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What is RSS?

A fair question, technology particularly on the internet is moving so fast these days that it is only natural that almost all of us, including myself are continually trying catch up!

If you would like to keep up to date with what’s happening at iDigiBuzz there are a number of ways you can subscribe and receive updates. The main one that our readers use is the iDigiBuzz RSS feed.

But what exactly is RSS?

RSS is a technology that is being used by millions of people on the web every day to keep up to date with their favourite websites.

The ‘old fashion’ way to keep track of your favourite websites was to ‘bookmark’ the site into your browser and then manually return to the site on a regular basis to see what had been added.

The problems you get with bookmarking

- You the web surfer has to do all of the work

- If you are tracking multiple websites at once it can become complicated

- When you forget to check your bookmarks you miss information

- You end up seeing the same information over and over again on the sites that don’t update very often

RSS has changed everything!

What if you could tell your favourite websites to let you know every time that they update? Basically, this is what RSS does for you!

RSS turns it all around and provides you with a method of getting relevant and up to date information sent directly to you to read in your own time. It saves you loads of time and ensures you get the information that you want as soon as it is published

RSS stands for ‘really simple syndication’ most people describe it as a ‘news feed’ that you subscribe to.

Another way of looking at RSS is as a subscription to a magazine that is delivered to you periodically, but instead of it arriving in your physical mailbox every month, when it is published it is delivered to your ‘RSS Reader’ every time one of your favourite websites updates.

I am like most other people in the fact that I’m not the most technical savvy guy around. When I first started using RSS instead of bookmarking I must admit I found it a bit strange, but it didn’t take me long to get going – I should also mention it is addictive!

How do I use RSS?

The first step is to get an RSS Feed Reader

There are a wide variety of feed readers around with a whole host of different features – however I would suggest the best place to start is with one of the free web based readers such as Google Reader and Bloglines

I personally use Google’s Reader but either one when you are starting out will be suffice, both are easy to use and will get you understanding the basics of RSS

Once you have your reader you will notice it is very similar to email, as you subscribe to feeds you will see that unread entries from the sites that you are tracking will be marked as bold. As you click on them you will be able to read the updates right there in your feed reader. You then have the option to click through to the actual site you are reading the feed from or move onto the next unread feed, marking the last one as ‘read’.

Once you have your feed reader you want to find some feeds to subscribe to – there are two places to look for a sites feed:

On the Site

In your Browser

On the Site Subscribing

You may have noticed in the past few years a growing amount of buttons or widgets appearing on your favourite sites and blogs. Little orange buttons, ‘counters’ with how many reader a blog has, links like RSS, XML, ATOM and loads more.

These buttons and widgets come in all shapes and sizes. Below is a picture of a few you may have seen:

There are loads more, but any time you see any of these buttons or widgets, or anything similar to them it means the site that you are viewing almost certainly has a feed that you can subscribe to. To actually subscribe to a feed it is just a matter of clicking on the button and following the instructions so that you can subscribe using the feed reader of your choice. Otherwise you can simply copy and paste the link that is associated with the button in to your RSS reader.

In your Browser Subscribing

Most internet browsers these days now have the ability to find and subscribe to RSS feeds built into them.

The best way to tell if a site has an RSS feed is by looking in the right hand side of the address where you would type in the sites URL

Here is how it looks for iDigiBuzz when you’re using Firefox

Using Safari Browser it is a blue RSS icon:

To quickly and easily subscribe by clicking these icons you’ll want to set up your browser to do it with your feed reader of choice as by default they will probably subscribe you using the in-browser reader. You can do this by going to the ‘preferences’ in your browser and choosing ‘Google Reader’ or ‘Bloglines’ etc as your feed reader.

Once you’ve done this and have subscribed to a few feeds you’ll begin to see unread items in your Feed Reader and you can start reading.

RSS Reader not for you? Email is an option

If RSS seems a little too complicated to you there is no need to worry. Most sites enable you to subscribe to RSS feeds through your Email

Here at iDigiBuzz we understand that not everyone is into this RSS thing, so at the top of the right hand sidebar in the subscription area there is a field where you enter your email address and get emails with a summary of our latest posts. You can unsubscribe at any time, and your email will not be used for any other purpose but to send you these updates.