What is RSS?RSS is short for
Really Simple Syndication or
Rich Site Summary and is an XML-based format used to provide off-site news feeds. In short, RSS allows a website to provide a feed of information direct to end-users without having them browse the website. It is proving an ever-popular medium for Internet users who wish to remain on top of news events from a large selection of information sources.
How do I use RSS?All our news content on this site is driven though our forum software, SMF (Simple Machines Forum) The actual RSS URL is..
http://turnerscross.com/smf/index.php?type=rss;action=.xml;limit=20 ..this provides a feed of the 20 most recent topics on this forum. This URL can only be used by RSS reader applications or RSS-compatible browsers. (google for RSS reader).
Mozilla Firefox users can benefit from built-in RSS functionality. While viewing this forum, an orange logo should be visible on the bottom-right corner of the browser window. Clicking on this icon will pop-up an option to subscribe to the feed. The result is an expandable bookmark (referred to by Firefox as a live bookmark) that will expand to show the list of recent posts.. clicking on any one will automatically load up the appropriate post. There are several Firefox extensions that expand this functionality, most notably, Sage (
http://sage.mozdev.org).
Mozilla Thunderbird users can also benefit from its built-in RSS support which provides an effective integration of RSS feeds, making them appear as email folders.
Mac Safari users can benefit from the new RSS support. Similarly to Mozilla, an RSS logo appears near the URL bar that indicates the presence of an RSS feed.
Other methods of reading RSS.. As mentioned, it is worth doing a google for "RSS reader" to see the various options that exist. Another common means of reading RSS feeds is to integrate them in web-based environments such as Google, My Yahoo and MyMSN.
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