You can now subscribe to my blog’s RSS feed through a reader by clicking on the orange button on the sidebar to the left. I have included the option of having updates sent to your email inbox if you prefer to do it that way.
Here’s a brief explanation of what all this means.
Firstly, what is RSS?
RSS (short for Really Simple Syndication) is a technology that helps you to keep up to date with your favorite websites and blogs.
Without RSS, you would have to bookmark a site and then check it regularly to see if any new information had been added. RSS automatically does that for you. It checks your favourite sites and feeds all the updates from each one to a central place for you to read at your leisure. The central place can either be your email inbox, or an RSS reader.
What is an RSS Reader?
An RSS reader is an online application that brings together updated content from multiple websites into one location for easy viewing. There are many RSS readers; two of the most popular free ones are Google Reader and Bloglines. You will need to create an account with the RSS reader of your choice before being able to subscribe to a website’s RSS feed.
What does it mean to subscribe to a blog or website?
Subscribing to a blog or a website’s RSS feed is a bit like subscribing to a magazine, only instead of each issue arriving through the post, each update is sent to your RSS reader or your email inbox.
What was that about my email inbox?
If you don’t want to use an RSS reader, many websites also enable you to subscribe to RSS feeds via email. If you choose this option you can get a summary of a site’s latest posts; as with an RSS reader you can then go directly to the site.
How do I use RSS to subscribe?
The orange symbol above is the standard symbol for RSS. When you see it on a website you can click on it to start the subscription process. Or you might see some linked text to click on saying something like “Subscribe to my RSS feed”. You will then typically be asked to which RSS reader you would like the feed to be sent.
And that’s pretty much it! Once you have the feed set up, you can log into your RSS reader and you will see either an excerpt from, or the the whole of, each update from your favourite sites. You can click on a link to take you directly to the site, or you can read the update through your reader.
That was all interesting stuff
I set up bloglines a few months ago when someone mentioned it and I have subscribed to your blog through that. Sometimes though, bloglines doesn’t tell you if a blog has updated (I think there’s a glitch somewhere?) but for the most part it works.
Love how your shawl is coming along, that first pic in the previous post looks very clear and I can really see the pattern and edging well in it
Took me an age to get to grips with feed readers, I used to click on every blog in my list from my blog to check if they had updated, a slow process! I use Google Reader and find that I read many more blogs now I have this to speed things up.
Just been teching up my blog too with the Rav project bars, see you got to that before. I definitely have to do any techy updating in small chunks as that part of my brain is weak!
I only learnt about RSS through Ravelry. Ive got mine going through FB too.
You rock!
Oh thank you for that. I had absolutely no idea what rss stood for. Much appreciated. I do like bloglines, I hate to miss updates.