Embrace RSS Feeds!
Did you know you could build your own news feed or algorithm without constantly checking on your favourite websites for new content? That’s right! That technology is called Really Simple Syndication or RSS for short.
The name might sound scary, but in practice, it’s a simple way to subscribe to websites and get notified when new content is published. You can think of it as a digital newspaper subscription, but curated by yourself! You can choose which websites to subscribe to, organize them into categories if you wish, and sometimes even save the articles so you can read them offline!
But don't newsletters already do that?
Well, sort of. With newsletters, you have no control over the frequency of the updates. If you subscribe to many newsletters, your inbox can quickly become cluttered and overwhelming as the emails are sent. With RSS, you control how often you want to receive updates, while keeping your inbox free from clutter!
Another advantage of RSS feeds is that they’re usually more distraction-free, since you can consume the content with no cookie banners, pop-ups, ads or any other annoying elements that can distract you from the actual content.
Sounds cool? Then let’s check out how to set up your own RSS feed!
$ How to Set Up an RSS Feed
Getting started is easier than you think. You need two things: an RSS Reader and the Feed URL.
Step 1: Choose a Reader
An RSS Reader is really just an app that allows you to subscribe to RSS feeds. Depending on which one you choose, you can get a lot of features out of it, such as the ability to filter by category, mark articles as read, and even save articles to read later. I’m going to be using FeedFlow for this post since it supports all platforms and allows us to organize feeds into categories, but you can choose any RSS reader you like.
Step 2: Add a new feed
- Go to the website you’d like to subscribe to (news site, blog, podcast).
- Copy the URL of the website
- In your RSS Reader app, click on the “Add Feed” button, and paste the URL there.
- (Optional) Give the feed a category (e.g., “Politics,” “Tech,” “Gardening”).
- If the website supports RSS, you should see the content of the website appearing! 🎉
In case the website you chose does not support RSS, adding a new feed will fail. In that case, there’s not much you can do asides from reaching out to the website’s owner and asking them to add RSS support. Worth a try, though!
When a website supports RSS, you’ll usually see the following icon somewhere on the website:
If you click on it, you’ll likely be redirected to another page with a lot of code on it. That’s expected! In that case, you can copy that link and paste it into your RSS Reader app to subscribe to that feed.
Step 3: Enjoy!
That pretty much covers it! There’s a lot more you can do with RSS feeds, but this is a good starting point to gain back control over how you consume content. I hope you found this post helpful and that you’ll be using RSS feeds more in the future! 👋