RSS Feeds or How to keep up with your favourite websites
Social networks seem to be the most popular way to get updated on the topics we are interested in, despite how convenient are, I eventually decided to use RSS as a way to reduce the noise and distractions social networks bring.
Today we get most of our news from social networks, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, etc.; however, we are not in control of what we see in our newsfeeds, their algorithms dictates what is get delivered to us as consumers or followers.
From the publisher point of view, if you are an owner of a website that uses a Facebook page to promote your website’s latest post; not all your followers might get your new posts notifications. The organic reach of your posts is limited, to reach all your followers you will need to pay to get that exposure.
Is not uncommon to see people logging out of social networks to improve their mental health, but logging out of the social media means losing the news or other information we like to keep updated. With RSS subscriptions, you can still get updated on the topics you want without the noise that social networks have.
Before social networks existed, the web used technology that kept you informed whenever your favourite site has published a new post or article. This technology still is in use today and is called RSS, that stands for Really Simple Syndication. Few websites promote the use of RSS subscriptions because they can’t profit much from them, or they are harder to set up than a Facebook like.
Most websites use RSS, and you can take advantage of that. Setting up an app to subscribe to websites is easy, and in no time, you will be ready to keep up with your favourite sites with your iPhone. You will get chronically ordered updates of all the post form your subscribed websites; there won’t be an algorithm filtering what you will see — That’s how I keep up with all my favourite UX and design websites.
Here I describe how to copy my RSS set up. There are many apps and services, but in my case, we will be using iOS and Mac apps. My set up is made of two parts, the service provided by Feedly and the reader app called Reeder.
You can still follow the steps as the principles are the same for Android or Windows. These apps and services are the ones I currently use, they are not sponsored, and I have no connection with their respective companies.
Step 1 - Get a Feedly account
Go to www.feedly.com and open a free account. The free account provided features are enough for most users. Feedly is the application that will run in the backend, checking if any of your subscribed websites have been updated and sync between your devices which articles or post have you marked as read.
Step 2 — Get Reeder.
Get the Reeder app at www.reederapp.com. The appl comes in two versions: iOS and Mac. They are not free, $9.99 for the Mac version and $4.99 of the iOS version.
If you don’t want to pay for Reeder, Feedly has its own free app, but for me, Reeder has the best experience, so I am happy to pay for the app.
Step 3- subscribe to your websites.
Once you have installed the Reeder app in your iPhone or iPad, the first thing we need to do is to login in the Reeder app with our Feedly account. After opening the Reeder app, tap the settings icon in the top left corner; then select “Add Account..”, in the next screen under services choose Feedly, then you will get the login page.
You can see the steps here:
Now that we have logged in, we are ready to subscribe to a website. In the top right corner, tap the plus “+” button. Then type or paste the address of the website (URL), wait for the confirmation and tap on “Subscribe”, and you are done. Give it a few minutes for the app to load the latest posts.
In this example, I am using Apple’s website, but if I try to use www.apple.com, the subscription will not work. I need to point to www.apple.com/newsroom that is the address where Apple publish their latest official posts.
Here you can see how to subscribe to a website RSS feed:
Once you are subscribed to a website, Reeder will list the headlines and a summary of the posts. Some sites will allow you to see the entire post inside the Reeder app; for others, you will have to tap and go to the website to see the full post.
Reeder toolbar
At the bottom of the app, you can see five icons:
- Tick — This button is to mark all the posts as read
- Star — This one is to filter the posts that you have marked as favourites
- Circle — This one is to filter the posts that are marked as unread
- Lines — This one is to show all posts read and unread
- Search — This is to search within all the posts
I hope you like this article and start using RSS or teach other people how to use RSS. I think it is a great technology that puts you in control, can reduce the distractions of social media and still get your news updates.
P.S. I wrote this article because I was inspired by Brent Simons initiative for supporting his RSS and his app NetNewsWire. You can read more about it here: https://github.com/brentsimmons/NetNewsWire/blob/master/Technotes/HowToSupportNetNewsWire.markdown
