What’s this RSS lark about???

I like to think of myself as someone who is confident with their understanding of computers etc, but I’m going to hold my hand up and admit I’ve not got the foggiest about this RSS lark you see everywhere.

Could someone kindly explain so I can join the 21st Century?

Right, first thing you need is an RSS Reader.
The Google one is very good and if you already have a Google account (for GMail, iGoogle or whatever) then it is minimal hassle to sign up to.

https://www.google.com/reader/

Websites publish “RSS feeds” and you can “subscribe” to them.

Typically it might be something like the news headlines.
I have 30 feeds that I subscribe to. The net result is that instead of me visiting 30 websites every day to see if they are reporting anything of interest, I can just look at my RSS Reader and see them all in one place.

Cheers Graham…

So, if I click on the RSS feeds link, do I get an update just relating to this thread, or relating to every other post on the forum?

Basically give it a go and see if you like it.
It won’t cost you anything and chances are you will.

Some feeds to start you off:
http://xkcd.com/atom.xml – Amusing cartoons
http://feeds.gawker.com/lifehacker/full – Tips a for a better life.
http://www.singletrackworld.com/feed/ – STW front page headlines

(If you are using Firefox then just click on those and it will ask if you want to add them)

Jenga: yeah the STW forum offers a few different feeds.

You can click the “RSS feed for this topic” to get a feed for all further posts just to this topic.

Or you can click the “Forum Topics” link at the bottom to get a feed containing new topics as they are posted.

Or you can use the “Add this topic to your favorites” link at the top and then you can subscribe to a feed that contains posts to all threads that you have marked as favourites.

Or you can do all three.

bushwacked,see ya at corby

so if ive ‘RSS’d it this post should show on my google reader thing, hmm.

how quick is it supposed to be? thats 5mins now its not shown up, may as well just look at the bloody website!

Try pressing the “Refresh” button in Google Reader.

Google Reader doesn’t update all that often for new feeds that only a couple of people have subscribed to and you’re probably one of the only people in the world subscribing to this thread.

Importantly RSS isn’t a replacement for the website. You’re still better off coming here to use the forum because replies in this forum happen so quickly.
Topic subscriptions are much more useful on slower moving forums where it may be a couple of days till you get a reply – so rather than check it every day you just subscribe to the RSS and wait for it to tell you there is a reply.

Tony – just having lunch then offski! Car all packed up!