What is RSS?
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.
RSS is a web feed protocol used to publish frequently-updated content, such as blogs, news feeds or podcasts.
From a user's perspective, it's a means of discovering new or recent content (such as news headlines) without requiring you
to constantly visit a given website to see what's new.
Instead, your RSS reader brings new content to you, as a list of possible webpages to visit.
Note that the reader doesn't load the actual content; rather, for each entry it displays a page title, and a hyperlink to the article or webpage.
Dreamflows RSS feeds
All Dreamflows RSS feeds are in RSS 2.0 format.
Each feed contains only those webpages that have changed in the last week, most recently-changed webpage first.
The feeds are:
- All Pages - all pages with new content, including Realtime and Daily Reports.
- No Realtime Report - all pages with new content, including Daily Reports, but excluding the Realtime Report.
- No Flow Reports - all pages with new content, but excluding Daily and Realtime Reports.
Which feed to select is, of course, up to you.
Your decision will center around the depth of your desire to be notified every time a given flow report changes.
Realtime reports are updated every 30 minutes during the day, and every hour at night.
The Daily reports are usually updated between 4:30 and 5pm daily; a lot depends on Dreamflows' Internet connection speed.
All times are Pacific Time.
Setting up an RSS feed from Dreamflows
To read an RSS feed, you need a program called a feed reader or aggregator.
Comparison shopping is beyond the scope of this article, however choices include the Live Bookmarks feature of Firefox and Opera,
the Sage add-on to Firefox, and Google Reader.
Here are several ways to set up an RSS feed from Dreamflows:
- If you're using Firefox 2.0 or later, you can add the Sage extension.
After adding the Sage Add-on,
visit the Dreamflows Home Page.
Click on the green Sage leaf next to the address bar on your browser, then click on the magnifying glass in the panel that opens up on the left.
Choose from the list of possible feeds.
- If you're using a recent version of Firefox or Opera, you can use Live Bookmarks.
Visit the Dreamflows Home Page.
The Live Bookmarks icon
will appear on the right of the address bar.
Click on it and choose from the list of possible feeds.
-
Visit the Dreamflows Home Page.
Near the bottom of the page, locate the bullet item describing how to set up an RSS feed.
Click on the
symbol for the feed of your choice.
Follow the instructions.
-
Open your reader, or read its documentation, and follow the instructions specific to it.
If it asks you for the feed's URL, choose between the following:
- All Pages - http://www.dreamflows.com/rss/rss.all.xml
- No Realtime Report - http://www.dreamflows.com/rss/rss.nrt.xml
- No Flow Reports - http://www.dreamflows.com/rss/rss.nfr.xml
Note that in each case, the feed's name is pretty long and descriptive; it's that way to make it easier for you to select which one you want.
To change (shorten?) it, just edit the feed's Properties in your reader.
This page was last updated Sat, Apr 9, 2022.