What is an RSS Feed?.

When I first saw mention of RSS and of RSS Feeds I discovered that RSS stood for 'Really Simple Syndication' and, no, it didn't mean anything to me either.

Where web sites offer changing content it is normally the case that you will have to make repeated visits to the site to check for changes and new content. If the site offers an RSS Feed and you have, or can get, an RSS Feed Reader (also known as News Aggregators) then you can subscribe to these sites and your reader is automatcally updated with details of the new content without you having to do anything. It is then a simple matter to browse through the new items to see which are of interest.

There are a number of freeware RSS Readers available for different operating systems including Linux, Mac and Windows.

Once you have your reader then, in theory, clicking on a 'Subscribe' link or icon will automatically start your reader, if it's not already running, and add the site to your current list of subscriptions. Then all you have to do is look through the results - easy!

But, there had to be a 'but' didn't there, some web browsers and RSS readers cannot yet handle this new protocol so you may get an error message instead or nothing at all in which case you will have to subscribe manually. This is not difficult and usually means selecting an 'Add feed' option in your reader and entering the address of the site in the URL or URI address box.

For this site the address for the Blog is: 'http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk/deoprrssw/' and the address for the Updates page is: 'http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk/updates.xml' (without the quotes). You can even copy and paste the addresses from this page.

Some web browsers, such as Firefox, can add an RSS feed as a 'live bookmark' by clicking on the orange icon ( ) which appears in the address box. The items in the feed then appear as a drop-down menu.