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Really Simple RSS
There's been a lot of interest in RSS lately, well at least if you inhabit the online media world. For most people outside this sphere, the few that have heard about it, it's just another buzz word.
What is RSS really?
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It's an easy way for website owners to syndicate their content - distribute it for publishing on other sites.
An RSS feed contains a list of article summaries: for each article there will be a title, a description and a link to the main article text on the originating site. Other sites can then subscribe to the feed and publish it.
So a news portal site could publish content from Reuters, PA, BBC and other news providers. Other examples include a restaurant that syndicates its daily menu out to the local community website, a mortgage lender that feeds its latest deals to estate agents or the Chamber of Commerce that aggregates event details, from any number of local networking groups, onto its own website.
Who else would want to subscribe to an RSS feed?
Most of us have a selection of websites we visit on a regular basis, the handful of sites we always check whenever we logon to the Internet. Rather than visiting each one in turn and drilling down to the section of interest, wouldn't it be nice if you could find out the latest from all those sites at once?
RSS lets you do just that. Using either a web-based or desktop program called a news aggregator you can subscribe to all the feeds you like, view the article summaries and visit the site of any article that grabs your attention. Subscription will simply involve typing the feed URL into the news aggregator program.
My Yahoo! My MSN and Google accounts all have RSS aggregation facilities so if you've got one of those (and you will if you've got Yahoo Mail, Hotmail or Gmail) then you can start right away.
What are the advantages of creating an RSS feed?
Here's an RSS feed for the most recent EMNM articles:
. The orange icon,
with 'XML' or 'RSS' written on it, is usually used to represent an RSS feed.
Have a look at the content in your web browser to see how an RSS file is structured and subscribe to it using any of the news aggregators available. (The feed's URL is http://www.emnm.co.uk/articles/articlesfeed.xml or you can right-click the icon and select 'Copy Shortcut').
EMNM offer a range of new media design services including interactive CD presentations and website design.
What is RSS really?
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It's an easy way for website owners to syndicate their content - distribute it for publishing on other sites.
An RSS feed contains a list of article summaries: for each article there will be a title, a description and a link to the main article text on the originating site. Other sites can then subscribe to the feed and publish it.
So a news portal site could publish content from Reuters, PA, BBC and other news providers. Other examples include a restaurant that syndicates its daily menu out to the local community website, a mortgage lender that feeds its latest deals to estate agents or the Chamber of Commerce that aggregates event details, from any number of local networking groups, onto its own website.
Who else would want to subscribe to an RSS feed?
Most of us have a selection of websites we visit on a regular basis, the handful of sites we always check whenever we logon to the Internet. Rather than visiting each one in turn and drilling down to the section of interest, wouldn't it be nice if you could find out the latest from all those sites at once?
RSS lets you do just that. Using either a web-based or desktop program called a news aggregator you can subscribe to all the feeds you like, view the article summaries and visit the site of any article that grabs your attention. Subscription will simply involve typing the feed URL into the news aggregator program.
My Yahoo! My MSN and Google accounts all have RSS aggregation facilities so if you've got one of those (and you will if you've got Yahoo Mail, Hotmail or Gmail) then you can start right away.
What are the advantages of creating an RSS feed?
- It gets more people reading your content
- It includes links back to your site
- It gets more people visiting your site who might not have been aware of its existence
- It keeps subscribers up-to-date with your content
- It will probably have a positive effect on your search engine rankings
Here's an RSS feed for the most recent EMNM articles:
. The orange icon,
with 'XML' or 'RSS' written on it, is usually used to represent an RSS feed.
Have a look at the content in your web browser to see how an RSS file is structured and subscribe to it using any of the news aggregators available. (The feed's URL is http://www.emnm.co.uk/articles/articlesfeed.xml or you can right-click the icon and select 'Copy Shortcut').
EMNM offer a range of new media design services including interactive CD presentations and website design.