RSS stands for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. It’s a protocol designed, way back in the 1990’s, to allow customers to aggregate content from frequently updated websites without having to visit the websites and check manually. By 2015, most people preferred to use social media for aggregated content.
However, web developers have found many ingenious ways to continue to use them and other types of feeds, for example, syndicating podcasts. RSS is only one of the feed sharing protocols that websites can use to provide a feed of content. The COFA web team uses feeds to pull content from one site and share it on another, examples include:
- All events from the department and unit sites are automatically added to the College site.
- Some sites have the ability to also share events to the University Calendar using feeds.
- All Alumni in the News items entered on the College site are “fed” out to the corresponding department site.
- News features from the departments are also “pulled” into the College site.
The feeds help reduce people hours entering duplicate content in multiple places and increases promotional opportunities within the college. If you know of a use for this kind of automation that we can help make possible, let us know.
Still want to give RSS a try?
You’ll need a Reader for your computer. Below are links to reader programs for Windows, Macintosh, iOS and Android platforms, available for free download. These are not pieces of software supported or endorsed by the College of Fine Arts or the University of Texas at Austin. They are free programs written by third-party software vendors, and any problems you may encounter while running them should be taken up with their makers.
- PC: Feedly
- Mac: NetNewsWire Lite
- iOS/Android/Web: Feedly
Learn More
Tech Crunch article, RSS is Undead, from 2018. RSS wikipedia page.
