- What is RSS?
- RSS feed readers
- Subscribing to RSS feeds
- OCN RSS feeds
- A great alternative to RSS feed readers: OCN’s app
What is RSS?
RSS (variously defined as Rich Site Syndication, Realtime Site Syndication, Really Simple Syndication, and several others) has been around for more than 20 years. About 10 years ago, interest in RSS had waned, but has increased in the past few years.
RSS feed readers
To use RSS feeds, you need to install an RSS feed reader on your computer or mobile device. While some readers run as standalone applications or are built into email applications, now it is more common for them to run as browser extensions such as Feedbro, which is available for most browsers.
Subscribing to RSS feeds
Using Feedbro as an example, once a feed reader is installed, when you go to a web page, you can ask Feedbro to look for RSS feeds on the current page. If in the list you see a feed that interests you, click subscribe.
Once you have subscribed to some feeds, whenever there are new postings on any of those feeds, the new postings automatically show up in the reader and the feed reader icon on your browser’s taskbar will display an indicator that there are unread postings to your subscribed feeds. Use the feed reader icon to open the feed reader and read the posts without going to the source websites.
OCN RSS feeds
On most OCN posts, Feedbro will find our general feeds for posts, podcasts, comments on any post, and comments specific to that post.
At the bottom of the OCN home page, we have a list of RSS feeds.
To subscribe to any of those, right-click on the feed and copy the URL from that RSS feed, paste it into your feed reader, and click subscribe. For example, using the next last of our RSS links (“Water & Sanitation District Articles”), you can subscribe to just OCN water & sanitation district articles. Every time we post an article about a water & sanitation district, everyone who has subscribed to that feed will receive that article in their feed reader.
A great alternative to RSS feed readers: OCN’s app
The ideal way to keep up with the latest OCN postings is for you to skip the feed readers and instead install OCN’s (Mobile or Desktop) App. It acts as an easy to use specialized feed reader which is already subscribed to many of OCN’s RSS feeds. To quickly learn of the latest Tri-Lakes area news, keep it handy on your mobile device or computer.
If you have questions, please contact us.