what is rss?

what is it?

rssstands for rich site summary or really simple syndication.

Basically the idea is that pretty much all news looks alike. It has a headline and some content, a date, an author and occasionally a picture. So if everyone who writes news, publishes it in the same way, then feed reader software and websites can read news from loads of different sources live from the source.

what does that mean?

What that means is that if I want to know what's happening in the world I can set up a feed reader to syndicate content from the bbc site, sky news, cnn, reuters ... and stick it all on one page automatically.

what does that mean to you?

Here's a simple example:

go to google http://www.google.co.uk
click the personalised home link [top right]
click the add content link [top left]
click the add by url link next to the searhc homepage content button
now enter the url to our feed http://www.humber-edc.org.uk/hedcrss.php
click add

You should now have a box on your personalised homepage with the live news from our site being read into it. Each time you return to the personalised home section of google, the HEDC news section will be there but updated with the live content.

want to know more?

Here is a list of some articles you could read if you really wanted to that tell you all about what it is and how it works. They get increasingly nerdy as you go down so I would recommend starting at the top.

Alternatively, drop me an email or give me a call and I'll do my best to explain it in a non-nerdy way.