HSfB Blogs and RSS Feeds

Our Current Blogs

Your Articles Weblog: http://hsfbarticles.blogspot.com/
Site News Weblog: http://hsfbsitenews.blogspot.com/

Our Current Feeds

Your Articles Feed: - Subscribe in a RSS reader
Site News Feed: - Subscribe in a RSS reader
Discussion Forums Feed: Temporarily Unavailable, Sorry!

You can keep track of what's new on HSfB via our weblogs and RSS feeds as well as visiting our site. Here's how...

What is a Weblog?

Definition - Blog: (noun) - A weblog or similar brief journal usually containing links and commentary thereon.

There are many definitions of what a weblog is. In it's simplest of simplest of forms, a weblog is a dated entry on a website. Weblogs originated in 1993/94 at the beginning of the internet itself. Back then they were lists of links to other sites with commentary alongside. The weblog editor, known as a blogger, surfs the web for topics of interest to him/her. They then post a weblog about one of the links that they found particularly interesting. Alongside these links would be commentary about the link itself.

Our weblogs are basically a journal of additions to the site, whether it be new articles written by our visitors, site news, news articles with even more to come.

What's the point?

You may wonder why bother when you can simply visit the site and see for yourself all the new items, i.e. our site news pages. The weblogs are another tool which is used to help promote the site and is simply an alternative to keeping track of what HSfB has to offer you. The great thing about weblogs is that they can easily utilise RSS feeds (see below) which makes for another viewing tool for convenience.

What is a RSS feed?

Using RSS enables reading of weblogs and our news feeds or forum feeds easy, as they can be imported into applications or other sites and not only on the site that they are posted on. All you have to do is look for the image which means that there is an RSS feed present - the orange RSS image has become a universal sign of a RSS feed being present.

Wouldn't it be better to have the latest news and features delivered directly to your desktop, rather than clicking from site to site? Well now you can, thanks to a very clever service of RSS feeds.

There is some discussion as to what RSS stands for, but the majority plump for 'Really Simple Syndication'. Put plainly, it allows you to identify the content you like and have it delivered directly to you.

It takes the hassle out of staying up-to-date, by showing you the very latest information that you are interested in.

If you are so busy that you don't have time to surf the web for your news and articles etc, then the first thing you need is something called a news reader. There are many different versions, some of which are accessed using a browser, and some of which are downloadable applications. All allow you to display and subscribe to the RSS feeds you choose.

Once you have chosen a news reader, all you have to do is to decide what content you want. For example, if you would like the latest articles written by you and published on our site, simply visit the 'Your Articles' page and you will notice an orange RSS button.

If you click on the button you can subscribe to the feed in various ways, including by dragging the URL of the RSS feed into your news reader or by cutting and pasting the same URL into a new feed in your news reader.

Some browsers, including Firefox, Opera and Safari, have functionality which automatically picks up RSS feeds for you. For more details on these, please check their websites.

How do I get a News Reader?

There is a range of different news readers available and new versions are appearing all the time.

Different news readers work on different operating systems, so you will need to take this into account when you make your choice.

A Selection of News Readers

Windows

Mac OS X

Web