May 6, 2007 13:21
Category: Blogging
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When you create RSS feed, you're giving readers of your blog an opportunity to get a glimpse of contents as they grow without the necessity of actually visiting it.
Since RSS feed typically includes only a brief of your posts, therefore if a reader who has subscribed to your feed wants to know more, he can then follow the link of a post to come to the concerned page in your blog.
But then what is RSS feed, and indeed how can one create RSS feed? Let's find out more.
RSS or Really Simple Syndication, as it is now known, is basically a XML file, normally automatically created by any blog software, whether hosted in your or other server. Here's what a typical RSS feed looks like:
An RSS 2.0 Feed
The RSS feed can be separated into 3 parts. The first part is usually constant, and broadly describes your blog, while the last part has the closing tags, <channel> and </rss>.
The middle portion consists of the posts of your blog. Each post is enclosed within a pair of opening and closing "item" tag. When you create RSS feed, by default in most cases, here is what it looks like.
<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
<title>Your Blog Title</title>
<link>http://yourblog.com</link>
<description>About Your Blog</description>
<image>
<url>http://yourblogimage.gif</url>
<link>http://yourblog.com/index.html</link>
</image>
<item>
<title>Last Post</title>
<link>http://yourblog.com/last-post.html</link>
<description>Last post summary</description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Last Post</title>
<link>http://yourblog.com/last-post.html</link>
<description>Last post summary</description>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>
Why To Create RSS Feed
Since an RSS feed stores every new post that you add to your blog in a reverse chronological order (newest first), it is a handy weapon to propagate your blog on the Internet.
That in turn has the potential to bring in more and more viewers to your blog. In a way therefore, the RSS feed has replaced the need of email marketing only to inform them 'what's new' in your site.
But, in the form an RSS feed presents itself, there is no doubt it'll scare away even the most ardent of your readers. Thus the need of feed-readers arises.
Enabling Feed Reading
As you create RSS feed, you'd surely want it to be available freely to your readers. For, isn't that what your aim is? There are many ways to do that, and here are some:
Provide the feed URL:
You must have seen icons like 
or 
(icon images courtesy XUL) in many blog-sites. These icons would lead to the XML file like the one shown above. You readers are then supposed to use the URL in one of their favorite feed-readers or newsreaders to view the content of your blog in a readable way.
But this practice is rarely in vogue today simply because it's too cumbersome and also for the reason that better techniques are now available.
Direct feed-reader links
No more treating your viewer with raw XML file, you can provide direct feed-reader link for your blog. Notice the icons on the right panel under the heading, Subscribe To RSS Feed.
If you hover the cursor on these button-shaped icons and look at the link URL in the status bar, you'll find each of these feed-readers is already 'armed' with XML file of this blog.
This means when a reader clicks on one of her choice, she is directly taken to the feed-reader's site where she, after she has logged in there, can see all the recent posts of this blog.
And there she'll have chance to mark this blog as her favorites so that she can continue to see the latest posts there itself.
Receiving feeds by email
It's yet another way to reach out to your readers after you create RSS feed. Notice at the top of this page there's an option for readers to get feeds of this blog by email.
What happens here is that feed-readers like FeedBlitz accumulate everyday posts from the XML file and automatically send email to readers who've subscribed to it.
Do nothing yet receive
Suppose the readers do not want the hassle of subscribing to newsreaders or to FeedBlitz emails, yet wish to keep track of fresh posts in my blog.
For them the option is FeedBurner. Notice the yellow button at the very top of this page. After you create RSS feed, just go to FeedBurner and 'burn' it to get a unique URL that automatically updates with each update of the feed's XML file.
For this blog, the FeedBurner URL is http://feeds.feedburner.com/Words2ContentBlog. Readers can simply bookmark [Ctrl+D] the URL and visit it time and again to see if there are fresh posts in my blog.
But FeedBurner offers more options like reading the feed in a newsreader of one's choice (covered above, refer 'Direct feed-reader links').
Going a step ahead, if you as a blog-owner wish to embed an automatically updating widget of my RSS feed in your website (see examples on my homepage where I've used Grazr for embedding contents from Search Engine Watch and Blog Burst), FeedBurner helps to do that as well.
Bookmarking And Pinging
Having done your bit to create RSS feed, it is important to know how it differs from pinging and bookmarking, the 2 common mix-ups. First, let's look at bookmarking.
When you add bookmark buttons such as those from 'Digg', 'Furl', 'del.icio.us' and host of others, you are in fact doing what is termed as social media optimization. Visitors, if they like a post or content, can readily click on any of these buttons and inform the world about it.
Bookmark buttons convey the URL of html file of a page, and in fact they can be incorporated even in static webpages. In other words, bookmarking has nothing to do with RSS feeds.
On the other hand, pinging certainly concerns RSS feed, rather the XML file a blog generates. When you ping blog directories/engines either directly (example: Technorati), or through a mediator (example: Ping-o-Matic!), you're notifying them about any new post you've added or other change in your blog.
In any case, after you create RSS feed, include the following code within the <head> </head> section to let browsers know it. Same goes for blog directories and engines.
<line rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"
href="http://www.yourblog.com/rss.xml" title="Your blog title">
Conclusion
At first reading, the whole thing may appear confusing. But, to be true, it is not difficult to get going and create RSS feed, and let the world know of your creation.
Your feedbacks are welcome.
Related reading:
- Let RSS retain your visitors
- Why would you blog?
- Why blogging fails?
- Making money from blog
