What is RSS?
In a world heaving under the weight of billions of Web pages, keeping up
to date with the information you want can be a drag. Wouldn't it be better to have the latest news and features delivered directly
to you, rather than clicking from site to site?
Using RSS (Really Simple Syndication) allows you to see when sites from all
over the Internet have added new content. You can get the latest headlines
and articles (or even audio files, photographs or video) in one place, as
soon as they are published, without having to remember to visit each site
every day.
RSS takes the hassle out of staying up-to-date by showing you the very latest
information that you are interested in. RSS feeds are just a special kind of Web page, designed to be read by computers
rather than people. It might help to think of the old-fashioned ticker-tape
news wire machines.
Not all Websites currently provide RSS, but it is growing rapidly in popularity
and many other sites, including The Guardian, New York Times and CNN, provide
it.
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How do I start using RSS feeds?
In general, the first thing you need is something called a news reader. This
is a piece of software that checks RSS feeds and lets you read any new articles
that have been added to them.
There are many different versions, some of them use a Web browser and some
are downloadable applications. Browser-based news readers let you catch up
with your RSS subscriptions from any computer, whereas downloadable applications
let you store them on your main computer, in the same way that you either
download email using Outlook or Thunderbird, or keep it on a web-based service
like Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail.
Once you have chosen a news reader, all you have to do is to decide what
content you want to receive in your news reader, by finding and subscribing
to the relevant RSS feeds. For example, if you liked the latest BBC Sport
Football stories, simply visit the Football section and you will see an orange
RSS button on the left-hand side.
If you click on the button, you can subscribe to the feed in various ways,
including dragging or cutting and pasting the address of the RSS feed into
your news reader. Most sites that offer RSS use a similar, orange RSS button, but some may
just have a normal Web link to the feed.
Some browsers, including Firefox, Opera and Safari, automatically check RSS
feeds for you when you visit a Website, and display an icon when they find
one. This can make subscribing to RSS feeds much easier. For more details
on these, please check their Websites.
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Using RSS feeds on your site
If you run your own Website you can use RSS feeds to display the latest headlines
from other sites on your site. We encourage the use of BBC RSS feeds as part of a Website, subject to our
Terms and Consitions.
However, we do require that the proper format and attribution is used when
BBC content appears. The attribution text should read "BBC Where I Live"
or "From BBC Where I Live" as appropriate. You may not use any BBC
logo or other BBC trademark.
We reserve the right to prevent the distribution of BBC content. Please read
our Terms and Conditions for further instructions. The BBC does not accept any liability for its RSS feeds. Please see the Terms
and Conditions for full details.
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