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Watch this brilliant little video from CommonCraft: RSS in plain English
What is RSS? By Lasa Information Systems Team This technology can help you stay up to date with the latest news, and keep others informed what's up with your organisation. Depending on whom you ask RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary. These differences aside, RSS is just another way for websites to publish their content. Information published by RSS is often referred to as an RSS feed, or just simply a feed. With both Microsoft and Firefox embracing RSS support as a key feature you'll be hearing a lot more about these three letters in the next year or two. Feed me! Most feeds you see on the web replicate content on the website you are viewing. A website that regularly produces new articles (such as a blog or a news site) would publish its most recent ten or so articles (or excerpts of them) in an RSS feed as well as on their website. As each new article is published it is added to the top of the feed, with older articles removed from the bottom. The feed also contains information such as when each article was published and the URL of the web version. What does that mean to me? You can use RSS feeds in a number of ways - the main two being syndicating content from a feed onto your own website, and subscribing to a feed using either your browser (latest versions of Internet Explorer or Firefox) or software called an aggregator. Aggregating what? Most aggregators look a lot like email programmes. When you subscribe to a feed using an aggregator a new folder is created. Each article in the feed is stored in that folder. Aggregators make it really easy to keep up to date with websites you look at regularly. Some aggregators even create a customised "front page" for you, made up of the newest stories from all the feeds you subscribe to. This can be a great time saver, making it possible to see what information is available on all those sites and choosing which articles are really interesting to you.
Aggregator websites also exist which provide the same functionality but through your web browser. To use an aggregator of either sort you need the URL of the feed. You can get this by right clicking on the feed icon or link and selecting Copy Link Location or Copy Shortcut. You can then paste the URL to wherever you need it. Some aggregators will automatically subscribe to a feed when you click on the icon or link. What about syndication? Syndication in this context means taking the content from one website and displaying it on another. RSS feeds can be used to do this with a little web know how. Can I really do that? You should always check with a site owner before syndicating content made available through an RSS Feed unless they have explicitly stated you may do so. In the case communityNet, you are welcome to syndicate any of our content. Feed the world If you regularly produce information for a website, an RSS feed may be a great way to get that information on front of more sets of eyes. If you use a CMS, you may find that setting up a feed is simply a matter of throwing a switch and deciding where on your pages to link from. Without a CMS things are a bit trickier - you may need to manually create the RSS feed, and remember to update it each time you write a new item. Luckily for those who find working with code a bit much, tools are available which make the task easier. RSSDreamFeeder is an extension for Dreamweaver that automatically scours your site for new information and creates and updates your feed appropriately. Another option is the online RSS Creator tool, although this doesn't allow updating of existing feeds. Once you have created your feed, simply save it to your website as you would a regular web page and then link to it. If you start the URL with feed:// instead of http:// some aggregators will automatically subscribe to the feed when the link is clicked. More details on this can be found at the Feed Protocol site. RSS Icons RSS Feeds are usually advertised with one of a whole plethora of icons. You may see them marked as XML, RSS or simply FEED, often with a bright orange background. Both Microsoft and the Firefox web browser have embraced RSS as a key feature and are sharing the same icon which may as a result become a de facto standard. You can download the image from the Feed Icon site. About the author
Lasa Information Systems Team
Source: UK ICT Hub |
