Networking

On some pages of this site you'll notice a 'share' button. When you hover your mouse over this button you are presented with options as to how you can share the content of that particular page with friends or colleagues (clicking the button as opposed to hovering will provide a menu with even more options).

You can use this button to share our content with friends and colleagues by posting links directly to your Facebook or Twitter pages for example. This helps you to help us by spreading the word about events and happenings at the railway.

The Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railways also have an active presence on both Facebook and Twitter - you can see our latest updates on the right hand side of this page, and login to your own accounts on those respective sites to subscribe to updates and get all the latest news.

The 'share' button can also be used to add individual pages of the site to your 'favourites' for easy reference at a later date, or to email page links direct to your contacts.

You may also use the Twitter and Facebook 'Tweet' or 'recommend' buttons at the foot of pages to achieve this.

Many websites have links labelled "XML" or "RSS" or "Atom". All of these are ways of saying that you can find out about updates to that site without having to visit the site in your web browser. This feature is referred to as "syndication" or "aggregation". Sometimes it's just called subscribing, and these days, instead of one of these words lots of sites will use a little orange button. The presence of this button indicates that the site you're viewing has a feed available. 

RSS (or Really Simple Syndication) is a technology that has existed on the web for a few years. This is a non-technical explanation of what it is and how it works. In short it does two things:

It allows content from this website to be syndicated to (or displayed on) other sites. This might be our latest news, special event listings, or anything else for that matter. When we publish new content it can be automatically updated and displayed on other sites. It also allows users to be automatically notified of new content without needing to visit our site.

In order to subscribe to an RSS Feed you need a newsreader. There are many options available both free and not free. To subscribe you need the URL of the feed. This is much like a traditional link.

You can copy the link by right clicking and choosing copy, or copy link location (depending on which browser you use). Each newsreader has a slightly different way off adding a URL but it should be straightforward and obvious.

Paste the link into the reader and that's it - your newsreader will now check at regular intervals and if there is a new story it will be downloaded. The idea is much like email. Feeds you have selected will automatically come to you as they are published. Of course you can unsubscribe from feeds as and when you wish.