So what exactly is syndication? What is this RSS I keep hearing about? How is this useful for my website or blog? And most importantly, what’s in it for me?

What is RSS?

Syndication with RSS (which stands for Rich Site Summary, or maybe Really Simple Syndication—depending on who you ask) is a way of letting certain web services, search engines and other internet machine thingies (such as information aggregation tools) know when your website or blog has been updated. Aggregators (or newsreaders) scan these feeds, and alert you whenever the website you’re interested in has changed.

They are rather like a digital newspaper clipping service, although its not just limited to news—any website that offers dynamic content can offer an RSS feed to its viewers. This could consist of news headlines, search results, “what’s new”, etc. The three web “biggies”—Google, Yahoo and Microsoft—are all integrating RSS technology in their new software and platforms, so its here to stay.

Why is it useful to me, as a reader?

Imagine you have a favourite website, like, say, Out in Africa Film Festival. You know they don’t post a new article every day (although that is soon to change), and it’s rather a pain to go to the website every day, wait for it to load, and then be disappointed if there is nothing new. Rather than waste your time like that, be smart and get your computer to fetch the information for you!

RSS feeds allow you to have current, customised information delivered straight to you (with virtually no effort), in your area of interest. So if you’re interested in GLBT news and the latest on persian cats, you can customise your google search results for those only. Similarly, you could get real-time weather alerts, personal reminders, movie reviews, etc. Check out MicroPersuasion’s “35 ways to use RSS” for some creative uses! (I’ll get to the “how” in a step-by-step later).

Once you’re set up, you should periodically review and refine your feeds, as some feeds get “stale”, your interests may change, current events (e.g. the 2008 US elections) become past events, etc.

A word of warning from personal experience: all this is ultimately designed to make your web-surfing more efficient, and assist with “information overload“. However, the temptation to go nuts over how cool this all is, is huge, especially in the beginning. By all means, go nuts, check it out, but in the end, I seriously advise you to triage those feeds that don’t actually hold your interest, or you’ll end up causing information overload, rather than managing it.

CommonCraft has a fabulously amusing video clip explaining RSS.

Why is it useful to me, as a website owner/blogger?

Well, providing tools to make your readers’ lives easier is always A Good Thing™. Providing an RSS feed increases your visibility, and using RSS feeds, you can generate dynamic content on your site. All of this combines to drive traffic to your blog/website (ever seen those “These Blogs have Just been Updated” lists – well…).

And if you’re into buttons and things, you can even add a tracker to your webpage to advertise how many people are “feeding” off you.

I won’t go into any further technical explanations about what RSS is our how machines use it—there are literally thousands of tutorials out there if you google for it. What I will do, though, is give you a step-by-step for getting started, as an RSS end-user.

Getting Started Step-by-Step

Step One:

Get a feed reader.

There are two types of readers—an installed desktop program, or an online, web-based reader. I won’t go into too much detail on the desktop versions, because I find them less useful than the web-based readers, but my two favourite would be Google Desktop, and the integrated RSS reader in MS Office 2007 .

There are many many online readers available as well, but my favourites would be Google Reader (which allows you to share feeds and things you find interesting), My Yahoo!, Bloglines, Gmail clips, and Newsgator.

There is also a feed reader built in to the Firefox browser (if you aren’t using Firefox: Shame on you! Make the switch now! Its much better than Internet Explorer).

Step Two:

Subscribe to feeds.

When you are browsing the web, be on the lookout for the orange RSS symbol:

You might also see various little buttons with pics/names of different feed readers on them, to add the feed directly to your chosen reader (see the bottom of this post for examples).

Subscribing is simple a matter of clicking on the appropriate button. Choose the button for your feed reader, or the or the orange RSS icon if your reader is not listed). It should be a one-click process (if you’re using Firefox, of course), or it may ask you to confirm. Otherwise, if you get to a page of gobbledy-gook code, simply cut-and-paste the URL in the address bar to your reader manually.

Alternatively, in Firefox, you might see the orange button in the address bar – click, and you will be given options about how you want to subscribe:

• Live Bookmarks will make a bookmark on your bookmark toolbar -> click the down arrow, and you’ll see the headlines in your browser
• OR: choose Outlook, or Google reader, or whatever option you prefer.
• If you tick the checkbox to make that choice permanent, it will be one-click in the future. You can always change it in the Tools options later.

And there you have it. If you are still stuck, and need a more substantial tutorial, check out Wizard Creek’s RSS tutorial.