Creating an RSS Feed Manually
Let’s manually build a basic RSS feed. Assume that we want to construct a feed about documentation standards and guidelines proper to the IT industry. Within this feed, we can combine a few topics such as:
– Writing style
– Significance of correct grammar, punctuation, and spellings
– Sentence arrangement
– Guidelines for writing technical documents, white papers, installations sheets, customer service feature manuals, and user guides
– Sample templates
– Tips for conforming to international standards
– Signification of avoiding or containing colloquialism
– Rules for reviewing and editing
– Charges for writing beginners, experienced, and experts
Each topic identified above forms an item for the RSS feed. Our first item can be written as follows
Item Title Writing Style
Item Description
The purpose of a document and its audience define its writing style. A formal arising such as a white paper or a management report must have the formal tone. In comparison, a user guide haves to be written in a more friendly tone. Learn more about writing style and compose 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 info for all index to be included in the feed. This data forms item data part of the RSS feed.
As for the channel information, define a feed title, Definition, and its URL. In our case these attributes can be:
Feed Title Guidelines for IT Documentation
Feed Construction Brilliant volume 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:
:
:
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 specify the extra data you can combine in an RSS feed. This data is not authoritative, 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 before format. The first item in our reference when inserted in the before format will look as follows:
of all experience levels working in the IT field!
user guide haves to be written in a more friendly tone. Learn more about writing style and construct result-oriented documents.
:
:
Use the hereinbefore format to add newsletter for other items and your feed is settled!
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 syndicate as many and various index as you want though try not to exceed beyond 10 part per feed for usability reasons.
In an RSS feed, elements 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.
As well 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 fineness 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 reference 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 neediness 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 circumstance 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 embracing images, audio, and video can transport your audience to a numerous realm. With this capability, your messages become alike more personalized and superadd that human touch to the process.
Besides actually embracing an audio file, you can embed a upright 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 surrounding reading software comes across such a feed item, it reads the combined link and content form to automatically download it and store it on a media device.
Using Software to Build an RSS Feed
Software offers a certain number advantages over manual:
– No requirement of any technical knowledge enclosing that of XML or HTML.
– Spell check to eliminate spelling mistakes from feeds.
– No essential to validate your feed.
– Eases the process of updating a feed.
– The option of adding your line of business 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 discover the first 3 parts please download the extensive report from our web site in the downloads area.