Help with RSS
RSS is the short form of Rich Site Summary or sometimes Really Simple Syndication. RSS can be used to read a blog without actually opening a browser and typing the address, although you still need to have an RSS aggregator software. An RSS document (which is called a “feed”, “web feed”, or “channel”) includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship.
You can add this inside the .. tag of a page so that browsers will know your site offers an RSS feed and thus shows the icon on the address bar.
<link href="PATH_TO_RSS"type="application/rss+xml" rel="alternate" title="TITLE_FOR_FEED" />
How To subscribe to RSS Feeds?
When you click on the RSS feed icon you will be taken to a new URL. For this site it is http://www.exnol.com/feed Many sites including this one uses FeedBurner a free feed management program to manage RSS feeds. So this blogs feed is also available at http://feeds.feedburner.com/simpleinfo You can right click on the RSS icon and select “Copy Link Location” (“Copy Shortcut” in IE) to copy the address of the RSS feed of any blog.
If you are using a feed reader such as Mozilla Thunderbird or some of the clients listed at Wikipedis – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aggregators you can see an Add Feed or a similar option. Just paste the address where it asks for the URL and add a title. But if you are using an online feed aggregator such as Google Reader – http://reader.google.com you can just login and click the Add Subscription button. You will be asked for the address, paste the address you copied and save it.
RSS FAQ!
- I have a blog/site how can I add an RSS feed for it?
If you have a blog the go to FeedBurner and signup. They have some really easy tools to create an RSS feed for any site. If your blog is on Blogger or WordPress or any such tools, chances are that you would already have a feed. Now use the tag given above with your feed address in your template file.
- What are the common expansions for RSS?
Besides the above given two expansion the following ones are also used
Rich Site Summary
R(DF) Site Summary
- What is the default feed address for my blogger blog?
The default RSS feed address for a blogger hosted blog is “http://YOUR_BLOG.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss” You can access the settings of your Blogger feed on your Blogger Dashboard>>Settings>>Site Feeds
- Can you suggest some good RSS aggregator tools?
Since most of the free email programs like Yahoo and Gmail supports IMAP and POP now a days it is best to use ThunderBird from Mozilla. Its an Email client and an RSS aggregator. You can easily add, read and manage RSS feeds. The download is only about 7Mb.
If you have further questions please [intlink id="contact-me" type="page"]contact me[/intlink].