OK. Im not an expert on this by any means but Really Simple Syndication/Rich Site Summary ( RSS for short ) is a really handy but underused web feature that I hope more TD'ers will take advantage of if they already arent doing so.

You might have seen this before, the symbol thats used for RSS. Its usually orange but as you'll see in Firefox its blue, no idea why.



A simple way of explaining RSS would be "a way of delivering regularly changing content from websites" such as news sites like BBC, CNN along with blogs and a host of other types of sites that get updated regularly, including Teakdoor. It allows you to easily stay informed of updates to sites and save you time by not having to visit the sites individually to check whats new. The number of sites offering an RSS "feed" grows every day and includes all the big names like Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and loads more.

I'll start with the simplest way to use RSS which is using Firefox's built in feature called Live Bookmarks. It works by subscribing to the RSS feed, same as a physical newspaper where you subscribe and it gets delivered to your door. In this case its getting delivered to your computer.

If you look in the address bar and you see the RSS symbol, this means that a feed for that particular page is available. Each section of the site will have its own feed so the news pages have a feed, the sports pages have a feed and so on. It delivers the updates from that page or section of the site not necessarily the site as a whole.

Im using the BBC site for an example as its a news site which will have lots of new stories added over the course of a day



If you click on the blue button in the bar it should take you to a page like this with a button to subscribe to the feed. Select "Live Bookmarks" in the dropdown box if it isnt already done.


When you click the "Subscribe Now" button a pop up appears asking where you want to save the feed


Ive already created a folder for my RSS feeds in the bookmarks toolbar so Im saving it in there, duh. Choose where you want to save it and click the Subscribe button.



Each feed now has its own folder where all the updated info gets stored in bookmarks.


Because Ive subscribed to the front page it has delivered links to various headlines from the different sections, news, sport etc


Click on the story that grabs your attention and it take you to the relevant page


Thats it, as I said the feed gets updated automatically so the latest news, articles or info from whatever type of site you've subscribed to will get added automatically to the list of bookmarks.