Understanding RSS

RSS is a standard for distributing headlines and descriptions. It is both really simple and extremely complicated at the same time.

RSS is still in its infancy yet, it shows significant promise and could potentially revolutionize Internet content distribution. The RSS standard is still being determined, and has experienced growing pains along the way with two version standards competing to become one.

The benefits of RSS is that users control the content they wish to see. Users who are tired of unscrupulous emailers can take back control, over the content theyare served opting in to each feed. If the quality of the feed does not keep their attention they can simply remove it from their viewer and never see it again.

Creating an RSS Feed

The specification can seem overwhelming to those not familiar with markup languages, fortunately there are software tools, like FeedForAll that make feed creation easy for both beginners and novices. If you are bound and determined to hand-code a feed I recommend the make RSS feeds site that provides a step by step coding walk through.

Distributing RSS Feeds

Once the feed is created, you can submit it to RSS search engines. I suggest using the list at RSS Specifications. You will also want to use a standard RSS/XML graphic indicating that the content has a feed available for it. In addition you can insert the following code into the html of your web page which will allow users to "auto-detect" your feed.

Fresh Content

It is important that users keep their RSS feed content fresh and update it on a regular basis. This will increase your feeds popularity.