What You Should Know About

Daily more and more websites, news services and blogs are adding RSS content. RSS is a method of syndicating content.The concept of aggregating content in a central location or warehouse is very appealing. Consumers have been tired of push technology, RSS gives users the flexibility to regain control of their content. RSS feed creators provide content without forcing it on to consumers. In fact with RSS consumers are able to choose the content they want to view.

How to make a RSS Feed
RSS feeds contain what are referred to as "elements". Elements are normally connected in some way and contain a common theme or other similarity.

If you want to save themselves headaches of hand-code consider an RSS feed to use FeedForAll, application user friendly software that formats the XML for you.

Contains eight items at the time of writing the following feed materials http://www.notepage.net/feed.xml. The items are all SMS and paging related news articles which would probably be beneficial to anyone interested in the wireless market.

Each element contains:

Title and description must be written to describe the content and the link must refer to the Web page that contains the actual content.

Just as html uses XML file open and close tags to designate a title, description and link. The codes are enclosed in <>in square brackets, like standard HTML and close the code contains a forward slash/.

The following is an element in an XML file looks like:

Description goes here
http://www.linkgoeshere.com

As I mentioned earlier, an RSS feeds contains elements and, like the above marks an open and close tag is used to distinguish between elements.

Description goes here
http://www.linkgoeshere.com

Another description goes here
http://www.anotherlinkgoeshere.com

Now an RSS feed is a range of topics, to link these items together to create what is called a "channel".

Channel appears at the top of the file and tell people how items relate to each other. Like the elements user channels title, description, and link tags to describe its contents. The code open channel event occurs before the first element and exits mark occurs after the last element.

Explanation of how the elements are related goes here
http://www.directoryoflinksgohere

Description goes here
http://www.linkgoeshere.com

Another description goes here
http://www.anotherlinkgoeshere.com

Finally, you identify the file by specifying it is an XML file by inserting the xml and rss define codes at the beginning and end.

Explanation of how the elements are related goes here
http://www.directoryoflinksgohere

Description goes here
http://www.linkgoeshere.com

Another description goes here
http://www.anotherlinkgoeshere.com

When you save the file, you must save it as an XML file.

Warning
If you create the file using Dreamweaver or a similar tool that it does not deprive becareful out is marks it feels redundant. In order to be a RSS-feed your file should be on that marks that were discussed above, and the file will not be valid, if the codes are dressed like minimum.

I found a cool small, freely distributable program that helped in the creation of the xml file is called first object editor http://www.firstobject.com/

Validation
As my math teacher use to say, check your work! When your file is finished and uploaded einter for animal feed validator by http://feedvalidator.org

Syndication/submission
If you've made it this far you are in good shape, it is time to "publish" your content! Submit your RSS feed (the XML file you created) to the Web sites, just as you would send a Web page. Some of the more popular Web sites that accept RSS files can be found under "Post rss Feed"
http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com/RSS-feeds.html

About the author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for the Note Page, Inc. http://www.notepage.net a company specializing in alphanumeric paging, SMS and wireless messaging software solutions. Other sites by Sharon can be found at http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com, http://www.messaging-software.net and http://www.monitoring-software.net