What are RSS feeds?

RSS is most commonly said to stand for 'Really Simple Syndication'. The feeds themselves are web pages designed to be read by a variety of web browsers and RSS readers.

RSS feeds, also known as news feeds, allow you to stay in touch with your selected websites and be notified as soon as they have added new content. By subscribing to them, you receive the latest headlines, brief summaries of the content and a clickable link to the full content on the website.

How to subscribe

The two main ways of subscribing to a news feed are through your web browser or an RSS reader.

Some browsers automatically search for RSS feeds. If a website has a feed, you will see the orange RSS icon next to the browser's address bar and clicking on it will allow you to subscribe. You can also click on the RSS icon on the website itself, or follow links.

If your browser doesn't support RSS subscriptions then you will need an RSS reader. There is a wide variety available to either download or sign up to and many are free of charge. These applications will vary, but generally if a website displays the orange RSS icon you can simply copy the website's URL into your RSS reader to subscribe to the feed.