Posted on Monday, 25th January 2010 by Catherine

A few short months ago when I entered the public blogging world I learned about the wonderful concept of RSS.  It occurred to me the other day that I always encourage readers to subscribe but perhaps I should explain what RSS is and why I think it is the best way to get content from your favorite websites.

Much of this post comes straight from ProBlogger. He said it best no need to reinvent the wheel.

RSS Changes Everything

What if you could tell a website to let you know every time that they update? In a sense, this is what RSS does for you.

RSS stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’. Many people describe it as a ‘news feed’ that you subscribe to.

RSS provides you with a method of getting relevant and up to date information sent to you for you to read in your own time. It saves you time and helps you to get the information you want quickly after it was published.

I find the ’subscription’ description helpful. It’s like subscribing to a magazine that is delivered to you periodically but instead of it coming in your physical mail box each month when the magazine is published it is delivered to your ‘RSS Reader’ every time your favorite website updates.

How RSS actually technically works is probably a lesson for another day but the key today is for you to understand why it’s good and how to use it.

Let me say right up front that I’m not the most technically savvy person around – but even I can use RSS. At first I found it a little strange to make the change from bookmarking and subscribing in e-mail to RSS but I found that when I started I just couldn’t stop.

Why use RSS?

RSS brings information from multiple Web  sites to a single page (the reader). Thus visitors do not have to take the time to visit each of their favorite sites individually and search for the latest content. The reader knows when new content has been published and brings it to one place.

Visitors can also preserve their privacy and reduce their email load by subscribing to the feed rather than subscribing to e-mail updates.
There are a wide variety of RSS readers to choose from on the Internet; some of the most popular are available from Google, Yahoo, Newsgator and Bloglines.

So What Next?

Get an RSS Reader – The first thing you’ll want to do if you’re getting into reading sites via RSS is to hook yourself up with an RSS Feed Reader.

There are many feed readers with a variety of approaches and features – however a good place to start is with a couple of free and easy to use web based ones like Google Reader or Bloglines. Either one will do if you’re starting out (I use Google Reader).  There are many others to choose from but to get started either of these are fairly easy to use and will help you work out the basics of RSS.

Both of these feed readers work a little like email. As you subscribe to feeds you’ll see that any unread entries from the sites you’re tracking will be marked as bold. As you click on them you’ll see the latest update and can read it right there in the feed reader. You are given the option to click through to the actual site or move onto the next unread item – marking the last one as ‘read’.

The best way to learn how to use either Google Reader or Bloglines is to simply subscribe to some feeds and give it a go. Why not start with this site Click on the orange button in the “Get your shoe fix” section and get started.

You can get great info from the “help” sections of these readers if you get lost.

You may be familiar with other options to tracking websites include using pages like MyYahoo, iGoogle and MyMSN.  I use iGoogle as my homepage.  Many of the sites I subscribe to in RSS show up on my home page.  It looks like this.

That way when I get online I can see if there is new content.  I can choose to click on it right then or wait until I have more time. My igoogle page can be customized beyond words with gadgets, widgets and all sorts of stuff. I love it and it keeps my e-mail less full which in turn makes me a happy camper.

So if you have never tried RSS give it a shot.  Find a few sites to subscribe to (including this one please) and let me know what you think!

To make it easy you can click here to subscribe in RSS if you like~

So now maybe you know a little bit more about RSS and perhaps you will  pass this post on for others to easily subscribe thereby growing the readership here at the SBD (wink, wink).  My goal after all is to reach as many people as I can and you can help me with that task.

Thanks for reading and sharing.

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