Subscribing to RSS Feeds

RSS actually stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary depending on the version used, and is written in a generic data format called XML that is used by many computer programs.

An RSS feed can be used to publish information from blogs, news feeds or pod casts where the original information changes on a frequent basis.

So instead of subscribing to one article that might get changed, moved or deleted you are effectively subscribing to an area and the RSS feed will link to anything in that particular area. This means that when the stream is set up you will get a constant stream of changing articles appearing on your home page, or where ever you have set the stream to connect to.

If you have blogs on several sites or want to show the latest news on a subject dear to your heart it is easy to make the link and pull it across from one site to another without having to re-type or post the information each time.

Other sites may have a facility to "seed" article's; this is basically a way of taking over one specific article rather than a stream of changing information.

SETTING UP AN RSS FEED TO YOUR WEB PAGE

On many web pages or sites you will typically see a small square or rectangular button often orange in colour with the letters XML or RSS on it with the word "Subscribe" or "RSS Feed" next to it.

1. Firstly go to the site you want to add the feed to. When setting up an RSS feed you need to supply the URL [Uniform Resource Locator] of the RSS Feed. If you know what this is you can simply type it in.

2. However most of us are not sure of the RSS URL, so to link it across follow the following steps.

3. Go to the blog, website, news feed etc you want to link to and look for the little XML or RSS button. If you left click on the button it links directly to the raw computing code behind the button. However what you need to do is right click on the button; by doing this you should get a number of options offered to you, one of which will be "Copy Shortcut", select this option. Don't worry if nothing seems to be happening at this point!

4. Now go back to the site you want to host the link. Click into the field used to specify the URL. Then using either "Ctrl-V" or right clicking your mouse paste the URL in to the field.

5. This should post across a link that looks like this:

http://www.helium.com/rss/topic/25673

6. Now click the Save button.

Congratulations you have just saved your first RSS Feed. Many sites allow you to save several feeds so you can have multiple sites you link across.

Just one thing, RSS feeds are updated on a schedule and it can be several hours or even a day before they begin to work.