What Is RSS

RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication". It is used to subscribe to the feed of a website and by doing so you do not need to go to visit the website to read the latest content. In layman terms, it becomes like a 2nd duplicate blog. Contents that are found on the actual URL of the blog can be seen in the RSS feed as well. You can find many websites with the RSS technology and it is usually represented by a orange button which looks like the one on the left.


How Does It Benefit User


There are so many blogs and websites on the Internet nowadays and are always updating their content every now and then. However, let's say if you like to keep track of the content for 20 different websites, does it means that you will bookmarked them and check on it every single day for updates?

This makes life difficult for the users because they do not want to miss out any content that the website has updated but at the same time it is too troublesome for them to check the websites everyday for updates. Therefore, that is when RSS will come into play and solve this situation.

When you subscribe to the RSS of a website, you leave the job of tracking for updates to the RSS. Whenever there is an update on the website that you subscribe to, it will send a notification to the RSS. Therefore, instead of checking 1 by 1 on the 20 websites that you liked, you will instantly know when there are updates if you subscribe to their RSS.


How To View RSS


Special programs are required to view the RSS and they are known as 'RSS aggregators' or in my terms I called these programs RSS readers. You need these programs in order to read the RSS. There are so many programs that you can find on the Internet and the more commonly used ones are Google Reader, My Yahoo and Bloglines. You can sign up with them and view the RSS with it.

Other than the RSS readers, you can also subscribe to the RSS via email if the option is given. You can see that I provided this option on the top right corner of my blog. Therefore, whenever there is an update on my blog, an email will be send to you to notify you.


How To Subscribe RSS


When you click on my RSS feed, you will be taken to a page which looks like this:



The area where I circle in red is the RSS readers in which you have sign up for. Choose the RSS readers or you could even subscribe to RSS via email in which I mention earlier on. Once you have completed this process, you have successfully subscribed to the RSS and your RSS reader will be notified whenever there is an update on the website. Therefore, you are only required to check your RSS reader instead of going to the individual website 1 by 1.

Do subscribe to my feed if you like my post.