What is an RSS Feed? What does RSS mean?
|
RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” RSS is a data feed
format that's used to publish updates to webpages. For example, when new
content is added to a blog, the RSS feed for the blog automatically gets
updated with the headline of the new post, a link to it, (usually) an
excerpt from the content, etc. Think of RSS this way: Whenever a writer
who belongs to a syndicate writes a column, they don’t just write it for
their local paper, every article goes up on the newswire and any paper who
belongs to the syndicate can reprint it.
RSS feeds generally contain data for the specific number of most
recently added posts, with the most recent listed first. When new item is
added, the oldest item is removed from the end of the feed. |
|
"What is an RSS Parser?"
An RSS parser is a script (often written in PHP, but some are written in
other languages), that chops up the data from an RSS feed so that it can
be used in another kind of document -- for example, a webpage. Another
script could, for example, give an RSS parser the address of the RSS feed
and ask it for just the headlines and links, which the other script could
display however it wanted.
"What is the Difference Between an RSS Parser and an RSS to HTML
Converter?"
An RSS to HTML converter is an RSS parser that has the built-in ability to
display the data in HTML format (ie. in a webpage).
Many simple RSS to HTML converters give you no control at all over the
formatting of their output. More powerful scripts have a default output
format, but can also be configured to control things like font sizes,
colors and styles; how much of the headline or summary excerpt to display;
whether to display images; whether to keep or remove any formatting
specified by the feed, etc.
Why Should Have RSS Feed on my Computer ?
It is very beneficial to avid we browsers to have all or most sources of
news and information in one place. RSS feed allows a subscriber to
consolidate important resources in one area of on their computer and get
all latest updates by merely refreshing the screen. It saves lots of time
and hastle in jumping from source to source looking for news and
information. To do so, First, you have to download an RSS Reader, a
program that combines all the news online in one place. You can download a
reader for free at http://www.RssReader.com . Once you’ve downloaded a
reader, you can click any topic that suits your need, and only those
topics will be delivered right to you.
Why would I put RSS on my website?
An RSS feed can be thought of like this. Let’s take
three news sources
(Yahoo, MSN, FOX). An RSS reader would scan all five news
sources and take each headline and create a summary of the article. Now,
you can actually sort the news stories and have only the ones you are
interested in delivered right to your website from all five news sources.
Search Engines are crawling websites and looking for fresh content. If you
have an RSS Feed, you are getting up to the minute news stories. These
constantly change whenever a new story comes out. The Search Engines will
give you a higher Page Rank because it thinks your page is updated on a
regular basis. |
|
An RSS feed can be thought of like this. Let’s take three news sources
(Yahoo, MSN, FOX). An RSS reader would scan all five news
sources and take each headline and create a summary of the article. Now,
you can actually sort the news stories and have only the ones you are
interested in delivered right to your website from all five news sources.
Search Engines are crawling websites and looking for fresh content. If you
have an RSS Feed, you are getting up to the minute news stories. These
constantly change whenever a new story comes out. The Search Engines will
give you a higher Page Rank because it thinks your page is updated on a
regular basis.
Why do I need an RSS Feed on my Website?
Search Engines are crawling your site and if you are not providing
quality, up to the minute content then you are getting placed further down
the rankings. Your competition who has this information is getting FREE
advertising from the Search Engines who are placing their page 1st or 2nd
when users search for a particular keyword.
You can now place an RSS Feed on your website in THREE easy steps.
• Step 1: Search for topics that you are currently interested in (use
Yahoo, google or Bing).
When you see an orange RSS or XML box like the one above, you know that
article is compatible with a feed. Copy the URL of the webpage.
|
• Step 2: Go to free services online that will convert the RSS feed URL
into a 2-3 line code for your webpage.
• Step 3: In Frontpage, Go to Insert - a web component - html markup and
paste the two or three line script that you got from free rss service gave
you. You can also simply add the code into source code of your page and
get the feed. Your first RSS Feed! Try it yourself right now, create your first RSS feed
in under five minutes, for free !
RSS is becoming increasing popular. The reason is fairly simple. RSS
is a free and easy way to promote a site and its |
|
content without the need to advertise or create complicated content
sharing partnerships.
|