I figured it would be a good idea to explain a little about RSS feeds, why they’re great, and how this blog implements them.

What I publish #

1. Posts feed /index.xml - posts to the blog
   When I update a post, it is assigned a new <guid>, which, in some RSS feed readers, will cause that post to be marked as unread, or brought back to the top of your feed. This is the best way to square an old spec meant for chronological content with the circle that is my continually updated stuff that I’ve found, if you have another idea, let me know!
2. Seedlings feed
   A feed for my little thoughts and not-quite-posts, called seedlings.

If you’re getting errors, you can check validity as these URLs, if there’s an error, email me! posts, seedlings.

What is a feed? #

An Atom feed, RSS feed, or just feed, is kind of like a menu that a computer can understand of what’s on my site. An example of a feed in use is podcasts. When you subscribe to a podcast, you’re telling your phone to go and ask the server where the podcast is hosted for a menu every hour^[1], and if there’s a new menu item, it gets added to your podcast app.

RSS feeds are a really great way to “follow” someone’s work without having to be captive to a platform like Twitter, or an email list. I don’t have to have your data (email). Your reader app can just fetch my feed every so often, and show you new items in it.

I use Omnivore, it’s a feed reader and a read-it-later app, and I love it. It’s hugely improved my reading productivity and ability to keep up to date with people’s blogs, news and other stuff. It lets you subscribe to feeds and newsletters, save pages for later, and it digests all of that into a nice reader devoid of ads or other distractions.

RSS feeds are a great way to allow people to stitch together disparate parts of the indieweb/personal web, bringing the benefits of social media without the platform capitalism, lock in or censorship of you daring to call someone cisgender.