Blogging - How To Create An Rss Feed

How To Create An Rss Feed

An RSS news feed can be used to communicate with your target audience. It is an ideal means of notifying people of new content on your website without the need for them to keep on visiting your site. You can send newsletters to your readership without having to use email and risk being accused of spamming. You will be comfortable in the knowledge that people who request your feed are actually interested in it because they have actively subscribed to it. This article will explain just how to create your own RSS news feed.

There are a couple of ways to create an RSS file, you can use an editor designed for the purpose or you can create a file using a simple text editor. The latter will require you to learn some XML whilst the former will do the hard part for you. First off I will describe an RSS file, there are several versions and I will be showing you version 2.0, the latest RSS version.

An RSS file looks just like an HTML file except it has different tags and the files end in .rss or .xml rather than .html. The file is made up of header information and item information, the item information contains the actual news items.

The first section of the file contains the header information. This states that the file is XML and which version, the encoding used and the version of RSS that you are using. This part of the file is mandatory. Next up is the channel tag, this encloses the whole of the rest of the file. This is followed by a title, description and link which explain the what the feed is about and what website it is associated with. The final part of the header is the optional image information. If you use this the software that is used to parse or read your file can display a small picture such as a logo.

Please note that in these examples I have used square brackets instead of angled brackets.

[?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?]
[rss version="2.0"]
[channel]
[title]The Widget news feed[/title]
[description]The latest news on widgets[/description]
[link]http://www.widget.com/[/link]
[image]
[title]Widget News[/title]
[url>http://www.widget.com/widget.gif[/url]
[link>http://www.widget.com/[/link]
[/image]

The body of the file is made up of the news items. Each news item is enclosed in the item tag and comprises of a title, a description and a published date. The date needs to be in the format shown in the example below.

[title]Which is the best Widget to?[/title]
[description]In this article we discuss the release of several new widgets, but which is the best widget.[/description]
[pubDate]Sun, 20 Mar 2005 14:38:50 GMT[/pubDate]
[link]http://www.widget.com/the-best-widgets.html[/link]
[/item]

You can have as many items in the feed as you like but many webmasters just show the 10 most recent items to keep the bandwidth usage down and also so not to overwhelm the end user with too many items.

Finally the file is ended with the closing channel tag and a closing RSS tag.

[/channel]
[/rss]

I have covered the basic tags to create an RSS file, there are other tags that can be used and these are explained in the http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss (RSS 2.0) specification.

Once you have created your file you will need to verify it is ok, to do this upload the file to your server and then go to this validator to validate the file. Your file is now ready. Now anyone can subscribe to your feed just by pointing their RSS reader to your RSS file.

That is the basics covered. I will be covering other areas in future articles as there is far too much information to fit into a single article.

Allan is the webmaster at http://www.newsniche.com an RSS resource for webmasters. Learn how to use RSS to attract and retain visitors to your site.

Car Insurance | Car Rentals | Health Insurance | Weight Loss | Life Insurance

| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |

3 Tips To Improve Your Rss Marketing
3 Tips to improve your RSS marketingYou have created an RSS feed, or maybe you have several feeds and you post at least once a week to keep your RSS subscribers interested. So now you can sit back and watch your hit counter tally up all thos...(related: Blogging)

Will Spam-blogging Be The Death Of Blogging?
Technorati reports that 30,000 - 40,000 new blogs are being created each day.According to David Sifry, part of the growth of new blogs created each day is due to an increase in spam blogs.What are spam blogs? They are fake blogs that are created by robots in order to foster link farms, attempted search engine optimization, or drive traffic through to advertising or affiliate sites.They contain robot-generated posts made up of random words, with the title linking back to the blogger's own p...(related: Blogging)

To Blog Or Not To Blog
Web logs, commonly referred to as "blogs," represent allthe rage right now in online publishing.Not really a newsletter or traditional html pagepublishing, blogs resemble more of a web-based diary wherethe creator records their thoughts, posts links, orresponds to questions.With so much confusion online and an absence of "personaltouch," blogs stand to actually bring back some humanity tothe web ...(related: Blogging)

Blogging Policies, Does Your Business Need One?
Weblogs or Blogs as they are more commonly referred to, have become extremely popular in the last several years. So popular in fact that many large businesses are lettin...(related: Blogging)

Rss For Newbies; A Quick Tutorial
"RSS" stands for "Really Simple Syndication". It is a new way to distribute content. Any content: websites, blogs, forums, etc.To explain what this means, for once let's start at the end.Content from RSS feeds can be displayed by an RSS newsreader.You and I...(related: Blogging)

7 Questions To Ask Yourself Before Staring A Business Blog
Blogging is the latest buzzword in online marketing and PR. But with so many marketers jumping on the blogging bandwagon, few people are giving a thought to whether blogs are really up their alley, or taking the time to consider the best ways of going about it. If you are planning to start a business blog, ask yourself these questions before you take the final plunge. 1. Do you really need a blog? Writ...(related: Blogging)

12 Reasons Why You Need A Blog
"Why Should I Blog? I Simply Don't Get It"This post on a popular discussion forum set me thinking - and I came up with 12 reasons you should blog.Read them and get started on your blog. Or better still, go get your blog up and running and THEN come back and read this :)#1 - You Do Not Need...(related: Blogging)

What Are Rss Feeds?
RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication." It's a format thatweb sites and blogs can use to send updated headlines to you viaservices like My Yahoo!. My Yahoo! gathers the content youselect from a variety of sources and displays it for you in oneconvenient location. Syndication means you don't have to visiteach site individually to see what's new -- you simply scanheadli...(related: Blogging)

Get The Internet On Your Own Terms
RSS for the Rest of UsI don't know about you, but I'm seeing a whole bunch of articles and websites telling me that I need to get into this RSS thing.Is it really time?RSS (it stands for "Really Simple Syndication") is the latest wave of internet technology designed to take advantage of the "Content is King" mentality. Imagine getting direct access to the content you want, without having to give out your personal information. Wouldn't that be nice?Here's how it works: You find a website you like and look for the little orange XML button, or a link that says "Syndicate this site". When you click that link, you get the raw feed of content from that site.An example:My Simplified Selling site allows you to syndicate my content. That means you don't have to remem...(related: Blogging)