How to syndicate your Web site: new technology makes it really simple to let interested constituents know when you have something new on your Web site. And it only takes five minutes to get started.

• Author: Dysart, Joe
• Position: TOOLS OF THE TRADE - Really Simple Syndication

A new technology that has incredible potential for legislators is taking the World Wide Web by storm. RSS technology-or Really Simple Syndication--allows you to "push" the latest information about legislative activity, campaign events or community information to those who have subscribed.

What's unique about RSS is that the technology is actually true to its name--it is incredibly simple to get started.

In a matter of minutes, you can tweak your legislative or campaign Web site so that hotlinks to your new press releases, calendar, legislative district information or key issues can be automatically sent to subscribers with RSS readers across the Web.

The popularity of RSS is growing exponentially, primarily because the technology can be used to track changes on Web sites without a user having to visit your site to check for updates. This "push" technology allows legislators to keep their constituents and supporters informed with the most up-to-the-minute information.

You've probably seen invitations to subscribe to an RSS feed--little orange tags with "RSS" or "XML"--on virtually every type of Web site you visit. When you click on these tags, Web pages tied to them will automatically send you updates in the form of hotlinked headlines.

While RSS readers may sound complicated, they generally resemble everyday portal Web sites, which track news stories from a number of sources, and Place hotlinks to those stories on a single page. Indeed, the RSS reader officially went mainstream late last year, when mega portal My Yahoo! (http:/my.yahoo.com/s/ rss-faq.html), a site used by millions worldwide to follow news and information, added RSS-tracking to its arsenal of Web data gathering tools.

In addition, third-party products like RSS-Explorer (http:/rssexplorer.planet-hood.com) are enabling even the most casual users of Web to add a toolbar to Internet Explorer that instantly makes the popular browser RSS-ready.

Also fueling mainstream acceptance of RSS are sites like IceRocket (http://rss.icerocket.com), which offer easy steps to generate the tiny strip of code you need to make a Web page RSS-readable. (IceRocket offers the service free-of-charge as a way to encourage use of its main products, its Web search engine.)

HOW IT WORKS

If you're interested in adding RSS to your legislative or campaign site, a good place to start is IceRocket's RSS builder (http:/rss.icerocket.com). It's a free tool that enables you to generate an RSS link for your site...