How do I subscribe to an RSS feed with My Yahoo?

The problem you’re having is one of the current stumbling blocks to the widespread adoption of RSS and news aggregators: XML and RDF feeds, “syndication feeds”, aren’t meant to be clicked upon.

Instead, in the current generation of Web browsers, you need to capture the URL of the feed then paste that into the new feed subscription box in your news aggregator. The difference between XML and RDF feeds is really something that only the uber-geeks are going to care about, but for our purposes they’re completely identical.

The first step, then, is to right-click on an XML, RSS or RDF button, which should produce a pop-up menu of options in your browser rather than just taking you to the destination URL. One of the pop-up options is something like “copy this URL”, “Copy URL to Clipboard” or “Copy Shortcut”. Do that and you’re done with that page and need to switch to your My Yahoo page.

To get to the section in My Yahoo! where you should be able to add a new RSS feed, either click on the EDIT button on your My Yahoo! home page adjacent to “RSS Headlines (BETA)” if you already have a feed configured, or click on Choose Content at the top, then choose “RSS Headlines (BETA)” from the “My Yahoo! Essentials” area if you don’t. Oh, and kudos to the My Yahoo! team for realizing that RSS feeds are essential for the next decade of the Internet.

Once you’re on the My Yahoo configuration screen, entitled “Choose your RSS sources”, find the section “Add New Sources” and paste the XML/RDF URL you previously copied from a page you were browsing into the box labeled ‘Enter a keyword, site or URL’. Click “Search” and it should be promptly added to your list of favorite RSS feeds.

This is pretty complex, isn’t it? What I’m waiting for is the ability to simply subscribe to an RSS reader service once in my browser, then forevermore clicking on an RDF/XML feed button instantly pops up a “subscribe to this feed?” dialog box. I click “yes” and that’s all there is to it.

If I could talk about Mac OS X Tiger, I could talk about the newest generation of Safari which includes a nicely integrated RSS reader, and how it lets you subscribe to feeds, but I can’t, so, well, stay tuned. There are other Web browsers with integrated RSS readers, but I haven’t seen any browsers that have RSS sufficiently integrated that it’s as easy as I suggest. Yet.

I hope that clarifies your My Yahoo RSS confusion!