Quick guide to RSS

Using Really Simple Syndication (or for short RSS) allows you to see when sites have added new content in one place, as soon as they are published. Most websites (at least ones you would want to be updated on, such as our blog :+)) provide an RSS feed.

 

 

In general, the first thing you need is something called a news reader. This is a piece of software that checks RSS feeds and lets you read any new information (including text, audio or video files) that have been added to them. There are many different versions, which are online, desktop or mobile-based.

 

Once you have chosen a news reader, all you have to do is to decide what content you want to receive in your reader, by finding and subscribing to the relevant RSS feeds which is normally denoted with the orange ‘transmit’ icon that you can see in the Aurora ‘Subscribe’ box in the right-hand column of our website.

 

If you click on the RSS icon, you can subscribe to the feed in various ways, including dragging or cutting and pasting the address of the RSS feed into your news reader. All blogs are based on RSS so often you can simply add the web address straight into your reader.

 

 

There is a range of different news readers available and new versions are appearing all the time. Different news readers work on different platforms and operating systems, so you will need to choose one that will work best for you.

 

The reader that the Aurora team use (for business and personal RSS management) is Google Reader. It is free, online and easy to use – all you need is to have a Google account (which basically means signing up for Google Mail) and then adding Google Reader to your account. Google Reader also has apps for your smart phone and so you can access your reader while on the move.

 

Aurora is planning to put together a quick video tutorial on how to do set up a Google Reader – in the meantime if you are struggling to get this sorted then just give us a call and we can walk you through the process in a couple of minutes over the phone.

 

Having a news reader in place really is the start of taking control of the information you are interested in and really getting benefit from the fabulous world wide web.

 

To learn about subscribing to the Aurora RSS feed then click here.