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Asked in the Nicest Way Possible

What in the hell are RSS feeds, and do I need one? After seeing the little RSS symbols over most of my favorite blog and photoblog sites, I am beginning to feel severely underendowed and in need of a blog remedy akin to viagra. So, here are my specific questions:

1. What the hell is an RSS feed?

2. Do I need one of the damn things to increase traffic to my blog? Or is it actually just a bunch of bullsh*t and I do not need one? If I need one, how in the living hell do I do this?

3. From the small amount of research I have done, it appears there are about a dozen different versions of the damnable RSS feed (such as ATOM, XML and others). Which one is best, or which one is going to be better for me (such as being able to attract more viewers, or being a helluva lot easier to use or some such other valuable criteria)?

4. It seems like a helluva lot of people have these RSS feeds.... and some of them even seem to be less capable at computer gizmos than I am (and I am a veritable dullwit about computer issues)! If they can do it, and knew to create these feeds.... why the hell was I so out of the loop?

5. Even though I am not sure if this is true or not, it seems that RSS feeds may be important to attract viewers who want to read all of their blogs in "a single stream". Is this true? If so, does this mean they get some sort of little packet in their e-mail of the blogs they want to read? If so, does this remove the design of the blog itself and turn it into just text? If so, who the hell would want to read a blog without all the bells and whistles of how it looks?

I truly do not understand this issue and would appreciate any advice given.

P.S. #1 - Please be sure to read yesterday's post, and please add comments on the new color scheme and look at some of the new links.

P.S. #2 - What the hell is "comment spam" ? It seems more and more of the blogs I enjoy are talking about this. It sounds bad, but why do I not receive any? Even if it is bad, it makes me think my blog must be pure horse sh*t because it does not even garner enough readership to attract the b*st*rd spammers.

PipeTobacco