How to Subscribe to a RSS Feed?

Posted on: July 18, 2008
7 comments so far (is that a lot?)

rss

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” – it’s a format for distributing and gathering content from sources across the Web, including newspapers, magazines, and blogs. With RSS you can quickly and easily get the latest updates from all your favourite websites in one place, rather than having to visiting them one by one. To do this you use an RSS reader that automatically checks for news and updates.

How can you tell if a website has an RSS feed?

Often you will see a small orange feed icon RSS feed icon saying ‘RSS’, ’subscribe’ or ‘feed’ next to it. Usually you just copy and paste the feed link into your RSS reader. Another great thing about RSS feeds: No spam and complete user control; Unsubscribing to RSS feeds are as easy as it can get – delete it, and it’s gone. Period.

Choosing an RSS reader

There are many different ‘feed readers’ (also known as RSS readers, RSS aggregators or simply newsreaders) to choose from, but they can be divided into two main types: web-based and application based. Web-based readers have the benefit that you can check your feeds from any computer, while the stand-alone applications often have more features and greater flexibility. Browsers such as Internet Explorer 7, Firefox and Safari also have built-in RSS readers, although these are not as flexible and versatile as using a separate application.

Web Based RSS Readers

All you have to do is to sign up for an account and you can add as many feeds as you want. Below are a few of the most popular; some sites will  have buttons that allow you to add it to these RSS readers automatically. Otherwise, just copy and paste the RSS feed link into your  reader and you’re up and running.

Locally installed RSS Readers

If you prefer, you can download an RSS reader and install it on your computer, below are links to a few of the most popular. Some of these are freeware/open source, others charge a licence fee:

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7 Responses to “How to Subscribe to a RSS Feed?”

  1. Dave Haslett Says:
    July 18th, 2008 at 4:30 pm

    Less technical readers may find it easier and more familiar to subscribe to an RSS feed via email, with each post arriving in their inbox like a regular message. You can add this to your blog quite easily by using a service such as Feedblitz or Feedburner. I use Feedblitz – you can see it in action on my blog site “The Official ideas4writers Blog” at http://ideas4writers.wordpress.com

    When I’m subscribing to feeds myself (including this one) I use Newsgator.

  2. prashant Says:
    October 17th, 2008 at 8:29 am

    Hi,
    please let me know if we can bring rss feed information,Example-Latest cricket news to an xml file on my desktop or to my own website.

    regards
    prashant

  3. admin Says:
    October 17th, 2008 at 5:27 pm

    Hi Prashant,

    If you want to add posts from another blog to your Wordpress blog, the easiest is to use the plugin “MultiFeedSnap”, which is the one we use for our “Internet News section”.

    If you would like to receive a lot of information for your personal use, you can use Igoogle, which will replace your homepage, and display all the feeds of your choice at the same time. For more details please check this post http://decoding.wordpress.com/2007/07/01/how-to-add-an-rss-feed-on-your-igoogle-homepage/

    Finally if you would like to add posts from an external RSS feed to your own HTML website, then the best and easiest way is to use http://www.feeddigest.com You need to create an account for free with them, but the result worth it. Just copy and paste your feed link in there, follow the different steps in order to choose the format you want to export your result(HTML, Flash etc..) and it will do the job for you.
    I’ve tested it myself and pasted the HTML result I had from there in my NotePad, and saved it as an HTML file, and here is the result I got in 2 minutes time.: http://www.easilyblog.co.uk/bringfeed_test.html

    Enjoy!

  4. Ravil Says:
    November 6th, 2008 at 3:33 am

    Even my mom liked it:))

  5. Property Spanish Says:
    November 6th, 2008 at 12:37 pm

    Thanks for that advice Prashant.
    Lucy xx

  6. macafee Says:
    October 21st, 2009 at 2:21 pm

    Your message raises contradictions in my head

  7. admin Says:
    October 21st, 2009 at 2:33 pm

    What contradictions MacAfee? Is there anything we could do to clarify?

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