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Explaining RSS to those not in the know can be a little difficult.  RSS has become another acronym among many in the list of internet terminology. What it stands for has changed a few times but its purpose is very basic.  RSS is a file that sits on your website for other websites to read.  That’s it.  It can be more expansive but the basics of it is simply letting sites know information about each other.  The most practical usage for RSS is in the form of news feeds.  These feeds aggregate headlines from a site that can be shown through portal sites like My Yahoo! to let the reader see current news or blog updates.  With an RSS feed, users can subscribe to a site without having to give over personal information.

The history of RSS goes back over a decade. It took a long time to really catch on.  The format and purpose RSS has changed through the years and was managed by several different companies and developers.  There were competing formats too which made it difficult for web developers who were trying to integrate RSS into their own sites.  Also, no real practical application for using RSS existed.  Few sites offered it and even fewer sites could read it.

It wasn't until major software companies started integrating RSS support into their products when it became more popular. Most sites now offer RSS feeds and even some support in how to subscribe to it.  CNN, BBC and other major news sites have RSS feeds.  Blogging sites like LiveJournal, Blogger and even MySpace do the same.  However, finding the urls to use isn’t always easy.  The standard orange badge that you see on some sites may or may not be used.  Sometimes it isn’t called RSS, it's called XML or another format ATOM. The standards for website support of RSS are still being defined.

Reading RSS feeds has become a lot easier with new features added to browsers, websites and desktop applications. Browsers like Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox and the Thunderbird email client support RSS feeds.  Those browsers automatically detect sites with valid RSS code and show the RSS badge within the location bar.  Websites like Google Reader, Windows Live and Bloglines can aggregate RSS feeds in one place.  Additionally, there are several really good desktop applications manage RSS feeds. For the die hard news reader, that might be the best way to go.  If you have several web sites you go to every day, chances are you will be interested in using one these services.

In the last year, the syndication fad has taken on other forms than just displaying the latest headlines.  Vigilant bloggers use services beyond WordPress software to publish their lives on the net.  Sites like Flickr and del.icio.us  (for photos and bookmarks) can be easily integrated into blogs giving readers a neat mosaic of a writer's works and interests.

For creators, writers, amateur bloggers, RSS feeds and other forms of syndication are important methods of reaching out and keeping visitors.  It's one thing to get visitors to your site. If you're slow to update, its more of a challenge to get them coming back.  Using RSS to automatically keep visitors updated is an effective way to promote your work.

RSS Tips

Don’t worry about knowing HTML or XML or PHP, here are just a few tips for you to make RSS Feeds for your site through services already set up with little programming required.

Make a button

Most likely, you already have RSS as an option for your site.  It might not be listed but its there.  Go to your homepage and view the source.  In all that HTML code, look for a line of code starting with:

<link rel=”alternative” type=”application/rss+xml”...

Anything on that line of code with href is your url for subscribers or Feed url.  It doesn’t matter if it says atom+xml instead, these days it’s the same thing.  That link tells enabled browsers and applications your site is subscribeable. 

http://publisher.yahoo.com/rss_guide/promote.php by Yahoo! has a simple form for making a button.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/add.html does the same thing for Google's news reader service.

If you want to get fancy with it, FeedBurner can take your Feed URL and make an animated graphic that plays through your headlines like a news ticker. http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/publishers/headlineanimator Amaze and annoy your friends at the same time by adding this graphic to your forum signature!

Start a blog already

Honestly, creating an account with one of the many blogging sites is the best way to make an RSS feed for your site.  Blogs are already used as marketing tools for companies to increase user participation.  Blogger and Livejournal both have free accounts that automatically create RSS feeds.  MySpace accounts have the option of providing RSS feeds if you posts blog entries, plus MySpace will notify via email all of its members subscribed to your blog when it becomes updated. 

Blogging sites have a built in network and the tools needed for easy content creation.  It doesn’t have to be a part of your site for you to build a network of friends and simply update your blog about your project or product.

Scrape a feed

Dot com owners might have a limited ability of installing server software or not have the know how to use FTP services offered by Blogger.  Creating an RSS feed on your own without the right tools is virtually impossible.  Unless you know how to hand write XML and keep it valid, no one will be able to subscribe to it.

So for whatever reason the two previous methods are unavailable, there are web sites that will “scrape” your site for relevant data and collate it into an RSS feed for you.

http://www.feedfire.com claims to be able to do just that.  Feed Fire, according to its about page, can decipher important information from non-news information such as contact information.

There are other sites out there with similar services.  However, you may have to adjust your HTML code to make it easier for these sites to see the “meat” of your content.

Publish from your desktop

The options for writing RSS files using desktop apps has diminished over the past few years.  Before web 2.0 rolled around, the only non-developer option was using little shareware apps to write RSS files and hope for the best.  There are still a few online if you can google them.

Jitbit RSS Feed Creator works on windows and comes with some dummy proof features to help publish RSS feed to your web server.  This way, you don’t have to rely on a third party site or install a complex server package.  http://www.jitbit.com/rssfeedcreator.aspx  For Apple users iWeb can publish to .Mac accounts or export to a folder.

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So that's it.  There's more you can do with RSS too like sharing photos, publishing calendar events, and saving search results.  It's a way of distributing information. Even my column, Nerd Alert! has its own RSS feed.

Next week, I'm writing a step by step project.  And yes, RSS is involved.

Chris Williams is not responsible for your subscription to Jugs. That's not his thing. 0