Syndication

Instead of manually visiting sites to check if they’ve published new content, syndication feeds allow you to subscribe and get updates from sites in a so-called feed reader (also called an RSS reader or aggregator). Your feed reader checks the syndication feeds you’ve subscribed to for any changes and then shows all the new content for your perusal.

You end up with what is in essence a curated newspaper based on exactly what you want to read. It is similar to subscribing to newsletters, but with far less cruft clogging up your email inbox.

To use a feed, you’ll first need to get a feed reader. There are plenty of free options available, with FeedFlow and Croissant being my favourites. Lots of email clients like Thunderbird and Outlook also have support for subscribing to feeds.

In your selected feed reader there will be a way to input the URL of a feed. Some sites even have auto-detection, so you can just paste in the normal link and the feed will be found. For others, you’ll need to track down a direct link to the feed. They’re often represented with a white wireless icon on an orange background.

Syndication feeds come in a few different formats. The three most widely used are RSS (Really Simple Syndication), Atom, and JSON. They’re slightly different on a technical level but largely identical in usage. They’re all just big text files that list content and some information about them. You only need to provide one format if there are multiple provided. For instance, you don’t need to provide a JSON Feed and an RSS feed, just one of them.

Below is an example of what a raw RSS feed with one item looks like, though you’d never need to interact with one of these directly. You’d just copy the link into your chosen feed reader.

<rss version="2.0">
    <channel>
        <title>Vale.Rocks Posts</title>
        <description>Long form writings about assorted topics.</description>
        <link>https://vale.rocks/posts</link>
        <atom:link href="https://vale.rocks/posts/feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/>
        <item>
            <pubDate>Mon, 25 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <title>Lorem Ipsum</title>
            <link>https://vale.rocks/posts/lorem-ipsum</link>
            <guid>https://vale.rocks/posts/lorem-ipsum</guid>
            <description>A page for testing and trialing formatting, features, and typography by seeing how they interact in complex arrangements to catch edge cases at scale.</description>
            <content:encoded>...</content:encoded>
        </item>
    </channel>
</rss>

Then, depending on how your feed reader is configured, it’ll fetch each feed automatically or on demand and list all the new content. There are no algorithms dictating what you see, and you’re served everything you’ve subscribed to.

Lots and lots of sites have syndication feeds, even if they don’t always make it obvious. They’re widely used by everyone from NASA, to Apple, to small sites like this one, as is evidenced below.