RSS Subscription For Newbies
Small Dogs Paradise RSS Subscription
For Dog Owners Who Take Responsibilities
Why Should I Subscribe to RSS?
Unlike getting website updates or ezines by email, RSS feeds give you absolute, 100% complete control over the situation. You don’t have to reveal your email address. If you want to stop receiving content, you don’t have to request to be taken off the list. One click and the subscription is gone.
Plus, since there’s no email address involved, there’s no way a publisher can sell, rent or give away the means to contact you. No more spam, viruses, phishing, or identity theft. And best of all, no reason to put yourself at the mercy of the publisher’s intentions. If you don’t like the content, you can make it disappear as fast as you can change a TV channel, with just one click.
What Is RSS?
RSS is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication and Rich Site Summary. Simply put it, RSS is just a little signal that comes from a favorite blog or site, telling your RSS reader that it has been updated. If there’s nothing new, it doesn’t show up in your RSS reader and you don’t have to waste time surfing around the site for any new updates. In short, RSS is an Internet technology standard that allows busy people to receive updates to web-based content of interest. Best of all, you don’t have to go to the blog/site to read articles that don’t interest you, and you can preview all you favorite content from the same place—RSS reader.
What Is RSS Reader?
You may already be using a form of RSS/feed reader, and not even realize it. If you use personalized home page services like My Yahoo or My MSN, you’ve got RSS capabilities built in. That’s how syndicated content like news, weather, and stock quotes appears on your personal page. You can also add content from any blog or other site that uses RSS to provide updates.
There are many other web-based tools primarily dedicated to feed reading only. One of the most popular web-based feed readers is Bloglines (It’s free and easy to use). It used to be my favorite feed reader until I took Google reader for a test drive. Ever since there was no U-turn, I’m a Google convert. Check them out, they have a bunch of free tools for casual surfers to experienced webmasters.
There are also desktop-based feed readers. They function somewhat like an email program for feeds and these include
- BlogExpress for Windows
- FeedReader for Windows
- NetNewsWire Lite for Mac
- Lifera for Linux
Ok, How Do I Subscribe To A Feed?
First of all, look for the subscription or feed options, usually they are located at the top right or left sidebar.
If the site you want to subscribe to uses FeedBurner to aid in the subscription process, you’ll likely see the standard RSS icon, which takes you to a page that will give you an array of the most popular feed readers so you can select yours, and you’ll go from there.
Sometimes there will be a chicklet for your particular reader right on the blog that will take you to the appropriate subscription page. You may see these (among others):
or RSS 
. Often these chicklets will take you to a page that looks like code gibberish. In this case, you simply cut and paste the page URL from your browser window and manually paste it into your feed reader subscription function.Reading Content via Feed Reader vs Actual BlogWith so many benefits of reading content via feed reader, it looks visiting the blog is redundant? Not exactly so! Here are some drawbacks.
- Some RSS publishers choose to provide partial feed. What this mean is that, you are only reading an excerpt of the blog post. To read the full content, you will then have to visit the actual blog. As for my blogs, including this one, are full feeds. I understand your time is valuable so I don’t wish to have you click twice just to read my full content.
- Regardless it is full or partial feed, you are not able to see comments left by others commentors and myself on that particular post. To do that, you have to subscribe to that particular post comment feeds. Just add /feed/ to that post title. ie. http://www.smalldogsparadise.com/fitness-and-games/iq-test-how-fast-can-your-dog-think-maze/feed/. I used to have a comment feed link at the end of each post, and it was so underused. Hence I switch to subscribe to comments so that commentors can choose to be notified of follow-up comments via email. Alternatively, you may simply choose to subscribe to comment feed, which will give you all the comments posted on that blog itself. Anyhow my comment feed is http://www.smalldogsparadise.com/comments/feed/ if you’d like to keep updated on all comments posted on this blog.
- Periodically, I’ll do some minor change on my blog layout, such as adding promotional coupons, best buys/read or resources pages or top 10 posts (changed monthly) on the sidebars. And these, RSS reader will not be able to “provide.” Unless you are subscribed to my email listing, only then you will be notified of the change. Otherwise, you have to visit my blog from time to time to see what’s new things I’m offering.
So there you have it! RSS is being adopted at a phenomenal rate, because it’s a good thing for everyone. The benefit to readers is obvious. And it’s good for publishers too, because we want to make sure that people feel comfortable subscribing, and that our message is not nuked by an overzealous spam filter.
Now, it’s up to you to weigh the pros and cons of subscribing to my RSS feed. However, I urge you to give it a try for a week or two. And if you still prefer visiting my blog via your browser bookmarkers, then unsubscribe my feed with one click of the button as I mentioned above. You won’t fully understand the convenient and ease of receiving content via RSS reader until you try.
If there’s anything here that is confusing, or you have a question, please contact me and I’ll be happy to help!
