RSS for Beginners

See that little orange square icon in the right end or corner of the domain address field on this (or any other) hub? That is the RSS icon, and I am sure you have seen quite a few of those around the place. RSS is a term that is bandied around quite a bit online, but many people do not know what it is. It has a history, and has quickly become an essential feature of many websites and a very useful tool to syndicate content.

The original RSS (RDF Site Summary RSS 0.9) was developed by Dan Libby for Netscape. Remember Netscape? They virtually invented the web browser...before Firefox...before IE. After a couple of months, the Netscape boys produced a simpler and easier-to-use version called Rich Site Summary or RSS 0.91. But they later lost interest, leaving it without an owner. As more and more users were using RSS, Winer made an adapted version of RSS 0.91 for Userland, claiming it as his own. Later in 2005, Microsoft developed Really Simple Syndication in relation to its Simple Sharing Extensions.

RSS is a unique format for copying or receiving a feed from (syndicating) content or news on a website. It is usually used by websites that constantly need to update their content regularly such as news websites (CNN, BBC and Reuters) and blogs. Since it essentially gives one’s webpage more traffic, it is now more widely used in marketing, web publications and virus reports. Today, large and small websites alike are usually RSS-enabled. The important thing is that it is updated in real time (or close to real time), meaning that fresh content is being provided, and the latest “news” is posted.

These days RSS feeds are used by many websites as a way to get their content out to other sites, and attract users back to the original site. Other than content, you can also attach multimedia files, like videos or pictures. By using RSS feeds, other Internet users subscribed to RSS-enabled sites can read your “headline” for free. They can also track for changes and updates using news aggregators.

To be able to use RSS, you need to be operating on a platform that can take and use and read the XML code. Wordpress is a common platform that can create an RSS feed, and with an appropriate tool or plugin, you can use that feed on another wordpress site. Same goes for Hubpages and Squidoo. The title and, excerpt of the article, and a link to the full article are shown. Other than just text, you can also insert multimedia files in RSS feeds like pictures, videos, mp3s and others. So, for the RSS feeds of all my hubs, click on the RSS option in the right hand menu and a new page will come with the url being http://hubpages.com/author/Fivestar/latest/?rss

This can be pasted into an appropriate reader (Hub has that as an option to add to your Hub) and voila! You will have a feed of the title, content and summary of the site from which the RSS is drawn. I have included the above feed in the RSS capsule below. And below that is an RSS feed from one of my blogs. An excellent Hub on how to use RSS feeds is located here.

So there you have it – RSS has become even more Really Simple in recent years and it is a great way to get freshly updated content on to your website, or Hub or Squidoo lens. It is also a great way for you to have links back to your own site posted other peoples sites. Check it out, RSS is a great tool.