No comprendo RSS!

• 

  quintconsequential · Member · Jan 22, 2011 at 12:56 pm

  • Copy link
  • Add topic to favorites

  I’m sorry if I’ve missed something really obvious here, but I’ve been looking through the support section, FAQs and forum for a while now and I still don’t quite understand how RSS works.

  I’m new to blogging (in case you hadn’t guessed :p) and I thought that to subscribe to RSS there was some kind of button or something… as it is I only get how subscribing by email works. I don’t get if you need to do anything to allow people to easily subscribe to RSS for your site.

  Thanks!

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

• 

  airodyssey · Member · Jan 22, 2011 at 1:40 pm

  • Copy link

  Hi. The following article explains the basics of what an RSS feed is:
  http://en.support.wordpress.com/feeds/

  You can offer your visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed (just like you would for email subscription) either by installing an RSS link or meta widget, but in most cases, their browser will automatically offer that feature.

  If you still need more information, Google “Why RSS”.

• 

  quintconsequential · Member · Jan 22, 2011 at 1:53 pm

  • Copy link

  Ah that’s the bit I didn’t understand – the RSS link/meta-widget thing you mention. Do you need to put a button or link to allow people to easily subscribe to RSS? I couldn’t see anything about this on the support page.

• 

  airodyssey · Member · Jan 22, 2011 at 1:59 pm

  • Copy link

  Seasoned RSS users will be able to subscribe regardless, but yes you can put the button or link if you want. Here are the two ways I described earlier:
  http://en.support.wordpress.com/widgets/rss-links-widget/
  http://en.support.wordpress.com/widgets/meta-widget/

  I don’t know if this is too advanced for you, but you might also be interested in FeedBurner, which is sort of an enhanced way of offering RSS Feed subscriptions to your visitors. I’ll let you Google it to get more information and see if it would be helpful for you.

• 

  quintconsequential · Member · Jan 22, 2011 at 2:05 pm

  • Copy link

  Thank you very much – it’s funny, I read those two links earlier today, but I just couldn’t grasp what they were on about the first time around haha. I think I’ll take a look at Feedburner, too – thanks very much!

• 

  airodyssey · Member · Jan 22, 2011 at 2:10 pm

  • Copy link

  You’re welcome and please feel free to check back this thread. Another volunteer may provide some helpful insights about RSS feeds.