Keeping Track of Changes...

There have been many a varied calls over time, from users who want new and interesting ways in which to keep track of changes on The Druid Network web site. Facilitating these calls has often taken some work by the techie team behind the site, and no one solution appears to be the solution for every user.

The site now has several update feeds, including the 'Community and Web News' listing on the right hand side of the Home page, and the 'Recent Forum Topics' and 'Member's News' feeds (available to Members only - well, we have to have some reason for full Membership, so much of our site is free to browse!)

Members can subscribe to the 'Members News' by clicking the appropriate button beside the feed, and this enables an email to be sent when a new News item is published. 'Recent Forum Topics' is what it says - a listing of the latest postings on the Members message board.

The 'Community and Web News' is RSS enabled. If, like me, you have never explored RSS you may find it's exactly what you were looking for - a feed monitored by a utility (already built into software you may already have, or easily downloaded) that shows you the latest updates to the site.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (mostly anyway; there are always alternative meanings if you talk to a geek). To quote from this site, 'RSS is a defined standard based on XML with the specific purpose of delivering updates to web-based content. Using this standard, webmasters provide headlines and fresh content in a succinct manner. Meanwhile, consumers use RSS readers and news aggregators to collect and monitor their favorite feeds in one centralized program or location. Content viewed in the RSS reader or news aggregator is place known as an RSS feed.'

The RSS button looks like this:

Clicking it in Internet Explorer, or several other browsers including Firefox, will bring up a page listing the latest updates on that page along with an option to 'subscribe' to the feed.

Internet Explorer

This is not the best implementation of an RSS feed reader, but it works and is generally to be found on the computer, even if it's not the primary browser of choice. Subscribed RSS feeds are added to the 'Feeds' menu available under the Star / Favourites Centre (Alt-C), along with Favourite and History. Clicking on the RSS feed for The Druid Network - Community & Web News (this title needs fettling) will take you to the update list no matter what site your browser is on at the time.

FireFox 3

This has a much prettier presentation of the feed than Internet Explorer. It works in the same way however, with only one addition. When subscribing to a feed you are given an option of which feed reader to use, dependant upon what is available to you. For example, on my computer I was presented with four options (and other); Firefox Live Bookmarks, Bloglines, My Yahoo and Google Reader. I used Live Bookmarks for convenience.

There are many other utility RSS readers available on the Internet, such as Feed Reader but we'll leave it to you to explore those once you're familiar with the concept! I hope this article has helped a few folk. Let us know if it can be improved - especially if you commit to improving it! But if you are having troubles or have a different browser and have difficulties, do get in touch.