Friday, March 07, 2008

How to use RSS feeds

As some of you know I am a contributor to Drag Racing Online. DRO is the only
major drag racing site to offer RSS feeds. Below is how I set them up for myself.
This obviously works for any type of newsfeed, as long as the site offers it.


RSS feeds are a fairly new internet tool which stands for Really Simple Syndication. You need a "feed reader" or an "aggregator" to see the feeds. I use the one Yahoo offers and most sites support this “reader”. I am moving more and more to RSS feeds to stay current with news, finance and of course sports, specifically drag racing. I have found using My Yahoo and RSS feeds easier than email subscriptions and bookmarks to get the lastest articles about things I’m interested in. I have found that email updates seem to clutter my inbox and I can’t seem to get to them to stay current. I do go to my bookmarks occasionally, but don’t always have time to read everything on the page. I am keeping my bookmark pages, but with using RSS feeds, I can at a glance see the news I want to stay current with.

HOW TO GET STARTED:The first thing you want to do is get a “newsreader”. The easiest for me is just using Yahoo. First you need a “My Yahoo”. This is a personalized and customizable page on Yahoo.com. Go to Yahoo.com and create an account with an idea. Don’t worry, you won’t get spammed over this either.

Click the MyYahoo link.



After you have setup your “My Yahoo” page here is how I have setup my RSS feeds, specifically for DRO. At DRO you will see the feeds link at the end of the page. This is true with most sites. Their links for RSS feeds are on the left side or at the bottom of the home page.

After you click the link, you see lots of options (see below). Click the stories or information you want to follow. I watch the DRO feed and the 1320 notes feed.

After clicking the DRO feed, it shows up in “My Yahoo” page at the top of the page. (see below).

I categorize my information into news (the My Front Page), Bible Study, Finances (I like to track stock news), CBS Finance (CBS MarketPlace.com has tons of RSS feeds if you are interested) and of course Sports. I want to put the DRO feed into the Sports section. The screen shot below shows how I’m dragging the DRO feed to my Sports page. You simply hold the left mouse button down in the header section and drag the module to the page you want it in. You DON’T have to do this! Your My Front Page can be your only page with whatever mix of info you like! I have so many feeds now, I categorize them.

Below is the DRO feed module after I dragged it to my Sports section. As you can see below, my Sports page is a work in progress. I have my fantasy football from CBSSports.com and Yahoo NFL news. I also have added the two DRO feeds.

Ok, after I have added the feeds to the pages, I want to take a look at what is new. I see a headline that Force is back. What is this all about? Simply put your mouse under the headline and you get a paragraph or so of what the article is about. Actually, what you get is the first few lines of the article, but any good writer will tell you what the article is about in the first few lines.



If you are interested in the article, simply click the link and boom bada bing or Bing Bada Boom you can read the whole article.


So there you have it. RSS feeds 101 and how to use them.

DRO is the only major Drag Racing site at the time of this writing to be using
them.

Good racing to you this year!

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