OTWOMD | Bluepanjeet.Net

I have been promoting my feed for the past months now in order to increase the readership of my amateur blog. My loyal readers are mostly non-bloggers and private readers who happens to gobble my daily dose of non-sense in their own time of luxury and boredom. Yet, many of these private readers often communicate with me through email and private messages. Among the many emails I received from my handful of loyal readers (priests, seminarians, OFW, nuns, civilians, students, friends, relatives, professors, nurses, doctors etc) tackles about the question of the RSS Feed. Quoting from a student who emailed me recently, “Mr. Bluep, ano po ba yung RSS feed na palagi ko nababasa sa blog nyo?”, the student was just like many of the non-bloggers who doesn’t know the usage of this very important web technology. So I decided in my own limited capacity to discuss the fundamentals of an RSS feed and how it can be delivered right into the readers’ desktop without having to go on the blog itself. This is intended for those who are still puzzled on the mystery of an RSS feed.

Before I became an official blogger outside my “friendster blog”, like most of the non-bloggers and private readers, I also have no clue on what this RSS does. It just happens that Jaypee of Jaypee Online was the one who taught me the value and importance of web feeds to bloggers, blog-hoppers and lurkers. So let me share to you my limited view of an RSS feed through easily understandable layman’s term and useful analogies, and how you can utilize them in reading your favorite blogs.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. An RSS document (which is called a “feed” or “web feed” or “channel”) contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner that can be piped into special programs or filtered displays.

For example, if you want to watch your favorite Movies on your TV 24/7, then you have to have channels that caters to that kind of programming like HBO, Cinemax, Star Movies or Cinema One. If your TV is running in an antenna, then possibly you can’t get a signal from these channels. So in order to have them on your TV, you have to subscribe to a cable provider in order to deliver movie channels right in your Boob Tube. Same thing with the RSS feed. The Cable Service is the RSS feed, the movie Channel is your favorite blogs and websites and your TV is a feed reader. The only difference is, Cable services are paid, while RSS feeds are completely free. Now what the heck is a feed reader? we will tackle that momentarily and separately.

So where do you find a feed in a blog? Easy. Everywhere you click in a blog or website, there is always an RSS icon that looks like this

If you happen to see that orange icon, then that is your clue. The RSS feed is there. But for various reasons, the standard icon does not usually exist. Other clues that you can use to locate an RSS feed are the words: “Feed“, “Web Feed“, “subscribe to email” or “RSS“. Taking OTWOMD as an example, let us locate where the RSS feed is placed throughout the blog.

on the welcome heading on the sidebar

on the log-in portal on the sidebar

on the sidebar

above the title of every posts

at the end of every posts

Of course blogs have different themes so we can assume that different blogs have different locations of the RSS icon. But the most obvious place where you can find an RSS icon is on the Firefox browser web address bar. In the Internet explorer, RSS icons are not shown. This is the reason why I always promote Firefox and other browsers when viewing my site because they are more RSS friendly, blog friendly and faster to load compared to Internet Explorer. I just don’t know if IE7 has already this kind of feature because I haven’t used IE for such a long time now.

So what do you do now with the RSS Icon? When you see that Icon you just have to click it and it will take you to a webpage where most of the contents of that blogs are syndicated, or mirrored for those who are web illiterate.

Rss feeds have their own url. As you can see in OTWOMD feed, it has two RSS web address or URL. The http://bluepanjeet.net/feed/ and the http://feeds.feedburner.com/bluepanjeet. Both of these URLs are complimentary to each other, meaning you can use any of these two feed URL to subscribe to OTWOMD. Other blogs has an atom extension or an xtml at the end of the url. But that is a more complicated topic. The most important thing is, whether it is an atom, xtml or RSS, they all serve the same purpose of delivering contents to you.

Now you know what is an RSS feed, an RSS icon (which comes in various designs), an RSS feed URL and where to locate most of the RSS feed, then what? what do you do now with the RSS URL? In analogy, you already have a Cable service (RSS feed), and a Channel (the website or blog). Now all you have to do is to find a TV or a Feed Reader. Now what is a feed reader again?

A feed reader can be analogous to a common Television. It is a computer software or in some cases, a web site, that shows you the contents of the RSS feed of a blog. Meaning, it contains the very same contents of the posts or articles of a blog or a website. There are hundreds of feed readers and feed sites available. It is really your choice what to use (you can google for it if you want). The most popular is Feed Demon and News Gator. But for the sake of example, I will tell you the feed reader that I am actually using. This is quite commendable for beginners because of its user-friendly features and clean design. Some feed readers are limited wherein they will only run on your computer in a certain number of days. But FeedReader is unlimited. It is absolutely free. Plus it can also be used as a browser while reading your favorite blogs. To give you an idea, below is a walk-through on how to use the FeedReader.

First you download the FeedReader Installer here

Then after downloading, you install the software on your PC, Mac or Laptop. Follow the screen capture of the installation.

click the FeedReader installer.

Choose the language you want. Kung Tagalog, Bisaya ka o Ilokano ka, mag english ka na lang kasi di pa available ang tagalog.

click next

be sure to read the License agreement so that you will know the limits of the software. Tick the “I accept” button and click next.

again click next.

isa pa uling next.

Now as a beginner, do not tick the Additional actions. Just toggle the “Create desktop icon” or if you prefer, you can also tick the “Quick Launch icon” button. But if you are already an advance user, sige, go ka lang Kakosa!

then finally, sa pagkadami daming next, click to install

wait until the installation completes itself. Magbasa ka muna ng FHM because it will take a few minutes.

Now if you see this logo on your screen, it is positive that your installation is successful.

Then dyan-dyararan… you now have a feed reader installed on your PC. Of course the feed reader needs a feed in order to have contents. So the next step is to find a “feed” for your feed reader.

Now how do you put the feed of your favorite blog to your newly installed FeedReader? Just follow the instructions below.

first click the “New” button on the left sidebar of the FeedReader

then click new feed. A feed URL bar will appear.

Now go to the feed page (by clicking the RSS feed icon) that you want to subscribe to then copy paste the URL to your FeedReader

Ganun din iba lang ang feed.

then click ok.

And now it’s done! you can now read your favorite blogs from your own PC desktop without going to the website or blog source itself. Ang dali ano?

Now for some additional info…

Organizing your feeds.

you can organize your feeds according to the categories that you want. Let say you want to organize the feed alphabetically or you want to arrange the feeds according to aesthetic value (pinakamaganda sa taas, pinakapangit sa huli). To do this just click the “New” button, then click the “new folder”. Once a folder is created, you can drag and drop the feeds inside every folders.

you can also rename your feeds according to your desire. Kung sa pandinig mo pangit yung pangalan ng blog, then sige lang ng sige, rename the feed.

O kung wala ka namang natututunan sa mga pinagsaususulat nung blogger, pwes, DELETE!

Reader and a browser

Your FeedReader can also be a browser. Let say you want to read the post from its original source, you just click the title and it will take you to the website or blog.

Like this, you can actually see the and interact on the blog with just the use of your browser.

Plus you can also write a comment and submit it. And then go back to the other posts that you haven’t read before. Gleng gleng no? nung una bano din ako eh.

Variations of RSS Feeds contents

Now all contents of RSS feed varies differently in a manner that is chosen by the blog owner. Don’t be puzzled if some RSS feed have a full content and partial content on your feed reader. Again what? Full feeds are feeds that gives you the full content of a blog post including the text, images, photos, videos and the MP3’s that are currently embedded on a post. While Partial feeds gives you an excerpt or a summary of a content. Other feeds just gives you the title itself. Just to give you an idea of what I’m blabbering about, look at the screen shots below:

This is an example of a partial feed. Notice that the post only includes the first few lines of the original entry and is asking you to go to the blog in order to read the rest.

This is an example of a full feed which includes all of the contents of a post.

Some feeds are created as a Podcast or Webcast which only means that the feed does not only deliver the text of the contents of a post but also the Videos embedded in it. You can actually watch on your FeedReader some videos from youtube and other video sites.

In addition, music lovers can actually download MP3’s that are embedded on a blog post. Cool diba? libre download.

And some feeds just contain the title of their latest post like this one (from Rebecca’s Blog)

RSS Feed contents varies because of preferences of the blogger. some like to have their feeds in full so that the readers would not anymore go to their website. But others choose to limit the exposure of their contents because of security reasons. Before, OTWOMD feed was running in full RSS feed and in podcast. But because there were so many intances of other scrappers subscribing to the feed, copying the contents without prior permission and posting them on their own website (that’s called stealing you know), I had a change of heart and obliterated my old feed. As much as I want my readers to be convenient in reading my crap, yet I have no choice but choose the partial feeds. Although there are already plugins available that protect contents via RSS feed, yet I’m still uncomfortable in exposing my contents to scrappers (long story, that’s another post). But hey, my feed can give you the anticipation of what might be the content of that post, which is exactly ther purpose of the partial feeds — to give the readers suspense.

Anyhow there are benefits and downsides of both full and partial feeds. It just depends on the preference of the blogger.

Jaypee has a comparative anatomy between full feeds and partial feeds on his blog. I suggest you read it so that you can have an additional info about it.

Now there you go. I think I have said everything that a newbie blogger or a non-blogger has to know about the uses and benefits of an RSS feed. Now that you have a feed reader of your own, I think it is high time that you surf the net for the RSS feeds of your favorite websites and blog, then add them to your very own feed reader. And hey, maawa ka naman sa akin, pinagpaguran ko ito, subscribe to my feed, Jaypee’s feed and the feeds of my friends in my blogroll para naman sulit! Next time I will teach you how to cross stitch, magsulsi, maghabi ng tela, magputol ng kahoy, magpalitada ng pader, magsinsin ng buhangin at maglala ng banig, magsubscribe ka lang Kakosa hehe. Siguro naman wala ng magtatanong sa akin sa email. See you on your FeedReader!

(PS. Special thanks to Jaypee for teaching me the RSS feed stuff when I was just a beginner in the blogosphere. I am one of his apprentice and I am still very grateful for his help. hehe. And also to Malen, Pareng KK, Pareng Ambo and Reynz for teaching me the ways of Ninoy Aquino in the blogosphere. [sssshhhhhhh secret natin yun mga adik, hindi pa ito yun, pending pa LOL] Soon, basic tutorial for using Adobe Photoshop, Converting Movie Files, Movie Editing Tricks, Editing MP3’s at lahat ng sikreto ng OTWOMD. Kaya Magsubscribe kayo kungdi malalawasan kayo!)