Backdoor Tech

A Beginner's Guide to RSS Feeds

What's all this about news feeds, Really Simple Syndication, and webblogs? With an aggregator, its possible to monitor changes to 50 or 100 hundred sites easily. Some channels change daily, some only a few times a year. New items will show up in the aggregator.

RDF Site Summary or Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. Think of an RSS feed reader as your favorites or bookmarks on steroids, with a window into each site that spots new entries. Because of the boom with blogging, more sites are incorporating a RSS feed, which is handled automatically.

  1. Instead of signing up for e-mail notification, an application checks up on target sites.
  2. You don't have to visit your favorite sites just to know if they've been updated. The feed reader shows the new entries.

This page is oriented towards the new comer to the syndication world. In other words, someone trying to simplify surfing and online experience. For those wishing to add RSS to their web sites or blogs, you should consult some of the other sites listed below on these RSS-related pages. There is a lot of interesting, but distracting discussion about the potential of syndication, but that is more oriented towards the backend operations of the system. It does not affect the user.

1. Get a RSS Headline Viewer

Take a stab at FeedDemon. It is a Windows application. It is currently in beta but it is an extremely mature and polished product. It lacks help files and documentation but it is intuitive and easy to handle. Nick Bradbury created the web editor HomeSite and TopStyle, an editor that handles Cascading Style Sheets, HTML and XHTML. I have used Homesite since 1996, when it was freeware. Then, I purchased the shareware product and have upgraded ever since -- as the product changed hands to Allaire and now Macromedia. I also purchased TopStyle and upgraded twice. Bradbury has gained a reputation for responsiveness to users and clean design. He also has a policy of reasonably priced software and an easy upgrade path. What's more, he's working on FeedDemon because he did not find a feedreader that met his needs.

If you want to try on other flavors, check out this shortlist. RSS feed readers are a relatively new breed of application. It will take a while to shake out. Much will have to do with the refinement of the interface and the features. Your selection will also depend on personal preference.

Warning: Please note that I have no formal relationship with Bradbury Software, LLC or Nick Bradbury, aside from being a satisfied customer. Because FeedDemon is currently in beta, there can be no guarantee that the software will work without flaw. Problems may exist with your computer or operating system. The pages on this site are aimed to be an aid until Nick can develop his own help files, documentation and finish programming.

2. Go to an aggregator

Most feed readers come with a selection of news feeds already set up. That makes it easy to get the hang of how the whole system works. In FeedDemon, the left hand pane provides multiple listings of newsfeeds around specific themes. The initial install includes listings for Blogging, Web Authoring, Technology and News, to name a few.

There are several ways to find RSS news feeds -- aggregator services, news sites and RSS search enginers.

Aggregator services

News sites

Search Engines

Others

3. Look for the RSS icon on a webpage

On a weblog or a news site, you may see an XML or RSS icon. Click on it and you will see a page that is a raw code feed. The file extension may be .xml, .rdf, or .rss. It really doesn't make a difference because the code itself tells the reader how to interpret the content.

Explanation of RSS, How You Can Use it, and Finding RSS Feeds ::: About.com's section on RSS Readers

Other Angles on Web Content

Reference

I don't want to get too technical here, but if you're interested in finding out more about the details, you can check out any of the sites below. You can also turn to my page on using RSS in a web site.