What Is All This Fuss About RSS?

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is an XML format designed for sharing web content like news headlines. An RSS service (also known as an RSS channel) consists of a list of items, each of which contains a headline, description, and a link to a web page.

RSS organizes information within 'tags' or 'labels' and places this information into what could be considered an outline format. If you think about it, all information can be organized into separate parts. As an example, a press release website is made up of news releases. Each news release can be considered its own part of the site. Within each news release there are parts as well, such as the title of the news release, the main text, the date the release was published, contact information, and so on. What RSS does is to present these 'parts' in a uniform, organized format.

A typical RSS Newsfeed can be viewed at:
http://www.pressreleasenetwork.com/rssfeed.xml

RSS organizes information the same way every time. An RSS feed can be broken down into a few parts. First RSS presents the header information such as the XML version and various comments. This is more for the computers than it is for the readers. Next RSS presents information about the website. The information presented here can vary, but typically there will be the name of the site, a link to the site, the webmaster's e-mail address, and maybe the last time the feed was updated. The next part to an RSS feed is the actual content of the feed.

To understand more about how RSS organizes information, it would be useful to see how an RSS feed is published. Even if you have no intention on publishing a feed, you should read the next section.

Publishing an RSS Feed

Because RSS is focused on organizing content, creating an RSS feed is fairly easy to do. The below example is extremely simplified. RSS has quite a bit more flexibility than is demonstrated here, but for most webmasters a basic RSS feed is all that is needed. An RSS feed can be broken up into a few simple parts. Similar to regular HTML, the first part of an RSS feed is the header information. A sample RSS newsfeed is located below:

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
<title> PressReleaseNetwork.com: News Feed</title>
<link> http://www.pressreleasenetwork.com</link>
<description> Press Release Distribution & Online Media Monitoring Service</description>
<language> en-us</language>
<item>
<title> Tamweel Launches Plans for New Headquarters</title>
<link> http://www.pressreleasenetwork.com/prnindex.phtml?link=newsroom/news_view.phtml?news_id=1056</link>
<description> Tamweel, the UAE's most trusted source for home financing, today announced the development of the "Tamweel Tower," the company's new head office tower on Sheikh Zayed Road within the prominent Jumeirah Lake Towers project. Completion for the construction of the Tower is set for 24 months. [Wired by: PressReleaseNetwork.com]</description>
</item>

The header is normally the same from feed to feed. There are only two things you need to make note of here, the "Publishing tool used" line and the RSS version line. The second line, which reads "Publishing tool used" is actually just a comment line.

The second thing to note is the RSS version number. There are actually seven different RSS versions. When wondering what version you should use, chances are very good that RSS 0.91 will suit your needs just fine. This is the simplest version available and it seems to cover just about every basic publisher's needs.

After the header comes the actual content. All of the content is surrounded by "channel" tags. You can see that the "channel" tags surround everything.

Within the channel tags lies the content being syndicated. We have the title of the site, the site description, a place for a webmaster's e-mail address, and the language that the site is in. You can add more tags if you like. For example, if you want to include information on when the feed was last updated, you might include a tag called "lastUpdate". Whatever information you want to give those who are syndicating your content, you can give them.

After this information are the "item" tags. The item tags allow you to separate the content being syndicated. In this example, the item tags separate each article. If you were a search engine, you would separate your listings with the item tag. Again, think about this in the most basic sense. Each item tag separates items.

Within the item tags is the bread and butter of your RSS feed. In the above example, each item tag separates an article, or story. Within the item tag, we have more tags which identify the title of the article, a link to the full article, the article's author, the date published, and a description of the article. Again, you could include more information or less information depending on what your goals are.

There is one final step to create your RSS feed: closing all your tags. RSS is very picky about open tags. So, when creating your RSS feed, make sure you close the RSS tag that we opened back in the header.

Now simply save this information as an XML document and you will have a valid RSS feed! You can actually save the document with any file extension you like, but it will not show up as a nice looking XML document in your browser unless you save it as .xml. So, to close this part of the article, the final sample RSS feed looks like the following:

<item>
<title> Royal Jordanian Gears Up Baggage Handling Systems in preparation for Seasons Tourist Boom</title>
<link> http://www.pressreleasenetwork.com/prnindex.phtml?link=newsroom/news_view.phtml?news_id=1047</link>
<description> Royal Jordanian Airlines will introduce a new integrated baggage management system based on the IBM WebSphere software platform. Since it began its move to privatisation, Royal Jordanian Airlines has been restructuring its systems to improve customer satisfaction and safety, and increase business efficiencies. The new baggage reconciliation and management system, which is being implemented with the help of IBM's business partner in Jordan, United Business Machines (UBM), automates and streamlines the baggage handling process, reduces errors and allows the airline to deliver a level of service on a par with airports around the world. [Wired by: PressReleaseNetwork.com]</description>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>

Putting an RSS Feed on Your Website

Why would any webmaster choose an RSS feed over a JavaScript, iFrame, PHP, or other type of feed? The answer is simply flexibility. With an RSS feed, you can take the content, arrange it how you want, make it fit the exact look and feel of your website, and control how much or how little information you are displaying on your website. And, unlike JavaScript, search engines will be able to read the content you are displaying on your site.

But how, exactly, does one take the content that is formatted to the RSS feed and turn that into workable HTML on your site? There is no other way than to parse the information using some programming code.

If you are by now convinced that there is a strong case for using RSS, call the professionals.