Many websites still make uses of RSS feed and it is still considered one of the most relevant tool for website owners as well as readers too. RSS feed is simply a portable file having latest content of websites. There are tons of websites offering good quality content and news. It may be hard for you to keep track of all the sites you are interested on. So these websites uses tool such as RSS feed to provide their readers content in some format which user can later view it through some RSS reader without visiting all these sites.
What is RSS?
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It is a method for sites to distribute their content and updates in a simple standard format which can be used to be read by programs such as RSS reader.
While creating RSS feed, they must follow certain syntax and structure. RSS feed are created in a XML text file which has .xml as a extension. XML ( Extension Markup Language ) is a markup language which has defined set rules for encoding a text in a structured format. XML is mainly used to store and transport data. Therefore RSS make uses of XML file to store web feeds and transport it to the readers. Programs such as RSS reader parses these XML file to a readable content for ease of reading.
Websites provide RSS feed containing the list of latest topics and articles. RSS feed always contains latest updates of contents including related content attribute such as summary of the content, author of the content, publication date, link, content featured image URL, etc. These feed can be accessed through some URL provided by the owner of these respective sites. Readers may then only subscribe or view the topics they are interested on without going through all the contents on the site.
How to get RSS Feed of WordPress sites?
WordPress sites have built-in RSS features available for your websites. You can get rss feed of any WordPress sites by going through url [yoursite.com/feed]. For example, you can get feed of this site by gong this url https://bountyscript.com/feed/.
Uses of RSS Feed
One of the primary uses of RSS is to provide latest updates and content to their readers. Readers do not have to keep on always browsing the websites for latest content instead they can use the RSS feed to be updated with the latest contents with the help of RSS readers. RSS provides simple and very time conserving solution to the readers by providing them to be able to access feeds related to their selected interested topics. RSS readers help you to parse the RSS feed file containing XML data to readable format. By using such programs you can view the content feeds in any devices and platform as long as they have support for rss feed programs.
RSS feed helps the website owners for the exposure of their content and in sharing their latest updates to their readers. Making feed available for your sites will also make your site more reputable. RSS feed can also help the websites to bring more traffic to their sites. These traffic can be obtained through external sites having content and references to your RSS feed. Your site traffic can be boosted majorly by submitting your RSS feed to other sites and feed aggregator.
What is Feed Aggregator?
If you have a lot of favorite sites for news and articles, you may not have enough time for browsing all these sites and its pretty time consuming to be updated with all the latest content of these sites. So by using program such as called Feed Aggregator or News aggregator you can access all the latest updates of all these websites without visiting each one of them.
Feed Aggregator provides you a interface to manage feeds of all your favorite websites at one place. It also provides features such as notifying readers whenever there is new content in one of their favorite sites, options for bookmarking your content feed for reading later, allowing to share feeds to other social media platform or readers and option to favorite the content you like so that it is always on a list whenever you might want to read again . Accessing content with news aggregator is more fast and comfortable than visiting each of the sites manually. Some feed aggregator also helps you to discover many new feed sources related to the topics and category you are interested in.
There are plenty of free and paid feed aggregator for parsing and reading RSS feed from multiple site sources. Some of these provide lot of feature such as sharing feeds, creating multiple feed sources, creating custom list of favorite feed, advertising feeds and so on.
Here are some of the best Feed aggregator.
Best RSS Feed and News Aggregator to Use
Feedly and Inoreader are two most popular rss feed aggregator which makes the best uses of rss feed.. They include almost all the features you might want to have for in a news aggregator.
- Feedly: Feedly is one of the most popular news aggregator for reading latest feeds in browsers. It has a web browser extension which helps you keep track of all your favorite sites and their content. It also allows readers to subscribe to certain feeds so that the feed get auto updated. Readers will also get notifications whenever their are latest content available to read. Feedly also offers android and iOS application in addition to web apps so that you don’t always have to access through the browser.
Feedly has free and paid plans for the readers. Free plan allows you to add 100 feed sources . For large number of feed sources which is more than 100 sources or more you must get a paid plan of feebly. paid plan of feebly has lots of features such as being able to power search, getting article faster, hiding ads, etc. - Inoreader: Inoreader is another news aggregator which has gained a lot of popular attention for its simplicity, easy interfaces and features. It has web as well as mobile application including support for both android and iOS. Like Feedly, it also has free and paid subscription plan. It offers you to add up to 150 feeds for free. For more than 150 plans you must upgrade to paid plans. Paid plans provides you features such as hiding advertisements, allowing newsletter services for alerts, keyword monitoring, etc.
Beside these some other best apps to use for news aggregator are Feeder, Newsblur, The Old Reader and Feedspot. You can take a look on each one of them and choose the one you feel more comfortable.