How to find the RSS feed of a website (and other things RSS)

First of all, if you don't know what RSS is, go here for reference.

I don't know if I'm doing it the hard way or what but sometimes here's what I do to check for the RSS link of a certain website. I'd like to get updated but I just can't find that freakin button to subscribe. This helps me a lot: I just go to Feedburner. I type in the URL of the website I want to subscribe to via RSS feed, then I click "Next". Then Feedburner will check if there is an existing feed for that website or not.

Now this is where I babble about RSS feeds.

I used this to subscribe to LiveJournal accounts because there is no visible RSS feed for LiveJournals, I think (or maybe I'm just not looking hard enough). I used this for Oh No They Didn't once but later on I figured it was such a bad idea because there are multiple posts coming in from this site and I don't even read every damn thing anyway. Plus, I see NSFW photos when I don't want to. AND the LJ cuts are there for the suspense and I miss those so yeah I chose to view the website instead rather than receive updates via RSS. One thing I like about RSS feeds though is I don't miss any posts (if I check regularly). I also had Perez Hilton on RSS but just like ONTD, there were many NSFW photos so I had to remove my subscription. But there was one time I saw a Mandy Moore post (it was about her visiting a hospital, nothing scandeluhz coz Mandy Moore is boring) in my Perez feed, but when I clicked on the hyperlink there, the page is non-existent on his website. Perez must have removed it. Nothing escapes the feed, I guess.

I think the feed owner can even send an RSS feed update without the update showing on the website. I don't know much about it, perhaps it's a Feedburner feature because I've had something like that from one of my subscriptions too.

OK here's what I think about using RSS feeds in general.

Advantages?

1. Updates get sent to your RSS feed reader. They are all in one place and you don't need to have many tabs on your browser just to read posts for every goddang subscription you have.

2. Perfect when the site you want to access is blocked from where you are. At work, YouTube is blocked but I'd like to get updated with site changes or news so I subscribed to the YouTube corporate blog. Yep, that's how geeky I am. (Note: If you'd like to get updated with the YouTube community itself, you can't just sit comfortably on your chair reading feeds. It's best to get involved with the people in front of and behind the camera.)

3. If you like the content of a website but you think its layout looks like shit or it loads like a motherf*cker, then you can avoid the eye sore and the lag by using RSS feeds.

Disadvantages?

1. Sometimes it discourages me to leave comments to the blogs I'm subscribed to because there are no forms on RSS feeds. I don't even use the hyperlink for comments that much too. Something about not seeing the comment box makes me want to shut up and just read. RSS feeds kind of "unbridge" the gap, if you know what I'm saying. I mean, you get updated with the content of the site, but it becomes one-way. The exchange of thoughts and ideas of the website owner and readers is lessened.

2. To support the first statement, you also do not contribute much to the stats and earnings of a website if you just read its RSS feed (unless there are ads on the RSS feed, but still the statistics suffer a bit).

3. Like I said earlier, you see FLIPPIN EVERYTHING, including posts you do not want to read. You are kind of forced to go over NSFW posts too even if you choose to skip or what. How will you know you need to skip if you don't check out the content of the post anyway?


If you use RSS like Post-Its; to remind you of a new post so you can access the website afterwards, that's really cool of you. It takes more time from you, but then again, if you visit the site you follow, you add up to the traffic of the site. That's the least you can do to show your support for the website owner.

This post has no direction. I'm sorry. Geez this sucks.