What is RSS

The rss icon

I used the term “RSS” in conversation recently and learned it’s use isn’t as ubiquitous (even in tech-y circles) as I thought. You can think of RSS as a vendor-agnostic subscription feed. Similar to how YouTube will send you a notifcation when someone releases a new video, your RSS reader can notify you when sombody posts on their website. But to understand that we should quick learn how it works. Like any webpage or API there are two parts:

  1. Server
  2. Client

The server serves an API route (URL) that responds with with an XML file (a file computers can read easily). This includes dated entries with some optional additional information. The RSS feed for this site is at https://oliveratkinson.net/rss.xml and roughly contains:

  • Title of the article
  • Link to the article on this website
  • The date the article is published

If the you (client) then add that URL to your RSS reader, it will periodically download a list of all the articles and see if there are any new entries. If there are, it will then send you a notification! Pretty simple and neat!

Here’s the phone RSS reader app I use: Aggregator - FDroid.

There are no accounts or separate apps for each platform, just 1 simple XML file per website, all collected into the same app on your phone or desktop!

Summary

  1. Server has API route (generally at /rss.xml).
  2. Client periodically checks this route for new information.
  3. If there is new information, notify the user.

Some cool RSS feeds to you started

  • Mine, of course https://oliveratkinson.net/rss.xml
  • XKCD: https://xkcd.com/rss.xml
  • HaveIBeenPwnd https://haveibeenpwned.com/feed/breaches/
  • American cyber threats https://www.ic3.gov/rssIndustry.xml

Notes if you have a website

  • If your website is built with Astro, they provide a plugin to handle most of the RSS stuff for you.
  • Hugo, which is what I was using before Astro, has RSS feeds built into it.
  • You should put the following tag in your home page’s head:
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"
    title="Your Site's Title" href="https://yoursite.example/path-to-your-feed.xml" />

(source) This allows for RSS readers like Aggregator to locate the RSS feed without you needing to put in the “correct” URL (makes it more idiot proof).

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