RSS will change the way you use the Internet. That may be a bold statement, but once you begin to understand and use RSS, you may view it as a serious understatement.

Weblogs and news sites create a summary of their website in a format known as RSS. RSS stands for either Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. Both are apt descriptions, as RSS is both a summary of the content of your site as well as a simple way to syndicate your content.

The RSS file is often referred to as a newsfeed or simply as a feed. An RSS feed lists the most recently updated articles for a website, the time that articles were last updated, URLs for each article, and sometimes even images or the actual article itself.

The RSS feed makes it possible for you to use a special software program called a RSS reader or news aggregator to read the feeds from web sites without visiting them in your browser! All of the most recent articles from The New York Times, The Washington Post, Yahoo, BBC, and of course millions of weblogs can all be collected, organized and viewed in one place.

Here is an image of the NetNewsWire RSS aggregator for Mac OS X reading RSS headlines from a variety of websites:

NetNewsWire application reading RSS headlines

Here is an image of the Newsgator RSS aggregator for Microsoft Outlook reading RSS headlines from various websites:

Newsgator application reading RSS headlines

Your RSS newsreader can check your favorite sites, gather the links and articles, and organize and present them to you before you've even had time to start the coffee machine. And since you subscribe directly to the publisher's information, your RSS newsreader will not be cluttered with spam or viruses.

Some RSS readers can even allow you to create, post, and edit articles for your weblog, making it easy for you to read and write in one environment. For example, here is an image of the NetNewsWire application posting an article to a weblog:

NetNewsWire application posting an article to a weblog

Applications of RSS

New applications for RSS are continually being developed.

  • Teachers are using RSS to distribute homework assignments, making it easy for students to keep track of all of their classes in one place using their RSS aggregator.
  • Families are using RSS to share to share news with relatives, and inform them when a new photo of one of the kids has been posted to the web.
  • Companies use RSS as a way to distribute updates without requiring customers to visit their web site.
  • Groups are using RSS as a new form of Intranet or private portal, where they can share information without a central forum or bulletin board.

BlogHarbor RSS Support

BlogHarbor weblogs provide a high level of RSS support.

First, every BlogHarbor weblog generates an RSS feed at the path /blog/index.xml . So for this blog, the main RSS feed is at http://demo.blogharbor.com/blog/index.xml. Add this URL to your RSS newsreader and you'll always know when we have posted new information related to our service or a How To article.

Second, every BlogHarbor weblog generates a separate RSS feed for each category. Essentially, this means that every BlogHarbor site provides an almost unlimited number of weblogs... For example, this post is being made to the Features category, so the address for the RSS feed containing only updates about the Features category is http://demo.blogharbor.com/blog/Features/index.xml.

Finally, BlogHarbor weblogs offer support for something found in very few weblog services: Secure RSS. As you know, we offer security features which allow you to restrict access to your categories of your weblog to only people you explicitly permit to view your content. Coupled with this security feature is the ability to generate RSS feeds based on your identity and access level: your weblog can send out one RSS feed for a public user and another separate RSS feed for a family member who has special privileges to view family photos from your Photo Album!

The secure version of your RSS feed requires the addition of ?secure=1 at the end of your standard RSS URL, so the Secure RSS adddress for our main feed in the example above would be at http://demo.blogharbor.com/blog/index.xml?secure=1 . If we had restricted access to a top level category called "Private", its Secure RSS address would be http://demo.blogharbor.com/blog/Private/index.xml?secure=1 .

RSS readers such as Newzcrawler, NewsGator or NetNewsWire which support Authenticated RSS are required in order to access secure RSS feeds.

RSS Newsreaders

Some of the leading RSS readers/aggregators are listed here:

Please feel free to post feedback to this article if you have any questions or comments about RSS format, aggregators, applications, or usage!