Help with using RSS

Help with using RSS

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It’s a way of having information automatically delivered straight to your computer that you might otherwise use a web browser to access. For example, instead of going to the BBC news website and checking the headlines, with RSS you can have the headlines delivered straight to your computer automatically.

In addition, many mobile phones and PDAs can access RSS feeds.

To access RSS feeds you use a piece of software called an RSS reader or a news reader. Sometimes this type of software is also referred to as a news aggregator since it can aggregate many news sources into one single display

How to use RSS on the LTS Online Service

Many common web browsers now have basic RSS capabilities built into them. In Internet Explorer 7 there's a small icon on the menu bar (see picture) that becomes orange when an RSS feed is available for a given web page.

Clicking it will take you to the RSS feed. You can then opt to subscribe to that feed by clicking the link, following which you can then view all the feeds you've subscribed to by going to your favourites centre (the small yellow star at the top left of your browser window). Other browsers (eg Firefox, Safari) also offer similar functionality.

If you want to get the full benefits of RSS, you might want to use a dedicated, stand-alone RSS reader. These offer more time-saving features than readers that are built in to browsers.

The way you set up an RSS reader will vary depending on the software you’ve downloaded, but in general here’s what to do next:

1. In your browser, go to a site that you visit often. A good place to start would be LTS Education news.
2. Scroll down until you see a link to the RSS feed, which looks like this:. 
3. Right-click the link (Command + click if you’re using a one-buttoned Apple mouse) and choose 'copy link location' (or similar).
4. Open up your RSS reader, click a 'subscribe' button and paste in the link you copied in step 3.
5. Repeat the above steps for as many feeds as you like.
6. Sit back and relax as your news reader gathers all the news for you!