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What is RSS?
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RSS Definitions
RSS is a family of XML file formats for web syndication used by news websites and weblogs. They are used to provide items containing short descriptions of web content together with a link to the full version of the content. This information is delivered as an XML file called RSS feed, webfeed, RSS stream, or RSS channel.
Source: Wikipedia
Short for RDF Site Summary or Rich Site Summary, an XML format for syndicating Web content. A Web site that wants to allow other sites to publish some of its content creates an RSS document and registers the document with an RSS publisher.
Source: Webopedia
RSS is Santa Claus content, delivered to you by the postal carrier, via your own personal remote control ordering system.
Source: Lockergnome
RSS is a Web content syndication format. Its name is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication. RSS is a dialect of XML. All RSS files must conform to the XML 1.0 specification, as published on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) website.
Source: Harvard
RSS Overview
RSS has many different definitions depending upon who you ask and what version you are referencing, it may be defined as Rich Site Summary, Really Simple Syndication, RDF Site Summary, or any variation. RSS is a text-based format type of XML. Often RSS feeds are displayed on sites using an orange XML button and many times the file extensions end in .rss .xml .rdf or .atom. Any site offering an RSS feed may have that feed syndicated or displayed on other sites via an RSS reader or aggregator. There are various other syndication formats besides RSS (such as Atom), but RSS is currently the most popular, well known and supported format. RSS is available in different versions including 0.92/0.91 (by Netscape), 1.0 (by RSS-Dev) and 0.9x/2.0 (by UserLand).
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Why Syndicate Content via RSS?
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Syndication is a cost-effective way to increase content and brand awareness, drive traffic, improve search engine rankings and serve your existing site users or members. RSS syndication can help web publishers build long lasting, quality relationships with existing users. It is worth the small time investment to create an RSS file that you can distribute across the Internet with minimal ongoing work, minimal effort and almost no overhead. By providing a feed, you are in front of potential users constantly, improving the chances that they’ll click through to an article on your site that catches their eye. Also, when you communicate with customers via RSS you avoid email spam filters and subscription management issues.
RSS solves a problem for people who regularly use the Web. It allows you to easily stay informed by retrieving summaries of the latest content from the sites you are interested in. You save time by not needing to visit each site individually. You ensure your privacy, by not needing to join each site's email newsletter. The number of sites offering RSS feeds is growing rapidly and includes big names like Google, Yahoo, MSN, Amazon, BBC and NY Times.
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How do I Create an RSS Feed?
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If you're a webmaster or developer who manages a complex or custom content management system, there are many tutorials to help you get started with RSS publishing.
RSS Tutorial - Search Engine Watch RSS article on making an RSS feed.
RSS Tutorial - mnot.net RSS tutorial for content publishers and webmasters.
RSS Tutorial - EEVL Development RSS primer for publishers and content providers.
RSS Tutorial - W3schools RSS tutorial to start learning RSS.
RSS Tutorial - XMLfiles introduction to XML really simplr syndication (rss).
RSS Tutorial - Wizard-Creek introduction and overview RSS tutorial.
If you publish a weblog (blog) or personal web site, you can find help information from your publishing software or hosting service provider to enable RSS on your platform. Many services offer built-in tools to publish and update RSS feeds easily. MovableType, Wordpress, and other software programs as well as Blogger, LiveJournal, Typepad, and other blog-hosting services automatically create RSS feeds.
MovableType - Web Devcenter tutorial: Making Feature-Rich, Movable Type RSS Files.
Wordpress - WP support for RSS feeds, tag search for RSS.
Blogger - Blogger Help: What is RSS? How do I get it to work?
LiveJournal - LJ FAQ: Where can I get an RSS or Atom feed of my journal?
Typepad - Create category-specific RSS feeds for Typepad blogs.
RSS Titles & Descriptions
When your feed appears in search results, the title and description are displayed prominently just like a page in the results that is not a feed. By providing a meaningful and informative title and description, you increase the visibility and discoverability of your content and achieve higher placement in search results. It is extremely important to write a thoughtful, accurate, and descriptive title and summary for your feed(s).
RSS URLs
Most users subscribe to feeds by URL, because of this, it is important for feed publishers to decide on an appropriate URL structure and then stick to it. Changing URLs can result in a bad experience for existing users. Your feed would stop updating and if users wanted to continue reading they would have to resubscribe to your feed. Changing URLs also causes confusion for new users by creating duplicate or multiple entries in many RSS databases.
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How do I Display RSS Feeds?
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RSS has many known uses and offers webmasters an opportunity to display fresh content on their sites and keep it updated regularly with minimal effort. While publishing an RSS feed is a great way to generate site interest and increase communication, syndicating and displaying feeds from related sources can also generate user interest, increase traffic and improve search engine rankings.
The content displayed in RSS feeds can be added to web sites a number of different ways. Each technique has advantages and disadvantages associated with it. Each webmaster will need to do plenty of research in order to determine which option will best meet their SEO, CMS, hosting and other technology needs the best.
Using Javascript to Display RSS Feeds
Javascript is one of the easiest ways to display RSS feeds on a site. There are many sites that allow you to generate code that can be copied and pasted into a web site source code or uploaded onto a server. The javascript files will auto-update, showing the latest news headlines as each feed is updated. Every time a visitor sees the page the javascript pulls the data from the feed. Keep in mind, when javascript is used to display RSS feeds, search engines do not actually "see" the content of the feed, meaning that the search engines will not index the feed content at all.
Feedroll - Use Javascript to display RSS news feeds on your site.
Feed2JS - Feed to Javascript, using RSS feeds in your web pages.
FeedSweep - Introducing news to your site via RSS feeds to Javascript.
RSS-to-Javascript - Convert a feed from RSS to Javascript free.
Global Syndication - RSS to JavaScript converter.
Using PHP to Display RSS Feeds
Using PHP to display a feed is a little more complex than using javascript. Like javascript however, when the content of the feed updates, the page content will update as the page is visited or refreshed. The benefit of using PHP to display RSS is that the content of the feed displayed within the page can be spidered by search engine bots and indexed. The result is a feed that always displays the most current information from the RSS channel and page content that is considered search engine spider and robot-friendly.
CaRP - RSS to HTML converter software using php.
rss2html.php - Free RSS to HTML PHP script.
Global Syndication - PHP RSS parser.
lastRSS - Simple yet powerfull PHP class to parse RSS.
Using ASP to Display RSS Feeds
ASP is somewhat similar to PHP. There are free ASP/ASP.NET scripts that can be used to convert RSS feeds into HTML to be displayed on any ASP/ASP.NET server.
RssFeed - An open source custom ASP.NET server control that displays RSS feeds in ASP.NET pages.
ASP.net Tutorial - Custom ASP.NET server control for displaying RSS
feeds.
Exporting RSS Feeds into HTML
If you wish to customize the appearance of a feed you can use a template that exports the feed into HTML or an HTML table. Publishers can incorporate exported tables into an HTML template using a server-side include. Each time the feed is updated, the feed will need to be exported into HTML and uploaded along with each feed. Keep in mind, exporting RSS does require webmaster intervention in order to update the content. The end result, though, is a whole custom page or table with an RSS feed in it that will be search engine friendly.
Using Online Services to Display RSS Feeds
There are a number of Online services available which will host and display RSS feeds for you. Many of these services are available free of charge or for a small fee (usually to cover hosting costs). Because they operate on a seperate domain server and unique domain name there is little benefit to users who wish to display their feeds in this fashion. Basically, without full access to the feed display you are leaving yourself high and dry in the search engines.
FeedBurner - Service that displays RSS feeds on a site.
Using XSL to Display RSS Feeds
Although using XSL and CSS stylesheets to display XML directly is easy to understand in theory, it is much more difficult to implement than PHP or ASP and can be very tough for novices to accomplish. Webmasters must be somewhat familiar with CSS and XSL in order to have to have the formatting work right. Once formatting is in place you would then have to address browser incompatibilities and browser functionality issues. Currently, there are not a lot of resources or guides to help display RSS using XSL.
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RSS Readers & News Aggregators
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RSS channels provide news updates syndicated from a web site in a really simple form. You read these files in a program called an RSS reader or aggregator, which collects news from various sites and displays it for you or others to read. Feed readers check for new content at intervals determined by you once you have subscribed to a feed or several that interest you. A great benefit of subscribing to feeds through feed readers, unlike email news or newsletters, is you have the ability to easily unsubscribe from any feed you choose. Currently, there are many options and choices for aggregating RSS ranging from meta news feed portals (like SearchEngine Feeds.org), RSS search engines and directories, email readers, desktop aggregators and Online feed readers.
Web Based
My Yahoo
Bloglines
Google Reader
RSS Digest
Pluck
NewsGator
Feedmarker
Email Based
Squeet
My RSS Alerts
RSSknip
Email RSS Aggregator
Newspipe
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