Subscribing to web site updates (RSS)

This article applies to sites providing so called RSS ("Really Simple Syndication"), also known as Live Bookmarks. It is meant to explain to ALL site visitors how to use this facility. You'll recognize the sites to which this applies by a little graphic that looks like this: . Web sites that use Drupal content management system support this facility. If your site displays the graphic, usually located in the lower right corner of the page, it's available.

So, what is it good for? If you're regularly visiting a web site with a lot of content, it may require a considerable effort to identify new or changed content (pages). RSS is very helpful here by automatically maintaining the list of the most recently added/changed content. So instead of checking every page and following every link to find out what's new, you can simply subscribe to site's RSS and get links to these pages instantly.

RSS is not new and all major web browsers support it. All you need to do is to click on the image  and then follow relatively straightforward instructions from your web browser program. Some, like Internet Explorer and Firefox, will not only list the latest pages, but also offer you to subscribe to RSS. That means, every time you visit a site, it will automatically update the list of links to the latest pages EVEN without you having to click on the RSS graphic. That's where the name  Live Bookmarks comes from.

For other web browsers, please do some search on how to use this facility, it should all be very simple.