What is an RSS feed? RSS explained without the jargon

RSS is a small file that a website publishes alongside its normal pages. It lists the latest things the site has posted: titles, dates, a summary or the full text, and a link to each one. A program called a feed reader checks that file every so often and shows you whatever is new.

That is all. You do not sign up with the website, you do not give it your email address, and nothing decides which posts you see: you get all of them, in order.

What it looks like

You will never need to read the file yourself, but it helps to see how simple it is. A minimal feed looks like this:

<rss version="2.0">
  <channel>
    <title>Example blog</title>
    <link>https://example.com/</link>
    <item>
      <title>My latest post</title>
      <link>https://example.com/latest-post/</link>
      <pubDate>Wed, 04 Mar 2026 09:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
    </item>
  </channel>
</rss>

Each item is one post. When the site publishes something, a new item appears at the top, and your reader notices it the next time it checks.

Where the name comes from

Depending on who you ask, RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” or “Rich Site Summary”. The format grew out of work at Netscape and UserLand Software at the end of the 1990s; the version almost everyone uses, RSS 2.0, dates from 2002, and its specification is kept by the RSS Advisory Board. There is also a close cousin, Atom, which does the same job with stricter rules. For a reader the difference does not matter; we explain why in a later guide.

Do sites still have feeds?

More than you would think. Every WordPress site has one by default, and WordPress runs a large share of the web. Most news sites publish feeds, often one per section. YouTube channels have feeds. Every podcast is, technically, an RSS feed. Many newsletters on Substack, Ghost or Buttondown can be read by feed too.

What has disappeared is the orange icon. Sites rarely advertise their feeds any more, so you sometimes need to look for them. A good feed reader will find the feed if you just paste the address of the site.

What you need to start

1. A feed reader. It can be a website, an app on your phone or computer, or software on your own server.
2. The addresses of a few sites you like.
3. Ten minutes.

Paste each site into the reader, let it find the feed, and you are done. From then on, new posts come to you instead of the other way around.