What is RSS?
If you've noticed the orange XML button on our home page
, you've seen
the link to our RSS feed.
RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication." An RSS file is an XML (eXtensible Markup Language) file that lists all of the new items we have on our web site. You can view the file with your web browser (just click on the orange XML button), but most browsers don't format the data in a user-friendly fashion. The file contains summary information for new articles posted to a web site and links to the articles.
The power in RSS comes from using a newsreader program. A newsreader, which looks and acts like a web browser or an email program, will automatically go and get the RSS feeds from websites you are interested in. They can check every hour (which would be useful for news sites like the BBC or New York Times) or once a day (for sites like ours that don't change as often) and tell you what is new on the web site.
Here are some links to other web sites that will help you get started: