RSS Feeds

November 10th, 2006 by Shelby Thayer

This page is a tutorial about rss and how to use it. If you’re looking to subscribe to us, you can find our rss feed here.

What is RSS?
RSS stands for “Real Simple Syndication” and is used to subscribe to news or blog feeds. Many of you have probably subscribed to a newsletter that you view via email. RSS is the same type of thing only the news or blogs you subscribe to are put into one place (an “aggregator” or “feed reader”). RSS feeds are real-time, meaning as soon as the news or blog is published, it is immediately sent to your “feed reader” for your viewing pleasure.

Ok … I sort of get it. So … how do I use it?
Let’s walk through getting a feed reader or news aggregator (those terms are interchangeable) and subscribing to Terra Incognita, the Penn State World Campus blog. First, let’s sign up for a feed reader. For the purpose of this post, I will use Google Reader as an example. I am in no way promoting Google Reader. It’s simply what I use. There are many popular feed readers out there. Each feed reader is a tiny bit different to set up, but the idea is exactly the same.

So let’s get started:

  1. Open up your favorite web browser
  2. Go to http://www.google.com/reader
  3. If you have a google account, login. If not, create an account (it’s quick).
  4. After you’ve verified your subscription to the google account, login.
  5. Click on “Reader” under “My services.”
  6. You now have a feed reader/news aggregator where you can store your news/blog subscriptions.

Ok … so how do I get my subscriptions into the feed reader?
That’s the easy part. You’ll notice on the World Campus home page on the right hand side toward the middle of the page you’ll see this image RSS 2.0. Whenever you see that on a site, you know that’s what you click on to get your subscription URL.

  1. Click on that image, you’ll go to a page that looks like a listing of all blog postings from the World Campus blog.
  2. Copy the URL that shows up in your address bar (for our blog, it will be
    http://blog.worldcampus.psu.edu/?feed=rss2.
  3. Go into Google Reader and click “add subscription”
  4. Pasted the URL into the space provided and click “add”
  5. You’re all set!