I’m not certain if it pays to be a masochist or not, but I can’t seem to stop tinkering with the site and I bet I’m setting myself up with my latest site addition. For those “more advanced” users (1 or 2 of ya’) you know the power of RSS. For the rest of our users, consider this an introduction…a very basic introduction.  

RSS stands for Real-time Simple Syndication. The ability to use RSS on this site will hopefully eliminate the mass emails that notify our users when site content is added. Chances are, you use RSS and don’t even know it. If you have a My MSN or a My Yahoo account, you already use RSS. Actually most of your ISP home pages use some sort of “feed” that delivers information to you.

RSS allows you to see if a favorite site has changed content recently, without actually going to the site. It’s a pretty neat and powerful tool. You can learn more about RSS Here.

Unfortunately, to utilize RSS with this site, you are going to have to do some work. I have simply supplied the RSS feed and given you the ability to use RSS with this site if you so choose.

If you do want to try your hand with RSS, I’ll say a few things. First, Good Job! In my few years of tinkering with computers and computer programs, I’ve found discovery is very rewarding. Plus, you can never know too much about computers and how things work. I can go on a philosophical diatribe, but I’ll leave that for the blog section. Second, I’m going to do my best to help you set-up your browsers so you can use RSS with this site.

If you made it this far in the story, and you haven’t done so already, read the link on RSS. It will help explain RSS, and it might make my tutorial a little easier to understand.

The easiest way to use RSS, is to use the Mozilla Firefox Browser. There is a reason why I put the “Best Seen Using Firefox” link and logo on the homepage of my site. This site is paid for and I have no need for advertisements. That Firefox link is a public service announcement. I’m not really going to go into the gory details as to how Firefox and Internet Explorer differ and why, but trust me, they are different and my preference is Firefox.

OK, so you have Firefox. Go to Home Page and on the upper right you’ll see an icon that says RSS 2.0. Click on that icon and you’ll go to a page that looks like code. Copy the URL in the address bar. In Firefox, go to Bookmarks -> Manage Bookmarks. Once the Bookmark Manager is opened, go to File --> New Live Bookmark. Now the properties window for a “New Live Bookmark” will open. In “feed location”, paste the URL that you copied from the address bar. In “name”, type whatever title you want to use for the link. Using a “description” is not necessary. Now you just save the link in your bookmarks and you can move it around like any other link.

Now the RSS feed is in your Firefox bookmarks. Firefox will automatically refresh the bookmark at set intervals. Sometimes the feeds look to be unavailable. If you right click on the title of the feed, you can Reload Live Bookmark. Sometimes it may take a reload or two, to get the RSS feed to work. I have found this problem on a couple of RSS’s. I don’t know if it’s a Firefox issue or a site issue. I think it might be a little bit of both, so I’ll continue to make the RSS feed more stable.

If you can’t get away from Internet Explorer (IE) there’s hope for you still. Unfortunately, IE doesn’t have integrated RSS awareness. If you want to continue to use IE, and utilize RSS, you will need an RSS Reader. I have done some searching, and I really like Pluck. To use Pluck, you have to go to their website and register for their service. You will then need to download their plug-in for IE. Once you do that, you’ll have a Pluck Icon that is displayed in your toolbar. A Pluck toolbar will open on the left and you can then add a new Feed. In the Feed URL paste the URL found in the address bar after clicking the RSS 2.0 link found on the front page.

If you use My Yahoo or My MSN as homepages, you can easily add RSS content to the site. Both sites have an “Add Content” icon.  It may take some searching, but you can add RSS content and all you need is the URL form the RSS 2.0 link

With the My Yahoo/MSN sites, you’re only allowed a certain number of feeds. With Pluck or Firefox, I don’t believe you’re limited with how many RSS feeds you can use. Once you have RSS configured, you can go around to your favorite sites and look to see if they have RSS available. If the do, you just click on their RSS icon, copy the URL and add ‘em to your bookmarks. Now, you can go to one site, or check your browser and see if content has changed on any of your most frequented sites, without actually going to the site. Pretty cool, huh?

**UPDATE**

Firefox 1.5 users...You can now add this sites RSS feed to your live bookmarks by clicking the RSS Icon found in your Firefox address bar.

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