Home : Syndication : Introduction to RSS

Introduction to RSS

"Syndication", usually referred to as RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a way to get updates from many different websites without having to go back and check each of them individually.

Instead, you use a stand-alone RSS program, or an RSS-aware browser or e-mail program, and "subscribe" to the website "feeds" you're interested in. If you don't like the updates in the feed, or change your mind about the site, you can simply unsubscribe.

RSS Reading Options

We have a list of stand-alone RSS programs, so you could pick one of those and install it, then run it every so often or just let it run automatically in the background and alert you any time there are new feed items.

You could also see if your web browser or e-mail program has built-in RSS support, as many do. For web browsers, newer versions of Internet Explorer (version 7 and later) and all versions of the free Mozilla Firefox have RSS support.

For e-mail programs, the free Mozilla Thunderbird has built-in RSS support, and there are plugins/extensions to Outlook 2000/2003/XP (but not Outlook Express or Office Outlook) which let you add RSS support.

Subscribing to Feeds

There are several ways to "subscribe" to a feed, but the easiest is using your web browser if it has RSS support. Usually, you'll look for the icon somewhere in your browser, which alerts you that a website has feeds, and then you click that icon to subscribe.

With the free Mozilla Firefox browser, that icon is in the address bar—if you're using Firefox now, you should see it in the address bar for our site right now.

It's a bit more complicated to read RSS feeds with a standalone or e-mail program. You have to look for the "feed link", which usually has an icon. Instead of clicking it—which will just show you the raw feed file—right-click it and choose "Copy Shortcut" (Internet Explorer) or "Copy Link Location" (Firefox) to copy the feed link's address.

Once you've copied the feed location, you need to paste it into your RSS reader or e-mail programs's "Add Feed" or "Subscribe to Feed" feature. Hopefully that's easy to find, but if not you'll need to check your program's help file on subscribing to RSS feeds.

Further Questions

If you're ready to subscribe to some RSS feeds, go back to our main syndication page and look for the icons! And if you're a member, don't miss the Feeds for ADF members section.

For more info on RSS, see What is RSS?, How To Read RSS Feeds, or a video intro to RSS, or contact us.

Home : Syndication : Introduction to RSS