What Is RSS?

Rich Site Summary

If you’re new to RSS, this post could be life-changing for you.

Do you have a long list of sites you check every day? News sites, weather sites, blogs, sports, etc.? Man, wouldn’t it be nice if you could just go to one place and see the latest updates on all of them?

RSS feeds do just that. Anytime you see that lovely orange box on your favorite site you want to keep tabs on, just click it and go through the subscription process. RSS feeds update with every site update, so you never miss a thing.

RSS feeds are generally pretty ugly looking, so to make the best of them, you can integrate them into most email clients (including My Yahoo and Gmail) and get your updates the same time you’re checking your email for the day! There are also a ton of feed readers out there for use in the form of desktop software, widgets, and integrated browser tools, but if you’re new I’d point you to Bloglines to get started.

Now a quick “for instance” - Take a look at our site’s RSS feed here. You’ll notice the updates are listed in chronological order and on the right you can subscribe with a reader or have our updates delivered by email. Not all RSS’s are as friendly as ours, but hey, we do what we can to help. You’ll also notice in the top-right of our pages we have a box linking you to our RSS and offering the subscription there as well. This is just good practice for anyone offering new updates frequently that wants to encourage readership from its visitors.

Now if all that made sense, RSS should have a new meaning for you - Really Simple Syndication. Enjoy!