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RSS Feeds Explained (and How to Subscribe)!
By DaveM | August 13, 2006
(If you already know all about RSS feeds, then simply click here to subscribe to Mauder’s Money Matters Blog.)
How many people really know how to subscribe to a blog feed? How many even know what a feed is? You probably see the buzz words such as RSS, Atom, XML, feed, RSS Reader, and syndication all over the Internet. But what does it all mean? Ask most people about it and they end up looking like a deer in the headlights.
This is a slight departure from the topic of money, but I think it’s useful to explain a little more about feed syndication (in layman’s terms) so more people can benefit from it.
It’s a confusing topic, so don’t feel bad if you’ve been in the dark about RSS feeds up to this point. I’m about to turn the lights on for you right now! 
Quite simply, a “feed” is just a standardized way of delivering, or syndicating, content on the Web. In fact, the most common format, RSS, stands for Really Simple Syndication. Keep in mind, “RSS” is a widely accepted generic term used to describe most feeds. But a feed can be formatted using other methods such as Atom.
For now, don’t worry about the actual format of the feed - you typically won’t ever need to know that anyway.
A feed is often a special file that is formatted using XML. Don’t worry about what XML is either.. . Just know that it’s a special computer “language” used for publishing feeds on the Internet.
Feeds can be built into pretty much any website so that every time the site is updated, the feed’s XML file is also updated.
Then, by using any one of the many available feed readers (also called an ‘RSS reader’ or ‘feed aggregator’), you can be notified instantly when new information is available on the feeds you subscribe to.
These readers basically monitor the feed’s XML file, and any time something new shows up in one of them, the reader program shows it as a new post for you to check out. Sort of like when a new email shows up in your email program.
Simple, right?
So, have you seen this graphic anywhere?
I would hope so because it’s now become the standard feed icon for the Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) browsers. When you visit a web page that publishes a feed, these browsers will automatically detect it and show the above icon on your toolbar so you can easily subscribe to it.
If you’ve been surfing the web at all lately, you no doubt have noticed this graphic just about everywhere. But if you didn’t know what a feed was before today, you probably just ignored the strange little orange picture every time you saw it.
Next time you see one on your favorite website, try clicking on it. It should bring up a new webpage with the same content, only formatted a bit different. You can then grab the feed URL from the address bar in your browser and paste it into your favorite feed reader.
Here’s an example from one of the largest news providers there is — CNN. Visit this page (opens in a new window) and take a look at all the feeds they publish. While you’re there, also notice the little orange “XML” icon next to each feed URL. That is another common graphic websites will use to announce that they have a feed you can subscribe to.
OK… We haven’t really talked about the what & where of feed readers yet, so let’s do that now.
In addition to Firefox and IE7 browsers, there are a number of free feed readers you can use to subscribe to and manage your feeds.
Here are a few of the more popular ones:
You can find many more by searching for “free rss reader” on Google
Plus, if you have a personalized MSN, Yahoo or Google page, you can even add feeds as custom content modules to your home page! Pretty slick! This article won’t go into the details of how to do that, but if you can’t figure it out, feel free to contact me and I’ll try to help.
Personally, I use Bloglines almost exclusively. It’s open in my browser pretty much all day at work (Shhh!), and I check it several times in the evening if I’m on the computer. The nice thing about Bloglines is that it’s web-based, so you can access your feed subscriptions from any computer that has Internet access.
If you don’t have a favorite reader at the moment, I recommend you check out Bloglines. In fact, you can start by subscribing to my blog feed by clicking the button below.
Google Reader is also very cool and I’ve recently started playing around with it to see if I like it better than Bloglines.
But if you’re already using another program, you can subscribe to my feed by simply adding the feed URL below to your reader of choice.
This has obviously been an oversimplified explanation of RSS feeds, but it should give you all the information you need to start benefiting from the huge RSS craze happening on the Internet.
If you’re hungry to understand more about RSS and all the other geeky words, please visit http://rss.sitesell.com for a comprehensive RSS overview and additional how-to information. Just be prepared for information overload!
Happy Feed Reading!