Hedir Review : How to create RSS feeds

lakhya · Joined: 01 Mar 2005 Posts: 473 15242 Hedir Points

In response to the numerous queries we are getting on creating RSS feeds , i have pepared the following simple guide for the beginners .

Follow this simple guide to create feeds of your site.

An RSS feed usually consists of the following two elements,

channel and item. Each of these two elements have the

following sub elements in common:

title, description and link . To create an RSS feed you

need to know how to use these two elements.

Following steps will help you create the simplest RSS feed

of your site. Follow the steps one by one to get a clear

understanding.

1) Decide which page(s) you want to use as feed. Usually

such pages qualify which contain the latest updates

on product or service information of that site. Remember

that requirements vary from site to site. Decide your own

feed carefully.

2)Open notepad and write down the following lines:

<?xml version="1.0" ?>

<rss version="2.0">

<channel>

<title>[channel title]</title>

<description>[channel description]</description>

<link>[channel link]</link>

<item>

<title>[item title]</title>

<description>[item description]</description>

<link>[item link]</link>

</item>

[more items here]

</channel>

</rss>

3.Replace [channel title] with your site title.

4.Replace [channel description] with your site description.

5.Replace [channel link] with your site url.

6.Replace [item title] with the title of the page you want

to show up as feed .

7. Replace [item description] with description of that item page.

8. Replace [item link] with the url of the item page.

9. Repeat steps 6 to 8 to create multiple items for your feed

and replace [more items here].

Save the file with extension .rss or .xml (there are other extensions

also , but for beginners it is best to keep it simple)

Now use this tool www.feedvalidator.org to verify that your feed is ok to use.

Once it is verified to be ok , upload the file to your server.

Thats it ! You are now ready to distribute your content

to anyone who thinks it worthy !!

Note: This guide is mainly aimed at giving you a very

simple introduction to creating RSS feeds.Use this format

for some time then move on to use more advanced options

and specifications used for feed creation.

Have a nice time creating feeds Very Happy

Lakhya

webmaster425 · Joined: 13 Jun 2005 Posts: 7 128 Hedir Points

If you want to keep it really easy you can use FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com it has a built in wizard that makes feed creation really easy and supports all of the allowable fields in the RSS 2.0 specification.

If you prefer to create the feed by hand there is a detailed walk-through at http://www.make-rss-feeds.com that makes really walks beginners though the process.
HTH

aldarado_m · Joined: 02 Jun 2005 Posts: 8 0 Hedir Points

Thanks webmaster,

I found feedforall to be a good tool for creating RSS Feeds.

stacy_johnson04 · Joined: 14 Jun 2005 Posts: 10 228 Hedir Points

Yeah truly these steps are quite simple and feedforall is also a good tool. I should congratulate you Lakhya for making RSS feeds look so simple. Very Happy

support2 · Joined: 29 Jun 2005 Posts: 5 102 Hedir Points

I recommend Feed Editor (http://www.extralabs.com/feededitor.htm).
Very easy, powerful and stable tool.

media1 · Joined: 01 Sep 2005 Posts: 1 0 Hedir Points

One of the key problems I see with RSS is that there aren't enough ways to create RSS content for most web content publishers. Most use Dreamweaver and even the new Dreamweaver doesn't provide a method for publishing RSS feeds without lots of manual labor. So lots of people are working hard to create content that doesn't get put out there beyond HTML.

But there is an extension that you can use to create RSS feeds from Dreamweaver called RSS DreamFeeder (ok, that's a bit cheesey). It essentially is a mini search engine that pulls content out of existing web pages and puts them into a feed. You configure and run it through Dreamweaver and it creates rss/xml files you can link to and post.

Download at:
http://www.rnsoft.com/products/rssdreamfeeder/

Tutorial at:
http://www.rnsoft.com/products/rssdreamfeeder/content/tutorial/

lakhya · Joined: 01 Mar 2005 Posts: 473 15242 Hedir Points

Welcome to the forums media Smile