What is RSS?

And how do I use it to make my life easier

But First My Conclusion…

By the time I am done you will

know what this

means…

By the time I am done you will

know what this

means…

RSS is a popular way to pull in news and information from across the Web. "Really Simply Syndication" allows web sites and blogs to push content to you easily.

Say you come across a blog you find fascinating. A click or two and it now feeds directly to your My Yahoo! page. Works the same for major media outlets like the New York Times as for thousands of other sites across the Web.

From Yahoo.comhttp://my.yahoo.com/s/about/rss/index.html

RSS is a marked up language just like HTML

HTML• Open and closed tags• Few required tags• Many optional tags• Can be read by a

browser• Very free form in nature• Usually hand coded

RSS• Open and closed tags• Some required tags• Some optional tags• Can be read by a

browser or aggregator• Very structured in

nature• Usually generated by

script

RSS Example Step by Step

• Information can be entered into a database• A script uses this data and generates an RSS

file

Static HTML can also be ‘parsed’ by a script to generate an RSS formatted file

All you need is the RSS URL:

Example: http://www.ri.gov/rss/1/pressrelease.rss

Sample RSS file with one channel (RISCA)

and three items.For each

item:

• Date

• Title

• Description

• Link

Making it look nice…

• Parsers – Allows you to display the RSS file on a web page

• Aggregators – Allows you to display multiple files on a user configurable web page like My Yahoo or in a desktop RSS reader like Sage

• XLS Files – Formats the actual RSS file to look good in a web browser, much like CSS does for an HTML page

A parser is a script which tells your webpage how to display an RSS feed on that page.

RSS Parser

Example: Rex Parser, Magpie

An aggregator is an application or host which is designed to display multiple RSS feeds

RSS Aggregator

Exp: MyYahoo, Sage, Pluck

An XLS file can be linked from within an RSS file and will give a browser a default style sheet

of how to display the raw feed

Within Browser

RSS XLS

• Look for the orange icon • Yahoo search results • RSS in Government (http://www.rssgov.com) • RSS in News (http://www.feedster.com/) • RSS in Blogs (http://www.blogdigger.com/)• RSS in RI (http://www.ri.gov/rex/)

Show me the Content!

Embrace the Possibilities

• Information available on: www.ri.gov/rex

• Other webmasters can help you• We at RI.gov are ready to help

as well