RSS consider giving it a try. This screenshot will show you what Sage looks like running inside Firefox. Another handy extension for Firefox is Feedview, which allows you to preview almost any RSS feed without having to subscribe to it first. All you have to do is click on one of those RSS links. Other browsers, such as Safari for Mac, and Opera (which runs on many platforms), have support for reading news feeds already built in, so there’s no need to install anything.

“Publishing a feed” and “syndication” are two of the more common terms used to describe making available a feed for an information source, such as a blog. Like syndicated print newspaper features or broadcast programs, web feed content may be shared and republished by other websites.

This is good news for all users, since it represents the beginnings of a consistent method of indicating news feeds—making it quicker and easier to determine if a site has RSS content regardless of which browser you use! Soon afterwards, Opera followed suit.

If you have a website, blog, audio/video content, or even photos, you can offer a feed of your content as an option. If you are using a popular blogging platform or publishing tool like TypePad, Wordpress, or Blogger, you likely publish a feed automatically. Even other non-blogging sites like social photo-sharing service Flickr offer feeds of content you produce that others can retrieve. There are also tools on the market that can help transform traditional web content into the right format for distribution.

Think of an RSS aggregator as just a web browser for RSS content. RSS aggregators automatically check a series of RSS feeds for new items on an ongoing basis, making it is possible to keep track of changes to multiple websites without needing to tediously read and re-read each of the websites yourself. They detect the additions and present them all together to you in a compact and useful manner. If the title and description of an item are of interest, the link can be used to quickly bring the related web page up for reading.

Finally, there are desktop-based feed readers, e.g Newsgator and Feed Demon, these are like an email program for web feeds. Attensa for Outlook is a feed reader that puts the feeds in your Outlook. You can look for the feed reader that best suits your needs at the RSS Compendium.

The beauty of these feeds means that you can effectively create your own custom newspaper or magazine of recent content. There are a number of news aggregators or RSS readers that allow you to subscribe to and read RSS feeds.

Other uses of feeds include site tracking by search engines and other software; because the feed is machine-readable, the search software doesn’t have to figure out which parts of the site are important and which parts are just the navigation and presentation. You may also choose to allow people to republish your feeds on their Web sites, giving them the ability to represent your content as they require.