Since I started this blog, I have had more people than I would have anticipated ask me about how RSS feeds work, how they can set up a feed of this blog on their iGoogle page, and other similar questions.  What follows is a short overview of RSS and how you can use it to subscribe to a website’s feed.

What is RSS?

RSS is a technology standard that was originally developed in the late nineties by Netscape, and then further refined by Dave Winer.  The idea behind RSS was to establish a standard way to publish and syndicate frequently updated content on the web.  Since then, RSS has become the de facto mechanism that powers the distribution of news feeds, blog postings, and podcasts for basically every content-producing website or blog that you read.

It is not all that important for you to understand the technical details behind RSS or even know what the acronym stands for (in case you were wondering there are actually three different definitions for it), but just to simply know that when you see a link to a RSS feed or the orange RSS feed icon on a website, each provides you with a way to easily “subscribe” to a news feed of the site’s content.

There is also another news feed format called Atom which was designed as an alternative for RSS and is also commonly used.  However, for the purposes of this post, I will continue to talk about RSS since it is the more common format.  All of the information below applies to both feed formats.

How do I read the content in a RSS feed?

The most common ways to subscribe to RSS feeds are by adding them as “widgets” or “gadgets” to your personalized home page (such as iGoogle or My Yahoo!); by adding them to a newsreader (such as Google Reader or Bloglines); or by reading them in your web browser or email programs (most have built-in RSS readers although the implementation varies).  So in essence, if you are using the internet, you are most likely receiving content powered by RSS feeds right now whether you realize it or not.

How do I subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed?

Just like every other blog out there, this blog has a feed that syndicates all of my posts.  If you look on the right side of this page, you will see a link that says “Subscribe to this blog’s feed”.  The specific steps of what happens after you click on that link vary based on which web browser you are using.  However all provide you with the ability to read and / or subscribe to the feed.

I am not going to provide a tutorial on how to subscribe to an RSS feed for every web browser, but I will walk through how it works in Firefox.

In Firefox, after you click on the above link, assuming you have not already set a “default” feed reader,  you will first be brought to a screen that looks like this:

In the top half of the window, Firefox asks what type of reader you want to use to subscribe to the feed as well as asking you if you want to set a default reader.  In the bottom half, it shows you a preview of the RSS feed.

In this example, I wanted to put my feed onto my iGoogle page, so I selected Google.   After I click “Subscribe Now”, Firefox brings me to a page asking if I want to use Google Reader or iGoogle:

I click on “Add to Google homepage”, and now I see a new “Ken Clark’s Blog” gadget on my iGoogle page.  This gadget reads the RSS feed from my blog and will update anytime I put up a new blog post.

That is all there is to it.  As I mentioned previously, the process is different for Internet Explorer and Safari but conceptually both are similar to Firefox.  Once you start leveraging RSS, you will find that you will be much more efficient in sourcing the best content on the web based on your personal interests.  Good luck!

Tagged as: firefox, igoogle, rss