RSS for Beginners

RSS is a class of content syndication formats which allow content publishers, whether they are websites, blogs, or other online sources, to feed information to a user real-time as soon as content is published. RSS can also be used to automatically publish content to a website as soon as it is released on another website. An RSS reader, or aggregator, is a piece of software which interprets an RSS feed and displays it to the user in a human-readable format. Often, only a portion of the text or content from the feed will be displayed along with limited meta-data (who authored the content and its publishing date) to allow the user to make quick decisions on whether or not they would like to see more.

Blogs often utilize RSS feeds to alert regular readers when new content has been published, and users can configure their aggregator to display information from various different blogs side-by-side for comparison. News organizations often use RSS feeds to instantly publish work from news-writing organizations on their website.

RSS formats use XML, an extended version of the hyper-text markup language (HTML), to specify how your browser will access the RSS feed. Atom, another syndication/news format, uses XML as well in Atom Syndication Format. The Atom Publishing Protocol (APP) is an HTTP protocol that allows for the creation and update of website news. It was created as an alternative to RSS because Atom's creator believed that there were inherent flaws in the way RSS was designed. Atom works in much the same was as RSS, but Atom also allows for blog owners to back up and export their data to another blogging platform provided that both platforms support that feature.

Most modern web browsers come pre-equipped with the necessary plugins to read both Atom and RSS feeds, so subscribing to syndicated content on a website is as simple as clicking on the RSS/Atom symbol. To create an RSS or Atom syndication feed, the webmaster must either write the code in the appropriate format or install one of the widely available snippets into their code and modify it to their own needs. Once that code is installed, the client-side aggregator will periodically check back with the website for updates and place them in the queue for the user to examine when they are ready.