What is RSS?
RSS, or "Really Simple Syndication" enables you to easily discover when websites have updated their content.
Instead of having to visit sites each day or week, wondering whether there's something new, you can set your News Reader to do the task for you. It will automatically tell you when new material has been added to each site.
Let City Action come to you!
We currently provide an RSS feed for the City Action volunteering opportunities database and the blog service.
By subscribing to the volunteering database feed, you can keep track of all current and new volunteering opportunities in your chosen areas (London borough) and volunteer roles (e.g. sharing HR skills).
For example, by clicking on the drop down menus on the volunteering opportunities bulletin you can choose to look at volunteering roles within a certain borough (or boroughs) e.g. 'Camden', and by type (or types) e.g. 'Sharing marketing and publicity skills'. Once the opportunities have loaded you can then click on the RSS button on the left hand side in order to have a continuous feed of these opportunities into your chosen News Reader (see below for more information). This means that you will have 'live' volunteering opportunities sent to you every day which are automatically updated.
The blog feed will provide you with a link to all current and most recent blog postings.
How do I get started?
To 'subscribe' to City Action's volunteering opportunities or blog RSS feed, you need to have a tool called a News Reader (also sometimes called a News Aggregator). These come in many shapes and sizes. Some popular ones include My Yahoo!l, Google Reader, Feed Reader, and Netvibes. All of these are free, but some News Readers require paid subscriptions.
To see an example of an RSS reader already set up, you can view City Action's netvibes reader here.
I've got a News Reader
Great, once you have signed up for a News Reader, you just need to add City Action's 'feeds'. In most cases, you'll need to copy and paste the City Action RSS link into your News Reader. An easy way to do this is right click on the RSS button and choose "save target as..." (in Internet Explorer) or "Copy link location" (in Firefox). Then paste it into the place required in your News Reader.
Often, the News Reader tool you choose will provide a step by step guide on how to upload an RSS feed once you have signed up to it.
If you have any further questions about how to set up an RSS feed please do not hesitate to contact the City Action team via email or telephone: 0207 332 1762/1753 and we will be happy to help you.