Many times I face myself explaining to people what a RSS Feed is. Even though, I think most of you already know what’s a RSS Feed is, but for those who don’t, I’ll try to create a very simple yet explicative tutorial showing why you should be using it for a while now. Statistics can’t be ignored, most Internet users still don’t know what it is. So, recommend this post, and help spread RSS.
What’s a RSS Feed?
RSS Feed is an abbreviation for Really Simple Syndication, a technology based on XML that allows web sites to organize and distribute content, by one specific URL address, that is interpreted/read by aggregators (programs and sites) of feeds.
There’s RSS and Atom, which is a improvement of the actual RSS, that (some day in the future), all feeds will be written in Atom.
How it works?
RSS files are actually a .xml file, containing information like title, date, author, URL address and blog description. This information is read by the feed aggregator, organized and displayed in a way you can view the posts from many different web sites in one single place, without needing to visit every web page.
RSS Feed URL example:
http://www.website.com/feed.xml
RSS Feed from this blog:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/pasteler0
What’s the purpose of all this?
Imagine that you are used to visit some sites to read the last news, everyday you add more URLs to your Favorites. Now imagine that you have about 30 different places to visit, you would need to visit every sites to see if there’s some new article or to read a old news. That would be a pain in the ass wouldn’t it?
So, by using a RSS Feeds, you can view all news from different places in only one window, and know when there’s a update. RSS Feed Aggregators can be accessed online or using a desktop program (I will list some below). So now you understand why this technology is so useful?
Below there’s two pictures from my aggregator (I’m currently using Google Reader)
So I need to start with a aggregator?
Yes! Here goes a list of aggregator I like:
After choosing your feed aggregator, it’s time to add your favorite website’s RSS feeds. I’ll show an example using Google Reader:
Super easy! 🙂
Hope you enjoyed! If you have and doubt or something that may help the post, please, share your wisdom with us.
Good introduction – here is a list of great free rss programs and a definition for the masses.
Rss Program Info From The Admin.