This is an RSS feed icon

Go ahead, click on it. Most modern browser know what to do with an RSS feed. This feed icon contains a link to the RSS feed for this wiki. It shows all of the changes that have been made to this wiki.

What and Why?

the cleanest explanation I've found is a page at Northwestern University, here is a portion of that page

What is RSS?

RSS is an document you can download from the web which describes website content, news, and resources from a specific website. Users of RSS can have up-to-date content from websites delivered to them and viewable via a news aggregator. A news aggregator is a type of software which is specifically tailored to receive these kinds of RSS feeds.

The XML coding within an RSS feed allows for the retrieval of a web source's content. Essentially, the feeds can contain a summary of the new content on a web site or anything else a website creator desires to share. For example, a company could send out a feed containing information about new product offers, new shareholder information, etc. Popular news sources and blogs (web logs) typically have RSS feeds, such as Wired News, Reuters, and ABC News. For more general information about RSS see RSS For Non-Techie Librarians or and ABC News's explanation of RSS.

Why is RSS useful?

RSS saves time. Instead of remembering to visit a favorite Website, the news or information you want comes directly into your computer at whatever interval you want. In addition, most RSS feeds contain only links, headlines, or brief synopses of new information. That means that the small amount of data found in an RSS feed can be sent to any XML-compatible device, a cell phone, pager, or handheld computer, without a lengthy download process. This also provides a way for you to receive customized information without having to reveal personal information about yourself.

Source: http://www.library.northwestern.edu/rssinfo.html

How?

Enabling RSS in your wiki

Log into your wiki as an Administrator. Go to your Settings page. Then go to the RSS & Atom page. You will see links to enable and disable your feeds as shown here.

Grab the RSS feed address

Most feed aggregators will ask you for the URL or internet address for your feed. To get the address, go to the bottom of your wiki and look for the orange RSS icon. Right click on it and "Copy Shortcut" or "Copy Link Location". Now go back to your aggregator and paste in the address.

The feed address for this wiki looks like this:

RSS feeds for individual pages

The regular feed for your wiki reports all changes to it. What if you only want to see the changes to a single page? This can be done.

As above, you can get the address of your feed from the orange icon in the bottom of the wiki by right clicking and copying it. At the end of that address, you can add the page name by adding ?page=YourPage to the end of that address.

If I wanted to get only the feeds for the FrontPage here, then the RSS feed address would look like this.

In addition, you can add a piece of java script to your page or to the SideBar that will generate the RSS page link automatically.

Here is the code to insert in the page.

See RssPageLinkWidget for a Java Script widget that adds an RSS page link to the page info section of your wiki.

Different methods for displaying RSS feeds.

• You can get RSS feeds on a portal home page like Yahoo, MSN, or Google.
• You can use an RSS web service.
• You can download and install an RSS reader on your computer.
• You can use gadgets to display RSS feeds in your wiki.
• You can use the built in RSS reader in your web browser.
• You can send RSS feeds to your email account

Here is a video showing some options.

VideoJug: How To Use RSS Feeds

Problems?

Browser issues:

Safari changes "http:" to "feed:" when you enter a RSS url -- which then breaks things when a Safari user sends the link to a MSIE user.