If you’re a regular Blog visitor you may already know what RSS Feeds are, how to subscribe to them and which RSS Feed Reader to use. However, if you’re fairly new to this whole “Blogging” thing and aren’t really sure what RSS is and what it’s used for, this quick guide will help you out.

What is an RSS Feed?

The acronym RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”. So what is an RSS feed and what’s it for? Well, essentially when you look at a typical Blog, such as this one, you can really break it down into two parts.

1. The Blog design, all the graphics, pictures, navigation, ads etc.
2. The actual content of the Blog, such as the Posts or Articles on the Blog.

Basically, what the RSS Feed provides you with is an easy way to just see #2 – the actual posts and articles on the Blog without the actual design wrapped around them.

Why should I care?

Whether or not you decide to use an RSS Feed Reader is entirely up to you. Why you may want to use a reader is to keep track of the articles you have / have not read on a group of Blogs that offer RSS feeds. So for example, if you subscribe to my RSS Feed, your Reader will download all of my articles from the Feed and it will keep track of which ones you’ve read and which ones you haven’t.

This way you won’t ever miss any articles if you stop visiting the Blog for a while for whatever reason. Essentially you can always pick up wherever you left off and the Reader will track exactly where you left off.

An RSS Reader also makes it convenient for you to read mutliple feeds from multiple Blogs. So for example lets say you visit 5 Blogs on a regular basis. Instead of visiting each one every day to see what’s new, you can simply subscribe to each Blog’s RSS Feed and then you only visit one page (Your Reader Page) and on that page you’ll see all the new posts/articles from all 5 sites. The Reader will automatically go and fetch your articles for you from each Feed.

Where do I find an RSS reader and how do I use it?

There are all kinds of RSS Readers out there, and you are welcome to use whichever one you like, but personally the one that I recommend and use myself is the Google RSS Reader. It is very simple to use. Just follow this link to get yourself signed up for a free Google RSS Reader account.

Once I got an RSS Reader Account, how do I subscribe to your feed?

Once you’ve got your RSS Feed Reader account setup, and you want to subscribe to my feed, all you need to do is click on this link to my feed. When you click on it, a page will pop up asking you which RSS Reader you want to add the feed to. You would then select your RSS Reader, such as Google by clicking on the “Add to Google” or “Subscribe with Google” buttons.

When you click on that button, your RSS Reader will pop up and you’ll be able to see my latest articles in your listing. As you read through the articles, the reader will keep track of what you’ve read and what you haven’t.

Final Notes

As you visit other sites, you will notice the familiar orange RSS reader logo. When you click on that logo, it will ask you which RSS Reader you use and then it will add that feed to your reader. Don’t worry, you can always remove any feeds you no longer want to read anymore, and you can add them back later if you wish. If you do remove a feed, however, it will lose track of which articles you have/haven’t read.