Subscribe to the Website with RSS
Get notified when we post!
Get Notified About New Posts
One of the big issues with the something whenever mindset, is that if people want to follow along, when should they check the website? And that’s a great question. Check whenever you’d like! Or, if that’s not your cup of tea, I’ll teach you how to subscribe to RSS feed or notifications so you get an alert when new episodes are up.
What is RSS
Really Simple Syndication, and you don’t really need to know that. Basically it’s just a little list of everything published on a site. It contains the title, author, decriptions, date, and photo / link to the content. In the same of Something Whenever, any post here will generate an RSS feed update. Every time I add something new you’ll know!
What are my options to subscribe?
There’s two main methods to subscribe by RSS.
- Get an RSS Reader app and add our feed.
- Use feedrabbit to get emails when we post new content.
What are the advantages to either method?
RSS Reader apps won’t send you emails. We have enough emails coming already in our lives, and sometimes it’s nice not to get one. They will (optionally) give you push notifications, and that may not be better.
Feed Rabbit wont make you download and configure an app. You will have to sign up for an account, which is fast, but you’ll likely need an account for most RSS reading apps anyways.
Ok, but do I NEED an RSS reader or Feed Rabbit?
No! You do not. If you don’t want to be notified when new content is added, then feel free to ignore everything else here. If you do, well this is the fastest way I could set this whole thing up.
Let’s get into how.
Configuring RSS Subscriptions
Here’s the two main ways to setup the RSS subscription. Just click/tap either drop-down and follow along!
Chosen an RSS app, eh? Allrighty, let’s go!
- Pick an RSS app off the app store and install if.
- If you’re on Android, I’d suggest Flym!
- Open your app, and find the button to add a feed.
- Flym opens up and prompts you to add a feed.
- Type in “SomethingWhenever.com/index.xml”
- The website should pop up. Click on it to add it!
- Navitage to your feeds section of the app, and you should see the posts!
That’s it!
Let’s setup email notifications from our RSS feed.
- Head to FeedRabbit
- In the text box, enter
SomethingWhenever.com/index.xmland press subscribe. - A page will pop up with the website name, and some details. Press subscribe again.
- Follow the prompts to confirm your settings / account.
- You may need to verify your email address before feed rabbit takes effect
That’s it!
Additional Notes
I have the feed setup to push the:
- Title
- Summary
- Feature image
You can click on the title in most reader apps to open the main article on the website. If you’re using FeedRabbit just follow the link through the email.
I would avoid reading the content through the RSS apps. There is a lot of special formatting, like this warning message, that will NOT display properly and make the article into an unreadable mess.
The feed is designed to show summaries for that reason, so you can see if the piece of content is something you’d like to read at this moment, or save for later.
While the main articles include a ‘read time’ feature, right now summaries in the RSS feeds don’t include the read-times. I’m working on adding them in the future!
That’s it!
That’s all you need to do to get everything set up. If something isn’t working properly, or there’s any issues with the RSS feed, you can always find me at [email protected] and I will reply whenever.
I’m excited to get this off the ground and looking forward to pushing a lot of great content. It only took me 6 hours to troubleshoot this god-damned RSS feed, so if it breaks I will be one extremely unhappy camper.