PDA

View Full Version : question and comment



greenoak
01-08-2009, 10:31 AM
question...whats an rss feed...and why...ive tried to read about this but dont get it....and i might need one..


comment...for someone in small business and outside of the deep guts of most of the convos on here ...i just want to say there is still good stuff for us......even tho i dont have time for or care about many important and minute internet issues which are far beyond my daily work, i have gotten lots of good insight for my business...one from joels blog , about soaking up the general ideas and standards of a world by being in its networks, forums...this is so true...and would help say an ad person from encouraging me to use a totally logical but so wrong of a word in an ad...or help me in seeing whats on the minds of the trash to treasure folks who i am trying to sell to...


the other real good thing i have gotten on here, and on itty biz, is the idea of launching, making my interenet thingys work together.... duh to you in the advanced blog and web worlds but a good easy application for me that i never heard of......just today i used a tool from eborg or goat in my deliberations over a name...the idea was to check google for popularity and where you could fit in the easiest....

and then there is the generosity in answering dumb questions like the one above ...
anyway these are some reasons i think anyone in business could get real value from coming here...
off the soapbox...
:cool:

vangogh
01-08-2009, 12:40 PM
First I'm glad the forum (even us web geeks) is helping you. That's the hope and idea behind the forum so it's always nice to hear when we're successful to some degree.

Now for the question.

RSS stands for really simple syndication. The important word is syndication. RSS is actually only one technology used to syndicate web content (Atom is another), but the basic idea is you're syndicating your content.

With an ordinary web page someone has to visit the page in order to read the content. With syndication (rss, atom, feeds) the content can come to you. For example when you publish a new blog post your blogging application will send out a ping to any services or software that is listening that there's a new post. A ping is just a fancy way of saying "Hey look over here, we just did something"

A feed reader is something that might be listening. There are many different feed readers in existence. Some are online, some are software you download and install. If you're using a feed reader and have subscribed to a particular sites feed then all you need to do to get the new content is open your feed reader. You don't actually need to visit the site in question to get the new content.

If you're subscribed to one site's feed it's probably not a big deal or all that exciting. It's easy enough to visit one site to see if they've published a new blog post. However I'm subscribed to a few hundred feeds. It would take quite a few hours just to visit each site to see if there's something new on each. But I just open my feed reader which lets me know right away which sites have new content. I just read that content in my feed reader without having to visit the sites and I can ultimately read a lot more information that way.

The benefits are that for me as an end user I can absorb a lot more information than I could without the feeds and I can find out quicker when there's something new to read. For the site owner the syndication means more people can ultimately access your content so there's a greater chance someone will actually read it.

There are other advantages too like the ping that gets sent out will be seen by search engines. Search spiders will visit your site sooner than they would otherwise and index your content. I've published a blog post and been able to find it in Google in a few minutes on some occasions.

Feed readers aren't the only things that can read rss. All sorts of applications can read an rss (or Atom) feed. In the end it's a way to help content travel further and faster so more people can have access to it.

Blog software almost always publishes a feed (either rss, atom, or both) and your blog is. I just checked to make sure.

The universal symbol for RSS is http://www.vanseodesign.com/images/rss.gif That's the image I use on my site.

You'll see a lot of variations. Some with different colors or shapes, but you should still be able to recognize them as the RSS symbol. Anytime you see that it means the site is publishing a feed.

greenoak
01-08-2009, 06:43 PM
so should i put the rss gdget on my blog? can people pick me up without it?
i dont quite understand if putting the rss gadget on my blog is for me to use to follow others or if its for making me available to others....
so someone can recieve my posts the way i am now?
or do i need to enable the rss gadget on blogger to make myself available?
thanks van gogh....
i definitely dont look down on web geeks....and i hope visa versa....where would we be without them!!!!.. ann

orion_joel
01-08-2009, 07:29 PM
Ann, thank-you for the comment, one thing you may like to consider doing when you leave comments is enter your website or your blog address. This then means that people who see your comments on blog will be able to click on your name and visit your site.

Probably more a issue on blogs relevant to your industry, but it doesn't hurt to do so on any blog you leave a comment on.

vangogh
01-08-2009, 07:32 PM
People can already subscribe to your feed now. You don't need to do anything in order for that to happen. However many people won't know how and I suspect your customers are less tech savvy than some and perhaps not as familiar with rss and feeds.

The big rss images you see on blogs are just that. They're images and don't do anything by themselves. They usually link to a feed. You're blog is currently publishing both an atom feed and an rss feed. Here are the URLs for each



http://magpiecottage.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
http://magpiecottage.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss


What you could do is add a big rss image to the top of your sidebar. and then turn it into a link like:



<a href="http://magpiecottage.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss"><img src="path-to-rss-image" alt="Subscribe to our Blog"></a>


I used the URL to subscribe to the rss feed, but you could also use the atom feed.

Another thing many people do, including myself, is to open a FeedBurner (http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/home) account and have FeedBurner manage your feed. Your feed will then take on a format like:


http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheVanBlog

That's my FeedBurner feed. Yours would replace TheVanBlog with whatever name you wanted to use. Probably MagpieCottage. Once you sign in to FeedBurner it's pretty easy to set up your FeedBurner feed. One advantage of using FeedBurner is they offer stats on how many subscribers you have and also generate code so people can subscribe to your feed by email. When you publish a new post it will get emailed to people who subscribe for email.

FeedBurner is now owned by Google and you can now ad AdSense directly to your feed. Since Blogger is also a Google product I'm guessing there's an easy way to set it up through the admin side of your blog.

billbenson
01-08-2009, 10:01 PM
I haven't messed with RSS feeds in a few years, but if its text I would think it would still be best to put it in html on your site for SEO. At least its new dynamic content rather than a line of js? Isn't atom just a line of js in your source to google?

vangogh
01-08-2009, 10:21 PM
Bill I'm not sure what you mean. Your feed is an xml file. RSS and Atom are essentially two different ways of formatting that xml. There's no JavaScript involved.

greenoak
01-08-2009, 10:30 PM
thanks , guess i wont do anything.... i have a lot of other stuff to deal with at his time....
in the foo foo world they are after followers and even showing pictures of them on their blogs...seems kind of ikky to me..im going to stick with my nice slow organic growth for a while...

billbenson
01-08-2009, 11:09 PM
Bill I'm not sure what you mean. Your feed is an xml file. RSS and Atom are essentially two different ways of formatting that xml. There's no JavaScript involved.

I thought Atom was an enhanced js language? Maybe I'm confusing it with something else. If you look at the source with your atom feed, do you see the text or just a link?

vangogh
01-09-2009, 12:05 AM
Bill I think you're thinking of Ajax.

Harold Mansfield
01-09-2009, 11:30 AM
thanks , guess i wont do anything.... i have a lot of other stuff to deal with at his time....
in the foo foo world they are after followers and even showing pictures of them on their blogs...seems kind of ikky to me..im going to stick with my nice slow organic growth for a while...

You may benefit from the email subscription aspect of a Feedburner account. With the niche followers that you have, building a list of email addresses of people that are interested in your product, is like building a customer base that could potentially buy at any time.

Feedburner (https://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/home)

Once you open an account, there are options like "Publicize" that will create the HTML code for you to place an "Subscribe by Email" on your blog.

It's is a very easy way to start building an email list.

vangogh
01-09-2009, 12:23 PM
I agree. Ann I can see your customers subscribing by email. All they'd have to do is click a button and enter their email address. It really is fairly easy to set up and you know we'll help you if you need the help.

greenoak
01-10-2009, 08:25 AM
thanks, if i decide on this ,i think this is something for my web person to take on, ...not me...
.now on our main site they can sign up for the newsletter....and lots do.....

and if they wanted to read the blog i thought they would just bookmark it or click on it when on a forum with me...what am i missing? why would they want an email from me?
now that i may be selling on line all this is lots more important to me than it used to be....

if i wasnt so totally working in the store which pays all my bills, 2nd home, health insurance etc etc!!!! i would try and do like you guys and have a great blog tied into my new selling site.... with affiliates, calendars, cool reports on the world, etc etc....but i just cant do all that...this is a little side thing for me.....reading here has sure shown me some of the good ways tho....in planning this im so indebted to here....... thanks