If you're not sure what all this RSS mumbo jumbo is about, you are forgiven - up until a few months ago¹⁾, neither did I.

I now know that RSS stands for really simple syndication (amongst other things), and that it's a super-easy way for you to keep up to date with such things as news, forum messages, updates to the users' gallery, or additions to the users' tutorials. Simply put, you can subscribe to the RSS news feeds in your web browser, or in a dedicated news aggregator program if you prefer, and thereafter it will check automatically for updates (hourly, daily, whatever) and notify you if anything new pops up.

• Skip to How to subscribe?
• Skip to List of L3DT news feeds.

The main benefits of RSS are:

1. You'll never miss any unexpected and important happenings, like an unscheduled critical update, or a really insightful forum post.
2. You'll never have to remember to check back for updates. It will tell you when they're available. Similarly, if you're waiting for a reply to your post in the forum, RSS will deliver it to your door.
3. It saves bandwidth, as the news headers are a lot smaller to download than the actual webpage.
4. Finally, it saves you brainpower. Your browser/aggregator remembers which items you have and haven't read, so you'll know immediately what is new and what is not.

Here's a little screenshot of Feedreader, a popular (and free) news aggregator:

On the left you can see my list of newsfeeds, the top right pane shows the news items for the selected feed, and the bottom right pane shows the description of the item, and gives a link to the full article.

Anyhoo, it's not just a fad, it's really useful. Too complex sounding and geeky for you? Not at all, it's downright simple…though it might be geeky. Whaddaya say, wanna give it a try?

If you're a bit new to all of this, I would recommend using Opera; it has really simple and intuitive RSS support, in addition to being a great web-browser. If you're not really keen on changing browsers; that's cool - most modern browsers also support RSS, though perhaps not as well as Opera. You can also use web based news aggregators like Google Reader, or stand alone programs like FeedReader. On the pages linked below I have outlined the pros and cons of each of the RSS readers I've tried, as well as procedures involved using them.

If you're using one of the following browsers, click on the link to go to the RSS guide for that browser:

• Opera — excellent, and easy to use.
• Mozilla Firefox — excellent, with some hard work first.
• Internet Explorer — not very good.

You can also use web-based RSS readers, which work in any browser:

• Google Reader — the only one I've tried, but there are more.

There are several free, stand-alone news aggregator programs out there (i.e. not based on a web browser), but the only one I've tried is:

• FeedReader — quite popular and easy to use.

Below are the actual addresses of the RSS news feeds for L3DT. Some feed readers, but thankfully not all, require you to enter these addresses manually, or by copy and paste.

• http://www.bundysoft.com/news/blogfeed.php — News weblog
• http://www.bundysoft.com/phpBB2/rss.php — Forums
• http://www.bundysoft.com/coppermine/rss.php — Users' gallery
• http://www.bundysoft.com/wiki/feed.php — Users' Wiki ²⁾