“Arrrrr, Im Captain of the R.S.S. Feed! Join me on my crew as we sail the bity seas and surf the news of the world!!”
RSS (Really Simple Syndication), also know as a “feed” and “Atom” (A newer version of RSS) is a technology that lets you read and follow news, blogs and journals from websites you love; without needing any accounts (Its also used for audio Podcasts, but this guide is focussed on text feeds). This guide is aimed at supplying you with some basic info to get started with RSS!
A community editable version of this guide is also hosted on the MelonLand Wiki!
Overview / Getting Started
An RSS feed is a specially formatted webpage (technically XML like HTML, but not the same) for example this one; each feed contains a list of the latest articles/posts for you to read. RSS feeds can be hand written, but most people use a program to generate their feed for them, so its often an automated process; many blogs and sites have feeds available, you just need to know how to find it.
To get started reading feeds you'll need a program that can collect and display your feeds; some great options are:
- For Mac + iOS - NetNewsWire - OpenSource
- For Windows + Linux - QuietRSS - OpenSource
- The Thunderbird E-Mail Client and the Vivaldi Web Browser also have built in feed readers, so you may already have one!
These feed readers will collect and store your feeds locally on your computer; however if you want to sync your feeds between multiple devices you'll need what's called an “RSS Aggregator”; this is an online service that will collect and sync your feeds for you; however most of them cost money. To get started I suggest you don't worry about this, but NewsBlur is one option and has a free plan; you can also self host with FreshRSS if your techy. All feed readers let you import/export the feeds you follow, so its easy to change in the future!
Once you have an RSS reader, you're ready to start collecting feeds! Adding a feed to your RSS reader is called “Subscribing”; this is purely one sided, no one can see if you subscribe to their feed. To subscribe to a feed, simply click a feed link (if your browser supports it), if that does not work, just copy the feed url and add it to your feed reader manually.
Most feed readers will automatically download new articles from your subscriptions every few minutes and will even keep them if you go offline! Some feeds you subscribe to will include full articles, while others may only include a sample of an article, if only a sample is provided you can click the article link to go to a webpage with the full article.
You should now be ready with the basics of RSS feeds, I hope you subscribe to lots and enjoy your time reading feeeeds!
Feeds To Try!
Here is a selection of feeds to get you started;
Web Revival and Neocities Feeds:
Community Direct Feeds
- MelonLand Forum all posts feed - https://forum.melonland.net/index.php?action=.xml;type=atom;limit=15
- Status Cafe all status updates - https://status.cafe/feed.atom
- Neon Kiosk (random updates from random web revival sites) - https://journal.miso.town/atom?url=https://kiosk.nightfall.city
Personal Feeds
- Melon's Homepage News (Key melon updates!) - https://brain.melonking.net/rss
- Melon's Thoughts (all long form and personal blog posts from Melon) - https://thoughts.melonking.net/atom/
- Owly's Blog (Neocities drama and culture) - https://owlyfans.neocities.org/nightfall/owly.rss
- thmnwh's feed (art and music) - https://thmnwhhsfld.neocities.org/feed.xml
General News Feeds:
Feed Lists:
- The BBC list all feeds free here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10628494
- All feeds from DW News English (German news agency) - https://corporate.dw.com/en/rss/s-31500
- New York Times (but you still need to pay a subscription to read on their site): https://www.nytimes.com/rss
- TheVerge for tech news: https://www.theverge.com/2012/1/25/2732963/verge-rss-feeds
Direct Feeds:
- Gizmodo for tech news: https://gizmodo.com/rss
- Kotaku for gaming news: https://kotaku.com/rss
- NASA Breaking News - https://www.nasa.gov/rss/dyn/breaking_news.rss
- NASA Image of the Day - https://www.nasa.gov/rss/dyn/lg_image_of_the_day.rss
Tips for finding feeds:
← This is the RSS icon! If you see it on a website, click it to get their feed!
- Dreamwidth.org journals - you can get a feed on any dreamwith journal with: https://{NAME}.dreamwidth.org/data/atom
- WordPress - with any WordPress blog you can use https://{BLOG URL}/feed to get an RSS feed.
- SmartGB - many guestbooks of your friends have feeds, follow them to see who's loved??
- YouTube - follow youtube channels via RSS https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id={CHANNEL ID}
- Mastodon - Get a mastodon profile feed with https://{SERVER URL}/users/{USERNAME}.rss OR https://{SERVER URL}/@{USERNAME}/with_replies.rss to see replies too!
Making Your Own Feed
Making your own feed can be very simple! If you just want to write it from scratch you can follow this guide: Create an RSS Feed - WikiHow
However there is a better way! You can use m15o's HTML Journal site to automatically generate a feed from a webpage, as long as your webpage is formatted in the correct way, this site will generate a feed for you that updates every time your websites does! Visit the journal here: https://journal.miso.town
