I wanted to take a moment to create this post because I have a feeling that there is a lot of people that don't know what an RSS Feed is. If you don't know what an RSS Feed is but see it mentioned on just about every site you visit, its now time to take the mystery out of RSS Feeds, and learn how they can make your Internet experience much more enjoyable! Please read on…

What is an RSS FEED?

The term RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It is a format that is actually designed to be very user friendly and unfortunately, it might be too simple causing people to over look its power. Unlocking the RSS mystery will quickly deliver you with a new way of surfing the web. There are many ways to use RSS; however, one of the most common methods is using it to read new content on all your favorite blog sites and that is what I will be talking about in this post.

How Is RSS Used and What Does It Do For Me?

If you are nuts about finding, reading, and visiting many different groups of blog sites on the Internet, then you might find yourself having trouble from time to time keeping up with all the new and useful content that you enjoy reading on all your favorite blogs. There are so many great blog sites out that, that you enjoy viewing… yet it can sometimes get hard to keep up with the different sites, and what happens is you might feel that you miss out on some good reading. That is where RSS kicks in to save the day. Unlocking the mystery is RSS will unlock the mystery in wondering if you missed reading good content.

Most of all the blog sites that you visit (I would say 9.5 out of 10) use RSS. What happens, is when the publisher of the blog site publishes new content… not only is the content visible from their website, but it is also published into what is called, an RSS Feed. On many blog sites that you visit on a regular basis, I am sure that you have seen some "Subscribe To My Feed" buttons and text. This RSS Feed is a section on their site where content is converted into a special format. This special format is a universal format that allows us to use a programs called an RSS Readers to view all the content from a publisher's blog site without actually having to visit the site.

What Is An RSS Reader?

There are many different RSS Reader programs that you can use. I will talk more in depth about the different programs available in part two of this discussion. RSS Readers are available as web based and as desktop applications. Using an RSS Reader gives you a time saving tool of being able to read the content from one, five, ten or even hundreds of different blogs sites all with a click or two of the mouse. In order to add your favorite blog's RSS Feed into your RSS reader, you must subscribe to their feed.

How To Subscribe To An RSS Feed?

Subscribing to someone's RSS Feed is one of the easiest things that you can do on a computer. Most sites have a button to click. Once you click the button, if you use the new Internet Explorer 7, the feed will automatically added and become accessable in a format very similiar to your Favorites in Internet Explorer. If you don't use Internet Explorer, typically the button links you to a page where it gives you the choice on which RSS Reader program you want to use, and then automatically configues things so that the newly added feed will appear in your favorite RSS Reader.

Let me use this site's feed for example:

View the feed in Internet Explorer: Click Here.
View the feed in your favorite RSS Reader: Click here.

How Do I Find RSS Feeds?

Finding RSS Feeds is almost as easy as subscribing to them. Most of your favorite blog sites make buttons, banners, and text links that are easily seen by their viewers. Just click on them…

Also if you see this icon:

That means that the site you are visiting has an RSS Feed and usually you can subscribe to it simply by clicking that icon.

I am hoping that this article will help clear up the mystery of RSS Feeds and I hope to see that you start using RSS. If you have any questions or suggestions… please feel free to comment on this post. I will enjoy reading your responses and talking with you.

Also, this is the first part to a multi part series of posts, all about RSS Feeds, RSS Readers, and the RSS technology. If the parts to come… I will be sharing information about many different RSS Reader programs… providing screenshots and publishing tips on how to utilize them and make the into very productive blog reading tools.

An excellent source of information about RSS feeds can be found here.