RSS 101 Tutorial Part 5
Monday, May 28th, 2007Creating an RSS Feed Manually
Let’s manually compose a basic RSS feed. Assume that we want to build a feed about documentation standards and guidelines relevant to the IT industry. Within this feed, we can combine exceptional topics such as:
- Writing style
- Concern of correct grammar, punctuation, and spellings
- Sentence construction
Guidelines for writing technical documents, white papers, installations sheets, customer service feature 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, knowing, and experts
Each topic identified hereinabove forms an item for the RSS feed. Our first item can be written as follows
Item Title Writing Style
Item Explanation
The purpose of a document and its audience define its writing style. A formal presenting such as a white paper or a management report must have the formal tone. In comparison, a user guide musts to be written in a more friendly tone. Learn more about writing style and create 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 newsletter part of the RSS feed.
As for the channel data, define a feed title, Explanation, and its URL. In our case these attributes can be:
Feed Title Guidelines for IT Documentation
Feed Description Brilliant collection 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 step after collecting the feed news is to put in a established format, which the Internet browsers and RSS aggregators can get the picture 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 Characterization</definition>
<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>
<definition>Insert Explanation of the first item </form>
<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>
<differentiation>Insert Form of the second item </form>
<author>Insert author’s email address (Author’s name)</author>
<pubDate>Insert item publishing date</pubDate>
</item>
:
:
</channel>
</rss>
Notice that there is only one instance of the channel tag, whereas quite some frequencys of the item tag. The number of item tags should be the same as the number of index you want to contain in your RSS feed.
The tags in red identify the extra newsletter you can include in an RSS feed. This info is not mandatory, but gives the article more credibility and offers the readers an option of communicating with the author.
Let’s now look at inserting item news in the hereinbefore format. The first item in our reference when inserted in the before 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>
<explanation> Brilliant gathering of writing tips and guidelines for documentation specialists
of all experience levels working in the IT field!</form>
<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 publication such as a white paper or a management report must have the formal tone. In alternative, a user guide constraints to be written in a more friendly tone. Learn more about writing style and create result-oriented documents.
</construction>
<author>WritingGuru at ITdocumentation dot com (Writing Guru)</author>
<pubDate> Mon, 27 June 2005, 0900 EST</pubDate>
</item>
:
:
</channel>
</rss>
Use the hereinabove format to attach newsletter for other content and your feed is settled!
Assign the feed a name and save it. Various 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. Exceptional RSS feed generating software written in hypertext preprocessor (PHP) use the .php extension for the feeds they build. It is also for the sake of keeping things simple and filenames indicating their content that public might syndicate .rss or .xml extensions to RSS feeds.
You can syndicate as plenty content as you want though try not to exceed beyond 10 elements per feed for usability reasons.
In an RSS feed, items are typically arranged in the reverse chronographic order with the most recent item being the first one and the oldest item at the end, just like news headlines.
Alike if you are new to Internet, you can actually compose an RSS feed as long as you follow this basic feed format and you have quality 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 hereinbefore, 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 must to enter the location of your RSS file, which in our case 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 frequency 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 enclosing images, audio, and video can transport your audience to a unequal realm. With this capability, your messages become after all more personalized and put together that human touch to the process.
Besides actually including an audio file, you can involve a standard 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 Construct an RSS Feed
Software offers certain advantages over manual:
- No requirement of any technical knowledge embracing that of XML or HTML.
- Spell check to eliminate spelling mistakes from feeds.
- No must to validate your feed.
- Eases the process of updating a feed.
- The option of adding your market logo thereby giving an identity to the feed.
The next part will be about: “Tips for Creating Remarkable RSS Feeds“
If you can’t wait till the next part release, or you can’t rediscover the first 4 parts please download the extensive report from our web site in the downloads area.
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