A look at RSS.

[Payton]

Ohai!

First off, let me just say hai2u and thanks for reading my topic. If you clicked this you either want to learn RSS for yourself, or just wanted to see what this was about. Hopefully you want to learn about RSS. First of all, let's start with the meaning of RSS: Really. Simple. Syndication. RSS is meant for getting your site's updates to users and viewers much faster than actually having to go to your site to check. Most blogs (if not all) have an RSS feed that allow viewers to check for updates anytime he or she wants. You can get RSS feeds on most of the new phones out there today, and finally, sites like CNN use RSS feeds to broadcast news to people! Why not use RSS?

Part One: The Essential Facts

These are just a couple of things you need to know before making your RSS feed.

1. You have to save your RSS feed as a .XML document.
2. Upload the file to your site.
3. Sign up for an aggregator site and submit your site's RSS feed (XML file link) when prompted.
4. All RSS feeds need this* code at the top, like XHTML needs a document type code atop it.

*

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>
<rss version="2.0">

Part 2: The Syntax and Outline

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>
<rss version="2.0">

<channel>
<title>Your Feed's Title</title>
<link>http://yoursitelinkhere.com</link>
<description>Site description</description>
<item>
<title>A News Item</title>
<link>http://yoursitelinkhere.com/page</link>
<description>A part of my site, check it out.</description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Another News Item.</title>
<link>http://yoursitelinkhere.com/page2</link>
<description>Another cool part of my site.</description>
</item>
</channel>

</rss>

This is the basic skeleton of a RSS feed. You update the feed with more items for the aggregator to pick up. So, say you're replicating a Word Press blog with basic HTML/CSS (which would be pointless but let's assume you are), and your news is on http://yoursitelinkhere.com/blog/POSTTITLEHERE.htm. You would basically do this with the RSS feed under the most recent:

<item>
<title>Blah blah blah </title>
<link>http://yoursitelinkhere.com/blog/POSTTITLEHERE.htm</link>
<description>Description</description>
</item>

Got it? When you add a new item, the aggregator will search your RSS feed for new stuff, pick it up, and add it to the mainstream feed that everyone sees. Now let's see the important stuff.

Part Three - srs bsns

RSS feeds are coded in XML, so they have to follow the rules of XML to be coded correctly. Let's review the rules of XML here.

-Must have a closing tag.
-Case sensitive.
-Nesting is important!
-Attribute values must be quoted.

For publishing information:
RSS Publish Your Feed

For reading RSS feeds information:
RSS Readers