Today in this WordPress tutorial, lets learn about RSS Feeds. Every blogger or Author using and working in WordPress have once come across RSS Feeds as they are an important part of a Website functionality and SEO.

What are RSS Feeds ?

 RSS_logo

RSS basically stands for “Rich Site Summary” which is often called as “Really Simple Syndication” and some also call it as “News Feeds”.

It was released in the year 1999 and was rapidly followed by many Blogs/Websites. It is the syndication of evolution of the “Internet World” which changed the entire distribution of Contents, Feeds to the readers. With the discovery of RSS, Blogging took a pace in the real world.

RSS allowed the bloggers, publishers to organize the feeds and publish it in the users mail which helped the users to keep track on the daily updates of their favorite Blog/Website.

Lets learn about RSS a bit more simply, Before the discovery of RSS Feeds. A reader who wants to be Up to Date then usually have to bookmark a Blog/Website for latest updates of their favorite content.

RSS made this easy by allowing the readers to keep a track on their bookmarked websites on daily basis. It is like you have subscribed and told a website to update you all the time. The readers now don’t have to remember the URL of any websites as they use RSS to bring all the contents of a Blog/Website in the same default place.

It is an XML document which contained all the info of the text like the “author name, title, published on”, etc. They are basically read by readers using “RSS Readers”, “Aggregator”,”Feedly”, etc on any thing like PC, Mobiles,Tablets. The best part of RSS Feeds is that readers can read the feeds offline also. ( See below is an image of RSS Feed ).

Rss_Feed

Learn how to use RSS Feeds :

After the growth of RSS technology many application both Web based and Cell phone based have clipped through the entire Web.

If you want to subscribe a Blog/Website, Visit the Blog/Website find a link that directs you to the “RSS” or “Subscribe” option and after that just confirm your subscription you are done.

Use readers to read out the news feed. Apps like ” RSS Reader”, News aggregator”, are basically for Desktop PC.

Just download the app from here “RSS Reader” and get the complete guide.

rss-reader_app

If you also want to read it in Cell phones then just download the app “Feedly” from your app store. With the help of “Feedly” you can synchronize all your news feeds in one go in your cell phone.

Feedly in built has a search option to make a search of RSS Feeds and subscribe it with just one click. Using Feedly you can save your article with the Save button provided.

feedy_app

Now if you want to read news feeds Online then you can go with “Feedreader Online” which also provides an option of Online reading. It is really an advanced platform to get all the news feeds in one place.

feed_reader_online

So just give a try to Rss Feeds and see the difference before and after.  Not only the above mentioned apps but also check the other apps which are there in the web store, who’s knows which you find better.

Extra Tips:

  • If you are subscribing to a Blogspot blog then you will have to look for a “Posts (Atom)” link to subscribe the news feeds. The button is usually located at the bottom of the Homepage of the Blog/Website.
  • Be a bit aware that not each and every Blog/Website provide you the RSS Feeds.
  • You can also use RSS Feeds to let your users subscribe to your posts and when new content is updated they can receive an email from you using the feedburner tool by google.