Messing with themes and RSS feeds

You’ll probably notice that I’ve changed the site’s theme again. I’m still messing around with this whole “blog” thing so I’ll probably end up changing it again.

I like this particular theme because it allows the RSS buttons to remain visible as I move the sidebar widgets around. My prior theme didn’t do that. Knowing how much I rely on RSS feeds, I would like to think that as other people find my site (and find it useful), they’ll subscribe to the RSS feeds. If they’re not visible, then it can be a pain to set it up.

While I’m on the topic, RSS (which stands for Real Simple Syndication) is one of the coolest things about the web. Previously, you had to check back with your favorite sites frequently to see if anything has changed. Now, using an RSS reader, you’ll get new updates every half hour or so.

Most of my news reading is done this way now. Depending on the feed, I don’t even have to visit the site to read an article. However, sites can put ads in the feed so they don’t lose out on any advertising revenue. And since RSS feeds are essentially small XML “pages”, you can embed pretty much anything into them.

If you don’t have an RSS reader yet, I highly recommend using the Google Reader. I switched to it a few weeks back because I was sick of having to manage several different RSS readers on the different computers I use. Now I only have to visit my Google Reader feeds on any Internet-connect computer and it’s continually updated.