This is something that is tremendously helpful to me. There are so many translation sites and blogs that I have been manually keeping track of and it was starting to get a little bit annoying to me. Whenever I needed to look up a fansub release or a VN translation, I'd always do it through my browser and would often notice an update at a far later time than I'd prefer. But through the use of RSS subscriptions, I no longer have to go through the hassle and life feels a lot easier. ^^
How does RSS work?
It does take a lot of searching around and a little bit of technical know-how, so I'll try to break it down in a way that's easy and simple to understand. I haven't been using it for very long so there's still quite a bit I don't know right now, but I do have a setup that I am fairly comfortable with and can show you the basics.
Click here to download this free RSS reader. I haven't tried any other programs, but this one is fairly simple to use and I am having no problems with it. You can upgrade to a paid version if you want a better interface and no ads, but I don't see a lot of need for it since the free version is fine. The ads in the corner aren't that annoying either.
After you have your reader installed, you'll want to look for an icon that looks like this. You can usually find it on the right hand side of most blogs or under the external features section (example). Just click it, open it with FeedDemon, and you will be asked if you want to add this to your list of subscriptions. You can also set it to where it opens in FeedDemon on default and the link will automatically go to the program. Also, if you're having a problem finding an RSS link on any blog (I.E. gg's site), just go to the home page and type in /feed at the end of the browser url and it will load if it's available. (Example)
Now with this, you will want to keep that box checked for just in case. I don't see any real reason to uncheck this option.
This is unchecked by default, but you can check it if you wish to make changes to it. I often use this to change the time that it automatically updates.
The other tabs are self explanatory so I'll only be going into this one (this is also pretty easy, but there are a few things I want to go over that involve this section). Just remember that updating these feeds eats the bandwidth of the site that is hosting it. I would not recommend going under the set limit. At default, it will be set to update every 30 minutes (which is a very fair time to keep your subscriptions updated). The lowest you can set it to is 5 minutes, but don't be an ass and actually set it that far below default (it seriously does screw over a lot of sites with unneeded traffic). I typically keep my fansub subscriptions at 30 minutes because I frequently use them to watch weekly anime. With regular blog sites, I will set it to 1 hour to ease up on bandwidth. And with visual novel patch sites, I keep it to once per day because those blogs are very rarely updated. Also note that tlwiki does not have an RSS feed (remember what I said about being a dick and updating every 5 minutes? Well, this site took down their feed because someone felt like being retarded) (Seriously, do not EVER set your update to 5 minutes, I will curse you to oblivion).
Okay, now here's the overall layout of the program. I'll go into a short breakdown on each numbered area.
1. This is your list of subscriptions. If there are any unread feeds from them, they will be in bold and have a number to the right indicating how many you have yet to look at. If you just recently subscribed to a feed, it will automatically show you 10 entries as unread, which you can mark as read if you want to skip them.
2. In this area, you will notice an option to read the next unread entry, fairly useful if you have more than one to look at. In this section, you will also find an option to mark the entire selected page as read. It is especially helpful if you're subscribing to a new feed.
3. This will basically show the title entry and possibly more if you're on the actual subscription page (I'll go more into that later). Also, unless you specify FeedDemon to use an external browser, this will be opened in the browser within the reader (it uses the IE interface so I highly suggest using an external browser like Firefox or lolChrome).
4. This is your drop down menu. You can set it to display all articles, articles that were made today, or unread/starred articles (I'll go more into this on the next passage).
On another note, you can check your taskbar for notifications. It will pop up on your desktop (on default) whenever something comes up, but there are times where you might be AFK, or you might have a player on fullscreen which would completely block it out. The icon on your task bar will look something like this and that will let you know that there is an unread entry.
Okay, now we'll go into the display aspect. This is what you will get if you have unread entries in your selected description. Since all have been read, it is currently empty.
With the option set to display all articles, you will see this layout of the selected subscription. In this setting, you will find the title of the entry, the name of the blog it's hosted on, the name of the person who made the entry, and the date the entry was submitted. To the left of the title, you find the options to mark the entry as read, bookmark it if you want to have it saved for later, or expand the entry to show more.
With this interface, you can even download a fansub release without having to go directly to their site. Just click the link and it will open in your selected browser and start the download (much better than refreshing nyaa all the time).
This is how it will look with the full display. You can toggle your display mode at the top area (over by the area where you see full posts).
And this will only show the headlines.
I personally prefer sticking with partial summaries. Having the full display makes it feel a little clustered to me and having the bare minimum display will make it to where you have to expand to show the download link (and I prefer having the lazy option).
Now, on to a very important step, selecting a different browser. By default, FeedDemon will have Internet Explorer as the model for it's built in browsing interface. Now, I don't know so much about your preferences, but I know pretty damn well that most regular browser users are not going to want to use something as shitty as IE. Here's how to change it to where your links will open in your default browser instead.
Open FeedDemon options using F8 while your reader is active. Go to the reading tab. Under "Browsing", check the first option to open links in your external browser and you are set. Now, your download links and links to the entry site will open in your default browser.
Okay, so I managed to find a way to completely remove ads in FeedDemon. Yay! Credit goes to Mickey on the comments section of this site for providing the solution.
Download Reshacker. Make sure FeedDemon is not open and open the exe in Reshacker.
Expand folder 23 and IDH_THEDECK and select 1033.
At the bottom, where the ads section is, remove only what you see selected in this image (be careful to not accidently delete </html>).
Delete background-image: url($IMAGEDIR$bg-ad.png);.
Replace background-color: #555555; with background-color: #E6EDF9;.
Click Compile Script.
File > Save (make sure you don't have FeedDemon in Program Files (x86) or it won't work).
And open the new exe (keep the original just in case).
If you removed the ads successfully, your program should look something like this.
Edit: Okay, so after I leave the program open for a while, another ad still pops up. It's the less annoying one and it does still go away after a while, but does anyone know how to fix this? http://i1083.photobucket.com/albums/j391/holland5/Other/Other2/19.png
I think I've covered just about everything that matters. Let me know if there's anything you are confused on and I will try my best to help. :)
Feedback
If there's anything you'd like to add to this guide, it would be very much appreciated. I'm still fairly new to this program and unfamiliar to how this entirely works. I'm still fairly comfortable with what I have now, but would definitely like to learn some useful tricks if there are any. Would definitely appreciate some recommendations for RSS subscriptions that would be useful for tracking things such as anime releases, news, visual novel patches, etc. ^^
