How to Write

What Is RSS and How Can It Help You

What is RSS?

RSS (or Really Simple Syndication) is an Internet technology standard that allows you to receive the latest content from your favorite websites without having to actually visit the site. The RSS process is simple and straight-forward - you simply subscribe to a site’s RSS feed (we’ll show you how to do that in a moment) and then you’ll automatically receive new content from that site in your favorite RSS reader (we’ll explain what that is right now).

What is a feed reader?

You may already be using a form of feed reader, and not even realize it. If you use personalized home page services like My Yahoo or My MSN, you’ve got RSS capabilities built in. That’s how syndicated content like news, weather and stock quotes appears on your personal page. You can also add content from any blog or other site that uses RSS to provide updates.

Other web-based tools are primarily dedicated to feed reading only - that is to say to collecting and displaying RSS feeds that you’ve subscribed to. One of the most popular web-based feed readers at this point is Google Reader, which is free and easy to use.

There are also desktop-based feed readers. These function somewhat like an email program for feeds. For instance, Microsoft recently introduced Windows Live Mail, a program similar to Outlook Express, which allows you to subscribe to RSS feeds.

How to Subscribe to an RSS Feed?

Your first step is to look for the subscription or feed options available on a blog or website. Many sites use the standard RSS icon - which looks like this:

Clicking on this icon will usually takes you to a subscription page with a list of Chicklets or little icons to some of the most popular feed readers. Some blogs and websites actually display these Chicklets directly on their site. Either way, you can easily subscribe to your favorite feed reader simply by clicking on the Chicklet and following the relevant instructions. Here, by the way, are a few popular Chicklets:

On other sites you may also see little orange buttons that say XML or RSS. Often these chicklets will take you to a page that looks like code gibberish. In this case, you simply cut and paste the page URL from your browser window and manually paste it into your feed reader subscription box.

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Based on a tutorial on RSS by Brain Clark of Copyblogger.