The Problem
RSS is one of those technologies that people who have used the web for a while get used to. Newsreaders and blog syndication have popularised the format. Browsers like FireFox (and the soon to be released Internet Explorer 7) allow you to bookmark news feeds so you can get a snapshot of a site's activity without too much hassle.
Trouble is, for a newbie they can be a bit intimidating.
When you add an RSS feed to a page, generally with a little orange RSS button, you are bound to cause a bit of confusion. Not everybody knows what they are, or how to use them. Click on the link and the feeds themselves tend to look a bit intimidating. All that unstyled code. Here's an example feed (which you may wish to copy and save as rss.xml for use later):
<rss version='2.0'>
<channel>
<title>Some Site News</title>
<link>http://www.somesite.com/</link>
<description>Some Site</description>
<lastBuildDate>Tues, 4 Oct 2005 23:00:14 GMT</lastBuildDate>
<item>
<guid ispermalink='true'>http://www.somesite.com/17053.html</guid>
<pubDate>Tues, 4 Oct 2005 12:10:01 GMT</pubDate>
<title>New info about the site</title>
<link>http://www.somesite.com/17053.html</link>
<description>So here's some info</description>
<comments>http://www.somesite.com/17053.html</comments>
</item>
<item>
<guid ispermalink='true'>http://www.somesite.com/16720.html</guid>
<pubDate>Tues, 4 Oct 2005 16:42:51 GMT</pubDate>
<title>Jobs</title>
<link>http://www.somesite.com/16720.html</link>
<description>We have jobs available...</description>
<comments>http://www.somesite.com/16720.html</comments>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>
A man of many talents, Matt has been a web designer, technical editor, and jewellery picker. He is currently on contract for the Birmingham City University, producing pages for research centres.