To "subscribe" to a site feed, whether RSS or ATOM, you need a feed reader. Simply point the reader to the URL (address) of the site feed, and it will do the rest: it will display the contents of the feed in a window or panel for you. The feed will look like a series of messages. Although the word "subscribe" is used, there is no actual subscription (in the traditional sense of the word) involved. You do not need to give your email address, fork out any money, nor furnish any information whatsoever. Your feed reader does all the real work: it checks the website regularly to see if the feed has been updated. If the latter has been changed, the feed reader software will inform you and allow you to read it, giving you the illusion that you have subscribed to some sort of newsletter or message service.

How to Read a Site Feed

• 1. Using Your Browser's Built-in Support

  Some browsers already contain built-in support for tracking and reading RSS and ATOM site feeds. Often, in those browsers, all you have to do is to click on the link to the feed to subscribe to it. The browser will then alert you whenever there are new items in the site feed and provide you a way to read it from within the browser. At the time this was written, browsers that contain built-in support for tracking and reading RSS feeds include Opera (which has versions for Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD, etc), Safari (Mac OS X) and Internet Explorer 7 (Windows only). Those who use Firefox can download an extension that allows them to read feeds. One such extension is Sage, which supports both RSS and ATOM feeds.

  If you have a browser that supports the reading of newsfeeds, just click on this link.

• 2. Using a Standalone Feed Reader Software

  Another alternative to using your web browser is to download specialised feed reader software. There are numerous such software around on the Internet, many of them free of charge. Since I don't use standalone feed reader software, I'm not able to give you any recommendations, but you can get free ones from thefreecountry.com's Free Offline News Feed Readers and News Aggregators page. Since they are all free, you can download as many of them as you like to find one that appeals to you.

  To add Mission Residential's newsfeed to the software, just use the following link.

  (Simply, click the right mouse button on the link, and select "Copy shortcut" or its equivalent from the menu that appears. Then paste it into your feed reader at the appropriate place.)

• 3. Using an Online Feed Aggregator

  Yet another way to read ATOM and RSS feeds is to use an online feed aggregator (also known as a news aggregator). This is basically an online service that you can access using your web browser. You'll have to sign up for the service and tell it what URL to track. In the case of missionresidential.com's RSS feed, the URL is http://63.134.253.218/news_rss.xml.

  You can then read the feed using your web browser - the online feed aggregator will format the feed in a manner that can be conveniently read by any web browser.