RSS Help

The School of Psychology News pages make use of a technology called RSS (which means Really Simple Syndication), it is also sometimes refered to as a 'newsfeed'. RSS makes it possible for you to use a single tool to easily read news and posts from weblogs and news sites across the web. The news comes to you without using email.

The following instructions are not specific to the School of Psychology RSS Feed and can be used to help setup feeds from other sites. Here is how you can get started:

On a majority of weblogs and some online community discussions and news sites, you'll see links and buttons like these:

or:
Syndicate this site (XML)

Think about weblogs like individual news sources that create headlines and RSS as a way to read the news more easily. Something called a RSS newsreader or aggregator allows you keep up with these headlines more efficiently. It can be a replacement for visiting sites individually or subscribing to email newsletters. Using RSS, the news comes to you. It allows you to use a single tool to read news on the sites you choose.

Modern Browsers

Modern browsers such as:

• Mozilla 2 and above
• Opera 9 and above
• Safari 3 and above
• Internet Explorer 7 and above

can manage Newsfeeds without the use of any external newsreader software.

News Readers

Generally if you click the newsfeed button or link, the older browsers will display the raw XML code used to describe the newsfeed. This XML code is designed to be read only by a "RSS" news reader.

How it works:

First, you need to download an RSS newsreader. A good open-source RSS newsreader is Feedreader, although any reader will do really.

Once you have a news reader installed you can start addng newsfeeds. To add the School of Psychology Newsfeed find the link on the bottom of all 'News' pages. You'll see a bunch of XML code. All you need to worry about is the URL (website address) on that page:

http://www.psy.uq.edu.au/rss/newsfeed.rss

Copy the URL and open your newsreader.

With your newsreader open, look for "New Feed" or some way to add a site. It should be very obvious. Once you click this button or link, the application will ask for the address of the site you'd like to add. Paste the .rss (or .rdf or .xml) address into the application.

Once you've added a site, you should see that the RSS reader displays the "headlines" from the site. By clicking a headline, you can read the news from the site without going to it. You should quickly see how it works. If you added my site, you should see my latest entries each time you open your newsreader.