News Headlines (RSS)

What is RSS? RSS is a lightweight format designed for sharing headlines and other Web content on demand. Think of it as a distributable "What's New" for your site. A computer user can "sign up" to receive your RSS headlines, which get delivered directly to his or her RSS news reader.

Why do people like RSS? People like RSS feeds because they don't have to visit lots of Web sites individually. The headlines or brief summaries are delivered right to their news readers. Similarly, they don't have to sign up for e-mail lists that clutter up their email inboxes. They get only the content (RSS headlines) that they choose.

Is RSS right for your site? If you have information on your site that changes often (news headlines, new products, new real estate listings, a "something" (thought, joke, quote, photo, etc.) of the day or week, fishing reports, events, etc.) then RSS may work for you!

What does RSS stand for? Depends on who you ask! Most think it stands for:

Really Simple Syndication, or
Rich Site Summary, or
Resource Description Framework (RDF) Site Summary

How can I view RSS feeds? To view RSS feeds, you need to have a news reader, also known as a news aggregator. Popular news readers include:

News Gator
NewzCrawler
Feed Demon
My Yahoo! (this is not a separate program, you can use my.yahoo right through your web browser -- you just need to signup for a free Yahoo! account)
Soap Client (free web-based reader with no registration required. downside - must enter URL each time want to view the feed)
Firefox Browser (the new Firefox Web browser from Mozilla uses "Live Bookmarks" to display RSS feeds in your Bookmarks list)

After you have a news reader, you must add URLs (web addresses) to the RSS feeds you want to view. Here are a couple of samples to play with:

CNN Top Stories: http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_topstories.rss
Word of the Day: http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/wotd.rss

The news reader will show you the different "channels" you have signed up for -- the headlines in those channels -- and links to the news stories.

What about folks who don't have RSS news readers? We can use a script to display your RSS feeds directly on your Web site. View a demo of our RSS script here.

That's it! Contact our office for more information.