Wakeboarder.com and RSS Feeds
Wakeboarder.com has recently added numerous RSS data feeds to the site for the convenience of all our users.
However, we figure many of you might not know what RSS feeds are, how they can be used, and how to start using
them.
What Is RSS?
RSS stands for either "Really Simple Syndication", or "Rich Site Summary". It's basically a way for web site
owners to let you know what new content they have available within their web sites, and this content can be
viewed in an RSS reader or displayed on other web sites.
There are a lot of web sites that "syndicate" their content with RSS feeds. All the top news sites like the New
York Times, the Guardian, Washington Post, and others use RSS feeds. Also almost every blog has an RSS feed, as
well as tons of other topic web sites like Wakeboarder.com.
The beauty of these feeds means that you can effectively create your own custom newspaper or magazine of recent
content. There are a number of news aggregators or RSS readers that allow you to subscribe to and read RSS
feeds.
For example, I use an RSS reader to get the headlines and article summaries of all my favorite web sites and
blogs and I can browse through them really quickly to and then choose to go to the web site if I want. Now that
Wakeboarder.com has an RSS feed for the forums, I can even see what topics are getting updated and posted on.
RSS Readers
In order to subscribe to and read RSS feeds, you need a software program that allows you to see the content.
NewsGator is a reader that works within Microsoft Outlook, and it has a
14 day free trial and then costs $29.95. It's the one I'm using now because I like how it's integrated with
Outlook so I don't have to have a seperate application open.
There are lots of readers out there though, so you might want to check out this list of readers.
Finding RSS Feeds Via RSS Directories
So once you have your RSS reader ready to go, you need to find some RSS feeds. You might already know that some
of your favorite sites (such as Wakeboarder.com) have RSS feeds. You can look for little icons on sites that
say "XML" or "RSS" on them. If you see those icons, you can just click on them to get the URL you need for your
RSS reader. Some readers actually modify your browser to allow you to right click on the icon and add the feed
to your feader. You can see these icons on the Wakeboarder.com Main
Page.
Besides that, you can also use one of the numerous RSS feed directories/search engines. Simply go to one of
these engines and search for the type of content you're interested in, and you should be able to find some
feeds.
Here are some of the most popular RSS search engines:
