Yesterday, Sunday, found me researching RSS. I enjoy things being simple. I dislike carrying a phone and wouldn’t exactly mind going back to a pre-internet lifestyle. I underwent the brain “remapping” process in order to figure out how RSS works. I noticed that technical instructions found on the web were considerably subpar. Nonsensical, backwards, i.e., tech talk. They always seem to explain why you would want to figure something out rather than explaining how to figure something out. RSS (simple right). “RSS is used to make blogging easier, cuts down on searches.” “RSS is really simple.” “RSS XML.” “RSS google, yahoo, MSN, what!!”
Of course, after searching for blogs to put in the RSS widget, I figured out that a “blog feed” was what I was looking for. My personal explanation of RSS would be: “A cool way to make your blog function more as a magazine with one RSS address working as a blog roll link on your side bar (also nice to have podcast feeds). Copy and paste the feed URL to your widget.”
Exercise:
- Pull up Google and type “reuters RSS.” The first search result will be ” Reuters RSS | Reuters.com.
- Click on the link and you will see all the RSS feed subjects. Click on the one you want. For this example click on RSS Top News (the first selection).
- http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/topNews pops up. Copy and paste that into your RSS widget.
- If you want the title to remain as the RSS feed owner has it, don’t bother naming the feed at all. Keep the slot empty and it will automatically name itself once saved.
I will be experimenting with my feeds. I think news headlines (in one form or another), SLOG (The Stranger Magazine), KEXP podcast, and NPR are keepers. For the record, I’m agnostic, but I wanted to offer some spiritual sites and included a Buddhist and atheist feed.
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