Syndicate or Die An overview of RSS Feeds Pen Lister, MSc PGCert TLHE, 2009

The beginning… RSS began as several different coding languages… BUT WAIT! What IS RSS?

Really Simple Syndication Ok, lets start again… RSS is the code that makes FEEDS Feeds are what many websites now offer us, or use to provide their content Feeds are a way of accessing content from websites without visiting the website

A.k.a Rich Site Summary See the logo at the bottom of this slide? It’s a feed logo It signifies that a feed is available from a webpage or website You can copy (‘copy link location’) the link that is embedded in that logo and SUBSCRIBE to the website content

Please explain How do I subscribe? Where do I put the link? In a READER (aka Aggregator) For example: Google Reader myYahoo iTunes Bloglines

Google Reader

MyYahoo

What else? We can also display feeds in our Facebook profiles, in ‘Notes’ or using apps like SocialRSS We can share a Twitter profile using the feed Or take our Twitter feed and display it elsewhere We can also do this with a YouTube feed or a blog feed…)

Facebook SocialRSS

What’s the point? The point is: Content can be shared and viewed in many places This increases communication possibilities This increases the usefulness of information on webpages You can even make RSS feeds of the comments people make about a piece of content and share those too!

Whats the code look like? <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" media="screen" href="/~d/styles/rss2enclosuresfull.xsl"?><?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~d/styles/itemcontent.css"?><!-- generator="wordpress/2.3.2" --><rss xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd" xmlns:creativeCommons="http://backend.userland.com/creativeCommonsRssModule" xmlns:feedburner="http://rssnamespace.org/feedburner/ext/1.0" version="2.0"> <channel> <title>Class Video</title> <link>http://www.classvideo.co.uk</link> <description>Making Video at University</description> <pubDate>Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:54:40 +0000</pubDate> <generator>http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.2</generator> <language>en</language> Etc etc etc It’s written using a version of XML, like this:

More simple please <?xml version="1.0"?> <rss version="2.0"> <channel> <title>BoSh - A Story of the Future</title> <description>Art, Multimedia, Alternative Politics, Technology News and Discussion Articles</description> <link>http://boshy.blogspot.com</link> <ttl>5</ttl> <image> <title>B o S h - A Story of the Future</title> <width>100</width> <height>50</height> <link>http://boshy.blogspot.com</link> <url>http://rainbowsystems.virtualave.net/penworks/blog/boshicon1.png</url> </image> <item> <title>It's a New Day, but will anyone notice?</title> <description>Having earlier read again the comments from <a href="http://musingsofafatkid.blogspot.com" target="blank">fatkid</a> about the whole Bush versus Kerry thing, [on 'Fight to the Death for Freedom' post], I think a couple of points are good to make here....</description> <link>http://boshy.blogspot.com/2004_11_01_boshy_archive.html#109942962709983115</link> <pubDate>Tue, 2 Nov 2004 20:45:52 GMT</pubDate> </item> </channel> </rss>

That’s RSS If you wrote code like the previous example, you would have an RSS feed Luckily for most people, a ‘dynamic’ (E.g. php/mysql) webpage will generate it automatically But it IS actually quite simple, when it’s most basic

Feedburner If you use Feedburner to make your RSS ‘friendly’, it can be read by almost any aggregator or webpage Feedburner was recently purchased by Google It’s free to get an account and start putting your feeds ‘through’ it Feedburner.com

So, here’s a video Here’s a flash video explaining how it all works… (it’s from 2005, when RSS really took off)

And another thing RSS can be submitted and followed by Search Directories like Bloglines, Syndic8 You can get RSS feeds for your mobile If you have a blog, you can publish the content on your Facebook profile using the RSS it generates

Websites that generate RSS Blogs like Wordpress or Blogger Twitter YouTube News websites Video blogs and audio podcasting Just about anything…

Useful information RSS History http://www.rss-specifications.com/history-rss.htm Syndic8 http://www.syndic8.com/ Blogdigger http://www.blogdigger.com/index.html Feedage http://www.feedage.com/ RSS for mobiles http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/rss_on_mobile_p.php

End / Happy syndicating 