You are in

• Home
• Help
• News feeds help

Home:

News feeds help

No need to spend time checking websites for updates - have the updates come to you

• Save time - no need to visit numerous individual websites
• Keep up-to-date with websites and blogs you look at regularly
• Stay in control - you decide which sites to follow

News feeds are a way to keep track of regularly updated online content such as news items, blogs and podcasts.

You can use your browser or download desktop- or web-based feed reading software (known as feed readers, news readers or aggregators) to monitor any number of feeds from different sources.

When a new item is published on a website you are monitoring your feed reader will automatically pull in the item, so you don't have to visit the websites to keep up to date.

Our feeds use a format called RSS (Really Simple Syndication).

Our feeds

Our news feeds are the simplest way of keeping up-to-date with BBSRC news, and are our preferred method of disseminating information:

BBSRC news feed - complete feed of all our funding opportunities, media releases, news stories and the Chief Executive's blog posts.

Chief Executive's blog news feed - a feed of Professor Douglas Kell's blog posts.

To follow our feeds you need to add them to your feed reader.

Using your web browser's feed reader

Most new web browsers include a built-in feed reader. If you have an open browser most of the time, this may be the best feed reader option for you.

The following browsers include a built-in feed reader:

• Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 and above
• Mozilla Firefox
• Opera
• Safari 2.0 and above

Google Chrome and Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 and below do not have built-in support for RSS feeds. If you have one of these browsers you can use an external feed reader, upgrade to Internet Explorer 7 or above, or use another web browser to view our feed.

Adding a feed to Internet Explorer 7 and above

If you visit a page containing a feed you will notice the orange feed logo on the toolbar. Click on the logo to view the feed, then in the yellow box click on 'Subscribe to this feed' to add it to your feeds list.

To view your Internet Explorer feeds, open your Favorites by clicking on the star icon to the left of the tab(s), and select Feeds

Adding a feed to Firefox

There are 2 ways of subscribing to a feed in Firefox:

1. If you visit a page containing a feed you will notice the orange feed logo to the right of the address bar. Click on the orange logo to display all the feeds available on that page and select a feed to add it to your Live Bookmarks
2. View the feed itself (see image below). Click the 'Subscribe now' button to add the feed to your Live Bookmarks

Once added to your Live Bookmarks you can access the feeds from the Bookmarks menu on the toolbar.

Using a web-based reader

There are many web-based readers available. Two of the most commonly used are Bloglines and Google Reader.

Bloglines

Bloglines is a free web-based reader. You can sign up for an account at www.bloglines.com and then access your account from any computer.

There are 2 ways to add a feed to Bloglines:

1. From within Bloglines
   • Login to your account and click on the 'Add' button on the left hand side
     
   • Enter the URL (web address) of the page containing the feed and click Subscribe
     
   • Select your desired options for the feed and click Subscribe
   • The feed will now appear on the left hand side of the screen
2. Using the Easy Subscribe Bookmarklet
   Once you have a Bloglines account you can add an 'Easy subscribe bookmarklet' to quickly add new feeds to your account.
   • Scroll to the additional features at the bottom of the left hand column
   • Click on Easy Subscribe Bookmarklet
     
   • Follow the instructions to add the button to your browser
   • If you visit a page containing a feed you would like to subscribe to, just click the 'Sub with Bloglines' button from within your Favorites menu
     

When there are new items in your feeds it will display in bold with the number of new items in brackets.

Google Reader

Google Reader is a free web-based reader. You can sign up for a Google account at www.google.com/reader and then access your account from any computer.

To subscribe to a feed:

1. Click on the 'Add a subscription' button and enter a search term (e.g. bbsrc) or paste in the URL (web address of the feed)
   
2. Click on the Subscribe button for the desired feed
   
3. The feed will be added to your subscriptions list on the left hand side