Dave’s Rants
Never Knowing when to shut up!
Subscription Buttons
If you use any of the services below simply click on the relevant button and you’ll be subsribed to the main feed of this site. If you don’t know what I’m talking about you can get a better description of what syndication and subscribing is all about about. If you don’t want these complications you can just have the full feed of Dave’s Rants.
Subscribe? What the hell does that mean??
Many sites now provide feeds of their content which you can subscribe to. This simple technology allows you to use software called a `feed reader’ or `aggregator’ to read content from sites instead of visiting the site itself. Don’t be put off by the acronyms like XML or RSS - this is genuinely easy to do.
Why would I want to do it?
If you like to keep up to date with a number of sites, you can now do so more easily with a feed reader. You no longer have to go from site to site checking for new content. This technology allows you to keep up to date with the content from a large number of sites. Using a feed reader you can subscribe to a sites feed. You can now read the sites content in your feed reader and the site’s feed will automatically update. The feed reader will usually have way to visually let you know when there is fresh content from a site you are subscribed to, so you can see at a glance which feeds you need to catch up on.
OK, so how do I do all this?
First, you’ll need a feed reader, or `aggregator’. You can install a feed reader on your computer so that you have access to it on your desktop, or if you prefer you can use an online feed reader. If you are not comfortable installing software on your computer then an online feed reader might suit you best. I personally prefer online readers and use Feedlounge.
The following three feed readers are popular:
- FeedDemon for Windows
- NetNewsWire for Mac OS X
- Bloglines which is Web based
How do I know where a site’s feed is?
A lot of sites include a text link or button which leads to their feed. The trouble is there are many different names and acronyms in use to alert you to a site’s feed. This is partly to do with the different technologies being used to offer feeds, but we won’t worry about that now. The fact is you have probably seen these links or buttons but you may not have known what they were. A common button is a small orange button with white writing on it which might say one of the following: RSS or XML
These buttons are usually links to the url (web address) of the feed for that site or blog. That is the url you need to give to your `feed reader’ or `aggregator’ in order to subscribe.
If this is still too complicated don’t worry, most feed readers are clever enough to figure out where the RSS feed for a particular website is so just give the feed reader the ordinary URL — the one you visit when you read the site — and it’ll figure out where the RSS feed is.
That’s it?
Pretty much, so you can now subscribe to one of my feeds!
Finally I’d like to thank 9mmfilm for the inspiration and much of the content of this post!