Pacific Northwest Research Station

What are RSS feeds

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is an XML-based format for distributing Web content. With RSS, you can regularly gather information from Web sites—without actually visiting them—and deliver the information to your computer as a "feed" using a program known as reader. Because you can subscribe to just those feeds that are of interest to you, RSS puts you in control of the information you receive from the Web.

How to subscribe

To subscribe to RSS feeds, you first need a reader—a program that allows you to aggregate RSS feeds. Many readers are available, often free of charge and downloadable from the Web.

After installing a reader, you can add feeds from a Web site by clicking on the feed's button. With some readers, after clicking on a feed's button, you will have to manually copy and paste the feed's URL into your reader's toolbar.

What happens after you subscribe

After you subscribe to a feed, summaries of and links to the available postings from that feed are automatically sent to your reader. Then, whenever a new Station news release, or publication is published to the Web, you'll receive a posting of that document in your reader, along with a summary and access to a full-text version of the document.