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RSS Mania – Part Two – Outline of how to create an RSS feed

Well now you like it, are you in love or obsessed with RSS. Those little orange buttons are everywhere and you want to put one on your website or blog or on your wall. That’s great, and it will require a bit of technical knowledge, some writing, some research, and some frustration. So here are the main steps to publish your RSS feed and bring all that information to the world at large, which I will discuss in depth with examples in this article series. Right now we will describe these steps.

1. Sit down, STOP! & To think. (How’s that for step one?)

  • For. Do you have information that should or should be included in an RSS file? Remember that the unwritten rules of RSS are that you should update the file with “new” and more “current” information if not hourly or daily, but at least on a fairly common basis. No one will want to keep their RSS feed on their reader if the information they see every day for the next month is exactly the same as the day before.
  • B. Also, although some people do this, it is NOT good practice to put long essays on an RSS feed. What you want is the first line or description of an object, idea or news. Hook the person into clicking the topic in your reader, read the summary, click again, and they are on your web page.
  • vs. Do you have time to do it? There are millions of blogs that were started with the best of intentions. One entry, two entries, three entries. And then they die. Why? Because the author / owners simply had no idea of ​​the dedication required and the time required to update their Blogs on a regular basis. They also had no idea how difficult the competition was for people to read those blogs. The same goes for RSS. You start a feed to get readers or to transmit information to the web. You must understand that this will take time, patience, and work. This is not a one-time, one-time deal.

2. His deep technical knowledge

You will need to familiarize yourself with and understand the following terms, and perhaps learn some very simple things about how to program them.

  1. RSS
  2. XML
  3. HTML
  4. CSS
  5. Atom
  6. RSS Readers
  7. RSS parsers
  8. RSS validation

3. Now the REAL WORK begins!

  • For. File Preparation: You will need a template RSS file (for the sake of these articles it will be called rss.xml, though it can be whatever name you choose as long as it is in xml format). yourself, this is essential.
  • B. Understand the template and what information goes where
  • vs. Put the information in the template: Every piece of information you have will be included in [headers] and you need to understand the RSS structure in the XML file to get it right.
  • D. Template validation: a crucial aspect. Unlike HTML, RSS is very, very, let me say this again, very relentless. You don’t like deviations from the norm or the established basic format. Getting it right can be the most difficult and frustrating part of the process.

4. Ok, now you wrote the RSS file, your XML file is ready and validated. Now what? I guess you think it’s over. Think again.

  • For. You will need to put the rss.xml file on your website or somewhere on the web where people can access it.
  • B. Now you can steal, get, copy, make, whatever you choose, your own little XML / RSS or RSS – Valid button.
  • vs. Hyperlink your file to RSS
  • D. Submit your file in the correct category to RSS directories.

5. How many people will access your RSS? I’ll talk about this in a later article as well, but surprisingly, the answer here is still very vague. There are a few ways to track numbers, but none are foolproof and most are very complicated.

6. Go and get a good night’s sleep because tomorrow you will have to start the process of adding information to your RSS (or changing it) all over again!

(This is a continuation of my first article on RSS – “Addiction to RSS mania – Introduction to RSS and the terminology”)