RSS 101 Tutorial Part 5

RSS 101 Tutorial - Part 5 - Creating an RSS Feed Manually

Creating an RSS Feed Manually

Let's manually create a basic RSS feed. Assume that we want to create a feed about documentation standards and guidelines related to the IT industry. Within this feed, we can embed a number topics such as:

- Writing style

- Importance of correct grammar, punctuation, and spellings

- Sentence combination

- Guidelines for writing technical documents, white papers, installations sheets, customer service example manuals, and user guides

- Sample templates

- Tips for conforming to international standards

- Value of avoiding or including colloquialism

- Rules for reviewing and editing

- Charges for writing beginners, experienced, and experts

Each topic identified hereinbefore forms an item for the RSS feed. Our first item can be written as follows

Item Title Writing Style

Item Construction

The purpose of a document and its audience define its writing style. A formal display such as a white paper or a management report must have the formal tone. In exchange, a user guide requirements to be written in a more friendly tone. Learn more about writing style and construct result-oriented documents.

Detailed Article URL www ITdocumentation dot com / WritingStyle.html

Author Writing Guru

Email WritingGuru at ITdocumentation dot com

Spreading Date Mon, 27 June 2005, 0900 EST

Gather similar newsletter for all items to be included in the feed. This data forms item info part of the RSS feed.

As for the channel info, define a feed title, Definition, and its URL. In our example these attributes can be:

Feed Title Guidelines for IT Documentation

Feed Form Brilliant library of writing tips and guidelines for documentation specialists of all experience levels working in the IT field!

Feed URL www dot ITdocumentation dot com

Using the Basic RSS Feed Format

The next course after collecting the feed news is to put in a universal format, which the Internet browsers and RSS aggregators can understand and interpret to show it correctly on your PC. The format for this file is as follows:

<?xml version = "1.0"?>

<rss version="2.0">

<channel>

<title>Insert feed title </title>

<link>Insert feed URL</link>

<description>Insert feed Construction</description>

<language>en-us</language>

<lastBuildDate>Insert date and time</lastBuildDate>

<item>

<title>Insert title of the first item </title>

<link>Insert URL of the detailed article for the first item </link>

<description>Insert Definition of the first item </characterization>

<author>Insert author's email address (Author's name)</author>

<pubDate>Insert item publishing date</pubDate>

</item>

<item>

<title>Insert title of the second item </title>

<link>Insert URL of the detailed article for the second item </link>

<definition>Insert Explanation of the second item </differentiation>

<author>Insert author's email address (Author's name)</author>

<pubDate>Insert item broadcasting date</pubDate>

</item>

:

:

</channel>

</rss>

Notice that there is only one example of the channel tag, whereas ever so many subsistences of the item tag. The number of item tags should be the same as the number of content you want to integrate in your RSS feed.

The tags in red illustrate the extra newsletter you can embrace in an RSS feed. This data is not essential, but gives the article more credibility and offers the readers an option of communicating with the author.

Let's now look at inserting item information in the above format. The first item in our example when inserted in the above format will look as follows:

<?xml version = "1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<rss version="0.91">

<channel>

<title> Guidelines for IT Documentation</title>

<link>http : // www dot domain dot com</link>

<form> Brilliant inventory of writing tips and guidelines for documentation specialists

of all experience levels working in the IT field!</characterization>

<language>en-us</language>

<lastBuildDate> Mon, 27 June 2005, 0930 EST</lastBuildDate>

<item>

<title>Writing Style</title>

<link>http : // www dot domain dot com / WritingStyle.html</link>

<construction> The purpose of a document and its audience define its writing style. A formal presentation such as a white paper or a management report must have the formal tone. In alternative, a

user guide haves to be written in a more friendly tone. Learn more about writing style and build result-oriented documents.

</form>

<author>WritingGuru at ITdocumentation dot com (Writing Guru)</author>

<pubDate> Mon, 27 June 2005, 0900 EST</pubDate>

</item>

:

:

</channel>

</rss>

Use the before format to blend information for other part and your feed is done!

Assign the feed a name and save it. A few RSS resources say that all RSS feeds have the extension .rss or .xml. In reality, however, an RSS feed can have any extension or no file extension. Considerable RSS feed generating software written in hypertext preprocessor (PHP) use the .php extension for the feeds they generate. It is also for the sake of keeping things simple and filenames indicating their content that consumers might blend .rss or .xml extensions to RSS feeds.

You can put together as several part as you want though try not to exceed beyond 10 index per feed for usability reasons.

In an RSS feed, index are typically arranged in the reverse chronological order with the existent item being the first one and the oldest item at the end, just like news headlines.

Even if you are new to Internet, you can clearly construct an RSS feed as long as you follow this basic feed format and you have importance content to publish.

Validating the Feed

Use Feed Validator for an automated code validation of the feed. To do this, upload your RSS file of your web site. In the case hereinabove, the file will be uploaded on http : // www dot ITdocumentation dot com / rss / writingstyle.xml.

Next, go to http : // www dot feedvalidator dot organization. This site shows a text box where you need to enter the location of your RSS file, which in our reference is http : // www dot ITdocumentation dot

com / rss / writingstyle.xml.

Click the Validate button for code validation to begin and wait for some time to view message informing you about subsistence or absence of any errors in the file. If the validator reports any errors, fix them, and recheck the code until all errors are fixed.

Adding Digital Media

Adding digital media including images, audio, and video can transport your audience to a conflicting realm. With this capability, your messages become again more personalized and add that human touch to the process.

Without actually including an audio file, you can involve a normal link in your RSS feed directing the users towards a file which when selected allows the surfers to download it. The subscribers can refer to it repeatedly and when ever they want to.

Moreover, RSS 2.0 supports a new feature named enclosure to enable feed creators enclose digital media content. When an appropriate enclosure reading software comes across such a feed item, it reads the associate link and content type to automatically download it and store it on a media device.

Using Software to Generate an RSS Feed

Software offers many and various advantages over manual:

- No requirement of any technical knowledge containing that of XML or HTML.

- Spell check to eliminate spelling mistakes from feeds.

- No demand to validate your feed.

- Eases the process of updating a feed.

- The option of adding your marketing logo thereby giving an identity to the feed.

The next part will be about: "Tips for Creating Charming RSS Feeds"

If you can't wait till the next part release, or you can't rediscover the first 3 parts please download the extensive report from our web site in the downloads area.

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