Tutorials | Getting started with Syndicating RSS

Publish date: 14:00 Thursday, 1st September 2005
Written by: Oracle128
Audience intended for: Windows Users, Macintosh Users, Linux Users
Category: Computer Basics

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You may have noticed a link to RSS or XML on the Cyber Tech Help website, or indeed many other of your favorite websites. This tutorial will explain the basics of RSS, and what you can do with it.

XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a language used to describe content in a structured and well-formed manner. However, the tags used to describe this content can be chosen by the developer, and documents formed in this language are read by a program called an XML Interpreter.

RSS is an XML format for syndicating web content. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a subset of XML, meaning that it uses the rules and format of XML, but provides specifications for the names of tags and attributes and their use.

RSS is used by website designers or owners (Webmasters) to syndicate the content of their site. These webmasters provide an RSS file (usually ending in .rss or .xml), also called an RSS Feed, which users then download. The feed will have multiple items, which will have descriptions such as the title of the item, the content itself, the date & time the item was added, and also a link to either the full story on the website, or to the main site.

RSS doesn't make a whole lot of sense when viewed raw. News Aggregators, or feed readers, read the RSS file and interpret it into readable text. Almost all news aggregators are free, or at least free to try. Some suggested Windows aggregators are:

• FeedReader (free)
• FeedDemon (free to try, US$29.95 to buy)

At the time of writing, Microsoft also plans to add RSS support in the future, integrated into Internet Explorer.

For other platforms:

• (All) The Firefox Web Browser has integrated RSS support.
• (Web) My Yahoo allows you to customize your My Yahoo homepage by adding RSS feeds.
• (Mac) NetNewsWire
• (Linux) Liferea is a Linux FeedReader clone.

Personally, I use FeedReader and find it a simple and excellent piece of software.

The feed reader will allow you to subscribe to as many feeds as you wish, and will check them for new items at a regular specified interval, usually highlighting unread items. If you frequently use email, you'll be right at home with reading RSS feeds.

The content can be anything the webmaster wants, but RSS is primarily and most commonly used for one of two things:

1. News websites use RSS to deliver the latest headlines to their subscribers.
2. Bloggers (people who keep online logs, journals or diaries) use feeds to provide an alternate method for users to read their content.

Using a feed reader makes viewing web content as fast and easy as reading your email, as it not only points out unread items to you, but also prevents you from having to visit multiple sites, browsing through all the pages, looking for anything that interests you.

Podcasting is a combination of the words iPod (the digital audio player from Apple Computers) and broadcasting. Podcasting is a relatively new concept which uses RSS, but instead of delivering news items and the like, podcasters deliver podcasts (digital audio files). Podcasting is a way for anyone with a PC and a Microphone to essentially make a pre-recorded internet equivalent of their own radio programme. There are literally thousands of podcasts available at the iPodder.org directory, where you can also download a podcatcher for free to receive those files automatically and have them transferred to your digital audio player of choice. The latest version of Apple's iTunes also features integrated podcast support.

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