RSS and Blogs

Almost all blogging services provide an RSS feed for the blog. In fact the two have become so intertwined that many think that you have to have an RSS feed for a blog or that you can only have an RSS feed for a blog

The truth is that the two technologies are totally independent of each other and can and used separately. The reason why almost all Blogs provide an RSS feed has to do with the nature of blogging itself.

Web logs are updated frequently some many times per day. So how do you check if you favourite Blog has been updated?

Well you could visit the site several times per day or ,if the site offers it, receive email notifications of updates. None of these methods are very satisfactory and hence the connection to RSS.

RSS "Really Simple Syndication" is a new way for content publishers to distribute content. It is basically a news headline distributor modelled on the ticker tape/teletext idea.  A user uses and RSS reader which he uses to subscribe to an RSS feed (feeds).

An RSS feed is basically a list of Headlines with brief descriptions. The user sees the headlines and can follow a link to read the article/newsclip.

So how do you keep tabs on your favourite Blogs ? You use an RSS reader to subscribe to the RSS feed provided by the blogger. When the blogger makes an entry the RSS feed is instantly updated and the user sees the change in his RSS reader.

Now all of this can only happen if the blogger supplies an RSS feed, and that is why they all do.

You can find out more about RSS and how it is structured in the RSS feed  structure creation and Use