RSS/ATOM feeds
Like to keep up with a lot of blogs? Well RSS offers a simply way to do so. It's not just blogs the offer RSS other websites like the BBC do too. So what is RSS and how does it work? Well have a read of this for all you need to know.
RSS readers
RSS readers (or news readers) make it possible to keep up with all those blogs and web sites that you like to read regularly. Instead of surfing to each web site individually to check whether it's been updated, let the updates come to you. You simply register the RSS feeds (more information on RSS feeds below) with your RSS reader and it will periodically check whether the site has been recently updated. It's a much more efficient and enjoyable way to browse.
There are a whole host of RSS reading tools out there. As you'll see from this list there's almost too much choice: http://www.lights.com/weblogs/rss.html
What is RSS?
RSS is a Web content syndication format. Its name is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication. It is a lightweight XML format designed for sharing headlines and other Web content. And because of this you will notice the xml logo at the bottom of your category and poster lists is a link to the rss feed. Don't worry about all the technical details, think of it as a distributable "What's New" for your site.
RSS can be a tricky one to get to master at first. But the way to think about is this. HTML is used to transfer information from computer-to-human. This is done via the web-browser. HTML is full of nice visuals and attractive layouts etc designed for people to read.
RSS on the other hand is designed for computer-to-computer data exchange. It is devoid of all formatting, visuals and layouts. It is your raw data. So with that in mind, the question is how can you use it? Its in that nasty format that makes no real sense to humans. For example take a look at ours; http://support.blog-city.com/index.rss ; May not mean anything to you, but to another computer its beautiful data.
In many respects you don't use your own RSS feed, you let others use it. They can use it inside of their RSS readers (which include many major email clients now). So instead of them having to visit your blog to see if you've written anything new; their RSS reader alerts them automatically that something new has been written. So the feed allows data to be pushed to people as oppose to you pulling people in.
If you have marked your blog as public (in your profile) then we automatically ping many of the large RSS aggregators for you everytime you post a new blog entry. That means your blog RSS and URL are being promoted out there.
The next generation of browsers (Mozilla FireFox http://www.mozilla.org/ for example) comes RSS enabled. So when you surf to a site that is RSS enabled, in the status bar up comes an RSS label inwhich you can bookmark. Now how different is this from a normal bookmark? HUGE AMOUNT. The browser will periodically check to see if the content has been changed and alert you to the fact; all without you having to find information.
To understand it better, we would advise you become a user of other peoples RSS. You can even use your own blog to gather together all the RSS feeds in one place. Maybe the best way is through demonstration. Give us a list of blogs/sites you regularly read and we'll show you how to add them to your blog. You will then see RSS in action, and from there, you'll see how people can therefore use yours. You will then have a single page that lists all their latest entries in one place; as oppose to you having to go and read each one individually. Its very cool once you see it in action.
How to set your RSS feed up
To set up your RSS feed go to "Settings" "RSS Options" (10)
Your blog has many RSS feeds to which to syndicate your data. Blog-City supports version RSS 1.0. Your main RSS feed is,
http://<yourblog>.blog-city.com/rss/default.rss
This is your main default one.
You have an RSS feed for each category you have for example :
http://<yourblog>.blog-city.com/read/news.rss
http://<yourblog>.blog-city.com/read/life.rss
and one for your latest comments:
http://<yourblog>.blog-city.com/rss/latestcomments.rss
Another feed you will have if you have used our multiple poster feature is one for each poster. This allows you to see only entries written and published by that person.
You can pick if only a summary of your posts are shown, the full post or nothing at all (headlines only). The "title" section is just the name of your blog so that people know who they are reading. You have a box to add in a description of your blog so readers get the general idea of what your blog is and entries it may contain.
You can find a list of all your rss feeds at this page <yourblog>.blog-city.com/newsfeed/feeds.htm, it will look like the picture below;
ATOM
We now support ATOM which is also a news feed is a different format of RSS, you can find your ATOM feed on the same page as above; <yourblog>.blog-city.com/newsfeed/feeds.htm