RSS and Personalized Feeds from Phylo

One benefit of creating a free user account on Phylo is that you can create personalized RSS feeds. These feeds enable you to get updates on the information that most interests you in Phylo's database. This page explains RSS and tells you how to use the RSS feeds provided by Phylo. If you're already familiar with RSS, you may want to skip to the section on Phylo's RSS feeds.

What is RSS?

'RSS' stands for 'really simple syndication'. RSS is a way for people to get updates from their favorite web sites without having to visit those sites.

Many web sites provide "RSS feeds" containing information of various kinds. A "feed" is a bit like an email mailing list, but with two big differences. First, updates to a feed don't come in an email; they're viewed in a web browser or with a kind of software called an "RSS reader." Second, you can only receive updates from an RSS feed; you can't normally send emails to the feed to be distributed to the feed's other subscribers.

The best way to understand RSS feeds is to look at an example. The journal Philosophy and Phenomenological Research publishes an RSS feed of papers that appear in the journal. (Click here to view the feed in your web browser. Go ahead and click. The feed will open in a new window.) The feed contains titles of recent papers, along with the date that they were added to the feed, and the abstract of the paper. If you "subscribe" to that feed, you'll get an update every time the journal publishes another paper. You won't need to keep going back to their web site to check whether new articles have appeared.

RSS becomes really useful when you collect several feeds in one place. If you use an RSS reader like Vienna, FeedDemon, or Google Reader, you can see at a glance which feeds have new items, and you can browse your feeds much like you might look through your email inbox (but without the clutter).

How do I get started with RSS?

There are lots of tutorials on the web for getting started with RSS. A good way to start is to download an RSS reader. An RSS reader is a piece of software that lets you manage your RSS subscriptions. If you don't want to download any software, or if you want to be able to access your feed collection from anywhere, you might consider using Google Reader or another web-based RSS reader instead.

Once you have an RSS reader, visit your favorite web sites and look for RSS icons. RSS icons usually look like this: . On many sites, you'll see an RSS icon in the address bar at the top of your browser. You can click on that icon to access the main feed for that site. News sites, some academic journals, and many other sites provide RSS feeds. Subscribe to feeds from the ones you like, and they'll let you know when they have new content.

What kind of RSS feeds does Phylo provide?

Phylo provides both general RSS feeds, accessible by anyone, and personalized RSS feeds, which individual users can customize to get updates about specific items.

The main Phylo RSS feed updates you whenever we get new information about an individual philosopher or philosophy department. The Phylo job feed updates you whenever the users of our philosophy job wiki report new information about a job listing.

If you create a free account with Phylo, you'll also be able to create personalized RSS feeds for both general Phylo content (i.e., individuals and institutions) and job listings from the philosophy job wiki.

What are "personalized RSS feeds"?

Phylo's database already contains 17,331 individual philosophers and thousands of universities and colleges. At the height of the academic hiring season, our philosophy job wiki contains well over 100 job listings. While some people might be interested to know every time someone adds new information about a philosopher or reports something new about a job listing, most people will be more interested in a comparatively small number of philosophers, a few universities or colleges, or a few dozen job listings.

Personalized RSS feeds enable you to subscribe to specific items in our database. Registered Phylo users get two separate RSS feeds: a general feed to get updates about the individuals and institutions that they choose, and a job feed to get updates about the specific job listings that they choose from our philosophy job wiki.

To subscribe to or unsubscribe from a specific individual or institution, search for that individual or institution in the main Phylo interface. Once the details of the item you want appear in the interface, click on the RSS icon at the bottom of those details to subscribe or unsubscribe from the item.

To subscribe to or unsubscribe from a specific job listing, find that job listing on our philosophy job wiki. Click on the RSS icon for that listing. (You'll find it next to the "Last updated" field.) If you're unsure whether you're currently subscribed to an item, hold your mouse over the RSS icon, and a tooltip will appear to tell you.

How do I manage my personalized RSS feeds?

You may find yourself forgetting which items you've added to your personalized RSS feeds. Or perhaps you want to remove several items at once. You can do this from your personalized feed manager, which you can access from the 'My Account' item in Phylo's main menu. Note that you'll need to log in to Phylo to see the 'My Account' menu item.

How do I access my personalized RSS feeds?

You can find the URLs for your personalized RSS feeds at any time by visiting your personalized feed manager. (Mouse over the 'My Account' item in the main menu to access your feed manager. Note that you'll need to log in to Phylo to see the 'My Account' menu item.)