What is RSS?

RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it.

You have probably seen the orange RSS or XML buttons on different sites, and wondered what they are for.

RSS means "Really Simple Syndication". That probably says you nothing, but don't worry. RSS is just a very simple way of letting me or others who are publishing RSS feeds communicate with you.

It is simpler than email, because you do not have to go to your inbox and open your mail. Your RSS reader gets the message, when I have made new pages or updates, and you can choose if you want to read them or not.

What your advantage is as an end user is that you are totally in control of the feeds you are subscribing to.

Spam is eliminated because you are not giving anyone your email address. You can look at it like an "Active Bookmark", a bookmark that tells you when there is something new.

How to read RSS:- You first need to get an RSS reader, and I will provide you with some links where you can download this for free.

Into this reader you put addresses of the RSS feeds you want to subscribe to. When you visit a site you like and you see the little orange button saying RSS or XML, you simply right click (MAC users = control-click) on it and select "Copy Shortcut" (MAC users="Copy Link to Clipboard") and paste that shortcut into your RSS reader.

That is all there is to it.

You can as easily unsubscribe by deleting the feed from you RSS reader.

Windows -- RssReader www.rssreader.com

Mac -- NetNewsWire www.ranchero.com/netnewswire

After you have done that, you can start by adding this feed into your RSS reader.

Right click, copy shortcut, and paste it into your RSS reader!

WHERE TO REGISTER YOUR SITE(i.e. WHO ARE THE RSS PROVIDERS)

There are a couple of major advantages to adding an RSS feed to your content:

1. Changes to your site or content will be instantly "published" and available to your readers-nothing required by you, the publisher.

2. The RSS formatted content will appear instantly without any action required by your readers-on their preferred personal page, or in their favorite newsreader or browser.

3. Completely eliminates delivery issues (Spam Filters, etc.) that have become a major problem with content delivery via email

I now want to recommend a great way to get around the "alphabet soup" of emerging RSS standards. I use a service called Feedburner to publish my RSS feed. Feedburner is a great service which takes the guesswork out of deciding what format to publish in. It serves as an intermediary, converting your feed into any of the major standards that a reader might require to read a feed in his particular software solution. So while the native feed of Morettini on (High Tech) Management is in an ATOM format, it doesn't matter. Feedburner will convert it to whatever major standard is required by the subscriber.

Feedburner also provides the publisher with a nice set of statistics about what content is being viewed, what readers are being used to view the content, etc. There are also diagnostic tools available to make sure you feed is valid and conforming. It's a great service, and it's FREE-I highly recommend it.