This is going to be another two-parter. In the first part I’ll explain what RSS is and why it makes your life easier.
What is RSS?
RSS stands for Rich Site Summary. Don’t worry if that doesn’t mean anything to you. It’s basically a way for a website to deliver content straight to its readers instead of making them come to the site to check for something new. Kind of like an email newsletter, except you read it in your web browser or another piece of software, called a news reader or feed aggregator.
Here’s an excellent video summary:
Why do I want to use this?
This means you can keep up with changes and new content on your favorite websites and blogs without actually visiting the page to check if something new has been posted. This is good for quickly skimming new headlines from sites that update frequently, and usually they include a short summary so you can tell whether you are interested in the full article before you open it.
It’s also useful for following sites that don’t update frequently without wasting time visiting the page. Just subscribe and forget about it until your feed reader tells you there’s something new. It’s a good way to keep track of those sites you might forget about otherwise.
Some blogs include the full content of their posts in their feeds, which means that unless you want to comment, you don’t even have to visit the site to see the new content. And speaking of comments, some blogs offer RSS feeds for those too, so you can keep tabs on a discussion without visiting the page a dozen times just to see nothing new has been added.
Cool. How do I get it?
You need two things. The first is the address of an RSS feed, the second is software to read the feed in.
To get the address of an RSS feed, you need to visit a site that has one. Most of them do. (We’ll use the Writech blog as an example, and you can test it out.) Look for an icon like this:
That’s the universal RSS symbol. You’ll probably see it somewhere on the page, usually on the sidebar, header, or footer. You may also see it in the address bar, to the right of the URL. Most of the time, it’s as simple as clicking on the icon and letting your browser do the rest. Go ahead, try clicking on that icon. (It’s the feed for this blog.)
If your browser doesn’t know what to do, you can get the address in a few different ways.
If the icon appears on the page, you can click on it and then copy the contents of the address bar. You can also right click on it and choose the option that will let you copy the link address or location.
Sometimes you’ll see the RSS icon in the address bar, but you don’t see a link on the page. This means your browser found a feed for the site, even though they don’t announce it on the page. This is pretty common with some blog services. Just click on the RSS icon and it should take you to the feed page, where you can copy the URL in the address bar.
It’s better to use the address from icons that appear on the page, rather than the address bar, if you have both options. This is because many sites will use a third party service like Feedburner to produce their feeds. If they change their web address, they can also change Feedburner to reflect that and you will continue to receive updates without having to find the new address and subscribe again.
Next you need something to read your feeds in. Most browsers have an RSS reader built in these days, which makes it easy to subscribe to feeds. (And they even automatically detect if a feed is present.)
In my browser, Opera, whenever I click on an RSS icon, it takes me to a page that has a subscribe button. After I subscribe, I can check the site from the “Feeds” menu of my toolbar.
For Firefox users, your browser also has RSS functionality built in, but they call it “Live Bookmarks”. Mozilla has an excellent guide to using Live Bookmarks and if you need something with more features, there are lots of Firefox plugins to choose from.
Google has a web-based news reader called Google Reader. If you already have a Gmail or Google account, you can use that to sign in and get started. Andy Wibbles has a great introductory video on using Google Reader.
Now you can read the new content from all the sites you visit regularly in one place. Next time, I’ll explain why you should have RSS feeds for your website and some tools to help you manage them.
6 responses so far ↓
Bev Jackson // 4 July 2009 at 6:27 pm |
Oh, my, this is so well written and so evidently clear, but not to me. Do you happen to know if
google’s Chrome browser can do this? I’m sorry to say you lost me, but I NEED to learn, so I’ll try now re-reading it. But thanks for the info, truly!!!
M. Bobowski // 6 July 2009 at 10:41 am |
Hi Bev.
It doesn’t look like Google Chrome supports feed reading in the browser itself or subscribing in an external reader right now. You have some options though.
Google has some bookmarklets (little scripts you can place in your browser toolbar) that will let you add feeds to Google Reader.
To get started reading feeds this way, the first thing you should do is add Google Reader to your Google account, if you haven’t got it already. Go here:
Google Reader, log in to Google, and follow the directions for adding the service. (If I remember correctly, it’s basically just clicking a button saying “Yes, add this to my account” and agreeing to the terms of use.)
There are bookmarklets from Google will let you add feeds to your Google Reader directly from the page you are visiting. You can get them here:
Subscribing to feeds via little Google buttons
Drag the link that says “→ Subscribe ” to your browser’s toolbar.
(This will subscribe you to the first available feed for the site. Some pages offer multiple feeds, if you want to see them all, you can also drag the “→ Show all feeds” link to the toolbar and use that button. Pages may offer feeds in multiple formats, or sometimes by different topics. If I have multiple options, I usually choose the one that says RSS or RSS 2.0.)
You see how, when you drag the bookmarklet link to the toolbar, it creates an icon?
To use the bookmarklet, go to a page that you would like to add to your Google Reader and just click on the bookmarklet icon in your toolbar. If it finds a feed (and you’re logged in to your Google account) it will subscribe you to the newsfeed.
To read the feeds you are subscribed to, just log in to Google Reader. Here’s a video on using Google Reader that does a good job of showing the basics.
Does that help? The whole goal of this blog is to explain this stuff so if something still isn’t clear, tell me, and I’ll break it down further. :)
Bev Jackson // 6 July 2009 at 11:59 am |
Wow, are you ever knowledgeable. Thank you\
I do believe I’ve got it working now. I’ve been
playing around and voila! I wonder if you might
also know how to add an RSS feed (me being the
donor instead of the receiver) to my Blogspot account? I’m told I don’t have RSS by a friend, but she doesn’t know how I can add it. So that people can bookmark me (or whatever you call it) to their Readers? I’m imposing now, but it’s not often someone’s so generous with their knowledge. I’m very grateful.
Thanks, thanks.
Bev Jackson // 6 July 2009 at 12:01 pm |
Oh, I forgot to say that my blogspot account is not the usual blog. I combined (with someone’s help) an existing website with the blogger website, so I that I could keep my own url “www.beverlyajackson.com” instead of having a blogspot url. It took FOREVER for me to to get that right, but it finally worked.
M. Bobowski // 6 July 2009 at 10:51 pm |
I’m so glad that sorted out your RSS for you. It really is a useful tool.
I’ll answer your question about adding RSS to your site in my next post. It’s going to take me a litttle while (probably a couple days) to write up. You can subscribe to the RSS feed and get an update when it posts! :)
Bev Jackson // 6 July 2009 at 10:59 pm |
I just subscribed to you (it said there was nothing there at the moment? Maybe it doesn’t pick up past items?) Anyway, it looks like Google has figured it out to make it more easy. Anyway, I had no trouble as all the google buttons were there on your site.
Hey, don’t go to a lot of trouble. It’s not that big a deal (my blog is not very active ). I do not want to make work for you. I thank you for the first answer, honest!!