RSS

The Basics of RSS

What is RSS?

You probably have seen this three-letter acronym in the course of your internet surfing. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary; syndicating means republishing an article that comes from another source such as a website. A RSS feed is a means of publicizing updates about websites. It may or may not include a summary and photos of the latest posting. But those that provide summaries (thus Rich Site Summary) allow users to skim through the article so that they can decide later on if they want to access the website source. The RSS feed usually contains the title of the update originating from the website. It is also usually the link to the website source.

What are the Benefits of RSS?

RSS provides benefits to both readers (users) and web publishers.

1. It gives you the latest updates. Whether it is about the weather, new music, software upgrade, local news, or a new posting from a rarely-updated site, you can learn about the latest as soon as it comes out.

2. It saves on surfing time. Since an RSS feed provides a summary of the related article, it saves the user's time by helping s/he decide on which items to prioritize when reading or browsing the net.

3. It gives the power of subscription to the user. Users are given a free-hand on which websites to subscribe to in their RSS aggregators which they can change at any time they decide differently.

4. It lessens the clutter in your inbox. Although your email address will be required to enjoy the services of online RSS aggregators, RSS does not use your email address to send the updates.

5. It is spam free. Unlike email subscriptions, RSS does not make use of your email address to send updates thus your privacy is kept safe from spam mails.

6. Unsubscribing is hassle-free. Unlike email subscriptions where the user is asked questions on why s/he is unsubscribing and then the user is asked to confirm unsubscribing, all you have to do is to delete the RSS feed from your aggregator.

7. It can be used as an advertising or marketing tool. Users who subscribe to or syndicate product websites receive the latest news on products and services without the website sending spam mail. This is advantageous to both the web user and the website owner since advertising becomes targeted; those who are actually interested in their products are kept posted.

What are the Drawbacks of RSS?

The disadvantages of RSS stem from user-preference concerns and the fact that it is a new technology.

1. Some users prefer receiving email updates over an RSS feed.

2. Graphics and photos do not appear in all RSS feeds. For conciseness and ease of publication, RSS feeds do not display the photos from the original site in announcing the update except for some web-based aggregators.

3. The identity of the source website can be confusing. Since RSS feeds do not display the actual URL or name of the website, it can sometimes get confusing on what feed a user is actually reading.

4. Publishers cannot determine how many users are subscribed to their feed and the frequency of their visits. Moreover, they do not know the reasons why users unsubscribe which could be important in improving their advertising.

5. RSS feeds create higher traffic and demands on the server. Most readers still prefer the whole update over a brief summary of the entry, thus they still access the site.

6. Since it is a new technology, many sites still do not support RSS.

How Do I Start Using RSS?

There are two things needed: an RSS feed and an RSS aggregator or reader. The RSS feed comes from an RSS-supported website. There are also websites that provide a list of RSS feeds from different websites. An RSS aggregator is used to read the RSS feed from the source website. It scans and collects data on the latest RSS feeds from the worldwide web.

An aggregator comes in two forms: a downloadable program, also known as a desktop aggregator, and an online or web-based aggregator. Downloadable aggregators may require payment before they can be acquired, while internet-based aggregators are usually free of charge. All you need to do is to register an account and you are ready to use their services. Both versions allow you to customize, or choose, which RSS feeds to enter. Paid aggregators are usually chosen by more experienced users and they usually allow more freedom in customizing feeds.

Editor's Note: A list of top RSS Desktop Aggregators can be found at:

About.com
or
RSS-Specifications.com

1. Choose an RSS aggregator to use. For beginners, web-based aggregators are recommended since they are usually user-friendly.

2. Scan the homepage of your target website for the RSS or XML button. It contains the RSS code you need to enter in the aggregator. Copy this code. Syndic8 provides a directory of websites that support RSS.

3. Paste the code (which contains the URL of the website) in your aggregator. There is a space provided for pasting the code.

After you have done these three easy steps, you can start reading the RSS feeds coming from the website. New postings appear as they are published in real time at the source website.

RSS and Internet Marketing

The original idea of RSS came from Netscape, where the intention was to provide a means for users to customize their personal homepages with links to websites that were of interest to them, similar to bookmarking websites.

The application of RSS to internet marketing was an unforeseen development to RSS technology developers. Since users are given the freedom to add RSS feeds to their aggregators, those who are interested in particular products and services available on the internet can now be notified real time. Marketing becomes more specific to interested people and not a hit-and-miss operation.

Medium to big-scale companies who intend to use RSS for marketing their products and services should consider linking up with email account providers, (e.g. Yahoo, MSN, Google mail); networking websites (e.g. Friendster, Multiply, My Space, Hi5); websites of newspapers and television network websites (e.g. New York Times, CNN). Smaller companies can also look at networking websites as well as personal blog websites (e.g. Blogspot) and websites of clubs and organizations that would probably make use of their products or services e.g. a fishing supplies store can look for the website of their local fishing club for possible RSS marketing.

Clearly, RSS is an innovation in worldwide web information management as well as online marketing. We can expect better RSS technology in the not-so-distant future as its popularity increases among users and website owners alike.

About The Author: Werner Schamberger is CEO of Homework Online and Best Articles Online. He is an entrepreneur and author.

Source: SiteProNews * January 2, 2008 * Issue #1036

How To Keep Your Website Fresh With RSS

One of the biggest reasons people visit websites is to get information. If you can regularly provide fresh, quality content on your website you can expect to be rewarded by visitors and return visitors. What's more, you will be rewarded by the search engines. I recommend that you add new and original content to your site as often as possible, ideally once a day.

Regularly adding fresh and original content:

All of the above factors translate into revenue.

We all know how hard adding original and fresh content is, especially if you're the business owner. You have to be original, creative, organized, thoughtful and motivated, and above all, able to write. So what's a website owner or business owner supposed to do? RSS may be the answer.

What Is RSS?

Here's the Wikipedia definition of RSS:

RSS is a family of web feed formats specified in XML (a generic specification for data formats) and used for Web syndication. RSS delivers its information as an XML file called an "RSS feed", "webfeed", "RSS stream", or "RSS channel". These RSS feeds provide a way for users to passively receive newly released content (such as text, web pages, sound files, or other media); this might be the full content itself or just a link to it, possibly with a summary or other metadata (data describing the content).

RSS feeds are operated by many news web sites, weblogs, schools, and podcasters.

"RSS" can stand for any of the following phrases:

Want to see an example of RSS in action? Go to the Oak Web Works, LLC homepage, and look at the bottom of the right-hand column under the title 'Latest Tech News'. This is actually two RSS feeds from other websites.

Our company homepage was very static. It didn't change very much since the services we offer stay basically the same. Why should any visitors come back if every time they come to our site, the content is exactly the same? They don't have much of a reason.

Interestingly, that's the way search engine spiders were programmed to "think" as well. Spiders are programs written for search engines to regularly surf the Web and record what's there. That recording goes into the search engine's databases ready to be accessed by the next searcher. This process is called indexing.

For example, Google will send out a spider to your site and index a lot of it, but not always all of it. It determines how often to revisit and index your site by how often you update it. If you update it every day, then it will visit much more often than if you rarely update it. Engines also consider the homepage to be the most important page, so it's good to update it even more often than the rest of your site.

Again, if you struggle with adding fresh content, then RSS may be the answer. We didn't write the headlines under 'Latest Tech News' on our homepage. Instead, the RSS feed automatically grabbed it from another site that had created them. Once we set the feed up, we don't have to do anything more, and our homepage has regularly updated content. Every time those headlines change, it updates its feed, which is then updated on any other websites displaying that feed, as well as ours.

RSS feeds can be more than news headlines. They can be lists of any kind. They can be press releases, articles, blog entries, product releases, or almost any other grouping of changing or growing data.

How Do I Set An RSS Feed Up?

There are a number of ways in which you can display an RSS feed on your website. You can use JavaScript or various other scripting languages. Unfortunately, RSS that uses JavaScript is not seen at all by search engines when they come and index your site, so don't use JavaScript.

Instead, use a script that can be handled by your Web server besides JavaScript. Ask your hosting company or IT people what platform your Web server uses and what software or modules are loaded onto the machine. This will determine what scripting language you can use for your RSS.

Check if your Web server has PHP capabilities. If so, then there are hundreds of scripts written in PHP that you can use for free that properly display RSS feeds that are recognized by search engines. There are RSS scripts written in ASP.NET, Perl and numerous other languages, so you have a wide variety to choose from.

For the Oak Web Works, LLC homepage we used an ASP script called RSStoHTML.

Which one would you choose? After you've determined which languages your Web server supports, conduct a search such as 'PHP script for displaying RSS feeds in html' or 'ASP and RSS', for example. Try a few and see which ones run on your server. If one runs on your server properly, and you check this by simply seeing if it displays RSS feeds on your Web page, then use that one.

When you download the script, look at the code and find where to add an RSS feed URL. There should be a dummy one in there already, so just replace that one with the RSS feed you want to use. Here's what a typical RSS feed URL looks like:

http://nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/userland/Technology.xml

The URL's often end in '.rss' as well.

After we inserted the RSS feed URL into the script, we wanted to display the feed in HTML on our homepage. To do this we added the following bit of code into the spot on our homepage html code where we wanted it to display:

<!--#include virtual="RSS2HTML-tech-news-home.asp"-->

Keep in mind that this is for a Windows Web server. The way in which you include it on a website powered by a UNIX Web server will be a little different. If you're not sure, ask your hosting company. Where can I find feeds that are relevant to my website's content?

First you can try these:

You can also do a search for your topic and RSS feeds. For example, search for "RSS feeds and pets', or 'football and RSS feeds', or 'small business news feeds'. Finally, you can go to specific websites that are related to your industry and look for a small, orange, rectangular icon that says 'RSS' or 'XML'. Click on that and you'll get a feed URL to enter into your RSS feed script.

Remember, always be sure to include feeds that are relevant to your website's content. Once you get the hang of the concept, RSS can be a lot of fun, and it definitely keeps your website fresh and updated, just what search engines like, and more importantly, what website visitors like.

About The Author: Jason OConnor is President of Oak Web Works, LLC, an e-strategy firm. Reach him at joconnor888@hotmail.com.

Source: SiteProNews * September 22, 2006 * Issue #844

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