- What is an RSS feed?
- What are RSS enabled sites or RSS readers?
- What is an RSS-enabled website?
- What is an RSS reader and how does it work?
- Is PostRank an RSS reader?
- Is PostRank a search engine?
- How does PostRank.com work?
- What can PostRank do for me?
- Why doesn’t PostRank do X?
- Who are you people and why are you doing this?
1) What is an RSS feed?
Common Craft offers a great video to explain what RSS is and how it works.
Viewing website content via RSS feeds is like having a personal digital newspaper customized with only the sections and information you choose. Using RSS helps automate your web browsing. You don’t have to give out your email address or fill out any forms to receive RSS feeds, so you won’t receive information you haven’t requested. And you can unsubscribe to stop receiving a feed at any time, with just the click of a button.
Traditionally, to read or view your favourite websites’ content you would have to go to each site individually, and then scan through the content to determine what’s new or interesting. With RSS feeds and an RSS reader, all the information you’re interested in is delivered to you in one place.
RSS feeds are most commonly used for articles, news, and blog posts, but can also be used for distributing and viewing other digital content, like photos, audio (like podcasts or music), or video.
Other terms for RSS feeds include: feeds, XML feeds, web feeds, syndicated content, channels, or aggregated content.
2) What does RSS stand for?
RSS is an acronym that stands for Really Simple Syndication. This means that RSS provides a way to automatically keep track of different kinds of information from many different sites online (like news articles, blog posts, podcasts, etc.). People track all this information in one place, using special programs called RSS readers, of which there are a few kinds.
3) What is an RSS-enabled website?
An RSS-enabled website is any website that offers RSS feeds for its content. It is becoming rare for websites not to offer RSS feeds. Some websites offer several different RSS feeds, allowing you to select feeds that deliver items only on a specific topic.
You can tell if a website is RSS-enabled or not looking for the orange RSS symbol, usually located at the right side of a browser’s address bar, or near the top of the browser window. You can click on the RSS symbol to subscribe to that site’s RSS feed.
Below you can see where the RSS symbol is located on a number of popular browsers:
4) What is an RSS reader and how does it work?
RSS readers are applications specifically for managing and reading RSS feeds. Kind of like an email inbox, but just for online content you want to keep track of. They can be integrated into your web browser or email program, or can be separate applications (called clients), either web-based or on your computer. Adding RSS feeds to a reader is called subscribing, and can usually be done with one or two mouse clicks. Some feature-rich RSS readers are for sale, but many are free.
Once you have subscribed to RSS feeds, an RSS reader will automatically and frequently check for new content, and will deliver it to the reader for you. New items will remain in the reader and are categorized as unread until you read them, mark them as read, or remove the feed.
RSS reader settings allow you to display feeds however you like. This can include separating feeds into categories that you have set up, showing the most recently published items first, displaying entire articles or just previews, and many other features. Some readers allow you to share feeds or specific content with your friends. Other terms for RSS readers include: feed readers, news readers, and aggregators.
Web-based RSS readers include Google Reader (try our PostRank extension), Bloglines, NewsGator Online, trawlr (these have PostRank built in) and the readers integrated into portals like My Yahoo! and iGoogle. Popular client RSS readers include NewsFire, NetNewsWire, and FeedDemon..
5) Is PostRank an RSS reader?
No. There are plenty of great readers out there already, and we didn’t want to reinvent the wheel. That said, you can certainly view a feed’s items and see their PostRank scores on our site, but we think it’s nice to have all your information in one place, too.
6) Is PostRank a search engine?
No. There’s a little company called Google (among others) that is already doing great things for search. So again, we didn’t want to reinvent the wheel. That said, we’ve added some really neat features to improve filtering and searching related to RSS to get even more of exactly what you want. Stay tuned!
7) How does PostRank.com work?
In a nutshell, to use PostRank.com you enter the URL of a feed you would like to have filtered into the search box, and click the “Analyze” button. The feed can be any type of site – blog posts, news, etc. – but it does have to be from an RSS-enabled website.
In the background we retrieve information from the site and run some calculations (this is a very simplified explanation of how we perform engagement analysis). This allows us to learn about the feed, its statistics, and the audience’s engagement with the content.
We then assign a PostRank score to each item in the feed and provide you with a variety of tools to sort these items for perusal at your leisure.
8) What can PostRank do for me?
These days there are too many people and too much information to keep track of online. Some websites publish dozens of articles or hundreds of news items per day. There are hundreds of thousands of new blogs created every week. And there are RSS feeds for pretty much all of them. How do you use your time most wisely? How do you figure out what’s engaging and worth reading?
PostRank.com works like your personal aide or assistant, filtering and ranking your feeds based on a number of criteria to help you read what matters.
Best of all, you can use PostRank, keep all your RSS feeds, and continue to use your favorite RSS reader with your personalized settings. Simply substitute our customized feed URLs when subscribing to feeds and you’re ready to go. You can also track feeds, find a site’s best content, and browse the archives on our site.
9) Why doesn’t PostRank do X?
We like tools that are simple and easy to use. So that’s what we’ve tried to create. Of course, if you have an idea for a feature, please drop us a line.
10) Who are you people and why are you doing this?
We are a startup company located in Waterloo, Canada.
Just like many people, we were overwhelmed by the amount of information online and in our feed readers. We figured there had to be a way to help deal with this onslaught and enable us to make better use of our time. And so AideRSS was born. Or compiled. Whatever. We hope you like using it as much as we do!