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1. What is Real Simple Syndication (RSS)?

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is an easy way to keep up with your favorite news and information. An RSS feed contains headlines, summaries and links to full news stories on our web site. If you click an RSS link, you will see XML (eXtensible Markup Language) code in your browser. This is to be expected, since you do not view RSS content through a browser. You view the headlines through an RSS news reader (also called an RSS aggregator).

RSS allows you to see when sites from all over the internet have added new content. You can get the latest headlines and articles in one place, as soon as they are published, without having to remember to visit each site every day.

2. How do I start using Really Simple Syndication (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 from any computer, whereas downloadable applications let you store them on your main computer, in the same way that you either download your email 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 decide what content you want to receive in your news reader by finding and subscribing to the relevant RSS feeds.

Haywood County Government RSS Feed

For example, if you would like the most recent updates from Haywood County Government, simply visit our homepage and you will notice an orange RSS button on the left hand side.

If you click on the button you can subscribe to the feed in various ways, including:

• Dragging the URL of the RSS feed into your news reader
• Cutting and pasting the same URS into a new feed in your news reader

3. How do I get a news reader?

There is a range of different news readers available and new versions are appearing all the time. RSS is a standardized format that lets you subscribe to a website using software applications such as Microsoft® Outlook®, Microsoft® Internet Explorer® and Mozilla® Firefox®. Different news readers work on different operating systems, so you will need to choose one that will work with your computer.

4. Why should I subscribe?

Subscribing is also known as adding an RSS feed. Once you subscribe to a page, you can view content titles and click on the links to quickly link to the content from your personalized Google, My MSN, My Yahoo! or My AOL homepage.