What's this RSS / Feeds / Subscribing stuff?

Topic: RSS|Level: Beginner|Type: Informational & How-to

What Is RSS?
You've probably heard of "RSS" or "Feeds" or "Subscribing" (in terms of web stuff), but didn't know exactly what that all meant. They're all basically referring to the same thing. "RSS" stands for "Really Simple Syndication". RSS Feeds are content that you selectively subscribe to and get it when and how you want it.

Email is a push service; senders actively distribute stuff to you. If you want them to stop sending stuff to you, you have to explicitly tell them to do so. RSS, however, is a pull service; you selectively retrieve your content and the senders don't necessarily know who all is pulling what they're providing. RSS has quickly become a very popular and effective way of providing content. This content can be anything from news, store promotions, comics, weather forecasts, people's blogs, really anything that is provided on a continual updating basis is a good candidate for RSS.

With RSS you generally use some kind of RSS Reader application. In your RSS Reader application you create a list of the "RSS Feeds" (a special web address that is where the content is published) that interest you.

The magic of RSS is that content is always published in the same consistent structure. They have a Feed title, and each item in the Feed has a published date & time, title, body content and usually each item links to a web page containing additional content. Your RSS Reader application can take those pieces of information and display them to you in a consistent way, regardless of where they're actually coming from or what they contain.

How To Use RSS
So to use RSS, the first step is to figure out what you want to use to subscribe to them. Most web browsers have built in components for reading and subscribing to RSS Feeds. But these components are frequently pretty simplistic, and many many more sophisticated and more customizable Readers are available.

Some RSS Readers are web-based and others are local applications on your PC or web-device. Web-based readers have the advantage of feeds you subscribe to are saved on the web-hosting service and are thus available from any PC. On the other hand local pc readers have the advantage of generally being a bit more sophisticated being that they do not have the limitations of what a web page can do.

My current reader of choice is the web-based one, Google Reader. This service saves your Feed subscriptions with your Google account and the reader page itself is sufficient for my personal needs.
Alternatively, another Reader I've used and is quite nice is a Firefox add-on called "Wizz RSS". Wizz RSS opens its feed list in a new browser window or a side-bar window and provides various features like searching and all the standard Firefox tricks like being able to middle-click an item and have it open in a new Firefox tab.

Subscribing to Feeds
So how do you know when a page or some content is available via RSS? Usually you'll see an icon similar to this somewhere on the page:

Also, most pages that are available via RSS are coded so that you'll see the RSS Icon right the address bar of most browsers. For example, you probbly see the RSS Icon at the right end of your address bar on this page.

Clicking the RSS Icon from the address bar, or usually from elsewhere on the page, will then take you to the actual RSS Feed page. This is the page you want to provide your RSS Reader the address of.
Sometimes there are different versions of an RSS feed available. Clicking the RSS icon from the address bar or in some way elsewhere on the page, you might be prompted for which version of the Feed you want. RSS and Atom are two slightly different types of Feeds. Given this option I'd recommend just selecting the RSS one for now.
Also, the same content might be available in a few different way such as when subscribing to your news website's Feed you may be able to select All News or only Technology or Celebrity News, or you may even be able to select between things such as including images in the Feed items or not. All these types of options are up to the feed's author on how they want it to work.

Now from the actual Feed page you generally have two options. Most more sophisticated browsers give you a way right at the top of the page to Subscribe to the feed using various Readers the web browser is aware of. Firefox has the built in "Live Bookmarks" which is a special type of Bookmark for reading RSS.
Alternatively, you can copy and paste the address of the page and use the option in your Reader of choice to add a feed. Generally other Readers have a kind of "Add a Subscription" button that when clicked will ask for the address of the Feed.

Push and Pull Subscriptions
Many content services however provide support for both push email notifications of new content as well as RSS pull support. For example, this blog is published through blogspot.com. Blogspot.com handles setting up the RSS feed as well as providing a way that if you chose, you can have it send you an email when an author creates a new post.