It seems a few of our readers are unaware of RSS and it’s benefits, so I thought a quick overview of the concept and why you might want to do it would come in handy. From our point of view, more subscribers means more people seeing our content on a regular basis, and that’s always a good thing. Without further ado then:

What is RSS?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Basically, it’s a way for the blog to notify you whenever there’s a new post, rather than you having to actually come here and check.

I don’t want to be spammed

You can choose to receive your RSS updates either by email or through an RSS reader. An email subscription means you will receive mail upon every new post, while a reader subscription means you’ll need to actually be checking your reader regularly so some consider it the less “spammy” option. We’d never pass your email onto third party skanks, of course, mainly because we don’t know anybody that wants to sell you something.

If I have to check my reader, why not just come to the site?

If ours is the only blog you read, then RSS through a reader doesn’t necessarily make things any easier. The real benefit of RSS, however, is that you can add feeds from all of those blogs you keep forgetting/not getting time to check (most of you probably read wow.com, at the very least) and then you only ever need to check one place.

Where is this mystical feed?

You can see the orange RSS link in our sidebar, along with a link to subscribe by email. This icon is THE ICON for RSS so wherever you see it on whatever site, that’s a link to a feed. Depending on your browser it may also auto-detect feeds, for example Firefox will show the RSS link in your address bar when it detects a feed for the site you’re browsing.

What are the popular feed readers and how do I get one?

First of all if you’re using Firefox then you don’t technically need a feed reader at all. Click on the link either in our sidebar or your address bar, and as well as the usual subscription options you’ll also have a “Live Bookmarks” choice. This means it adds the feed to your bookmarks but will update with each new post.  If your bookmarks toolbar isn’t showing, go to View > Toolbars and make sure it’s ticked. Voila!

The most popular “standard” reader with our subscribers so far (yes we have a few) seems to be Google Reader, and since this is my reader of choice too this is the one you’re about to be exposed to. Since it’s Google, I have it set up on my homepage like so (though you don’t need a custom homepage to use it I’m just a geek).

You can see from the dropdown I have it set to show feeds that I’ve categorized as “Wow”, but I have many many feeds under 4 or 5 different categories. Imagine checking all those blogs individually every day!

Anyway clicking on the title of a post opens a little bubble thing giving you the option to just read it there and continue on down your “unread” list, or to click through and come read it/comment on the site. The first method is a real timesaver and can also get round “I’m reading at work” issues where you need everything to look a bit more serious.

I’m not convinced

Fair enough, but at least now you’re informed. Consider the following before you decide for good.

• We will be adding incentives such as giveaways for subscribers in the near future
• We make no money from having you subscribe, this is not a conspiracy
• If you’re worried about being able to set up a reader, email shell[at]emeralddreamers.co.uk and I’ll be only too happy to help out