What is RSS?RSS is a format for distributing and gathering the content of web pages. RSS allows you to see when sites from all over the internet have added new content. You can get the latest headlines and articles in one place, as soon as they are published, without having to remember to visit each site every day.
There are a number of opinions on what RSS stands for, but the most common is 'Really Simple Syndication'. RSS feeds are just a special kind of web page, designed to be read by computers rather than people. It might help to think of them as the free, internet version of the old-fashioned ticker-tape news wire machines.
A number of sections of www.davesharp.org are available as RSS Feeds - Latest News, Gig Info and Archive section (containing press articles, biographies, press releases etc).
How do I start using RSS feeds?In general, the first thing you need is something called a news reader or 'aggregator'. This is a piece of software that checks RSS feeds and lets you read any new articles that have been added to them.
There are many different types of news reader. Some internet browsers such as Opera and Firefox come with RSS readers built in. Other readers are standalone applications (or plug ins for programs such as Outlook) which run on your PC and download news to your desktop. Perhaps the simplest for the new user are the web based readers such as My Yahoo, Newsgator & My Google which allow you to create custom webpages bringing together RSS content from many different sites.
Once you have chosen a news reader, all you have to do is to decide what content you want to receive in your news reader, by finding and subscribing to the relevant RSS feeds. For example, to subscribe to our latest news feed, look for the little orange
logo.
If you click on the button you will see the XML code which forms the feed. Depending on your news reader, you can subscribe to the feed by dragging the RSS button into your news reader or by cutting and pasting the URL
http://www.davesharp.org/rss/news.asp into a new feed in your news reader.
How do I get a news reader? There is a range of different news readers available and new versions are appearing all the time.
Different news readers work on different operating systems, so you will need to choose one that will work with your computer. There are both free, shareware and commercial readers available. The selection below are just a sample of those available.
