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View Full Version : whats the point of rss?



greenoak
11-11-2010, 11:05 AM
i tried to do wordle, with my grandson and using our website....and it would only take sites with rss......should i bother?
ann

vangogh
11-11-2010, 11:52 AM
Up to you really. I'm not sure any of us can make that decision.

RSS is a way to syndicate your content. It stands for really simple syndication if I'm not mistaken. When you develop a web page you use html because that's the language browsers understand. With rss the same content is coded with xml, which many different kind of applications can read. You generally don't need to write the xml as there are so many ways to have it done for you.

The advantage is that more places can grab and present your content so it travels much further than your own site. The rss feed also sends out a signal when it updates so someone who's subscribed to your feed can be alerted you have something new without having to visit your site. I have a feedreader I use and I'm subscribed to about 500 different sources. It would be impossible for me to visit all those sources each day, but it's easy to open my feedreader and skim through all the new content to find the articles I want to read.

I think Wordle needs the rss feed because it needs to grab content from more than a single page to put together it's word tag. It forms them based on the entire site and not just a single page and I guess it finds the content beyond the one page through the feed. Any site with a blog will have an rss feed as will many without blogs.

greenoak
11-11-2010, 01:56 PM
thanks vg...sounds pretty attractive....

KristineS
11-11-2010, 01:59 PM
I use RSS feeds for all the blogs that I write. It is very helpful and makes it easy for people who read and follow your content to know when you have something new.

greenoak
11-11-2010, 04:44 PM
kristine...do your readers have to do anything to get your feeds?
also it sounds like vg is saying there are advantages even if one doesnt sign up for your feed...so i thnk i am interested.... thanks

vangogh
11-12-2010, 12:51 AM
Ann people do need to subscribe to your feed. Here's a really good and short (3 minute) video explaining rss in plain english (http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english).

In the video they mention Google Reader as one feedreader. Lots of people use it, but it's not the only one. I use a programming I downloaded to my computer. Lots of email programs have rss readers in them. Most browsers have rss readers built in as well.

You generally subscribe by clicking an rss icon. It's usually an orange square with white curves inside. If you watch the video you can see what it looks like. If you use Internet Explorer I think it displays as gray until you land on a page with an rss feed and then it turns orange and you can click it to subscribe. The first time or two you subscribe might seem a little confusing, but once you've done it a few times it becomes second nature.

The basic idea once you've subscribed is you no longer have to visit the sites you've subscribed to to see if they have new content. Anything new gets sent to your feedreader. You just visit one place (your feedreader) and you can access the new content of any site you've subscribed to. Like I mentioned above, I subscribe to about 500 different feeds from blogs about web design and seo and news and other topics I'm interested in. It would impossible to always visit those sites, but all I do now is open my feedreader and everything comes to me.

In many ways rss is like a modern newspaper, except you get to choose what the paper looks like. I spend about a half hour to an hour every morning to start my day going through the morning's feeds while having some coffee. I'll check again while eating lunch and usually once more before going to bed. It's a great way to keep up on the news and your favorite blogs.

This forum publishes feeds for every section. If you check the home page you'll see a column of small orange icons in the middle. Each icon corresponds to one section of the forum. You could subscribe to the Internet Marketing section for example and without ever visiting ready the conversations in any thread posted here and then if you want to say something you can easily visit the forum and post like usual. But if you notice there's nothing new you could save some time and not visit. Not that I want to encourage you not to visit of course.

There is an advantage where people don't have to subscribe. Because of the way feeds are coded it's easy for any program to read them. For example Facebook has it built in to read and republish your feed on your profile. You just have to let Facebook know what the the url of your feed is and allow them to grab it. Then all your Facebook friends can read your blog posts when they visit your profile.

Harold Mansfield
11-13-2010, 10:40 AM
Ann,
Here's the way I look at it. Today's web (just like T.V. and Print News) is all about syndication. The more places that can pick up your content, and the more places that you can submit your content, the better for you to attract people to your website.
RSS makes that possible without having to submit whole articles, one by one. RSS updates automatically when new content is published to it.

RSS is how Google and other search engines list blog posts in thier blog searches.
RSS is how CNN lists related stories across the web,
RSS is how your Blog posts are updated to your Linked In, Facebook, and Twitter accounts.
RSS is how your website or blog gets listed in directories and search engines that you have never heard of before.
RSS is how your readers can be alerted of new content to your website of blog.
RSS is how you auto post content pretty much anywhere on the web.

It's the feed that allows your content to be syndicated across the web.

These days a website without RSS ability is like standing alone on an island with no way of getting your message out to people who may want to see it, unless they visit the island.

Spider
11-13-2010, 11:08 AM
What I have not been able to find out is How to add RSS to one's website. Plenty of information and directions about adding a website or blog to one's incoming newsfeed but how do you make your site available for people to subscribe to it?

Harold Mansfield
11-13-2010, 12:08 PM
What I have not been able to find out is How to add RSS to one's website. Plenty of information and directions about adding a website or blog to one's incoming newsfeed but how do you make your site available for people to subscribe to it?

Try using Google reader:
Tutorial: Create RSS Feeds for your Website (http://www.labnol.org/internet/create-rss-feed-for-websites/5470/)

greenoak
11-13-2010, 01:08 PM
thanks....im going to put this on our list...

Harold Mansfield
11-13-2010, 03:13 PM
thanks....im going to put this on our list...

Ann,
You know your blog already has an RSS feed:
magpie cottage (http://magpiecottage.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss)

greenoak
11-13-2010, 05:37 PM
oh...duh.... i never got any feedback from it...i just read this thread and it sounded good....
. my poor blog....its pretty neglected lately...

vangogh
11-14-2010, 11:11 PM
What I have not been able to find out is How to add RSS to one's website.

An rss feed is created in xml according to one or more of several different standards. You either have to create the xml file for every new piece of content or use software to automatically do it for you. One reason people like to use content management systems like WordPress is because the application will automatically publish your feed.

If you don't continuously publish new content then there's no reason to publish an rss feed. If you are planning on creating new content search for things about creating or publishing an rss or atom feed.