Notes from the LWW Webmaster

This site uses something called “RSS” quite a bit behind the scenes – Really Simple Syndication. Frankly, you don’t have to know that for it to be useful!

What it means practically is that you can have your software automatically fetch the latest content from this site every time your fire it up. “What software?”, I hear you ask. There are several FREE RSS-readers out there, for Macs & Windows & Linux – but the HANDIEST way is to probably use your web browser.

If you’ve ever seen this logo on a webpage:

you’ve visited a site that provides a “feed”.

So what’s a feed?

Behind the scenes, up yonder on the server where the website is stashed, is a piece of software that keeps track of when a new article is posted. That’s called a feed (there’s a good reason why, but I’m trying to stay practical here).

So how do I get it?

You tell your software what the feed address is (it’ll look like a regular web page address – a.k.a. URL). In Firefox or Opera all you have to do is click on the feed icon – it’ll ask if you want to subscribe to the feed. There should also be one of those icon up at the top of the screen – in teh address bar. Go ahead and click on it – I’ll wait!

Firefox and Opera are two excellent web browsers that are both free, and are available for Macs and Window machines.

Internet Explorer 7 also has that kind of capability – as does Safari.

Did I mention these are all FREE?

Another way to get a feed – if you use My Yahoo or the personalized Google page – is to set your page options to fetch the feed for you or you can use some of the many separate RSS reader softwares that are out there:

For Windows: RssReader (I haven’t checked this out, though) or see a “Best of” list

Online: Google Reader

Macs: Shrook (requires 10.4 or later) or see a “best of” list

So where do I click on this site to get a feed?

On the side of each page you should see the RSS logo. Click it to see what happens.

On the main page and on the Webmaster section you’ll be redirected to a service called “feedforall”, which allows you to easily add the feed to various online services. At this point that’s just an experiment, though.

In all other sections what happens will depend on your browser. If your web browser understands RSS feeds, then a box will popup at the top of your screen asking you what to do with this feed. If you let the browser handle it, then you should have a “feeds” menu item – that’s how you access the latest news.

Your friendly Webmaster