Article First Blog

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) refers to a group of formats used for automatic content distribution via the Internet. An RSS web feed is a summary of web content from a source that is updated regularly. When you see news or sports tickers on a web site, most likely what you are seeing is some form of an RSS web feed.

Web site owners publish a feed, also known as syndicating content, to make content available from a updated source such as the articles, blog, audio or video on their website. Other web site owners who wish to display this content on their web site can simply perform a search for a targeted RSS feeds, get the web address of the feed and then format it for display on their site.

Normally, the web feed is condensed for display on another web site. At a minimum, each item in the feed displays as a headline, a description and a link to the web page where the entire article, blog post or other content resides. It can also be formatted to include the source, date and time the content was originally published. This way, a web site owner displaying RSS web feeds from external sources on their site can make several items from one source, or a collection from many different sources, available for their web site visitors.