For some you who regularly access my articles through RSS feeds, you may have also noticed that recently my RSS suddenly only displayed summary and no longer the full text RSS. Well, I was also trying hard to restore the RSS into full text again, and I lately found out that WordPress no longer displayed full text if we put the <!– more –> tags inside our posts, it started from version 2.1 and later. Too bad. I’ve also been seeking the way out for the whole week until I find out that we can use another way to cut our post displaying to have only few words and add the “read more” link to the text.

Those of you who usually could just read the whole text of my articles at the front page of my site, you may complain right now and ask me “Why is it suddenly only summary at the front page now? Why no longer displaying the whole text of the recent articles at the main page of your site?”

Well, sorry , but I’m considering about your loading time too. I’ve trimmed the text in order to have the main page load faster so you won’t need to wait any longer to display the whole page. I have also provided the links at the bottom part of the page, so you will also have the better navigation to this site. I know some people were only interested in one or two articles, since some of my visitors found this site from search engines and I felt bad if I just displayed all articles at the same page, while the visitors just needed information from one or two articles. I was considering about saving your time too. That’s why I decided to trim the articles into summary and I will let you decide which page you want to read.

The RSS should have been back into full text now. If you find out that the RSS still displays summary text, please post your alert through the comment form below and I will get it fixed as soon as possible.

I believe this site still needs some improvement. I have been trying to get rid of needless fancy pictures out of the page, also have pruned some widgets that I feel that I won’t need those too much, in order to have this site perform better and faster for you all. As you might notice, I’ve been changing the layout of this site several times. From the header, footer, sidebars, fonts, pictures and the layout style. I hope the changes bring more good performance and will serve your eyes better; I noticed that some readers didn’t really feel comfortable in reading my articles back then, because the old theme’s fonts were not really suitable for our eyes, not to mention the length of my articles.

Anyway, I still thank you for coming. I know some of you have been visiting this site regularly. Some of you ever dropped me a line, and some still lurked, but anyway, I’m still glad that you have ever come. I hope you’ll still check back here when you have time.

May you have a good day!

Oh yeah, Happy Chinese New Year 2559 for those who celebrate this day. Wishing you a healthy, wealthy and prosperous life in this Chinese New Year 2559 … Gong Xi Fa Cai!

What is RSS?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary; republishing an article that comes from another source, in this case, a website. RSS is a way to get news headlines, podcasts, blog entries, announcements, and any other information automatically updated right on your desktop, so you can avoid going from website to website for the latest news or constantly checking a favorite page for updates.

This one is how Wikipedia has explained about RSS:

RSS (formally “RDF Site Summary”, known colloquially as “Really Simple Syndication”) is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. An RSS document, which is called a “feed”, “web feed”, or “channel”, contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner that’s easier than checking them manually.

A RSS feed contains the publicized updates about websites. It may only be a summary or even full articles, with photos or without photos of the latest posting. Those that provide summaries (thus Rich Site Summary) allow users to skim through the article so they can decide later on if they want to access the website source. The RSS feed usually contains the title of the update originating from the website. It is also usually the link to the website source.

How does RSS works?

“So how does RSS works?” you might ask. There are two main things you will need: an RSS Feed that comes from an RSS-supported website, and a program to read RSS feeds.

A software called an “RSS reader”, “feed reader” or an “aggregator” can be used to read RSS contents. There are many RSS readers out there, some of them are accessed using a browser, and some others are downloadable applications, and every RSS user has their preference. Browser-based news readers let you catch up with your RSS feed subscriptions from any computer. Downloadable applications let you store them on your main computer.

An aggregator reads the RSS feed from the source website, it scans and collects data on the latest RSS feeds, then brings up text headlines and a summary, and you must click a link to see the whole story or go to the updated page. Some stand alone programs, some email clients like Opera Mail and Thunderbird have their own built in RSS reader that collects feeds just like it gathers email. The email clients give the headline then shows the actual page in their preview pane.

The user can subscribe to RSS feed by entering the feed’s link into the reader, or by clicking an RSS icon in a browser that initiates the subscription process. The reader later can check the user’s subscribed feeds regularly for new content, downloading any updates that it finds.

Some websites also provide a link to direct the visitor to the subscription page to their feeds, usually you can find an orange box that says “XML” or “RSS” in those websites. Or they might have any text saying “Feed Me”, or “Syndicate” which will be clickable to bring you to their RSS Feeds.

RSS Formats

RSS formats are specified using XML, a generic specification for the creation of data formats. And according to Wikipedia, the initials “RSS” are used to refer to the following formats:

• Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)
• RDF Site Summary (RSS 1.0 and RSS 0.90)
• Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91)

Need more information about RSS? You can find it at Wikipedia. Hope it helps.