The video to the right of the page really sums everything you need to know about RSS, but just in case you don’t like videos then continue reading…
RSS is a means by which websites like this one can let you know when they’ve been updated automatically. Its technology designed to take some of the hard work out of keeping up-to-date with all your favourite websites.
Using RSS (Really Simple Syndication) let you see when sites have added new content. You can get the latest headlines and articles (or even audio files, photographs or video) in one place, as soon as they are published, without having to remember to visit each site every day.
Most sites offer RSS feeds thses days including the large sites like The BBC, Yahoo, Google, The New York Times and CNN.
How do I start using RSS feeds?
The first thing you need is something called a news reader. This is a piece of software that checks RSS feeds and lets you read any new articles that have been added to them. There are lots of different types of reader, some of them based on the web, and some of which are downloadable applications. Browser-based news readers let you catch up with your RSS feed subscriptions from any computer, whereas downloadable applications let you store them on your main computer, in the same way that you either download your e-mail using Outlook, or keep it on a web-based service like Hotmail.
Most modern internet browsers, including Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari, automatically check for RSS feeds for you when you visit a website, and display an icon when they find one. This can make subscribing to RSS feeds much easier. Typically an icon will appear in the address bar (see below) of your browser when a feed is present and clicking on it will set your browser to subscribe to the feed.
arrow showing rss subscribe option in firefox
If you have chosen a separate news reader, all you have to do is to decide what content you want to receive in your news reader, by finding and subscribing to the relevant RSS feeds. If you click on the button you can subscribe to the feed in various ways, including by dragging the URL of the RSS feed into your news reader or by cutting and pasting the same URL into a new feed in your news reader.
Most sites that offer RSS feeds use a similar orange RSS button, but some may just have a normal web link to the feed.
common rss icons
a list of news reader software and compatiable browsers can be found here on wikipedia.
Subscribe to photographywired.com
Once your up and running and happy using a news reader you can quite easily subscribe to our website by clicking here or one of the many feed icons dotted around the website. If you are still not convinced by RSS then you still don’t have to miss out on what we have to offer as you can also subscribe to our email updates as an alternative.
This page has been adapted from information on this article found on the BBC website. Oh and special thanks to commoncraft for their awesome plain english youtube video!