What is RSS?

What is RSS? The initials RSS has most recently come to stand for Real Simple Syndication. I like this name, because once you understand it, it very much describes its functionality. Simply put, RSS is a way to have fresh website content delivered to you effortlessly as often as it is published. Websites that have frequently changing content (like blogs, news portals, online magazines, etc) will almost always have one or more published RSS feeds. Users can then subscribe to those feeds using an RSS reader and scan the content quickly and easily for items of interest.

This is easier to understand once you have seen an example, so I will delay further discussing the benefits until after I have walked you through the steps of setting up a reader and subscribing to a feed.

There are many RSS readers out there but perhaps the most popular is Google Reader. As with many of Google’s applications, it is free. All you need is a Google Account (also free). There is nothing to download, it operates completely within your web browser.

When you head on over to Google Reader, sign in with your Google Account. If you do not have one, you can sign up quickly and easily by giving them an email address, a password, and then they’ll send you a verification email to verify your email address. That’s all there is to it…they do not ask for any other information.

Upon first loading the Google Reader page, you will find a nice little video (about 1 minute long) that will give you a quick overview of how it works. I would recommend you spend the 1 minute it takes to watch the video. It’s no great video by any stretch, but worth a minute. There is also a link to take a tour, which can be helpful as well.

Now that you have your own account and can access Google Reader, let’s discuss the overall functionality. Below you will see a screenshot of my Google Reader:

The left column of the Reader lists all of your subscriptions. The right column displays all of the unread content as you click on a subscription feed or group of feeds (more on that later). The screenshot above shows the expanded view which gives you the headline and the article or article summary for each item. (Some sites publish their entire article via RSS, some publish a short summary.) There is also a list view if you prefer to view the headlines only:

When a website publishes new content, Google Reader automatically grabs that content and brings it into view in the main panel. As you scroll down the main panel, the Reader will mark the content as read. The next time you view that subscription, it will not show you the read items. There is an option to show all content, but I find it most useful to have the Reader automatically mark my read items.

If you want to read more of an article, you simply click the headline, and the article will open in a new tab or window displaying it on the article’s native site.

You can group your subscriptions into folders. I like to group my subscriptions in folders according to their topic. I have one for “News, one for “Sports”, etc. I have one that is labeled “Web Design” where I have all of the subscriptions to the various Website Design blogs and sites that I like to read:

You can collapse and expand your folders as desired to see individual subscriptions, or browse a whole group at once. Selecting a folder will display all of the content for the subscriptions in that folder grouped in the main viewing panel.

Adding subscriptions is very easy with Google Reader. From within the Google Reader, you can click on “Add a Subscription” and search for a feed using keywords or enter a feed’s URL (keep in mind you need the feed URL, not the site URL).

When you are browsing a website, you can tell if that site has an RSS feed by looking for the universal RSS logo:

In Internet Explorer 7, you will find an RSS icon exists on the right hand side of the browser. It will appear grey if the site has no feed, but will light up orange if it does have a feed:

Clicking on the orange button in Internet Explorer will take you to the feed. From there you can copy the URL, and paste it into Google Reader.

If you are smart enough to use the Firefox browser (and you should), the process is even easier. In Firefox, an RSS icon will appear in the address bar if a site has an RSS feed:

Clicking on that button in Firefox will open a very handy screen:

Simply clicking on the “Add to Google Reader” button will automatically add the subscription to your Google Reader. Sweetness.

So now that you have seen how it works, you can probably already infer the benefits. By aggregating content from sites you would otherwise have to navigate to individually, a news reader can save you a tremendous amount of time. You can simply go to one place and scan all the headlines from your favorite sites to determine what you want to read. Keeping up to date on the latest news, or specific industry trends, your hobbies and interests, is as easy as creating your subscriptions.