What is RSS?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It is a way to quickly find out new information on the internet by the publishing of short headlines and a summary of the item. The user can then decide from that information whether to click on the link and read the full article, or bypass it.

These summaries (RSS files) are picked up and read by software known as RSS Readers or feed readers. The user subscribes to a feed and the RSS reader checks the user's subscribed feeds regularly for new work, downloads any updates that it finds, and provides a user interface to monitor and read the feeds. RSS can save you time by bringing to your desktop or mobile device lists of new headlines from your favourite websites. When one of the feeds you subscribe to is updated, you will receive an alert.

There are many choices of feed readers.

Getting started

You need to tell your RSS reader which online resources it should report on. To find which websites have enabled RSS, you can visit your favourite websites and look for an RSS link or XML symbol such as these

Most RSS readers have an "Add New Feed" function. To add an RSS feed, you need to paste the URL of the feed into your feed reader. One way to do this is to right click on the orange RSS icon and select "copy shortcut" or "copy link location" and paste it into the appropriate place in your RSS reader. You can find the URLs of all the feeds available on this website at www.aph.gov.au/Help/RSS_feeds.