Learning RSS Feeds
One thing that has really intrigued me lately is RSS feeds. I knew it wouldn’t be that difficult to figure them out, but I just hadn’t taken the time to research it until last week. Aaron and I set out to learn the details of this increasingly popular aspect of the web.
What it comes down to is that they are very basic. If you have a website with multiple articles in a blog or multiple news stories, then you can easily create an RSS XML file. RSS files are made up of items. Each item must have three things: a title, a link and a description. The title is the name of the article. The link is the link to the full story located on your site. And the description is the text you want to show up from the article.
I discovered there are basically two ways to go about the description. You can be really nice and provide the entire article, even including images and links. Or you can simply provide the first few hundred characters as a sort of teaser. This way if someone who subscribes to your RSS feed is interested by the beginning of your newest article, they will click the link (Ah ha! Remember one of the three parts of an item is the link) that takes them to the full story. This is not a bad idea if you are trying to bring more traffic to your site. And who isn’t?
So while I feel privileged when the feeds I subscribe to provide the entire article, thus allowing me the ability to never leave Google Reader, I completely understand when a majority of them only provide a teaser.
If you are interested in learning more about the structure of an RSS file, just look at mine! It is located at http://www.mrandmrskraus.com/rss.xml
One thing worth noting. Not only does each item have a title, link and description, but these are also provided at the top of the RSS file in order to specify the main title, main website URL, and main description of your website.
Well, I will be excited if you all subscribe to my RSS feed now. The link to it is signified by the little orange icon on my main page. Happy reading!