Easy Intro to RSS
I’m sure that by now, we have all seen this 
little icon around the internet on many different websites. In fact, if you look up at or near the right-hand side of the address bar, you probably see that icon there right now. Ever wondered what it means, or what on earth it’s good for?
In a word, that icon means this site has an RSS feed. What does that mean? Well, I’ll get to that in a moment.
The Problem
OK, let’s say you like this website, chad-miller.com, quite a lot. That’s very understandable. But let’s say you always want to stay up to date with the intriguing content that is consistently published here, and you don’t want to miss anything.
Not a problem, right? You’ll just come take a look at chad-miller.com every time you get on the computer, just to see if there’s anything new. So far so good?
OK, but let’s say you also really like several other sites, like Jonathan Lowery‘s and Guinn Terry Davis‘ websites, along with several other blogs. How on earth are you going to keep up with them all? Are you going to visit each and every one of them every time you get on the internet?
The Solution
That’s pretty well impossible to do. Considering the sheer volume of content on the internet, even if you only looked at the sites that REALLY interested you a lot (like this site, of course) you’d still be on the internet for hours trying to keep up with it all. What we really need is a way to make all the updates of websites we like to come to us.
Enter RSS.
RSS is an acronym that means “Really Simple Syndication”. And essentially, it’s just that. RSS is a platform that allows you, the individual, to retrieve syndicated content from all the websites you like.
Syndication is essentially providing content (such as articles, news copy, illustrations, and photos) to be published by multiple sources. The Newspaper industry, for example syndicates much of its content to be pulished in multiple newspapers across the country and around the world. And today, many websites (such as mine) syndicate their content so you, the reader, can retrieve and read it at your leisure.
Fortunately, we don’t really have to worry about most of the ins and outs of syndication. Our syndication is ‘Really Simple’.
How to Use It
To use RSS, you’re going to need a program called an RSS Reader. Fortunately, these exist in abundance, and most of them are completely free. You can find them easily by searching for the term ‘RSS Reader’ on Google or Yahoo.
The RSS Reader I use is Google Reader, and I recommend it highly (assuming you use Firefox) for these reasons:
- It’s all online, so you don’t have to download or install anything.
- It’s really easy to navigate and use with the mouse or keyboard.
- Adding a website to the pile only takes a few clicks.
- Since it’s online, you can read your RSS Feeds from any computer you happen to find yourself at.
If you use Internet Explorer, I’d recommend first that you switch to Firefox. If you are for some reason unable to do that, I’d recommed looking at a desktop RSS Client such as RSSOwl.
In a future post, I’ll give a tour of Google Reader and show you why I like it so much.
