What is RSS?
Short for Really Simple Syndication, RSS alerts you when new content has been added to a web site without having to visit the site and search for it. While it may not be quite so simple for those who don't spend their lives in front of computers, if you learn to use RSS, you will no longer have to visit web sites such as this one to find out when information has been updated. Tybee Island's feeds will automatically tell you when new content has been posted.

As a great starting point, consider this YouTube video - amusing and short, but very educational - explaining what RSS is, why you might want to use it, and an overview of the basics:

How do I get the feeds delivered?
You will need a news reader, also known as an aggregator, that displays the content from RSS feeds. Numerous readers are available, many of them free of charge. Some readers are software that you download and install on your computer while others are browser based. Microsoft's latest version of its web browsing software, Internet Explorer, incorporates a news reader which allows you to easily subscribe to and view feeds from multiple sites. (Note that earlier versions than 7 of Internet Explorer do not support RSS feeds! There are plenty of good reasons to upgrade, including RSS - such as security and privacy concerns!) Yahoo and Google, along with other portal sites, also allow users to incorporate RSS feeds from multiple web sites into their personalized home pages.

IE from Microsoft
List of news readers from Yahoo
List of news readers from Google

Don't like any of these? Go to your favorite search site and search for "free newsreader software" to see if anything else catches your fancy.

How do I subscribe to the feeds from Tybee Island?
Select the feed(s) from the list at the left that you would like to subscribe to and then follow the instructions for your particular news reader on how to subscribe to RSS feeds. Feeds are also available on the keyword search results pages as well as at the bottom of individual pages, making it easy to subscribe when you find something interesting while you browse. Different newsreaders are set up differently:

Google Reader, for example, will accept the web address of a page with an RSS feed in it. Copy the URL from the address bar, and paste that into the Google Reader subscribe tool.
FeedReader will accept the address you get when you click the RSS icon. Click the icon, copy the URL from the address bar, and paste that address into the FeedReader subscribe tool.
If you use Internet Explorer as your browser, clicking the RSS icon will take you to a special subscription page where you can add the subscription to those that IE already follows.
Other tools will operate similarly to one of the above, but you'll have to read their instructions or experiment to get the feed to work just the way you want it to!

Great places to start: the City's Home page and City Newsletter are places where we try to put overviews of things that are changing or new. If you get those as feeds, they will help you quickly find more details with additional links. Another useful page is for Press Releases. Press Releases are posted to the City's web site at the same time they become available to the media, so this is a great way to stay on top of City events and issues. All of these links can be found in the list of RSS links here as well as in the navigation bar at the left of every page on the web site.