Erm… What’s RSS?
If you’ve seen this symbol on some of your favourite websites and have wondered what it means, then read on…
This is the internationally recognised symbol for RSS which stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’ or ‘Rich Site Summary’. Its purpose is to allow your favourite web sites to deliver their latest updates directly to your monitor. So, instead of having to visit 14 different websites to get your 24-hour weather report, sports news, twitter updates, celebrity gossip, and breaking news from your favourite theatre company (!), you can simply go to one place and see it all combined (or ‘aggregated’ in jargonese).
Assessing your RSS can therefore save you a lot of time. Through RSS you are immediately informed when new or updated content is added to those sites. Making RSS available to visitors is becoming increasing important, especially with the advent of social networking. It is used by major news organisations all over the world as well as on many personal weblogs.
How Does it work?
The author of each website that offers RSS maintains a list of notifications (called an RSS Feed or Channel) each time they update or add contact to their site. Special computer programs (installed on your computer) or websites (that you can visit like any other website) called RSS Aggregators or Readers have been developed that automatically access the RSS Feeds from your favourite websites and organize / present the results for you. Many websites also offer an option to subscribe via email so you can get the updates emailed to you instead of having to visit your Aggregator / Reader.
What information does a RSS Aggregator / Reader provide?
Once you have an RSS system set up, your RSS Aggregator / Reader will provide you with a constantly updated list of new content from your favorite websites. Each item on the list usually consists of a title and an extract or summary of the content. There will also be a web link to the relevant website page should you decide you want to read more. The list is ordered so that the newest updates are at the top with older items further down.
A typical RSS update from The Happiness Patrol might look something like this:
Title: Tales of Terror Tickets
Summary: Tickets for The Happiness Patrol’s spring tour of Tales of Terror go on sale at 9:00am on 5th February 2010.
Link: http://www.happiness-patrol.com
What do I need to do to get my own RSS system?
You are only two steps away from having your very own RSS system.
Firstly, you need to get yourself a RSS Aggregator / Reader. This is the software that will pull all of the feeds from your favourite websites and display them nicely in one place for you. There are lots available and most are free. Some are small programmes that you can download and run on your computer, and there are some that are web based and can be accessed from your web browser. A popular web-based RSS Aggregator is Google Reader, but put ‘RSS Aggregator’ into any search engine and you’ll find plenty to choose from. Most RSS Aggregators have instructions should you need any assistance.
Once you’ve set up your RSS Aggregator, you simply need to start choosing which websites you would like to be kept updated by. Most websites that provide an RSS Feed will display the orange RSS icon. If you click on that you should be taken to another screen that will lead you through the simple process of accepting the site’s RSS feed.
That’s more or less all you need to know about getting started with RSS! From now on, instead of visiting all your favourite sits individually, you can simply access your RSS Aggregator and get all the latest content in one place!
RSS Feeds from www.happiness-patrol.com
Once you’ve set up your RSS Aggregator / Reader, don’t forget to subscribe to our updates by clicking on our orange RSS icon! If you already have an Aggregator / Reader set up, you can get started now.
