Roleplay with RolePlayGateway

You've heard that I read every single post on RolePlayGateway - and it's true. We get hundreds of forum posts per day, and I read every last one of them.

How do I do it? By using a technology called RSS. Coming up on May 1st is RSS Awareness Day, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to highlight this great opportunity for you to better improve your web experience.

What is RSS?

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a format used to deliver information from websites and pages that get updated regularly. An RSS document (which is called feed) contains either a summary or the full content from a website.

The main benefit of RSS is that it enables people to stay connected with their favorite websites without having to visit them. Once you subscribe to a particular RSS feed, you will automatically receive updates from the website that publishes the feed, whenever they release new content. The video below illustrates the process.



As you saw on the video, before you start subscribing to the RSS feeds of your favorite sites you will need to have an RSS reader. Below you will find a list of web-based and free RSS readers that you can use:

Google Reader <- RECOMMENDED!
Bloglines
Newsgator

Once you have your RSS reader working you can just head to your favorite website and subscribe by clicking on the RSS icon. Notice that most recent web browsers already identify RSS feeds, so you will be able to see the RSS icon both on the Navigation Bar of your browser and on the page itself, as the screenshot below illustrates.

Now you are ready to start using RSS feeds from all over the Internet! If you want to know more about it just check the Wikipedia entry for RSS.

And here's the link for RolePlayGateway's Forum Feed, just in case you're too lazy to go all the way up to your address bar to click the RSS feed icon:

If that's what you want, go down to the bottom of each thread, and click the "Subscribe topic" link. This will enabled you to receive updates over instant messenger (if you're configured Jabber in your profile) and/or email, whenever someone responds to those topics.

In the future, we do plan to implements a more diverse RSS system, but right now it only aggregates all posts in the forum.