Overview of RSS feeds at Illinois State University
RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a web-based news feed format designed for publishing works.
What is RSS?
RSS feeds provide an easy way of pulling online content to you. Rather than visiting your favorite websites to see new stories published each day, you can use RSS to pull their headlines and article summaries to you, allowing you to see all their latest stories in one place.
Many websites, especially news sites and blogs, offer RSS feeds to their readers. There are two primary ways you can benefit from RSS feeds. Most people use software to display content presented through RSS. Web developers can also code their websites to display content offered through RSS.
RSS Reader Software
Many applications are capable of reading content distributed through RSS. Some are dedicated RSS readers, but many offer other services in addition to RSS reading, such as mail and calendar.
Outlook, Thunderbird, and Mac Mail all support RSS, and each can be configured to display content offered through RSS feeds. For more information on how to configure each of these applications, refer to the following:
- 1399: Using Thunderbird to read RSS feeds
- 1400: Using Microsoft Outlook 2007 to read RSS feeds
- 1451: Using Mail in Mac OS X 10.5 to read RSS feeds
RSS Feeds for Your Website
As a web developer, you can add syndicated content distributed through RSS to your website. To do so, you must use either a server-side scripting language (i.e. PHP, ASP, etc.) or a client-side scripting language (i.e. JavaScript, Java, etc.) to program the desired functionality.
Instructions on how to display RSS headlines and story summaries on your website fall outside the scope of this document, but many web development websites offer tutorials on how to accomplish this. If you are a faculty or staff member and need assistance adding an RSS feed to your website, contact Web Support Services.
RSS Feeds at Illinois State University
Illinois State has many websites that offer RSS feeds. For a comprehensive list of RSS feeds available through the University, please visit http://feeds.illinoisstate.edu/.
Help Desk and Alerts
The University Computer Help Desk and the Tech Alerts website both have RSS feeds. For more information, refer to 1001: Overview of Help Desk and Alerts RSS feeds.