RSS Feeds

If you use this site regularly, you should notice that the news headlines at the right of the page are changed daily. While I’d like to claim that this is the result of my hard work, in actual fact this information is updated automatically through the use of an RSS feed.

RSS Feeds are actually quite a simple tool which can be very useful in saving you time, and helping you to stay up to date with information and news from websites which you use regularly (you can actually subscribe to this blog by clicking on the 'Posts - Atom' link at the bottom of the page). However, web authors seem to take great delight in writing lengthy, jargon-ridden explanations of what RSS is, leading many to avoid getting to grips with the technology, which was my own experience until I attended a practical demonstration.

Today's post was intended to be a simple beginner's guide to RSS, but while looking for useful links I found a short video by CommonCraft, which does an excellent - and lighthearted - job of explaining how it all works. If you have sound on your machine, please have a look at the film entitled RSS in Plain English and see what you think. If you still have questions, feel free to email me or visit me in Summer Row library.