RSS is a technology that is being used by millions of web users around the world to keep track of their favorite websites. RSS stands for 'Really Simple Syndication' and provides you with a method of getting relevant and up to date information sent to you for you to read in your own time. It saves you time and helps you to get the information you want quickly after it was published.
It's like subscribing to a magazine that is delivered to you periodically but instead of it coming in your physical mail box each month it is delivered to your 'RSS Reader' every time your favorite website updates.
How to Use RSS
The first thing you'll want to do if you're getting into reading sites via RSS is to hook yourself up with an 'RSS Feed Reader'. There are many desktop feed readers (like the Newsgator Free RSS Reader Suite) with a variety of approaches and features - however a good place to start is with a couple of free web based ones like Google Reader and Bloglines.
In-Browser Subscription
Many internet browsers now also have the ability to find and subscribe to RSS feeds built right into them. When you surf to a site you can usually tell if it has an RSS feed by looking in the right hand side of address bar where you type in the site's URL.
Here's how it looks when you're using Firefox:
See the small orange icon on the right hand side?
Click on the icon to locate the P'lovers Blog feed.
Other modern web browsers will have similar icons in the location bar.
To quickly and easily subscribe by clicking these icons you'll want to set up your browser to do it with your feed reader of choice as by default they will probably subscribe you using the in-browser reader. You can do this by going to the 'preferences' to your browser and choosing 'Google Reader' or 'Bloglines' etc as your feed reader.
On Site Subscription
You may have noticed a lot of little buttons and widgets appearing on your favorite sites and blogs. Little orange buttons, 'counters' with how many readers a blog has, links called RSS, XML, ATOM and many more. They come in all shapes and sizes. Here are a few you might have seen:
Whenever you see any of these buttons or anything like them it means that the site you are viewing almost certainly has a feed that you can subscribe to. In most cases it’s as simple as either copying and pasting the link associated with the button into your RSS Reader or clicking the button and following the instructions to subscribe using the feed reader of your choice.
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