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What is RSS? How does RSS work?Back in the early days of the Internet, the concept of "push" was widely hailed as a new method of reaching your audience. Screensaver and other programs were "pushed" news and other data from web servers, then displayed on a users screen, without them having to go and search out the information. Over the course of several years, the push model evolved around the XML document format into something called RSS, or Really Simple Syndication. What is RSS? It is simply a method that allows a publisher to set up certain feeds (which can be photos, story headlines, podcasts) such that anyone using a RSS reader (whether as a stand alone application or as part of a website) can subscribe to that feed and automatically pull down the syndicated information. If you've used My Yahoo's newspage, you've seen this in action when you specify what kinds of news and stories you want to see -- most of those sites supplying those stories and headlines do so via an RSS feed - they just update the feed document or URL on their site, and all the users subscribed to that feed will see that information.
Setting up an RSS Feed on your websiteTo set up an RSS feed on your website, you need to create and publish a RSS XML file (the "feed"). Just like any other file or document on the web and on your server, this one has a specific URL that points to it -- like "www.thiswebsite.com/rss_feed.xml". You then publish that link for users that want to subscribe, and they add that URL into their RSS reader program. To update and push out your latest information, you simply add entries into the XML file hosted on your server. Each component of an RSS entry has 3 parts - title, summary, and body. You add the title, summary, and entry date directly into the XML file, while the body portion is just a URL that points to the full entry posting. Your reader program will check the RSS feed regularly and pull down any new entries that have been added. You can really increase traffic to your blog by enabling RSS. With all the millions of blogs out there, you are lucky to get someone to visit your site and then remember to bookmark it and visit again. By making an RSS feed available and prominent on your homepage, readers can quickly and easily add a subscription to your RSS feed if they like your content -- and once in their RSS subscription list, they will see your updated postings and headlines each time they check their RSS readers.Most sites add the little "XML" button on their sites to indicate an RSS feed is available, or you'll see the little +MY YAHOO button which allows you to add the content to your Yahoo page. And unlike email mailing lists that are often deleted and require personal information from users to sign up (at a minimum, their email address), using RSS to keep in touch with your visitors is much simpler and easier to do -- no emails, no spam, just automatic headlines delivered to those who request them, with sign up and unsubscribe functions all handled by the user and his/her RSS reader. As a webmaster, you can use tools like SilverPop.com's RSSDirect to design and build your XML pages and track user visits and results of your marketing efforts. Help with Creating an RSS XML DocumentSo now you know the basics of how RSS works, you need the nitty gritty about actually creating the XML file that will serve as your launching platform for your RSS items. If you know HTML, you'll find the XML markups and formats pretty easy to work with. Many people simply copy the feed document from another site, edit it with their own item information, and FTP it over to their own server. When you look at these files, you will see a few things. As noted, each item contains a title in a <title> tag, then a description inside a <description> tag, then the main story link inside a <link> tag. Surrounding this "item" is, you guessed it, an <item> tag. The whole thing is surrounded with Channel and RSS tags completing the document. Then save the file as an .XML extension. You can see a sample RSS document here to see more of what the code looks like when complete. You can see another example here that shows some more options in use, like how to display an image in an RSS feed. You should always validate your XML code as well to make sure it is error free (visit FeedValidator.org).Best RSS Readers and AggregatorsThere are a lot of 3rd party RSS readers out there than you can use to grab your favorite RSS feeds and display them on your desktop. In the Windows world, some popular ones are Netnewswire, NewsGator, RSS Bandit, Google Reader, Sharpreader, FeedReader, Feeddemon, and Mozilla Thunderbird. On the Mac side, check out FeedTicker, FireAnt, MiNews, NetNewsWire, or Pulpfiction. These RSS Readers also go by the name of News Aggregators or Feed Readers -- all the same thing. And they all work more or less the same - they access the syndicated feeds you designate via the web, and pull down headlines and links to the corresponding syndicated postings. You can get RSS feeds from blogs, websites, and podcasts. Once you start using a RSS reader to access your favorite sites, you'll see how useful it is. Instead of manually visiting a dozen sites each day, now they visit you, or at least their feeds visit your reader. In one quick glance, you can see all that is new and decide if there is something you want to visit and dig deeper into.
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