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What Are Webfeeds (RSS), and Why Should You Care?

This 12-part tutorial is a major revision and expansion of an article I originally published Oct. 18, 2003 under the title “What Is RSS and Why Should You Care?”

Please note that this tutorial reflects an important shift in terminology at CONTENTIOUS. This publication is transitioning from RSS feed to the more generic nickname webfeed. This shift is explained in Part 11.

TUTORIAL TABLE OF CONTENTS:

  1. Introduction: What’s New Online?
  2. How Most Webfeeds Work
  3. Main Advantage: Webfeeds Save You Time
  4. Getting Started: You Need a Feed Reader
  5. Subscribing to Webfeeds
  6. Finding Good Webfeeds
  7. For Publishers: Why Webfeeds Beat E-mail Newsletters
  8. Publishing Your Own Webfeed
  9. Content: What to Put on Your Webfeed
  10. Webfeed Disadvantages
  11. Why Do I Say “Webfeed” Rather than “RSS?”
  12. The Big Picture for Webfeeds

Read on… and feel free to link to this resource or quote from it (with attribution, please).

If you liked my post, feel free to subscribe to my rss feeds

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This entry was written by Amy Gahran and posted on October 18, 2003 at 7:20 pm and filed under Feeds (RSS). Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

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16 Comments so far (Add 1 more)

  1. Kleenex, Xerox, RSS…
    Seems to be a mighty storm brewin’ – a bit more powerful than a Nor’easter, too. Been a long time comin’. It’s RSS, it’s feeds, it’s XML – it’s all of the above. As an ex-English major, I’m torn. Does “Atom” really mean RSS? Does RDF really e…

    1. Lockergnome\'s RSS & Atom Tips on August 16th, 2005 at 2:37 pm
  2. Some starting points for Monday’s Meeting
    Hi guys, As you can see, blogs can have multiple authors. BusinessWeek has a new blog about blogging, at http://www.blogspotting.net/. In viewing that, I also found a good article that might be considered a primer for RSS, or “Webfeeds”. It’s…

    2. Centerwatch Journal on June 5th, 2005 at 11:26 am
  3. Headline Syndication for Intranets
    (by Amy Gahran,
    2004-10-05) So you have an intranet. Perhaps it’s supported by a costly and complex
    content management system. It’s full of rich, useful content that could enhance
    many types of projects and collaboration throughout your enter…

    3. Back Office on November 3rd, 2004 at 4:23 pm
  4. Syndication for Intranets
    Headline Syndication for Intranets by Amy Gahran, at CMS Watch So you have an intranet. Perhaps it’s supported by a costly and complex content management system. It’s full of rich, useful content that could enhance many types of projects and collabor…

    4. soulsoup on October 6th, 2004 at 8:35 pm

  5. Amy, It is great to see you publishing again! Thanks so much for setting up this nice site.

    5. David Irwin on October 19th, 2003 at 12:32 am

  6. Hi,

    Thanks for all this! I’ll be linking you.
    A couple of days ago you wrote about the need for an aggregator which integrated into a browser. I’m no techie or anything. Isn’t [http://www.aggreg8.net] just that ? It only works with Mozilla or Firebird, and I haven’t tested it yet (just installed it a couple of seconds ago)…

    6. Beckett on October 19th, 2003 at 3:21 pm

  7. This is an extremely well done explanation of RSS for the RSS newbie, Amy. You’ve taken something that is new, that *shouldn’t* be intimidating (but naturally is because it *is* new) and explained it in a way that shows the obvious strengths of this simple but powerful technology.

    7. Tom on October 19th, 2003 at 10:42 pm

  8. Thanks. I’d wondered what the whoop-de-do about RSS was, but my cursory search did not turn up a good explaination. This was great. I’ll use your weblog as an example feed to start…

    -dd/

    8. David Dunshee on October 20th, 2003 at 5:31 am

  9. I have a fairly simple RSS file that lists the major articles in Emerald City. It gets picked up by Diverse Books (http://news.diversebooks.com/reviews/), though they seem to be a bit behind this month. If anyone else is interested in SF&F book reviews, let me know.

    9. Cheryl Morgan on October 21st, 2003 at 12:11 pm

  10. How do I create RSS FEED of my website?

    10. Dhananjay on November 10th, 2003 at 8:03 am

  11. The best resource on how to create an RSS feed for your site is the primer I mentioned above: http://www.eevl.ac.uk/rss_primer.

    Also, there are many RSS feed generators you might be able to use, like this one: http://www.webdevtips.com/webdevtips/codegen/rss.shtml

    Many major weblog software packages contain RSS generators which are fairly easy to use, too.

    - Amy Gahran
    Editor, CONTENTIOUS

    11. Amy Gahran on November 10th, 2003 at 9:00 am

  12. This is a great intro to RSS. I am trying to explain the benefits of it to my organization, and I am very excited about its potential for enabling people to stay in touch with the content they want to read.

    We are looking to use it within our intranet (via Movable Type), in order to encourage our organization to move to a model where content is published more regularly and made more feely available for consumption.

    12. Christian on November 10th, 2003 at 10:11 pm

  13. Okay NOW you have my attention. I am now onto a couple of feeds to try it out.

    But am I not sure if I have drawn a correct conclusion.

    For example, I receive mails from corporations when they publish new jobs that could be of interest to me. That is cool because then I don’t have to bother trapsing through the long list of sites that make up “The Usual Suspects”.

    My conclusion on RSS is that I now would have to do something active in FeedDemon or whatever to see what’s new. Is this correct? Or can RSS Feed automatically give me a nudge that something has turned up at a particular site.

    13. Mark on November 14th, 2003 at 3:22 am

  14. Great intro on RSS, Amy! I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve put a link to this page underneath the RSS feed buttons on all my web sites. It really is the best way to explain what the button is for.

    Thanks!

    14. Home Improvement Man on February 3rd, 2004 at 5:07 am

  15. So I’m looking for an Webfeed reader. I think my requrements are fairly simple.

    1. I want it to run on a Windows platform.

    2. I want it to not require the use of Internet Explorer or Outlook.

    3. I want support for Atom as well as RSS.

    Can I find anything? No. Depressing.

    15. Cheryl Morgan on May 6th, 2004 at 10:45 am

  16. Regarding Cheryl’s comment for a feed reader:

    Try FeedDemon (http://www.feeddemon.com). That’s the one I use. The latest version handles both RSS and Atom feeds just fine, and I love the interface. I believe there’s a free 30-day trial, and it costs $29.95 if you decide to buy it

    16. Amy Gahran on May 6th, 2004 at 11:06 am