We’ve all seen them. Those funny orange icons dotted around the Internet with the words RSS, feed, and subscribe. This article explains what RSS actually is and how we can all use it to help our everyday tasks run more efficiently.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is a format for sharing data, typically from a website. For example, latest news, products, comments, members etc.

An RSS feed is a basic listing of items which can be inserted into another website, application, or news reader software. The feed is updated whenever the content changes so you are always retrieving the latest information without having to re-visit the website every day.

You will find RSS feeds all over the Internet, but is commonly used on blogs, news related websites, product catalogues, and social networking websites. Look for the orange icon and the words “RSS Feed” to subscribe to a feed.

Subscribe? eh?

The word subscribe can be misleading. To subscribe to a feed all you need to do is copy the URL of the feed (our blog feed is located at http://blog.acmultimedia.co.uk/feed) into your chosen RSS reader software. That’s it!

RSS feeds aren’t for everyone - some people still prefer to visit the website to check for the latest content, however, when you start to add these feeds to your favourite applications (Outlook, Firefox etc.) it becomes easier to see when the content has changed, and then subsequently visit the website for the main content.

RSS feeds are all over the Internet and are growing in popularity by the minute. Most websites separate their feeds into categories, for example, latest news, sports news, technology news, and so on…

The latest versions of Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer allow you to subscribe to feeds directly into the web browser. Feeds can also be added to your e-mail package (some require third-party plug-ins) so you can download your e-mail and feeds at the same time.

Our RSS Feeds

We have 2 main RSS feeds for our website design blog and latest company news. We also have separate feeds for comments for each blog entry. The URLs for our blog and latest news feeds are shown below:

AC Multimedia - Website Design Blog
The AC Multimedia blog is a web design and development blog containing articles and tutorials about the web and the stomping ground for Andy Crathorne, owner of AC Multimedia and web developer.
URL: http://blog.acmultimedia.co.uk/feed

Latest AC Multimedia News
AC Multimedia is a website design company based in Bournemouth, Dorset, offering website design, e-commerce, content management systems (CMS), and search engine optimisation (SEO).
URL: http://www.acmultimedia.co.uk/feed/news

Further Information

• Check out how the BBC use RSS feeds and their help guide.
• For a more technical and in-depth view of RSS view the article on Wikipedia.

Odds & Sods