web design tips
 

web design tipsRSS: Really Simple Syndication.

More websites are starting to offer RSS feeds, and more users are making use of RSS readers instead of visiting every website they want to read individually. But what is RSS, why is it getting popular, and - most importantly -what can it do for you? Read on.

What is RSS?

RSS stands for 'really simple syndication', and it does exactly what it says on the tin. Invented by Dave Winer, one of the first webloggers, the format aims to provide a standardised way to obtain a website's content, instead of forcing people to try to pick it out of masses of HTML. It is a simple XML (strictly, RDF) language designed to make it easy to describe content.

Information RSS gives you about content includes its title, the dates when it was created and last updated, and
its URL. There is also a space for content, which can either be used to provide a summary of the content at the URL or just to provide the content itself.

Which Version?

There is a bit of a controversy about the versions of RSS, for the simple reason that one is wildly different to the others. While RSS 0.9 and 2.0 are broadly similar, RSS 1.0 is widely considered to be a disaster - little software understands or uses it, as it's just too complicated. For most purposes, then, you should stick to RSS 0.9 if what you're doing is relatively simple, and offer RSS 2.0 if you want to give more detail to some of your users.

How is RSS Produced?

While you could write a script of your own to turn your content into RSS (it wouldn't be that difficult if you store your articles in a database), almost all CMSes and blog software packages now do it for you automatically - if you're looking for it, keep an eye out for a small orange button that says 'XML' or 'RSS' on it. All you have to do is give some prominence to the RSS feed, with instructions to your visitors on what it's for and how to use it.

With most software, then, the RSS should be produced either when you update your content or, alternatively, every time someone asks for the RSS. It's important to understand that RSS isn't a 'push' mechanism: updating it doesn't send changes to anyone until their software asks for them to be sent. This often means a window of five to ten minutes between something going in the RSS feed and people seeing it.

How Do RSS Readers Work?

RSS readers work by allowing a user to 'subscribe' to a feed, either by entering the URL of an RSS feed manually or by clicking on a link that starts with feed://. The reader then works something like an email program, retrieving new entries as they are added to the RSS and alerting the user - indeed, they are similar enough that many email programs now include a built-in RSS reader.

When the user opens the new RSS entry, they will see what you put in the content area, usually with a link to open that page of your website in their web browser. You have to realise, though, that they won't see any of your ads or graphics in the RSS feed, so it's best to give them some kind of incentive to click through.

What Else is RSS Used For?

RSS readers might be the most common use of RSS, but the format was designed to be used for almost anything. There's nothing to stop you, for example, from taking an RSS feed from another website and publishing it on yours - you can even be an 'aggregator', mixing relevant content from the RSS feeds of lots of different websites to create a new, more useful website.

That's where the word 'syndication' in RSS' name comes from: it lets you virtually syndicate other people's content on your site, and it lets people syndicate your content on theirs. It benefits everyone, since the one doing the aggregating gets more content for their website, while the one being linked to gets more links to theirs. If you want to do well on the web, you should make sure you've got an RSS fede

VBScript Javascript Made Easy

Working With Templates

Websites and Weblogs Whats the Difference

Using Quizzes and Games to Get Traffic

Python and Ruby the Newer Alternatives

  

Web Design
◦ 5 Simple Steps to Accepting Payments.
◦ 5 Ways to Avoid the 1998 Look.
◦ 6 Reasons Why You Need a Website.
◦ 7 Ways to Make Your Web Forms Better.
◦ A Question of Scroll Bars.
◦ Ads Under the Radar: Linking to Affiliates.
◦ AJAX: Should You Believe the Hype?
◦ All About Design: Principles and Elements.
◦ An Introduction to Paint Shop Pro.
◦ An Issue of Width: the Resolution Problem.
◦ Avoiding the Nuts and Bolts: Content Management Software.
◦ Beware the Stock Photographer: Picking Your Pictures.
◦ Building a Budget Website.
◦ Building Online Communities.
◦ Clean Page Structure: Headings and Lists.
◦ ColdFusion: Quicker Scripting, at a Price.
◦ Column Designs with CSS.
◦ Content is King.
◦ CSS and the End of Tables.
◦ Cut to the Chase: How to Make Your Website Load Faster.
◦ Designing for Sales.
◦ Designing for Search Engines.
◦ Dreamweaver: The Professional Touch.
◦ Encryption and Security with SSL.
◦ Finding a Good HTML Editor.
◦ Focus on the User: Task-Oriented Websites.
◦ Fonts are More Important Than You Think.
◦ Free Graphics Alternatives.
◦ FrontPage: Easy Pages.
◦ Hints All the Way.
◦ Hiring Professionals: 5 Things to Look For.
◦ How Databases Work.
◦ How the Web Works.
◦ How to Get Your Website Talked About on Blogs.
◦ How to Install and Configure a Forum.
◦ How to Make Visitors Add You to Their Favorites.
◦ How to Run Ads Without Driving Visitors Crazy.
◦ How to Set Up Your Hosting in 5 Minutes Flat.
◦ IIS and ASP: Microsoft's Server.
◦ Image Formats: GIF, JPEG, PNG and More.
◦ It's a World Wide Web: Going International.
◦ JSP: Java on Your Server.
◦ LAMP: The Most Popular Server System Ever.
◦ Making Friends and Influencing People: the Importance of Links.
◦ Making Searches Simple.
◦ Offering Free Downloads on Your Website.
◦ Opening a Web Shop with E-Commerce Software.
◦ tag - they have one extra tag before it. This is the doctype, and it must be present right at the top of your document for it to be valid HTML. There are only really
◦ Perl: Cryptic Power.
◦ Photoshop: a Graphic Designer's Dream.
◦ Picking a Colour Scheme.
◦ Printing and Sending: the Two Things Users Want to Do.
◦ Putting Multimedia to Good Use.
◦ Python and Ruby: the Newer Alternatives.
◦ Registering a Domain Name.
◦ Registering Your Users by Stealth.
◦ RSS: Really Simple Syndication.
◦ Setting Up a Mailing List.
◦ Setting up a Test Server on Your Own Computer.
◦ Some Places to Go For More Information.
◦ Taking HTML Further. HTML might seem like a simple language for web documents, and to an extent, it is - that's what it was intended to be. If you know what
◦ Taking HTML Further with Javascript. Once you've built your HTML pages, you might need them to do something a little more interactive on the client-side (that
◦ Taking Your Website Mobile.
◦ Text Ads: Unobtrusive Advertising.
◦ The 5 Principles of Effective Navigation.
◦ The Art of the Logo.
◦ The Basics of Web Forms.
◦ The Basics of Web Servers.
◦ The Case Against Flash.
◦ The Confusing World of Web Hosting: Making Your Decision.
◦ The Evils of PDFs.
◦ The Importance of Validation.
◦ The Many Flavours of HTML.
◦ The Smaller, the Better: Avoiding Graphical Overload.
◦ The Top 10 Biggest Web Design Mistakes.
◦ The Web Designer's Toolbox.
◦ The Web is Not Paper.
◦ There's More than One Web Browser.
◦ Time for User Testing.
◦ Titles and Headlines: It's Not a Newspaper.
◦ Tracking Your Visitors.
◦ Understanding Web Jargon.
◦ Uploading Your Website with FTP.
◦ Using Flash Sensibly.
◦ Using Quizzes and Games to Get Traffic.
◦ VBScript: Javascript Made Easy.
◦ Websites and Weblogs: What's the Difference?
◦ What Do You Want Your Website to Do?
◦ What You See Isn't Always What You Get.
◦ Which Database is Right for You?
◦ Why Doing It Yourself is Best.
◦ Why Java Will Drive Your Visitors Away.
◦ Why Word is Bad for the Web.
◦ Why You Should Put Your Content in a Weblog Format.
◦ Why You Should Stick to Design Conventions.
◦ Working With Templates.
◦ Writing for the Web.
GoogleSense
Making Money with Articles
Webhosting
RSS
◦ Reading RSS Feeds with an RSS Aggregator

Web Traffic Machines

Link to Us    Contact Us   Privacy Statement   Links  

LT International Inc - Web Design ABC