It’s RSS Awareness Day!
This is an RSS logo. Now that you know what it looks like, you’ll start noticing it everywhere. At least, that’s what happened to me!
Happy RSS Awareness Day! Thanks to Centsible Shopper for making me aware of it.
What the heck is an RSS feed anyway? Have you ever seen this orange logo anywhere? Well that’s just one of the major ways to indicate that a blog or website site has an RSS feed.
RSS (which stands for Real Simple Sindication) a way to keep track of all the blogs and websites you like without having to go to each individual website everyday. Neat, huh?
If you have many blogs you read everyday for example, going to visit each website could take hours. With RSS, you can “subscribe” to a website or blog, and get all the new headlines from all the sites and blogs you like in one list.
That one place where your RSS list is created is called an RSS Reader, and it gathers all the headlines from all the websites and blogs you have subscribed to.
How Do I Put An RSS Feed on my blog or website?
Most blogging software comes with a way to incorporate them into your blog easily but if you need to go it alone, here is an article about how to make one.
How Do I Subscribe to an RSS Feed?
1. Get an RSS reader. Here is a list of them. Being a Google stockowner, I use a Google Reader. You just download your reader of choice as you would anything else. (Don’t worry; they don’t take a lot of memory or anything!)
2. Go to www.breakingeveninc.com (or your other favorite blog- sorry couldn’t resist some self promotion). Click on the orange icon (see picture in this blog), click “RSS”, or click “subscribe to this blog’s feed”. UPDATE FROM THE FUTURE: Most RSS readers will now detect an RSS feed automatically so you can just type in your favorite website URL and automatically find the feed right in your RSS reader!
3. You click on your reader of choice to tell my feed how it should deliver the content to you (in my case, I click the “Google” button).
Then you’re done. The latest content from Breaking Even, Inc. is in your reader. You see just the headline and click on it to read more of the post.
RSS feeds allow me to keep track of about 100 blogs and websites daily so I know what’s going on in the world of personal finance and Maine (well, mostly).
As a blogger, I appreciate any web traffic I get but I do get a special smile to see when my “subscribers” go up (that is, those who read my site with the help of RSS). All websites want (and appreciate!) repeat readers. It helps build community around a blog. Here’s me appreciating RSS…
Do you need more info than I’ve explained here? Back in Skinny Jeans has an article that explains it all: How to Explain RSS the Oprah Way
Have you hugged your RSS reader today?