Magic Bus Designs: Articles: RSS
If you've spent any amount of time recently surfing the internet, there's a very good chance that you will have seen that little orange icon below or an orange box marked XML and wondered what it was all about. Well these are symbols for something called RSS.
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and basically what it does is that it allows users to subscribe to their favourite websites and get notified of any updates through feed readers or aggregators. Rather than keep checking your favourite website every day to see if there have been any changes, you subscribe to the RSS feed and get an alert when the site has been updated.
There are a number of feed readers or aggregators out there for you to use. The most popular ones are BlogLines, FeedReader, Google Reader, My Yahoo! and Newsgator. They're simple to use and can keep all of your regularly updated sites in one place. Most readers will display either just a headline or a partial slice of the article so you can choose which items to read and which to ignore.
If you own a website or run one, you need to make a decision as to whether or not to include an RSS feed on your site. If you have a blog or you intend to regularly update your content then it is certainly well worth putting a feed in place. It invites your readers to regularly come back and read your website.
If your site gets updated infrequently then offering an email newsletter subscription might be a better option for you. There's nothing worse than offering the carrot of an RSS feed and then never updating your site. It annoys the reader and you'll probably lose that visitor for ever.
When you place your order with us we'll have a chat about the best options for you and your site.