RSS feed?

[mystvearn]

I've google about it, but I don't understand what does it do actually. Its for weblogs only? So what happens with this thing actually?
Can someone explain it easier for me to understand. Thank you.

[mairving]

It's basically just a way of getting news headlines or website/forum updates from a site. Unfortunately IE 6 doesn't support it unless you go 3rd party with Google toolbar or other. FF does support RSS.

Example:
You go to MSNBC with a browser that supports RSS feeds, you can subscribe to a couple of feeds that they have. Once you subscribe, you can either set it as a bookmark or in some cases as a scroller.

[kstatefan40]

Basically, as marving said, it is used to pull news from sites. PCMech uses RSS for our news, http://www.pcmech.com/news

It pulls the title, link, and a short description (as well as other elements) and combines them into an XML file. Your browser in turn runs the XML, which returns the feeds.

[mystvearn]

I see it works with torrents as well. I go to pcmech news and I click RSS feed but I get some commands which I don't understand.

[Nav_functions]

RSS Feed:
This sound an interesting feature to have on the website. One of my colleague suggested this option to me and I would like to know more about this feature in XML.

Is it hard to learn (coding in XML)?
How much does it cost to set one up?
Is it easy to manage the update?
Please enlighten me the pros/cons of this feature.

Btw, I am trying to be a host to my fellow suscribers to get the update on the news.
Thanks in advance.

[doctorgonzo]

You don't need a browser to subscribe to RSS feeds. I use an external program called Feedreader for my feeds; I like it a lot.

RSS feeds are great for sites that produce article-type content, like blogs or news outlets. Instead of constantly hitting "refresh" to see the latest news, you wait until the RSS reader finds something, and then it alerts you.

[Nav_functions]

Actually, I want to be the person that host the news. I don't know how to set it up. I was wondering if anyone has the experience in that.

[mystvearn]

RSS is something like email then? But auto-refresh?

[doctorgonzo]

RSS is not exactly like e-mail. It is a small XML file that contains information about the articles or blog posts that your site has. Whenever you add something new, it is added to the XML file. Feedreader software will periodically check that XML file and see that something is new, then it will alert you.

It is better for bandwidth since the feedreader is just requesting a small text file instead of your whole website when it checks for something new. Plus, since it is XML, it can be parsed by the feedreader software so new items can be displayed however you want; most of the time it does look like your e-mail inbox.

Attached is a picture of the feedreader I use. As you can see, the feeds I am subscribed to are on the left, and the feed items are on the right, a lot like e-mail. When I click on a new item, I can be taken directly to the website or just read the text depending on how I have it set up (some RSS feeds include the full text of the article in the feed; others just the first couple of sentences with a web link to the rest).

[mystvearn]

so do you need to keep this running in the background? So that you do not miss any updates?

[doctorgonzo]

Yes, it runs in the background.

[Statica]

There are also a number of sites that will aggregate your feeds for you. For example I've started using www.live.com a lot!

[scomac]

If you want to try something else, you can always download Maxthon browser. It has RSS capabilities and works pretty much identically to IE plus it has tabbed browsing like Firefox.


Scomac