What’s RSS?
http://rackandruin.wordpress.com/feed/
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a way of keeping up-to-date with a website, without having to keep visiting the site. So in our case, we’re maintaining a list of forthcoming gigs which is being published via RSS at http://rackandruin.wordpress.com/feed/. This list automatically updates when we add a new gig, which in turn gets filtered through to everyone who has subscribed to our RSS feed.
What do I need to do?
If you just click the feed link, it will open up a new window and display what appears to be useless information. To view this RSS feed in a useful way, you either need:
- a web browser capable of interpreting RSS links
- a free subscription to a separate website which consolidates all of your favourite RSS feeds into one place
- separate software which consolidates RSS feed
You then just need to copy the actual link location address and paste it into your chosen RSS aggregator. That’s it. Or in long hand, our gig list RSS address is http://rackandruin.wordpress.com/feed/
More info
Most modern web browsers now support RSS (for instance Firefox allows you to create ‘Live Bookmarks’ which appear in the toolbar of your browser window). Additionally, you can get plug-ins to further enhance the browsers RSS functionality.
Websites that aggregate your chosen RSS feeds into one place include Bloglines and Newsgator.
Separate standalone software includes FeedReader and Newsfire amongst many others.
BBC News offers a variety of RSS feeds as do most of the UK newspapers. In fact anyone who wants to ‘push’ their content out to users is maintaining useful RSS feeds. Look for an RSS logo when visiting a site.
Further reading
Contact us if you’d like to be included in this list
Best Blog Directory and RSS Submission Sites
Everything you need to know about RSS
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