What is RSS?
RSS is how a website offers its content as a structured, subscribable feed. Here's what a feed actually is, how readers use it, and how RSS and Atom relate.
The short version
RSS, Really Simple Syndication: is a standard way for a website to publish its content as a machine-readable feed. Instead of visiting ten sites to see what’s new, you subscribe to their feeds in a feed reader, and new posts come to you, in order, with no algorithm deciding what you see. Those orange XML buttons you used to spot everywhere were the invitation: “here’s my feed, subscribe.”
What a feed actually is
A feed is an XML document the site keeps up to date. At the top it describes the channel (the site’s title, link, and description); below that is a list of items, each with a title, a link, a publish date, and the content or a summary. A reader fetches that document on a schedule, compares it to what it saw last time, and shows you what’s new. That’s the whole mechanism, a structured list a program can poll.
RSS vs Atom
You’ll see two feed formats in the wild, and they do the same job:
- RSS 2.0: the classic, widely-published format using
<channel>and<item>elements. Simple and everywhere. - Atom: a later IETF standard using
<feed>and<entry>. It’s stricter and more precisely specified (proper dates, explicit content types, namespacing).
A good feed reader handles both, so as a subscriber you rarely need to care which one a site uses.
How you use it
- Find the feed: many sites still link one, and browsers/readers can auto-discover it from a
tag in the page’s
<head>. - Subscribe in a feed reader (a dedicated app, or any tool that speaks RSS).
- Read: the reader polls each feed and collects new items into one chronological place you control.
Why it still matters
A feed is a standing offer of portable, chronological, un-gatekept access to a source you chose, no ranking, no engagement farming, no app lock-in. That’s why podcasts, newsletters, and the fediverse all quietly run on the same idea. Feeds are less visible than they were, but more load-bearing.
FAQ
Is RSS dead?
No, it became infrastructure. Every podcast subscription is an RSS feed, and the “follow a source, get its updates” model underpins newsletters and the fediverse. It lost its consumer face, not its role.
What were the orange XML buttons?
The web’s old universal “subscribe to my feed” icon. Clicking one handed your reader the feed URL to subscribe to.
Do I need RSS and Atom both?
As a reader, no, your app handles either. As a publisher, pick one; most use RSS 2.0, while Atom is the stricter choice.
Related
See the Feeds tools, why RSS didn’t die, and how feeds feed AI.