pelf-ism is contagious

I know I have been mentioning a lot about RSS and I understand that there are still people who do not know what RSS means, or what a feedreader is. Fact is, there are a lot of different explanations on the topic of RSS, and the challenge is not to understand them all, but to find one that you can easily follow and understand.

You may think that a lot of people already know what RSS is, yes, you may be right, but there are also people who are beginning to learn about this simple-yet-powerful concept. I remember when I was trying to learn what RSS was all about, I’ve read countless blog posts and Wiki articles repeatedly, but bloggers seem to regurgitate whatever they’ve read from probloggers (who sometimes forget that there are NEW bloggers who don’t know a thing).

And I am now attempting to explain in very simple terms what RSS is all about, and how to get it to work. I admit that I am not an expert in this field, which explains the lack of a variety in examples in the following guide (which I had prepared in my own words, sans the jargons), but if you followed me close enough, I believe you’re smart enough to catch the idea behind the concept

1. What is RSS feeds?

   You may have read from all over the Internet that RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. In simple terms, every blog publishes a feed, which is basically the content of your blog. And each time you publish a new blog post, your blog will generate a feed automatically. And this is the feed that your readers subscribe to.

   Your feed URL would typically be http://your-domain.com/feed, but if you’re not sure, you can always check it out by clicking on the RSS button on your blog. But the feed URL isn’t very important because feedreaders automatically detects them whenever you subscribe to a blog.

2. What are feedreaders?

   Feedreaders are services (also known as aggregators) that pull feeds from all your subscribed blogs so that you do not have to visit each and every one of them to check for new posts. You may go to bed tonight, and when you get up tomorrow, your feedreader would have pulled all new materials from the blogs you are subscribed to, so that you can read blogs and eat breakfast at the same time

   There are plenty of feedreaders available, for example, you may have heard of Bloglines, NetVibes, FeedLounge, Newsgator, and what have-yous. But since I am only familiar with Bloglines and Google Reader, I’m only going to talk about these two readers in the next few points.

   

   Bloglines and Google Reader are web-based aggregators, which simply means that in order to read those blogs that you are subscribed to on your feedreader, you will need to log in to the web-based service.

3. How do I subscribe to a blog?

   There are more than one way to subscribe to a blog:

   Click the RSS button.
   The simplest way is to click the RSS button found on a particular blog, and you will be brought to a page where you confirm your subscription.

   Manually type in the blog URL.
   But if you’d like to subscribe to a particular blog but the RSS button is nowhere to be seen, you may manually subscribe to the blog by typing in the blog URL. In Bloglines, under the Feeds tab, you need to click on the Add command and on your right window, type in the blog URL.

   

   

   And in Google Reader, one your left sidebar, click on Add subscription and a small green box will pop up, and you need to type the blog URL into the box.

   

   

   Subscribe using your browser.
   Alternatively, you may click on Bookmarks > Subscribe to this page on your browser (in this case, I am using FireFox). You will then be brought to a page where you confirm your subscription.

   

4. How do I read my feeds?

   Very simple. All you need to do is to login to your web-based feedreader, and your reader will tell you which blogs are updated with new posts (usually unread posts are marked bold).

5. OK, but can I unsubscribe from a blog?

   

   Of course you can! To unsubscribe from any blog in Bloglines, click the Unsubscribe command on your right window, and you will be asked to confirm your action. It’s as simple as that!

   

   And to unsubscribe from Google Reader, click the Manage subscriptions command on the bottom of your left sidebar, and you will be able to tag or rename a subscription, or unsubscribe from a blog.

6. Are we done yet?

   Yes, we are! If you have any questions regarding RSS feeds and Bloglines, you may drop them in the comment box, and I promise I will try to answer them as best as I could. But then again, something that begs repeating is that I am not an expert on this, and I am only sharing with you whatever limited knowledge I have on this so that you can get started (and you’d probably learn more than I can ever teach!).

OK, if you are still not getting it, I’d recommend that you watch a couple of videos. These videos are narrated in simple English, so no jargons, I swear!