What are RSS feeds?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Not a really helpful term. But they are very useful. An RSS feed is a document (XML based) which contains content items, summaries of stories or update details with web links to longer versions. Feeds are used to deliver structured information to users.

In our case, we have RSS feeds on the main page and the Latest Ride Information page, plus a few other places. Look at the table at the bottom of this page. The RSS feeds are automatically generated to contain the new information from these pages. If you "subscribe" to these feeds, you will get the information from these pages fed straight to your reader.

Who cares?

Ok - so all the techo stuff is out of the way - if you have read this far, then I am sure that you are wondering "what on earth does this have to do with me??". Good question, and one I didn't even bother to ask myself until I just happened to buy myself an iPod. I needed "podcasts" - but that is another topic. I also found that RSS feeds are REALLY useful - and I stress this - they are really useful and convenient.

Let me just give you my scenario - I sit at work all day on the computer - I get all the usual stuff popping up in my email. I also have my Omea RSS reader stting there - it picks up my feeds every few minutes. I am currently getting (amongst other things), Dilbert, The Dilbert Blog, Weird News, all the BBTA stuff, and heaps of other interesting stuff. As soon as something comes in on (say) the BBTA feeds, I get a popup notification, and then I can go read it. It is almost like an email feed.

Let me give you a good real life example - let us say that it is Friday, and Joe Bloggs decides to put on a ride for the next day, Saturday. He enters the ride into the Ride Calendar as per normal. His problem is that now he has to hope that people will come onto the BBTA website, go to the Ride Calendar and notice that there is a new ride listed. He can email/ring the Rides Co-ordinator, who may or may not be able to send out a mass email to all the members to let them know of this extra ride. A lot of effort. In the meantime, a few minutes after the new ride was entered, I have an update on my RSS feed with the full details of the ride. Since it is a new entry, it will also be bold in my reader - I know very quickly that a new ride has been added and the full details. Nobody has had to do anything, yet I know about the new ride within minutes.

How to subscribe

Which brings up the next question - how do you get and read these feeds?

RSS Readers

To actually get and display an RSS feed, you need a program on your computer that does this. This program is often called an aggregator as you would generally get feeds from all over the place, not just the BBTA website.

The RSS reader manages your feed subscriptions, monitoring and downloading any new content as it appears.

You will need to get yourself an RSS reader.

Suggested RSS readers

There are quite a few RSS readers out there - mostly free ones. Some are web-browser based, some run in your operating system. There are basically two types - those that cater for podcasting, and those that do not. Most people need the "non podcasting" type, and I have found that the best ones are...



Podcasting is a special form of RSS feed where you actually do not really want the text content of a feed - you want the files that are enclosed in the feed. These enclosures are often MP3 audio files (and more commonly video). If you have an iPod, you will be very interested in podcasting!

How to subscribe

How simple this is will depend on your RSS reader and how well it integrates into your web browser. There are basically two methods...

1. right click on the RSS image on the page you want to subscribe to (or the links in the table below). Select "Copy link location". Then paste this into your RSS reader as a new subscription. In your RSS reader you will have selected an option to "subscribe to feed". It will then ask you for the URL of the feed. Paste in the link location you just copied from the BBTA RSS icon. That is it.

2. if you have web browser integration for your RSS reader (ie, like with Omea), you simply right click on the BBTA page you want to subscribe to, and select "Subscribe to feed for this page in Omea". Omea will then scan the page and extract the feeds and all information required. Very simple. Here are the links here to save you the time...

Main Page	http://www.bbta.org/rss_0.xml
Latest Ride Info	http://www.bbta.org/rss_1.xml
Members News	http://www.bbta.org/rss_3.xml
Rides for next 14 days	http://www.bbta.org/calendarix/rss.php