RSS MAD

Using RSS on RSS Mad

Webmasters

So, you have an RSS feed for your site content, and are looking for ways to promote it and increase visitors to your site - well RSS Mad is here to help:

1. Feed Directory

First off, you need to submit your feed to our directory. Our thousands of users will then be able to either search or browse for your feed, and then be taken directly to your website.

2. RSS Mad Syndication

Would you like to take advantage of the thousands of users that RSS Mad has, and offer them a way to keep up to date on your content via their own personalized page? Well we have the answer.

Using our syndication link, you can direct your website users to RSS Mad where they will be presented with the My Feeds join page. My Feeds is a unqiue feature of RSS Mad where users can add and delete their favorite web feeds. All they then need to do is visit that customized page to be kept up to date on the latest goings on at their favorite websites.

By using the special syndication link that you will give them, and upon successfully joining RSS Mad, the feed of your website will automatically be added to their list of favorite feeds, so that they are able to view the latest content posted on your website at any time!

RSS Mad Syndication works as follows: You download the icon below, and setup your personalized syndication URL which will look like this:

http://www.rssmad.com/syndicate.php?read=[your rss feed url]&replyUrl=http://www.rssmad.com/myfeeds

So, using the example of the CNN news feed URL, their personalized RSS Mad Syndication URL would look as follows:

http://www.rssmad.com/syndicate.php?read=http://rss.cnn.com/rss/edition.rss&replyUrl=http://www.rssmad.com/myfeeds

Upon clicking that link, your site visitors will be taken to the RSS Mad joining page, where they will be able to join RSS Mad and then be kept up to date on what is happening on your website whenever they want!

We suggest using the syndication icon and your personalized URL as follows:

If you have any questions about this feature of RSS Mad, then please contact us using this form.

3. URL Feed Reader

So, you have the "raw" URL for your RSS feed, but would you like to give your users a quick and easy way of viewing it, as well as making sense of it? Well instead of simply linking them to your "raw" feed URL, you are able to link them to a special RSS Mad URL that will automatically show an update to date version of your feed content everytime.

It works like this: Say the raw URL of your feed is http://rss.cnn.com/rss/edition.rss. You could link directly to that URL from within your site, but many internet users will probably not know what it is for. So instead, you choose to link to it through the RSS URL Feed Reader as follows:

Just add the URL onto the end of the following RSS Mad URL: http://www.rssmad.com/rss_reader.php?read=[insert rss feed url here]. So, we would end up with something like so:

http://www.rssmad.com/rss_reader.php?read=http://rss.cnn.com/rss/edition.rss

If your users are looking for a quick update on the latest content on your site they then know exactly where to go!

Internet Users

You can use RSS in a number of different ways on RSS Mad.

1. Feed Directory

RSS Mad contains a directory of thousands of RSS feeds collected from all over the internet. The feeds have been quality checked and sorted into categories for easy browsing. If you want to find RSS feeds to add to your blog, or are just after information on a certain topic, then the Feeds directory is for you.

You may also wish to use our search feature which will look through the hundreds of thousands of articles, and thousands of feeds that we have for any information on your topic.

2. My Feeds

RSS MAD can also be personalized exactly to your liking with your favorite feeds. All you need to do is register, and you will then have the option of adding all your favorite feeds to your personal account, which can then all be viewed on one simple page.

The feeds under your account, like the rest of the feeds on the site, are all automatically kept up to date, so you can forget having to search hundreds of sites for your news updates, just visit your My Feeds page on RSS MAD and get updated instantly. If you want to read more on an article, just click its title and you will be taken to the source page.

3. Feed Reader

If you know the URL of the feed you want to view, but don't have any way to view it then simply enter the feed URL into our feed reader and view your feed via RSS MAD for free. You then have the options of adding the feed to your personalized page so you can keep updated more easily.

4. URL Feed Reading

This feature of RSS Mad is very similar to the Feed Reader above, however it is slightly quicker to use. Instead of needing to enter in the URL of the RSS feed that you want to display on our Feed Reader page, you simply tag it onto the end of a special URL! It works like follows:

Say you want to read the news feed from CNN, the URL of their news feed is http://rss.cnn.com/rss/edition.rss. If you want to read it via this function, just add that URL onto the end of the following RSS Mad URL: http://www.rssmad.com/rss_reader.php?read=[insert rss feed url here]. So, we would end up with something as follows:

http://www.rssmad.com/rss_reader.php?read=http://rss.cnn.com/rss/edition.rss

All you then need to do is bookmark that page as a favorite, you you will be kept constantly up to date!

Using RSS in General

Web feeds are widely used by the weblog community to share the latest entries' headlines or their full text, and even attached multimedia files. Since mid-2000, use of RSS has spread to many of the major news organizations, including Reuters, CNN, PR Newswire, and the BBC. These providers allow other websites to incorporate their "syndicated" headline or headline-and-short-summary feeds under various usage agreements. RSS is now used for many purposes, including marketing, bug-reports, or any other activity involving periodic updates or publications. Many corporations are turning to RSS for delivery of their news, replacing email and fax distribution.

As the mainstream media attempts to realize the full potential of RSS, the new media is utilizing RSS by bypassing traditional news sources. Consumers and journalists are now able to have news constantly fed to them instead of searching for it.

The RSS Mad Feed Reader can check a list of feeds on behalf of a user and display any updated articles that it finds. It is common to find web feeds on major websites and many smaller ones. Some websites let people choose between RSS or Atom formatted web feeds; others offer only RSS or only Atom.

The Feed Reader also requires no software installation and makes the user's "feeds" available on any computer with Web access. You can even register on RSS Mad and get your own special space called My Feeds. Here you can add as many RSS feeds from different sites as you like, and have them all updated for your automatically on one page.

What is RSS?

The Short Version:

RSS is a type of technology that enables someone to keep up to date on the latest posts (whether they be news posts, forum posts etc) that have occured on a website. They basically enable you, the user, to see a preview of the post and also give you the option of going to the source to read the full post.

The Long Version:

RSS is a family of web feed formats, specified in XML and used for Web syndication. RSS is used by (among other things) news websites, weblogs and podcasting. The abbreviation is variously used to refer to the following standards:

• Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91)
• RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0)
• Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)

Web feeds provide web content or summaries of web content together with links to the full versions of the content, and other metadata. RSS in particular, delivers this information as an XML file called an RSS feed, webfeed, RSS stream, or RSS channel. In addition to facilitating syndication, web feeds allow a website's frequent readers to track updates on the site using an aggregator.

Benefits of RSS

Accessing information and headlines via RSS Mad brings the following benefits:

• Efficiency: Everything is updated automatically for you in one place.
• Breadth: RSS Mad has thousands of web feeds available, with many more added daily.
• Organization: Within My Feeds you are able to create your own folders to organize all your feeds.

Basically, you will save time while also giving yourself access to the widest range of up to date information available. Instead of having to browse many different websites to for the information you require, all your favorite headlines and info can be delivered to you via RSS Mad; and if a new headline interests you, just click it to go to the source website.