Welcome To My Island

There are quite a bit of things to learn when it comes to blogging, RSS feeds being one of them.  A newcomer to the world of blogging may find it very confusing at first (I know I did).  So what exactly is an RSS Feed? 

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” When you syndicate something such as an article, it means you are submitting the article to not just one magazine, but several.  Having an RSS feed available for your blog allows readers to subscribe to your blog and read it through their chosen RSS feed reading program.

Imagine being able to pick what showed up in your daily newspaper, and then opening it up and seeing only what you wanted to read. RSS feeds make this possible.  Blog readers can subscribe to their favorite blog’s RSS feed and then use a feed reader to make it easy for them to read all of the blogs in one place.  So instead of them having to go from blog to blog on the Internet, they can go their feed reader and go down the list, reading all the new posts on each blog.

Most browsers have a button that lets you view the RSS feed of the blog you are looking at, and then subscribe to it with your browser.  I know Internet Explorer does this.

Just look for this kind of button…

The button above is generally considered the universal RSS feed symbol.  If you are looking for a blog’s RSS feed, just look for this symbol on the page.  More often than not, bloggers usually have their RSS feed subscription button somewhere in the top right region of their blog.

So What is an RSS Feed?

In my one sentence definition, an RSS feed is a really simple version of a blog’s content that is made to be used by RSS readers.