All You Need to Know RSS and Its Benefits

Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary is the full-form for RSS. It is also referred to as news feeds or feeds. Earlier, to keep a track of updates on one’s favorite website we had to bookmark the site in our browser and visit the website manually to check the updates. Now-a-days the websites themselves inform you about each and every update that takes place using RSS feature.

RSS keeps the users updated about their favorite websites without visiting the website manually every time the website is updated.  Publishers can automatically syndicate their content using RSS and users can read the same in their mail boxes, feed readers or other devices. Basically, RSS is a structured XML document containing full or summarized text and other metadata like author name, published date , time and more. Web based or even Mobile based Feed reading programs such as “Aggregator”, “RSS Reader” or “Feed reader” can be used for reading the RSS Feeds.

Below is an example how does the RSS feed actually look like :

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″ ?>
<rss version=”2.0″>
<channel>
<title> Website title </title>
<description>Description about website</description>
<link> website link (xyz.com) </link>
<lastBuildDate>Tue, 02 Apr 2013 00:01:00 +0000 </lastBuildDate>
<pubDate>Tue, 02 Apr 2013 16:45:00 +0000 </pubDate>
<ttl>1500</ttl>

<item>
<title>Example</title>
<description> an interesting description.</description>
<link>wesite link</link>
<guid>unique string per item</guid>
<pubDate>Mon, 02 Apr 2013 16:45:00 +0000 </pubDate>
</item>

</channel>
</rss>

Inbuilt RSS support is available in many web content management systems like WordPress. In WordPress every page you publish contains metatag to point to one’s website RSS Feed location. However we can disable RSS in WordPress but it is very beneficial to have RSS and I would recommend not to disable it .

Advantages of Having RSS

• People can subscribe to your website easily; Using RSS users can receive updates about your website into their web browsers, in their mailboxes, feed readers and other devices and applications.

• It allows the user to read the content where he wants to and he won’t have to remember the website URL to logon to your website and read the content. User has the liberty to subscribe to many websites using RSS and read the content at a centralized platform or location.

• Decent fan following can be developed using RSS as RSS subscribed user would share the content among their friends and family also on many social networking sites.

• By using RSS you can save time as it is possible to divide the content into categories and groups.

Promoting your RSS Feed

A WordPress website automatically publishes an RSS feed. One must encourage users to subscribe to the RSS feed. Adding RSS icon to the sidebar or somewhere in your website where it is visible can also increase the number of subscribers to your blog or website.

WordPress generates the RSS feeds automatically and the publisher has full control over these feeds. Publisher can change the settings of the RSS feeds so that it is more useful for the publisher as well as the subscribers.  One can add content, thumbnails and categories to one’s RSS feed in the WordPress template.

Hope you were able to understand what RSS is and what are its benefits we’ll end this here but do not forget to subscribe to our RSS Feeds.