This page provides some quick guidelines on troubleshooting your RSS reading experience. Most people are more familiar with social media. RSS isn't discussed as much online as it was 10 years ago even if it's still used in web applications. However, a browser subscription is limited to the one computer with the browser. When you see the dot with the two arcs, clicking that (or right-clicking and selecting "Copy Link Address") will let you see the site's RSS feed.įrom there, you can either copy and paste the link to subscribe to the feed in the reader of your choice, or in the case of many web browsers, such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, or Chrome, click a button to subscribe directly. Most RSS symbols have an orange background, but the color may vary on the web site's design scheme. RSS feeds can also be identified with the universal symbol for RSS. Just paste the URL into your feed reader and see what happens. If a website or blog uses Wordpress or Blogger, it usually has an RSS feed.This is recommended because many large-scale sites have special pages where they list out feeds by topic. Type in RSS feed and the name of a news website, government agency, or complex site.RSS readers show you everything from a site's RSS feed. Or, if you follow a news site, you may see everything when you're only interested in a specific topic, like health or climate news.Īdditionally, checking social media instead of using RSS provides an opportunity to be distracted! Almost everyone has had the experience of checking Facebook, Twitter, or Reddit in pursuit of specific information only to end up diving into a deep sea of current events.
On Twitter or Facebook, you follow a site's update feed, but you may not see all of its content - that depends on the algorithm. How is this different from Twitter or Facebook pages that I can follow for updates? It is theoretically usable, but not easy on the eyes. Without an RSS reader, you will just see the XML RSS document. has a list of over 200 RSS readers that you can sort by platform, features, and license. Pay attention to the column that says when the feed was last updated, as it will help you when choosing what to use.
You can find an incomplete list of RSS reading software on Wikipedia - which includes some familiar tools like the Safari web browser and some email clients. They save time and help you get to the content that matters. Feed readers also make it easy to just see a list of what's happening on your favorite web sites without having to scroll past giant pictures or click the Next Page button. Many feed readers are standalone web sites or integrated directly into email programs (such as Outlook and Thunderbird). Why should I use a feed reader? Can I use RSS without one?Īn RSS reader, feed reader, or RSS aggregator is essential to using RSS actively. An RSS reader checks your subscribed feeds regularly for new arrivals, downloads updates, and provides a human-readable interface for you to enjoy. Many websites - such as news agency pages - use RSS in the backend without users ever knowing that that's how the update feed is set up.įortunately, we can use RSS feeds without looking at the XML file by using software to subscribe to feeds from all over the web. You will rarely ever see the "raw" file, which is encoded in XML and looks similar to what you see when you view a web page's source code. It is a file with a unique URL that contains data describing a site's most recent changes. RSS feeds are a protocol that lets the Internet know that content on a site changes frequently. Once you know the basics of RSS, it is easy. In the context of RSS adoption, many people call it Really Simple Syndication.