I know that I was. I kept seeing little “RSS” and “SYNDICATE ME!” buttons and links on other’s blogs. Curious, yet cautious, I checked it out. It really isn’t very scary. You don’t have to be very technically saavy to reap the full benefits of RSS.

First of all, what the heck does RSS stand for? It is an abbreviation for Really Simple Syndication. Now that you know what it stands for, what does it mean? Since I don’t like getting too technical myself, I’ll make this as simple as I can.

RSS mirrors your blog (or website, or forum, or whatever…) into an RSS file. This RSS file can be referenced by an online newsreader in order to notify you whenever the site has been updated by its author.

So, in more practical terms, I can add the RSS address for your blog (and all my other friend’s blogs) into my newsreader – which in my case is a website called Bloglines.com – and I only have to check bloglines to find out if you have blogged again. Cause, why waste my time visiting 20 blogs if only 4 have new content?

bloglinesYou can see from the screenshot here how bloglines looks when one of the blogs that I have added gets updated. In this case, ChurchMarketingSucks.com has one new post. So, it basically allows you to have a one-stop-shop for your daily blog surfs. Of course, there are other newsreaders online and other ways to check RSS feeds, but this is by no means a comprehensive lecture on RSS feeds.

As far as the two buttons I have in the right column, the first is just simply a link to the raw RSS file for my blog for you to use how you like. The SUB BLOGINES button will actually add my blog to your existing bloglines account.

I hope this helped unravel the mystery of RSS a tiny bit for you.