RSS, also known as Really Simple Syndication, is a web feed used to send automatic updates of website content such as blog entries, news headlines, podcasts, etc. In most cases there is no fee to subscribe to an RSS feed. Subscribing to RSS feeds helps people keep track of many different websites in a single news aggregator (aka "RSS reader" or "feed reader"). These readers regularly check a specific file on the website that identifies content changes, removing the need for you to manually check those sites looking for updates. Many website feeds can be added into your reader alerting you to updates that are meaningful to you.

ABATE of South Dakota has developed two RSS feeds: one of our newsletters, and another of our Legislation page.

• ♦ The newsletter feed can alert you to when new issues have been published on our website. The newsletters can be opened directly from the reader, or you can go to our website and read it from there.
• ♦ The legislation feed will alert you to when our lobbyist updates information on the Legislation page of our website. Links in the feed will take you directly to the bill's webpage on the South Dakota Legislative Research Council's (LRC) website.

The LRC's website has a LOT of information on each bill: you can read all the documentation and amendments of that bill, you will see who it's sponsors are, listen to recorded debate and testimony from the chamber floor, and see how your district's legislators voted on it. Something else you will notice is that there is an RSS feed available on each bill which can then be added to your reader, giving you the ability to closely monitor any specific bill(s) that are important to you, and to help keep you informed.

So how does this all work? This process requires that you install software, called a news aggregator (reader). Readers can be added to a browser (called a "browser extension"), installed on a desktop computer, or installed on a mobile device. Some email clients such as Thunderbird and some versions of MS Outlook support RSS natively. Click here to do a Google search for RSS Readers.

When you have your reader installed, it's time to subscribe to some feeds. Typically a website will show an icon such as or . Depending on the browser you use, clicking on those buttons can produce different results.

• ♦ The Chrome browser opens a preview "page" of the feed file. At the top there is a button to subscribe to that feed if you use a reader defined in the drop-down box. You can also click on the link on the right-hand side labelled as "[ Feed ]", which copies the information you need for the feed file so you can paste it into your reader. Just be sure to remove any leading text prior to "HTTP://".
• ♦ The MS Edge browser opens the feed file, showing all the code of that file. Ignore all that and just grab the URL from the browser and paste that into your reader.
• ♦ Safari? Well, I've seen some versions of Safari barf on these files and just throw an error message. If you use Safari, or any browser for that matter, these are the URLs to the two feed files:
  • https://www.abatesd.com/legislation.rss
  • https://www.abatesd.com/newsletters.rss
  Copy these URLs and paste them into your reader.

Once you have some feeds defined in your reader, you'll start getting notices of updates. Some readers will open a pop-up window to notify you of updates. Others will display a number in the reader's icon which tells you how many updates were found. All readers have an options page to help you define how you want to be notified, some will allow you select how many columns of information you want to review in your reader, along with many other settings.

That's all there is to it!
Be active. Be informed.