Help with RSS News Feeds
What's an RSS News Feed?
Most of the time if you want to find out what's new on a website, you have to regularly check back at the website. RSS is all about letting the website provide updates directly to you so you don't have to click from site to site to find what's new. This might be updates on the news, posts on the forum or new entries on a blog.How do I use RSS?
Now that you know what its for, you need to know how to use it. Most of the time RSS feeds are linked to a tool called a News Reader which allows you to view the articles published by the RSS news feed. For example, the Thunderbird email client can act as a News Reader. News feeds can be well worth looking into even if you don't have (or don't realise you have) a news reader. Here's an idea to illustrate how useful RSS News feeds can be.- First, go to the Special Families News Feeds page.
- Right click on the feed you want to use and select Copy Link Location (if you use FireFox) or Copy Shortcut (Internet Explorer). If you are using a different browser, simply navigate to the link and copy the URL from the address bar.
- Now, start up a new web browser and navigate to the Google home page at http://www.google.com.
- In the top right of the page, click 'Personalised Home' (if you haven't already).
- You now have a personal view of the Google home page which you are free to add to and remove items from. Try clicking the cross in the top right corner of the boxes you don't want to remove them
- One of the things you can do is add a news feed such as a Special Families feed.
- Click the Add Content link in the top left of the page.
- In the list on the left, click the New content link.
- To the right of the button called Search Homepage Content at the top, click the link Add by URL.
- Paste the link you selected earlier into the box in the Add by URL section (right click in the box and select Paste. Make sure the http:// bit is not repeated twice).
- Click the Add button, then click the Back to Homepage link in the top left of the screen.
Available News Feeds
There are several news feeds available on the Special Families website. For a list of them, go to the News Feeds page.Back to main Help page