Web development: How to create an RSS web feed? by Grace Alexa

 

RSS feed is the latest trend in web development. RSS is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication.

In web 1.0 era, most challenging problem faced by a Web developer was to keep in sync with the information updates because it consumed more time than new websites. Now in web 2.0 era keeping in sync with the updates of news headlines, blog entries, and pod casts are easily done with the help of RSS Feeds. The prime purpose of these RSS feeds is to inform you about the information updates, so they may either carry the summary of the information updated on the associated page or they may carry full text.

RSS content is read by using the software called “RSS reader, or aggregator”. RSS feeds as told are the latest trend in website development, so they are still in their formative years. It is only recently that search engines started to pay importance to RSS feeds. So it’s high time that you start to experiment with RSS development along with web development or other web application development. RSS is not a fully developed platform it has some flaws. Online marketers who have integrated these RSS feed to boost their website development process are still incapable of understanding who are the viewers of their feeds and how are they perceiving it. The application development for RSS tools is still under development stage. It is believed that these tools will assist web marketers in understanding terminologies in relation to feeds because now they are doing it by tracking the clicks.

Tips to create your own RSS feeds during web development

1. Install an RSS editor. Go for any freeware, easy to use application. 2. Next step of RSS feeds development during web development is: Start with a new file and edit it with channel properties to give the basic information about your feed. Complete with the optional tabs on the channel properties which will prove to be helpful in adding new items in a stream line way. 3. Save the file with .xml extension. Start adding new items using the “Add item” feature. It is important to add a link to the full version of item on website. 4. Use the description box to enter the content of the website. Any of the common html tags can be used like the ones used during website development or web application development. 5. After finishing with the description box now you can apply this to whole RSS feed by clicking on “Apply”. You can then customise the Feed by adding individual items from time to time. 6. Once finished with this process then publish your site as normally you do with websites.

Adding the whole text to the feeds will increase the bandwidth. So only summary should be added to the keep the bandwidth in check. On adding new items older ones should be deleted to decrease the bandwidth usage. Other reason to limit yourself to summary is to encourage people to visit you and learn about you more. So leap a next step in your website development by adding RSS feed.

About the Author

Sigma InfoTech is an Australian based Web Design firm specialising in Website Developer, Website Development, Application Development, Website design Australia. Write editor to webmastergrace@gmail.com your comments and suggestions will be highly appreciated.