December 12, 2007
Reminder: RSS Is Awesome
The year's almost over, so we're going over our annual checklists to make sure we've provided a full year's worth of internet. Still undone: reminding you about how great RSS is.
For those unacquainted, the acronym stands for Really Simple Syndication, and it makes staying up to date with DCist and other sites much easier. You simply plug our feed URL into your favorite RSS application and it'll periodically check for new entries, saving you from constantly hitting your browser's refresh button in a desperate bid to avoid doing your job.
You can use a downloadable feed reader — Vienna and GreatNews are two good, free readers for OS X and Windows, respectively — or you can use a web-based reader. We've even made the latter option extra-easy for you: just use the Subscribe dropdown in our sidebar to start reading DCist through one of the many popular, free online readers.
RSS pros who aren't using our feed may want to check it out again, too: we've recently taken steps to make our feed update faster. So if you decided to avoid DCist's RSS because visiting the website got you timelier content, you should try giving our full-text(!) feed another shot.
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funny you say that, since my rss reader is still showing the "this week in jazz" as the most recent post...
No offense to DCist, you guys are great but I never understood RSS. If you need to be reminded to check something you forgot about, maybe it's not that important. Or maybe someone can explain RSS better to me. Am I missing the point? ham
RSS in plain english.
The RSS feed isn't always full text, either. Some stories are truncated, and I think it depends on the user posting it.
Ham -- RSS is good because it lets you subscribe to many blogs or other updated sites. You launch one application (or web app) and if there were any updates since the last time, you get them all. This is really nice for sites that don't update all the time, as you don't have to remember to go to the site and check once in a blue moon. If you only read one blog, though, it's not much of a help.
Ham: I like RSS because it frees me from having to check sites manually all the time to see if updates have happened. For example, I subscribe to RSS feeds of lots of online comics (like 50). With RSS, I load up Bloglines and throughout the day it will show whether or not I have a new comic.
Eventually you become addicted and you end up with a blogroll like this. Eep. Luckily a good swath of those don't work anymore.
The feed was having some issues for me yesterday, is that a result of the upgrades that DCist made?
Google Reader is the most convenient way to view RSS feeds. This is mostly because you can view it at home, at work, on your iPhone, whereever.
In fact, I've found myself looking for more and more sites to read because I never seem to have enough to read, where before I would just check 3 or 4 sites regularly.
Ham: I like RSS because it frees me from having to check sites manually all the time to see if updates have happened. For example, I subscribe to RSS feeds of lots of online comics (like 50). With RSS, I load up Bloglines and throughout the day it will show whether or not I have a new comic.
Eventually you become addicted and you end up with a blogroll like this. Eep. Luckily a good swath of those don't work anymore.
The RSS feed isn't always full text, either. Some stories are truncated, and I think it depends on the user posting it.
Ham -- RSS is good because it lets you subscribe to many blogs or other updated sites. You launch one application (or web app) and if there were any updates since the last time, you get them all. This is really nice for sites that don't update all the time, as you don't have to remember to go to the site and check once in a blue moon. If you only read one blog, though, it's not much of a help.
Google Reader is the most convenient way to view RSS feeds. This is mostly because you can view it at home, at work, on your iPhone, whereever.
In fact, I've found myself looking for more and more sites to read because I never seem to have enough to read, where before I would just check 3 or 4 sites regularly.
Ham: I like RSS because it frees me from having to check sites manually all the time to see if updates have happened. For example, I subscribe to RSS feeds of lots of online comics (like 50). With RSS, I load up Bloglines and throughout the day it will show whether or not I have a new comic.
Eventually you become addicted and you end up with a blogroll like this. Eep. Luckily a good swath of those don't work anymore.
Google Reader is the most convenient way to view RSS feeds. This is mostly because you can view it at home, at work, on your iPhone, whereever.
In fact, I've found myself looking for more and more sites to read because I never seem to have enough to read, where before I would just check 3 or 4 sites regularly.
Ham: I like RSS because it frees me from having to check sites manually all the time to see if updates have happened. For example, I subscribe to RSS feeds of lots of online comics (like 50). With RSS, I load up Bloglines and throughout the day it will show whether or not I have a new comic.
Eventually you become addicted and you end up with a blogroll like this. Eep. Luckily a good swath of those don't work anymore.
Ham: I like RSS because it frees me from having to check sites manually all the time to see if updates have happened. For example, I subscribe to RSS feeds of lots of online comics (like 50). With RSS, I load up Bloglines and throughout the day it will show whether or not I have a new comic.
Eventually you become addicted and you end up with a blogroll like this. Eep. Luckily a good swath of those don't work anymore.
Google Reader is the most convenient way to view RSS feeds. This is mostly because you can view it at home, at work, on your iPhone, whereever.
In fact, I've found myself looking for more and more sites to read because I never seem to have enough to read, where before I would just check 3 or 4 sites regularly.
I haven't checked out the RSS feed, but are comments included in it? So when a new comment is made it bumps the feed up for the site as having something new?
Also, if you leave DCist open to the front page, it automatically reloads every so often, right? Or is Firefox just learning from my actions and trying to save me the extra clicks? If so, I'd like to publicly thank my Firefox browser for looking out for my index finger's well being.
No what would be even more awesome? IF YOU COULD MAKE THE POSTER APPEAR IN COMMENTS USING RSS. They don't, at least in Thunderbird.
Holy multi-post Batman! Lay off the "Post" button, people. Like my wife, she bruises easily.
RSS sucks. It's the worst thing to happen to the internet since Godwin's Law. I don't need shit popping up telling me your stupid webpage has been updated. It's like calling someone each and every time your ugly kid manages to aim his shit into the toilet. Great for you, I'm sure it's your whole universe or something, but no one else cares so go away.
Holy crap.
Hey DCist folk: Has anyone diagnosed why the comments are still bonkers?
Does RSS help in terms of ad revenue at all? How does that work?
Exactly . . . I can understand why RSS is beneficial to the reader, since it allows you to gather content from multiple sources into a single location. And I can understand why sites want to make sure that their RSS feed is well-designed and managed, so that readers using that method don't grumble and complain, or even stop reading. What I don't get, though, is why DCist or any other traffic-seeking site would actively promote the usage of RSS. If you're putting the full text of the posts into your feed, why would people need to actually visit the site (and thus view the ads that are funding the site) at all?
Sorry about the comment weirdness, folks -- it's being worked on and will hopefully be resolved soon.
As for why we're promoting RSS: the people in New York look at RSS subscription rates and factor it into ad rates. So while you're right that many publications haven't yet figured out how to turn RSS subscriptions into money, the -ist sites are not one of them. It's one of the things I most appreciate about them, actually -- most ad-supported blog networks wouldn't take such a progressive stance.
The fact that DCist is popping up in your face more often (through the RSS feed) makes you more likely to remember to go to the site, which offsets the disincentive to go there to see if anything's new. Only people like monkeyrotica go to the same website often enough that this does not hold true.
RSS changed my life. I honestly don't even know what the dcist page looks like.
I'd love to see the IST publish category feeds.