RSS Feed Guidelines

 

What is RSS?

RSS (Rich Site Summary or more commonly called Really Simple Syndication) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it. Watch this YouTube video which provides an excellent overview - you may wish to skip the Ad which precedes it.

 

Why RSS? Benefits and Reasons for using RSS

RSS solves a problem for people who regularly use the web. It allows you easily to stay informed by retrieving the latest content from the sites in which you are interested. You save time by not needing to visit each site individually. You ensure your privacy, by not needing to join each site's email newsletter. The number of sites offering RSS feeds is growing rapidly.

 

What do I need to do to read an RSS Feed? RSS Feed Readers and News Aggregators

Feed Reader or News Aggregator software allow you to grab the RSS feeds from various sites and display them for you to read and use.

A variety of RSS Readers are available for different platforms. Some popular feed readers include Amphetadesk (Windows, Linux, Mac), FeedReader (Windows), and NewsGator (Windows - integrates with Outlook). There are also a number of web-based feed readers available. My Yahoo, Bloglines, Feedly and Digg are popular web-based feed readers. Google Reader was discontinued by Google as of 1st July 2013.

Once you have your Feed Reader, it is a matter of finding sites that syndicate content and adding their RSS feed to the list of feeds your Feed Reader checks. Many sites display a small icon with the acronyms RSS, XML, or RDF to let you know a feed is available.

 

Clogher Diocese RSS Feed

The latest Clogher Diocese news stories are now published via its RSS Feed. Whenever a new story is added to the website, it also added to the diocesan RSS Feed. Anyone subscribing to the diocesan RSS Feed service will get the new story, or stories, whenever they launch their RSS Feed Reader. Only the first 1,000 characters of each story are available through the RSS Feed, so if you want to read the full story, click on the story title in the RSS Feed to see it on the diocesan website. Also, the RSS Feed only contains text so to see photos and images, you need to go to the website.

To subscribe to the diocesan RSS Feed service, click on this RSS Feed icon or the one in the submenu. This action is required once only.

You may already have an RSS Feed Reader facility on you computer. It is standard with the PC (but not Mac) version of Office 2010. If you do not have an RSS Feed Reader, the earlier section explains where one can be found. Google Reader is recommended. However, you need a Google account to access it. If you don't have one, it can be created by clicking on this link : https://accounts.google.com/NewAccount.