PlusThat as an RSS feed reader
You can use PlusThat to subscribe to a feed of the latest articles from your favorite publishers.
Many websites offer an "RSS feed" of their published articles. PlusThat enables you to subscribe to these feeds so that you can see the latest articles from your favorite publishers right within PlusThat.
An RSS feed is a digital output from a website that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. You can find out more about RSS on Wikipedia.
The advantages of using PlusThat to subscribe to RSS feeds
- Rather than having to visit all of your favorite websites in turn, you can subscribe to their feeds and see all of the articles together in one place;
- You can add your subscribed feeds to different lists so you can easily look through all "Tech" articles or all "Fashion" articles depending on your mood.
- You can come back to articles you don't want to read immediately by adding them to your Later List with a single tap on the "coffee cup" button
- You can mark feeds read so that you then only get to see new publications next time
- Your subscriptions and what you have marked read are synchronized across all your devices in real time
- You can use the PlusThat reader mode to read each article in a single distraction free format rather than having to process the cognitive load of reading on many differently designed websites
How to add feeds
1. Go into the Feeds section of PlusThat by tapping on "Feeds" in the navigation menu or footer area.
2. Tap the orange floating action button
3. Paste the feed URL or the website URL whose feed you want to subscribe to into the input area at the top of the page and tap the "Save" button
4. Select which of your lists you want to add the new feed to. Or create a new list.
How to find the feed URL for a publisher
Many publishers will state somewhere on their website that they publish an RSS feed so look for the acronym "RSS" somewhere on the page. The RSS feed might also be shown using the RSS icon:
Larger publishers may offer several different RSS feeds for each category of content they provide.
If you click on a link that says it's an RSS feed an you're presented with what looks like code then this is probably the RSS feed itself. Simply copy the URL from the address bar and paste this into the input box in PlusThat.
Can't find a publisher's RSS feed
Sometimes a website does not directly advertise that it provides an RSS feed. The good news is that PlusThat is often able to find a publication's RSS feed. In these cases you can simply paste the URL of the website into the input field in PlusThat and PlusThat will attempt to find the feeds offered by that website.
Following feeds from another Plus
If you enjoy a Plussed article then you might also enjoy other content from the same publisher.
When you Plus content, PlusThat will check that content to see if it has any RSS feeds associated with it. In these cases you will see the RSS logo (as above, but in gray) or the words "Associated content feeds" next to the Plus.
Tap the gray RSS icon to see a list of RSS feeds associated with the Plus. From here you will have the option to "Subscribe" to those feeds.
