WHAT IS RSS?
It is virtually impossible to keep up-to-date with information you want on the world wide web considering there are billions of web pages. Too much information is as bad as little or none at all. It is therefore better to have the latest information delivered directly to you rather than going through the billions of web pages.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) allows you to see when sites are updated with new content. You can get the latest headlines and articles (or even audio files, photographs or video) in one place, as soon as they are published, without having to remember to visit each site every day.
RSS takes the hassle out of staying up-to-date, by showing you the very latest information that you are interested in. These are just a special kind of web page, designed to be read by computers rather than people.
Using RSS feeds?
In general, the first thing you need is something called a news reader. This is a piece of software that checks RSS feeds and lets you read any new articles that have been added to them. There are many different versions, some of which are accessed using a browser, and some of which are downloadable applications. Browser-based news readers let you catch up with your RSS feed subscriptions (mostly free) from any computer, whereas downloadable applications let you store them on your main computer, in the same way that you either download your e-mail using Outlook, or keep it on a web-based service like Hotmail.
Once you have chosen a news reader, all you have to do is to decide what content you want to receive in your news reader, by finding and subscribing to the relevant RSS feeds. For example, if you would like the latest Horsham District Council news releases, simply visit the News Releases section and you will notice an orange RSS button on the right hand side. Click on the button and you can subscribe to the feed in various ways, including by dragging the URL of the RSS feed into your news reader or by cutting and pasting the same URL into a new feed in your news reader.
Most sites that offer RSS feeds use a similar orange RSS button, but some may just have a normal web link to the feed.
Some browsers, including Firefox, Opera, Safari and possibly Internet Explorer 7, automatically check for RSS feeds for you when you visit a website, and display an icon when they find one. This can make subscribing to RSS feeds much easier.
How do I get a news reader?
There is a range of different news readers available and new versions are appearing all the time. Different news readers work on different operating systems, so you will need to choose one that will work with your computer.
| Windows | Mac OS x | Web |
|---|---|---|
| Newz Crawler | Newsfire | Bloglines |
| FeedDemon | NetNewsWire | My Yahoo! |
| Awasu | NewsGator | |
| Horsham District Council is not responsible for the content of external websites. | ||
Using the Horsham District Council RSS feeds on your website
If you run your own website, you can use RSS feeds to display the latest headlines from other sites on your site.
We encourage the use of Horsham District Council's RSS feeds as part of a website, subject to our Terms and Conditions.
However, we do require that the proper format and attribution is used when Horsham District Council news release content appears. The attribution text should read "Horsham District Council News Releases". You may not use any Horsham District Council logo or trademark.
We reserve the right to prevent the distribution of Horsham District Council news releases. Horsham District Council does not accept any liability for its RSS feeds. Please see the Terms and Conditions for full details.
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