SUBSCRIBE OUR FEEDS
- THE "GURBANI BLOG" FEEDS: Our Gurbani Blog has several different Feeds . When you subscribe to them, they automatically deliver notification to you of the arrival of the latest blog posts, comments, etc. at our Gurbani Blog. Please subscribe to Blog Feeds directly from our BLOG PAGE.
- Announcement/Notification of the New Gurbani Reflections: wehenever we post a new Gurbani Reflections at our parent page, we will announce it at our Blog page. That means, if you have subscribed to the Blog feed, the same feed will also notify you of the arrival of the new Gurbani Reflections.
ABOUT FEEDS
1. NEW TO FEEDS?If you are new to FEEDS, the following basic and "simple" information may be helpful to get you up and running particularly if you are not a pretty technical feed expert or don’t live and breath this stuff. Apart from anything else, we documented this basic information for educating ourselves with the very basics since it will give us something to refer back to and will set the groundwork for understanding feeds.
Since RSS FEEDS seem to be more common and widely used, the following discussion is limited to RSS Feeds only.
We all have busy lives with very little time. Web surfing is fun but can take hours going to visit every single website and blog you enjoy. Wouldn’t it be fabulous if you could just get all the updates from all your favorite websites and blogs in one place, automatically?
Well now you can, and it is called RSS feed.
For example, do you want to keep up to date with the latest posts on our Gurbani Blog? Also, do you want to keep up to date with the "What is new at Gurbani.org" page (updates, changes, news and new developments at this Website)? Now you can. The most efficient way you can recieve updates (automatically delivered to you) is by subscribing to the RSS Feeds of our website (or any other site for that matter). But what is RSS ?
1.1 What is RSS?
RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication", "Rich Site Summary", etc., a means to share content on the web. It is a method that permits subscription to regular updates, delivered automatically to you. This technology is being used by millions of web users around the world to keep track of their favorite websites. In other words, it is a way online for you to get a quick list of the latest updates from all your favorite websites and blogs all in one place (automatically). How cool is that?
In the "old days" of the web to keep track of updates on a website you had to "bookmark" websites in your browser and manually return to them on a regular basis to see what had been added.
RSS Changes Everything. That is, what if you could tell a website to let you know every time they update? In a sense, this is what RSS does for you.
2. HOW TO USE RSS
This section briesfly describes how to use RSS feeds.
2.1 Where to look for RSS Feeds?
There are two places to look for a Website's RSS Feed:
- On the Website
- In Your Browser
2.2 On Site Subscription
Over the last few years you may have noticed a lot of little buttons and widgets appearing on your favorite sites and blogs. Generally little orange buttons, links called RSS, XML, ATOM and many more. They come in all colors, shapes and sizes. But any time you see any of these buttons, or a text link, or anything like them it means that the site you are viewing almost certainly has a feed that you can subscribe to. In most cases it's as simple as either copying and pasting the link associated with the button into your RSS Reader or clicking the button and following the instructions to subscribe using the feed reader of your choice.
2.3 Browser Subscription
Many latest internet browsers now have the ability to find and subscribe to RSS Feeds built right into them. Latest browsers like Microsoft IE, Safari and Firefox allow you to subscribe to RSS feeds through the browser, and it's called "live bookmarking".
When you surf to a site you can usually tell if it has an RSS feed by looking for an RSS symbol or a text link either in the right hand side of address bar where you type in the site's URL or outside the address bar, or text links in your browser window, on the sides of the Website page, or on the bottom of the page.
Look for the little orange icon in your browser. Click on that and you'll be locating that website's RSS Feed (e.g., you will be locating Gurbani.org's RSS Feeds if you are on our website). Using Safari Browser it is a blue RSS icon. Other modern browsers will have similar icons.
You can quickly and easily subscribe to that feed by clicking these icons. As you subscribe to feeds you'll see that the new notification of unread entries from the sites or pages you're tracking will be marked as bold in MS 8+ browser. Fire Fox 3+ browser shows the new entry at the top of the older items (FF browser does not mark the new notification in bold as the MS browser does (they may in the future). As you click on them you'll see the latest update and can read it right there in the browser. We don't know much about Safari browser.
Once you've done this and have subscribed to a few feeds you'll begin to see unread items in your browser/Feed Reader and you can start reading.
2.4 Feed Readers
Suppose you have 50 sites and blogs that you like to visit regularly. Going to visit each websit and blog everyday could take you hours. With RSS, you can "subscribe" to a website or blog, and get "fed" all the new headlines from all of these 50 sites and blogs in one list, and see what's going on in minutes instead of hours. What a time saver!
There are many feed readers going around with a variety of approaches and features that provide the flexibility of complete accessibility. A good place to start is with a couple of free and easy to use web based ones like Google Reader and Bloglines. Either one will do if you're starting out (We use Google's Reader) - as we say there are many others to choose from but to get started either of these are fairly easy to use and will help you work out the basics of RSS.
Both of these feed readers work a little like email. As you subscribe to feeds you'll see that unread entries from the sites or pages you're tracking will be marked as bold. As you click on them you'll see the latest update and can read it right there in the feed reader. You are given the option to click through to the actual site/page or move onto the next unread item - marking the last one as 'read'.
2.5 Difference between using "RSS Readers" and "Browser Subscription"
The limitation with using RSS in "Browser Subscription" form is that you only have access to your RSS list from the computer you created the bookmarks on. If you want the flexibility of complete accessibility, then you may want to consider the RSS Reader route.
Hope this information was helpful to get you up and running. The best way to learn how to use all this is to simply subscribe to some feeds and give it a go. Note: You may learn more about RSS by searching the net.
Are you now Ready for subscribing to the Gurbani.org Feeds? Enjoy!