The Church of England has announced the launch of an online news RSS feed from its Ministry Division website.

|TOP|The RSS feed, launched yesterday, will enable those interested in the Church’s work and mission to receive live updates of the latest news from the Church – as soon as it is published.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a way of automatically delivering material electronically, through software which can be freely downloaded to a computer. Once set up, headlines from the Church will be updated in the RSS reader whenever users are connected to the internet.

Peter Crumpler, Director of Communications for the Archbishops’ Council, has said the latest development is part of an ongoing programme built upon feedback from users.

He said, “Our research into the use of the Church of England website shows that the news section receives an average of 20,000 visits every month. Launching an RSS feed means that users don’t have to keep coming back to the site to check for the latest news. Instead the information is sent automatically to their desktop or mobile device. We’re taking the news to the people rather than waiting for them to come to us.|AD|

“The new service will be a real benefit for anyone wanting the latest news from the Church, including parish magazine editors and webmasters,” he added.

The move coincides with the launch of an upgraded site search facility, which aims to deliver more accurate, user-friendly search results.

The Church of England explain that more than 90,000 people visit the website each month. The most popular term searched for on the site in the last six months has been ‘marriage’, followed by ‘lectionary’, with ‘baptism’ in third place. Fourth place was taken by ‘jobs/vacancies’, while the fifth most popular search in the chart was ‘weddings’.

A new section on weddings has recently been introduced to help meet demand for information about getting married in church, including lists of popular readings and music at marriage ceremonies.