Adding an RSS Feed to your site

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NOTE: If you are brand new to building a website, you may not want to read this at this moment. Furthermore, there are many programs out there that can do most of this for you, but they cost money, and we all hate having to spend money on things when we don't really need to.

What is RSS? RSS stands for, depending on which version of RSS, "RDF Site Summary (RSS 1.0 and RSS 0.90)", "Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91)", and "Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)". For all intents and purposes, all you need to know is that RSS now stands for Really Simple Syndication. So what makes it so important? Well for one, people can subscribe to it (most web browsers allow you to subscribe to an RSS feed) and whenever you make an update to it, they will be alerted and be able to view the new content. Secondly, it gives your site another chance to be viewed by people, which as we all know is the most important aspect of maintaining a website. Since RSS is relatively new, most sites only publish their "News" section with RSS.

No matter how daunting it may seem, all RSS basically is is another page under your domain. So let's get started.


Creating an RSS file.

First things first, let's open Notepad in Windows or any other text editor. Go to the Start Menu -> Accessories -> Notepad or the Run command "Notepad".

Here is what it will look like in Notepad, once you've copy and pasted this:
*I have attached an rss.txt file to this post to make it easier to work with. Get it and instructions on how to use it at the bottom of this tutorial*

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<rss version="2.0">
    <channel>
        <title>Big League Players Club Newsfeed</title>
        <link>http://bigleagueplayersclub/rss</link>
        <description>Big League Players Club news and announcements</description>
        <language>en-us</language>
 
        <item>
            <title>Big League Players Club Starts an RSS Feed!!</title>
            <link>http://bigleagueplayersclub/rssfeed1.html</link>
            <description>Big League Players Club Starts an RSS Feed!!</description>
        </item>
 
        <item>
            <title>Big League Players Club Continues!!</title>
            <link>http://bigleagueplayersclub/rssfeed2.html</link>
            <description>Big League Players Club Continues!!</description>
        </item>
    </channel>
    </rss>

Save this file as "rss.xml" or any other filename ending as xml.


Editing your RSS file.

Let's examine the lines that you must edit to make this your own RSS feed.

<title>Big League Players Club Newsfeed</title>
        <link>http://bigleagueplayersclub/rss</link>
        <description>Big League Players Club news and announcements</description>
        <language>en-us</language>

The title (Big League Players Club Newsfeed) is basically what is shown on the browser. You will want to replace this with a title more suited to your site. The next line, link (http://bigleagueplayersclub/rss), is just a link to either your site or the RSS file itself. The next line is just a description (Big League Players Club news and announcements) of the page, which you can change to whatever you wish. Do not touch the last line unless you are writing in a language other than english.

        <item>
            <title>Big League Players Club Continues!!</title>
            <link>http://bigleagueplayersclub/rssfeed2.html</link>
            <description>Big League Players Club Continues!!</description>
        </item>

Now comes your content. The title (Big League Players Club Continues!!) is the title of the article that you are publishing. The link (http://bigleagueplayersclub/rssfeed2.html) is the link from your title to the full article on your domain. The description (Big League Players Club Continues!!) is what the readers will see as what the article is basically about. Ideally, you want the description to be a small part of your article to entice the reader to come visit your site, but I just put in a small description here just to get the point across.

For every new item that you want to add, all you need to do is copy and edit the content above and paste it right under the last < /item> tag.

Finishing up the RSS file.

Ok, we're all done editing this template to make it usable for your own RSS feed. Save it, and it's time to upload it to your domain. Make sure you upload it in the same place as you indicated on the very first < link> tag, otherwise it won't function.


Validating your RSS

Once you have uploaded the xml file, you must now validate it. I like to use http://feedvalidator.org/, but for the most part, the site that will be syndicating your feed will also have a validator. Validating the RSS file will tell you whether or not you have created the file correctly. Make sure you give it the correct link to the RSS file you uploaded.


Syndicating your RSS!

After you've finished validating it successfully, all that's left to do is to let people all over the internet know that you have an RSS feed. There are many places on the internet that let you syndicate your RSS, such as weblog sites. One of the biggest of these is http://www.weblogs.com/. This site is completely free, while giving your RSS nice exposure.

One thing you might want to add after all this is a link to the RSS itself on your front page. On most sites that have RSS feeds, you will find an icon that looks like the one on top of the tutorial on the very top or very bottom of their homepage. See the sites that you have submitted your RSS to for more information.


Conclusion
I hope that this tutorial has helped you understand the basics of creating an RSS feed. Please remember that the above xml is the most basic style possible. There is much more information and styling that you can add to your feed. For further information you can visit http://www.petefreitag.com/item/465.cfm which I used many years ago to learn about RSS Feeds.




Attachment

I have attached an rss.txt file to this post to make it easier to work with. Once you have downloaded it, open Notepad, then File -> Open and navigate to rss.txt. Once open, you must save the file as an xml. If your computer is set so that you do not see extensions, such as txt or xml, take care when renaming the file. I believe the best way would be File -> Save As -> then change the "Save as type" option to All Files and name it rss.xml.

[bab3122]

Great information in a very simple to understand format!