rss feeds

What is an RSS feed?

RSS is a family of web feed formats, specified in XML and used for Web syndication. RSS is used by (among other things) news websites, weblogs and podcasting. The abbreviation is variously used to refer to the following standards:

Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91)
RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0)
Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)

Web feeds provide web content or summaries of web content together with links to the full versions of the content, and other metadata. RSS in particular, delivers this information as an XML file called an RSS feed, webfeed, RSS stream, or RSS channel. In addition to facilitating syndication, web feeds allow a website's frequent readers to track updates on the site using an aggregator.

Does your website need a feed?

You’re reading this article, so you’ve obviously heard of RSS. You’ve probably seen the buzz and excitement about Syndicating Content, and you’ve noticed that nearly every website or blog you see has at least an XML sitemap feed....and you wonder if your website could benefit from this technology.

The answer - in a word - is YES.

Business websites, Information websites, E-Commerce sites, directories, virtually all websites - personal or commercial, can take advantage of and benefit from RSS feeds.

Google, Yahoo and MSN Agree!

excerpts from the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog

“Joint support for the Sitemap Protocol
Posted by Grace Kwak, Google Zurich

11/15/2006 09:03:00 PM

We're thrilled to tell you that Yahoo! and Microsoft are joining us in supporting the Sitemap protocol.

As part of this development, we're moving the protocol to a new namespace, www.sitemaps.org, and raising the version number to 0.9. The sponsoring companies will continue to collaborate on the protocol and publish enhancements on the jointly-maintained site sitemaps.org.“

Ms. Kwak also states:
“If any website owners, tool writers, or webserver developers haven't gotten around to implementing Sitemaps yet, thinking this was just a crazy Google experiment, we hope this joint announcement shows that the industry is heading in this direction. The more Sitemaps eventually cover the entire web, the more we can revolutionize the way web crawlers interact with websites. In our view, the experiment is still underway.”

In summary, RSS web feeds make it easy for viewers to track website updates, facilitate syndicating website content via XML (go here to learn about syndicating content via javascript or php), plus make it easy to keep Search Engines updated on new website content, all while providing your website information in a search friendly format.

How do you give your website an RSS feed advantage?

1. Let me do it for you.

RSS is simple, but creating the files is time-consuming, and a rudimentary understanding of html, xml, etc. is desirable. Most site owners/managers find they simply don’t have the time to sit down, compile, and type in all the titles, descriptions, links, and other data required to create an RSS feed, or they don’t feel comfortable enough yet in their understanding of the technology.

Many Business/Website Owners and Managers understand that their time is much more effectively spent doing what they do best, and they call on DLPerry.com to create hand-coded, validated RSS feeds and Jointly Supported Sitemaps for their websites. How about you?

Contact me today to learn how affordable it will be to add web feeds to YOUR website. For a no-obligation quote, please complete and submit the RFQ request form below. Required items are in bold:

2. Do it yourself

RSS really IS ‘Really Simple Syndication’. It is a text/xml file that can be written in a plain ascii text editor. If you have the time and inclination there is a plethora of information available online to help you - such as RSS 2.0 Specification at http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss.

There are also some editing options available online. Many will require download and installation to your local computer. To find out whats available - you might try a search for “RSS editor” or “RSS creator”.

If you’d like to try your hand at building your own Sitemap feed - be sure to get a copy of my free RSS Sitemap Template (using the Sitemap.org protocol) here.