They May Be Cute, But They Sure Are Powerful!
Over on the right side of our web site you’ll see a couple of cute little red links under the “Subscribe” heading. I bet you can probably figure out what “MA Mailing List” is. But do you know what “MA RSS Feeds” means? This is one of the many many cool little upgrades that we have with the new MissionAdventures.net. RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication, and if you click on that link it takes you to a page that looks like this:
Rook Raggy… Feeds!
When visitors click on those links with the pretty orange icons next to them, they subscribe to a ‘feed’ from that blog Journal. What this means is, when you post an outreach to the Africa section it auto-magically gets sent to everyone who has subscribed! (Ummm… can someone please send teams to Africa?)
Youth Workers Get Notified Every Time We Post
See, these RSS feeds are an easy-peasy way for youth workers to stay up-to-date with the info they’re interested in. Say that a youth worker really wants to go on an outreach in Europe. When they visit our Europe page they’ll notice WE DON’T HAVE ANY OUTREACHES TO EUROPE posted yet. (This is a not-so-subtle message to our partners who do outreach in Europe to add their outreaches. Need help? Here’s how!) So this youth worker decides that they want to be notified if we ever do post an outreach to Europe. So they click the handy dandy Europe & Middle East RSS link. This auto-magically signs them up to get all the posts to that Journal. Isn’t that amazing?
Feed Reading
If you’ve never done the RSS thing, you may not realize that this is a whole ‘nuther (and in some ways a better way) to get amazing content on the Internets. (The best part is that with RSS, the Internets comes to you!) Most people use some sort of feed reading software. The most popular ones are FeedDemon (Windows) and NetNewsWire (Mac), but there are literally dozens. Other folks use their web browser, Safari, Firefox and Explorer all have built-in feed reading features. Chrome has an extension that allows feed reading. The fastest growing way to read the feeds is on mobile devices. There are literally dozens of ways to get these feeds on cell phones and other magical devices (iPads). Are you starting to feel the power of being able to connect with interested youth workers no matter where they are?! I myself am getting a bit tingly just writing about it!
Try It, You’ll Like It!
If you’re not doing the feed-reading thing, give it a whirl. There’s lots of free options out there. And who knows, you might discover a whole new way to enjoy the goodness on the world wide webs.
Motivated Yet?
The new MissionAdventures.net is serving up dozens of feeds each week—and that’s only gonna get bigger. This feature keeps youth workers informed about what you’re doing and where you’re going. And you’ll notice that there’s a feed for the MA News section too. Are you feeling a little itch on the back of your skull? That’s an opportunity! It means that you are going to want to post some outreaches and some MA News stories, ‘cuz every time you do, you connect with people that are interested! So let’s get to connecting—that’s what the new MissionAdventures.net is all about!
Wanna Know More?
Here are some handy-dandy linkages to the scintillating content in our Awesome User Manual:
What is the point of providing an RSS Feed?
Where can I get a feed reader?
Wikipedia has a really fascinating article about this magical RSS stuff too.