What is RSS
Posted on Wed Oct 07
Tagged: Blogging | Leave your comments
Time and time again I get asked what is RSS?
There are three types of people the first type don't have a clue. They have never heard about it and chances are it really isn't going to effect their life at all. These people don't use the internet much and only get on for a single purpose of finding information about a certain topic or subject.
The second type of person as heard of RSS. Knows what the icon looks like and knows that most sites these days have an RSS feed somewhere on their site. The might have already subscribed to a few, and can see how it can be quite useful.
Last but not least the internet savvy. These people read a lot on the internet. They used to subscribe to email newsletters, but found that too many email newsletters were getting turned into spam, and not providing the information they wanted. That is when RSS was developed.
RSS means "Really Simple Syndication". Now I could go into the technical details but let's just get into how it can help you.
RSS is a way of getting a quick list of headines from your favourite news site or blog. Think about this if you like to look at say 10 blogs that talk about "photography" you don't want to have to check all 10 blogs to see if they have posted a new story.
So you subscribe to the ten blogs RSS feed and all of these blogs are now easily readable in minutes. So you can see straight away what is new etc... You do however need an RSS reader which is a program that allows you to subscribe to the feeds.
There are so many different RSS readers out there, so here we go. Ok your internet browser (internet explorer 7, firefox, safari, flock, etc...) will have an RSS reader built in. Well it is actually called LiveBook marks but it is the same thing, so that is easy. Now if you want to be able to read your blogs while on the go then you need to look at an online version. Now the ones I have listed are all FREE!
- MyYahoo
- MyMSN
- MyAOL
- MyGoogle
Simply sign up to these and add your feeds. There are so many more FREE RSS readers out there that I would take me quite awhile to list them all.
I suggest you think about subscribing to some RSS feeds as it is the way of the future. Here start with ours.
Bloggers Block
Posted on Tue Oct 07
Tagged: Blogging | Leave your comments
This would have to be a bloggers worst nightmare!
Think about it, the number on rule in blogging is to keep on blogging. So what do you do when the inspiration tank runs out.
The answer isn't really that hard. With so much information on the world wide web today, for someone to actually say they have nothing to blog about would be a blantent lie. In most cases the blogger probably feels un-motivated.
My suggestion would be to simply search the net for someone else's post that is along the same lines as your blogs theme and blog it. Talk about it, give your opinions that sort of thing. Blogs are built on public opinion, in turn this might create a bit of good karma for your blog in the way of linking.Think of you blog as part of a network, and to give someone your opinion actually will help them and in turn will help you.
Get out there a blog about everything and anything.
RSS validation
Posted on Mon Oct 07
Tagged: Blogging | Leave your comments
For those luckly enough to be using the SnowFlake CMS your RSS feeds are now valid.
A simple problem which was overlooked in the initial development of the RSS feeds for those running blogs was fixed and uploaded to all the SnowFlake CMS sites today.
The error was produced via the date field and the format in which is was being extracted from the database.
