RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” or “Rich Site Summary”. It allows for the automated distribution of web site content one the one hand and aggregation of content from one or more web sites on the other.
RSS feeds are useful for someone who is tracking a number of websites — every change to each of those websites is streamed automatically to your RSS reader — you don’t have to go to each and every web site in order to check what’s new.
This blog has subscribed to a number of RSS feeds — you can see them on the lower right hand side of the home page — look for the orange RSS icon.
NOTE ABOUT FINDING FEEDS: Most blogs or websites that offer feeds will display one or other of these icons, or something similar:
Or there will be a link somewhere that says “Newsfeed,” “Feed,” “RSS,” “Atom,” “Subscribe to this feed,” etc.
Clicking on the icon / link will
1. Go to the RSS address — this site’s RSS address, for example, is: ” http://www.hkstories.net/jmsc-online/feed/ ”
2. Offer you the opportunity to subscribe via established RSS readers, eg Yahoo reader, Livebookmarks, Google Reader (see below) etc — in which case choose your option.
If you wish to add the RSS feed to a sidebar in your blog, go to DASHBOARD — APPEARANCE — WIDGETS and choose the RSS widget. Drag it into the relevant sidebar, open the widget, add the RSS address, give it a name and save. You can choose how many items to display and whether to show just the headlines or headlines plus excerpt).
