PAGE OVERVIEW

Overview of this page

• What is RSS?
• So how do you "Read" the RSS Messages?
• How to make an RSS Feed?
• Basic RSS elements

What is RSS?

You might already have an idea what RSS is, or maybe not. Any who, I'll try to explain it a little bit in this article.
The information here is basically a compilation of what I found on the Internet while trying to understand and build an RSS Feed for WeetHet.

RSS stands for (and the opinions on this differ) "Real Simple Syndication" (the more recent Userland definition) or "Rich Site Summary" (the older Netscape definition).

Great isn't it? When I first read this, I still had not much of an idea what people where talking about.

In essence; RSS is a method of distributing links. These links point to content on let's say your website.

Maybe easier said; RSS is a mechanism where short messages, say headlines or blips, accompanied by a short abstract, a link and, an optional picture, are distributed over the Internet. The intention of these blips or headlines is to get the attention of the reader so they actually visit your webpage and read more about this article.

RSS messages can help promote your website and can also be used to keep visitors informed about for example changes on your website. These messages can also be used for easy linking to another webpage - it seems to be popular amongst Bloggers.

Specifications: RSS 0.91 (Userland), RSS 0.91 rev 3 (Netscape), RDF/RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0 (Harvard),

So how do you "read" the RSS messages?

Messages (and some will tell me that this is not the right word for this) come from a so called "RSS Feed".

This "feed" provides the little blips or messages.

Feeds can be read in several different ways, commonly grouped under the name of "News Aggregators" (news collectors).
This can be a website running a PHP script to "get and display" the messages, or a JAVA Applet, or a standalone application for your Windows PC.

Keep in mind though: As with all great Internet ideas, sooner or later one or more idiots will consider this to be a great way to deliver spam to you,... I hope RSS will be the exception.

How to make an RSS feed?

The general opinion on making RSS Feeds is: Easy.

Well, exploring the web tought me differently. It takes a bit of reading and figuring out what the specs are saying. It also requires insight in things like HTML (formatting), XML (since the feed is based on XML), etc.

Not interested in figuring this out? Then I can only recommend setting up a blog with companies like Yahoo and Google. They commonly come with the proper tools to auto generate a feed.

Still reading? Aha, then you might be interested in building a RSS Feed for your website. Keep reading!

Note: we're focussing on the RSS definition v2.0.1 (2002).

The basic layout looks like this;

Let's take that picture and keep that in our minds and start taking apart what we're seeing here;
Every RSS Feed file is basically an XML file (regular text file so you can use Notepad for this) starts as such:

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<rss version="2.0">

The next step is to identify the channel using:

<channel>

Followed by the channel tags as defined below, like title and such.

The channel is not right away closed!!
First we start displaying the individual items using:

<item>
... item tags
</item>

After displaying all items we close the channel and the rss feed using:

</channel>
</rss>

After setting this all up you can save the file to your webserver. It is recommended though to use the .xml extension for your file. For example: newsfeed.xml. Later on we'll show you some PHP code to generate your feeds automatically using PHP and MySQL (database).

The BASIC Elements of a RSS Feed

Basically a RSS Feed can be seen as a text file on your webserver.
The formatting of this text file is predefined and uses a XML-like notation technique.

In this text file, you will find two basic element types: the "channel" and the "item(s)" for that channel.
Channels can have an optional "sub-channel".

Note: channels should at least have a title, link, and description (to make any sense).
For items at least title or description should be available (we recommend both).
All other elements (for both channel and items) are optional.

CHANNELS

The channel can be a "group", "category", or maybe even you website (more details here). For example for WeetHet:

ITEMS

A channel contains an undefined number of items (zero or more).

An item can represent an article on your website. In that case, the description should be an abstract of the fullsize story and it is practical to include a link to that story. An item can also be just a brief message where a link might not even be needed.

More in depth info can be found here.

For example:

Keep reading:
RSS Readers & Where to find RSS feeds »
or
RSS Feeds - Channel details defined »
RSS Feeds - Item details defined »