You Need RSS, Atom and ROR Codes on Your Website!

ROME in a Day: Parse and Publish Feeds in Java

2010-11-28T15:34:00.000-08:00

O'Reilly XML.com

February 22, 2006

Ready to parse and publish RSS and Atom feeds in Java? In this step-by-step tutorial, we'll show you how to pull in an existing feed, add your own content, and publish the results in a new format, all in 100 lines of code. (200 lines with whitespace and comments.)
Knowing that RSS and Atom feeds are "just" XML, you might think that parsing and creating syndicated feeds in Java should be a snap. Pick any one type of RSS, and you might be right. Unfortunately, there are at least ten flavors of RSS and Atom out there: RSS 0.90, RSS 0.91 Netscape, RSS 0.91 Userland, RSS 0.92, RSS 0.93, RSS 0.94, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, Atom 0.3, and the newest addition to the bunch, Atom 1.0. Then there are all the namespace modules, like Dublin Core, Media, and so on. It's all messy enough to make a grown programmer cry. Wipe those tears, Java developers, and say hello to ROME.

When in ROME

In this tutorial, we'll be using ROME to do all the heavy lifting. ROME is an open source (Apache licensed) Java library which is designed to make it easy for you to parse and create syndicated feeds, regardless of format. In fact, all of the variants of RSS and Atom mentioned earlier are supported by ROME.ROME doesn't just come with features, it also has a proven track record on sites like My AOL, CNET Networks, and Edmunds.com. The Powered By ROME wiki page describes how ROME is being used in these and other applications.
The basic approach of ROME is to parse any RSS or Atom feed item into a canonical bean interface. This lets you as a developer manage fairly homogeneous item beans regardless of their original format. Even better, ROME makes it easy to create a new RSS or Atom feed, using those very same beans. This tutorial is going to show you how to do just that.
(To read the rest of this article, please click on the link in this blog post's title above.)

Create RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0 in Asp.Net 3.5 C#

2010-09-17T14:31:00.000-07:00

March 14, 2010
Deepu MI's Blog

In this article I am going to explain how we can create web syndications like RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0 in Asp.Net and C# with very minimal code.

RSS 2.0
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is one of the syndication feed formats which can get the frequently updated content from the web site. (Refer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS).
The specification of RSS format http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html. RSS is most widely used syndication format.

Atom 1.0
Atom is a syndication format which is more flexible than RSS. Atom came into existence out of a need to improve RSS. (Refer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_standardard)

In Asp.Net 3.5 frame work we can create subscription feeds with very minimal code using System.ServiceModel.Syndication namespace which contains all of the classes that make up the Syndication Object Model. For example below is a sample Blog class I am defining a public method and some properties to retrieve the blog items (I have hardcoded two items you can replace this from your database logic).

The next step I am going to create another class called Syndication Helper which converts our web content to syndication format.

Code Explanation

Uri uri = new Uri(“http://deepumi.wordpress.com”);

Configure your site url ( blog or news).

SyndicationFeed syndicationFeed = new SyndicationFeed();
Syndicaiton Feed class represent a top level of feed object, (you can add your blog name / site name with description and the last blog/site updated time).

List items = new List();
Syndication Item class represent a individual feed atom/rss.item object like item url, item description, item id, last updated etc. Here I am creating a syndicaiton item collection object which mapping from MyBlogList() method.

List oBlogList = Blog.GetMyBlogList();
foreach (Blog oBlog in oBlogList)
{
SyndicationItem oItem = new SyndicationItem(oBlog.Title,
SyndicationContent.CreateHtmlContent(oBlog.Description),
new Uri(oBlog.Url),
oBlog.BlogId.ToString(),
oBlog.LastUpdated);
items.Add(oItem);
}

Finally you are return the SyndicationFeed object to the aspx pages.
Now we need to render the atom and rss content in the aspx pages.

Create a new aspx page called rss.aspx and make sure there is no html markup in the page(just a blank page)

Code behind (RSS page)

Create a new aspx page called rss.aspx and make sure there is no html markup in the page(just a blank page)

Code behind (Atom page)

Hope this help and If you have any comments, please feel free to write your feedback.

You can download the entire article from here or copy paste this URL

http://www.4shared.com/file/240764190/b37e055d/Feeds.html

Thanks
Deepu

Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS

2010-06-23T09:04:00.001-07:00

•Get all of your online content and marketing messages delivered to your receipients. No spam filters, no blacklists, no problems.
•Win back your customers and prospects by finally getting your messages through to them.
•Increase your natural search engine rankings and drive fresh traffic to your website.
•Get your content published on other sites, generating more visitors and exposure for your business.
•Ultimately, use RSS to increase your sales, develop profitable customer relationships and better monetize your online content.
•RSS publishing is easy and using some tools can even be free. You can start using it today without any cost whatsoever!
How Well-Known Marketers and Publishers Are Already Profiting from RSS

•BTI Communications Group: Search Engine Rankings
BTI Communications Group is a small VoIP solutions provider, but using RSS they acheived #1 search engine rankings for their most important keywords, such as voip solution provider on Google. While their larger competitors are investing in search engine campaigns, BTI is achieving top positions for free. They also increased the traffic to their corporate site for 75%.

•Lockergnome.com: Improved Clickthrough Rates
Lockergnome.com, one of the most popular tech sites on the Web today, used to distribute more than 400.000 e-mail newsletters weekly. Today, they have 5 times more RSS subscribers than e-mail subscribers and their RSS clickthrough rates are 500% greater than their e-mail clickthrough rates.

What is RSS?
RSS is a simple to use publishing tool for marketers and publishers, which allows you to easily get your internet content delivered to your subscribers and to other web media.
[to find out more about what RSS is, click here]

Up until now most internet marketing tools could be used only for a specific internet marketing activity (such as direct marketing, search engine marketing, business blogging, internet advertising, digital public relations, e-commerce, ...).

There has never before been a single tool to improve, enhance and power all of them, without prejudice.

But RSS is such a tool. Misunderstood by most marketers, overlooked by many end-users, it has the potential to power the entire internet marketing mix.

How Can RSS be Used by Marketers and Publishers
•Direct marketing
•E-zine publishing
•Public relations
•Monetizing online content
•Customer Relationship Management
•Advertising
•Internal and team communications
•Search engine optimisation
•Lead generation
•Online publishing
•E-commerce
•And much much more ...

"Rok's book is the most comprehensive guide on RSS for marketers. A milestone document that clearly defines the role of RSS in the marketing mix and gives concrete instructions and tips regarding how to best leverage this powerful and game changing capability."

--- Dick Costolo, Feedburner"Rok, What you did is not fair! You've left everyone else nothing more on the subject of RSS to write about.

Now I understand why Pakii calls your book the 'best on the planet' - I agree. It is the most comprehensive, detailed and complete writing on the topic of RSS feed marketing and publishing I've read.

My notebook has tons of notes to myself, made while reading your book - in ONE sitting, lasting just under 4 hours. I simply couldn't stop. There'll be a lot of changes implemented soon on my various RSS feeds, thanks to what I picked up from your guide.

All success,

Dr.Mani Sivasubramanian
Author: How To Profit From RSS Feeds
http://www.RSS-Marketing.com""Hello Rok -

Just a note to say I love your material on RSS. (You have new fan here!) IMO, you do a wonderful job of explaining exactly how RSS can help grow a business . One of your articles several weeks ago prompted me to have a look at your site.

I bought both your "Unleash the Marketing and Publishing Power of RSS" and the [ competitive print book title removed from the letter ] book. From a marketing-relevant standpoint, your book blows the other out of the water.

Anyway, saw another of your articles come through today and thought I'd drop you a line.

Regards,
Bobette Kyle
http://www.WebSiteMarketingPlan.com
Marketing Plan and Web Promotion Information" Take a Look at Some Quick Examples of How Companies are Already Using RSS ...
•MarketingVOX is using RSS to deliver internet marketing news to their readers as it becomes available. Instead of having to wait to receive all the news in a single e-mail newsletter, RSS users get them as soon as they are ready.

•BTI Communications, a VoIP company achieved #1 search engine positions for their most important keywords in a highly staurated market, only using the power of RSS.

•Amazon.com is using RSS to announce their bestsellers and to help their users keep track of releases they are most interested in.

•Some affiliate managers already communicate with their affiliates using RSS.

•FindSavings.com uses RSS to deliver savings coupons and related information.

•Lockergnome uses RSS to provide visitors with the latest downloads and relevant software. Yet again other companies are using RSS to deliver product updates and patches directly to their customers, just as they become available.

•A few hundred content publishers are using RSS to deliver audio content, such as .mp3 interviews, “radio” shows and even audio messages to their customers.

•Textamerica.com allows people to post pictures, videos & text from their mobile phones and then make this content available via RSS feeds.

•Other companies are using RSS to deliver whitepapers and other educational content.

•One company uses RSS as a consulting billing awareness tool. The consultants create activity reports and the RSS feeds from the activity channels carry the billable information to the accounting staff for invoice preparation.

•Many internet publishers are using RSS to deliver their newsletters.

•Publish living digital catalogues of your products and provide your customers with your latest product releases, broken down by the categories they're interested in, and make it easy for them to order.

•Provide your affiliates and marketing partners with RSS feeds they can promote to their visitors to better promote your products and still make a commission. Amazon.com is already doing it. When are you starting?

•Create RSS autoresponders with scheduled messages, to keep in constant “marketing” contact with your prospects and slowly get them to the point of purchase.

•Provide limited-access content to your customers, employees, team members and even investors, without fearing other unwanted eyes.
Discover the Marketing Power of RSS Today
If this is enough to convince you that you need to implement RSS as part of your internet marketing strategy now, click here to order the "Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS" e-book, acclaimed as the best and most comprehensive guide on RSS for marketers by leading RSS developers, marketers, experts and thought leaders. This is the only report on RSS that is fully supported by the RSS industry.

Your order is completely risk-free, as the e-book comes with a 90-day unconditional money-back guarantee.

If not, keep reading to find out more in-depth how you can benefit from RSS ...

New -- Just added to this package: a bonus 1 hour and 15 minutes RSS video on RSS Marketing for Beginners

A new video covering the basics of RSS marketing has just been added to the Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS package.

Just over 1 hour and 15 minutes in length, the video covers everything from what RSS is, why it matters to marketers, what marketers can do with it to an in-depth explanation of the 7 key steps to RSS marketing success.

You will receive this video as a bonus gift with your order of Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS.RSS in Detail
How RSS Will Increase Your Business Success
Improve Your Search Engine Rankings

RSS will increase your rankings for the most important search engines and at the same time, through RSS specific search engines and directories, generate new traffic for your web site.

It will generate completely new traffic for you and help you increase the power of your existing traffic sources.

It will get you listed almost immediately, even at directories like Yahoo!, and will get you #1 positions for your most important keywords and phrases.

And the best part: it's free and quick; takes less than a day to do.

100% Content Delivery

Forget about spam filters that are keeping your content away from your subscribers. RSS gets 100% of your content delivered. This works for direct marketing messages, e-zine publishing, customer support and so on.

With RSS you can even easily deliver daily or hourly news to your subscribers, and everything else as well. RSS will help you expand your content delivery to daily content updates, content updates by interest, content updates for different target audiences and so on. Use one RSS feed to deliver your daily news and the other to deliver in-depth articles, and so on...

And don't forget about the power of RSS personalization and autoresponder messages, which are already possible.

Discover New Marketing Opportunities

New times bring new marketing opportunities, and RSS is the leader in this area as well.

•Use it to increase the sales of your affiliates by providing them with RSS feeds to better promote your products.

•Launch your own RSS product feeds and digital catalogues (Amazon started publishing those not long ago) that bring your products directly to your recipient's desktops. Amazon is doing, but not many other people yet. Be among the first and get a lion's share of your target market.

•Market through branded RSS aggregators and establish a constant connection with your subscribers. It's just like having a branded e-mail client that your customers and prospects are using every day ... but much cheaper.

•Find innovative ways of delivering your ads and direct marketing messages directly to your audiences, making sure they are actually read.

•Autoresponders are a great marketing tool, but are becoming ineffective because your prospects just don't want to give you their e-mail addresses. RSS gives you this very same power, but without the fear people have with e-mail.

•Use RSS to market to your existing customers, affiliates, business partners and employees/team members.

•Publish your own "podcast", a special RSS feed, which carries audio. Perfect for your own audio "radio station" or for getting your voice to your readers, without having to worry about too large e-mail attachments. Podcasting got so big that not only every respected internet marketers is using it, but also huge corporations like GM.

•Use RSS to deliver latest posts and topics from your forums directly to your readers, to increase forum popularity and the quantity & quality of conversations.

Get Your Content Published On Other Web Sites

Get your content easily published on other web sites to reach new audiences and use their traffic to increase your own sales, as well as achieve greater recognition as an expert in your field.

Again, it's free and easy, and has the potential of bringing your content to thousands and thousands of new prospects, who are ready to buy now.

Generate New Subscribers More Easily

Internet users are reluctant to subscribe to any more e-mail newsletters, but because RSS is so easy to control they don't have any problems with subscribing to new RSS feeds that match their interests.

That means that by having an RSS feed you can raise your visitor-to-subscriber conversion easily.

Just imagine how converting more visitors in to subscribers will improve your long-term sales ... every additional subscriber you get means a new potential sales and a long-term relationship that could lead to dozens of sales on the long-term, especially if you convert him in to an affiliate.

If however you're not using RSS, these sales could easily be lost.

Don't Worry About Messages From Your Customers Not Reaching You

E-mail messages, yes, even those from your customers and their business enquieries, are often lost due to spam filters.

With RSS, no messages from your customers or prospects will ever get lost again. That means that you'll now capture every business enquiery and respond accordingly, turning it in to a real sale.

(For the rest, please click on the link in the title)

Do XML Sitemaps Actually Help?

2010-04-19T18:23:00.000-07:00

By Wesley LeFebvre
Posted on April 14, 2010
Site-Reference News

I don't know about you, but I stopped worrying about using XML sitemaps on most of the websites I manage a long time ago. Frankly, I felt It was a complete waste of my time trying to keep them updated regularly. There was no noticeably difference in the way Google crawled each website, or indexed the updated pages. So I DON'T agonize over them anymore.

I think site-maps are a great idea, and maybe they'll be better in the future, but I honestly feel like site-maps have been more of a nuisance than anything. They give a false sense of security that a page will be indexed or updated in a timely manor. And from my experience, an XML sitemap submission does not guarantee much of anything.

If you have a website or pages you want to get crawled frequently, here are a few things you might want to put your focus on before you worry too much about your XML sitemap.

Add a blog to your website! I can't emphasize this enough. If you have a website, you need a self-hosted blog. Twitter is great, and so is facebook, but a blog brings people and the search robots to your website. Update it weekly, and you'll establish yourself as an authority, attract readers and links, plus Google will crawl your website for updated content more frequently.

Link to your important pages! Do you have several "important" pages many clicks into your website? If so, you need to bring them closer to your home page. If you have several links on your home page to the less important pages, you may want to rethink your navigation structure.

Get more links! If your website isn't being crawled very frequently, maybe you need more links. Link-building is still as important as ever. Don't ever underestimate the power of link-building.

Create a static HTML sitemap. A static sitemap is great because it helps users find the most important content on your website. Obviously, it will do the same for the search engine robots too.

Even if an XML sitemap helps get your pages indexed, it's not going to help much with your rankings. An important page that wouldn't have been indexed otherwise, isn't going to show up in the top of the search results if it isn't getting any PageRank. Don't get too excited about getting your pages indexed. Indexation doesn't equal ranking.

If you use a content management system like wordpress, you can try a sitemap generator. I haven't used it myself, but this one has over a thousand reviews, most of which are very positive.

In conclusion: If rankings are important to you, then finish optimizing your website before you worry too much about your XML sitemap. What has your experience been like using an XML sitemap? Has your experience been different than mine, or about the same? Leave a comment and let us know.

Wesley LeFebvre is the owner of Seattle Web Services, a Seattle-based search engine marketing company. For more of his great SEO tips, follow him on his popular SEO Rankings Blog.

How to explain RSS the Oprah way

2010-02-03T19:54:00.000-08:00

back in skinny jeans

Today, I’m going to explain how RSS can help you live your best life online.

We all have busy lives with very little time. Web surfing is fun but can take hours going to visit every single website and blog you enjoy.

Wouldn’t it be fabulous if you could just get all the headlines of the most current stories from all your favorite websites and blogs in one place?

Well now you can, and it is called RSS feed.

The Oprah definition

The technical acronym for RSS is “Really Simple Syndication”, an XML format that was created to syndicate news, and be a means to share content on the web. Now, to geeks and techies that means something special, but to everyday folks like you and me, what comes to mind is, “Uh, I don’t get it?”

So, to make RSS much easier to understand, in Oprah speak, RSS stands for: I’m “Ready for Some Stories”. It is a way online for you to get a quick list of the latest story headlines from all your favorite websites and blogs all in one place. How cool is that?

Suppose you have 50 sites and blogs that you like to visit regularly. Going to visit each website and blog everyday could take you hours. With RSS, you can “subscribe” to a website or blog, and get “fed” all the new headlines from all of these 50 sites and blogs in one list, and see what’s going on in minutes instead of hours. What a time saver!

That one place where your RSS list is created is called an RSS Reader, and it gathers all the headlines from all the websites and blogs you have subscribed to. In a moment, I will describe how to get an RSS Reader.

Subscribing to RSS feeds

But first, to “subscribe” to a website or blog’s RSS feed simply means that you are telling that website or blog, “Yes please. Send me your story headlines.” It’s like subscribing to a magazine or newsletter. Instead of getting a magazine or email, you will just get a list of headlines sent to your RSS reader. If the headline looks interesting to you, all you have to do is click on the headline and you’ll be sent to the whole story.

In order to subscribe to a website or blog’s RSS, all you have to do is click on an RSS symbol like one of those shown in the diagram above, or a text link of the words “Subscribe to our RSS feed” on the website or blog. Typically, you can find these RSS symbols or text links in your browser window, on the sides of the website page, or on the bottom of the page.

The publishers of the websites and blogs really want people to subscribe to their RSS, so they will make it very easy for you to find the subscription links.

RSS Readers

Now, because nothing is ever standard on the web like dealing with different operating systems, Mac vs. PC, and different flavored browsers like Internet Explorer, AOL, Safari, and Firefox, the way to get an RSS reader will be dependent on what browser you like to use, and how accessible you’d like your RSS list(s) to be.

Just like there are flavors of web browsers, you may see and hear of different flavors of RSS XML feeders like RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, and Atom. Again, the flavors are only important if you want to get techie. If you stick to looking for an RSS symbol like I have shown you in the diagram, you will be just fine.

If you’d like your RSS list to be accessible from any computer or mobile device you may have like a PDA, laptop, or cell phone, some popular RSS readers include (and almost all are FREE):

MyYahoo
MyMSN
MyAOL
MyGoogle
Bloglines
FeedDemon (this one costs money)
NewsGator (there is a cost for mobile accessibility)
NetVibes
PageFlakes
Shrook (For Mac users. Free trial and then there's a cost.)
Lektora
Attensa (more for enterprise, and there's a cost)

Update: If there are any other good RSS readers I've missed, please let me know and I will add them.

As you can see, there are a plethora of choices for you. All are good RSS readers, so your choice will simply come down to the style that appeals most to you.

RSS as Live Bookmarks

Browsers like Safari and Firefox allow you to subscribe to RSS feeds through the browser, and it’s called “live bookmarking”. Currently, you can only do live bookmarking in Internet Explorer if you have IE7 which is still in Beta. Oprah translation: Non-geeks cannot do live bookmarking in Internet Explorer because it’s not done yet. The limitation with using RSS in live bookmark form is that you only have access to your RSS list from the computer you created the bookmarks on. If you want the flexibility of complete accessibility, then I recommend going the RSS Reader route.

So there you have it. Are you now Ready for Some Stories? Enjoy!

This post is part of the ProBlogger "How to" Group Writing Project. Please visit Problogger for other wonderful "How tos."

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Making An RSS Feed

2010-01-21T17:29:00.000-08:00

Making An RSS Feed
By Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Watch, Apr 2, 2003

Share RSS is a method of distributing links to content in your web site that you'd like others to use. In other words, it's a mechanism to "syndicate" your content.

To understand syndication, consider the "real world" situation where artist Scott Adams draws a daily Dilbert cartoon. The cartoon is made available to any newspaper that cares to run it, in exchange for a fee -- and 2,000 papers in 65 countries do so.

Unlike Scott Adams, syndication of web content via RSS is unlikely to make you rich. However, it can be an easy way to draw attention to your material, bringing you some traffic and perhaps a little net fame, depending on how good your information is.

What Is RSS?
How does RSS syndication work? Say you publish a new web page about a particular topic. You want others interested in that topic to know about it. By listing the page as an "item" in your RSS file, you can have the page appear in front of those who read information using RSS readers or "news aggregators" (explained more in my sidebar article, RSS: Your Gateway To News & Blog Content). RSS also allows people to easily add links to your content within their own web pages. Bloggers are a huge core audience that especially does this.

What does RSS stand for? There's a can of worms. RSS as introduced by Netscape in 1999 then later abandoned in 2001 stood for "Rich Site Summary." Another version of RSS pioneered by UserLand Software stands for "Really Simple Syndication." In yet another version, RSS stands for "RDF Site Summary."

History buffs might be interested that there's been some rivalry over who invented RSS. This is why we have both different names and indeed different "flavors" or versions of RSS. Mark Pilgrim's written an excellent article, What Is RSS, that charts the different versions with recommendations on which to use. I'll also revisit the version choice you'll need to make. But first, let's look more closely at some basics of what goes into any RSS file.

How Easy Is RSS?
I've been exploring RSS because it was time that Search Engine Watch offered its own stories in this manner. I've read several tutorials about making a feed, and they generally suggest that it is easy. They often offer code that you can "cut-and-paste" and link over to specifications that I actually don't find that clear.

For example, the RSS 2.0 specification has an "cloud" element that's optional but which a lay person might still wonder if they should use it. Meanwhile, heaven help the person who stumbles into the RSS 1.0 specification and its complicated RDF syntax.

Sure, making an RSS file IS easy for many. If you understand HTML, you'll probably understand enough to do a cut-and-paste from someone else's RSS file to make your own file. Don't know HTML? Start a blog, because several blogging tools automatically generates RSS files.

As for those non-technical people using WYSIWYG page building tools or personal home page building systems, have faith. Even you can build an RSS file from scratch, as long as you dispense with some of the extra features you probably don't need. We'll go through how to do this below. Later, I'll also mention some tools that will even do some or all of the work for you.

The RSS File
At the heart of an RSS file are "items." No matter what version of RSS you settle on, your file will have to include at least one item. Items are generally web pages that you'd like others to link to. For example, let's say you just created a web page reviewing a new cell phone that's being released. Information about that page would form an item.

To enter your item into the RSS file, you'll need three bits of information:

•Title
•Description
•Link

The title and description of your item need not match exactly the HTML title tag of the web page that the item refers to, nor the meta description tag, assuming you use these (don't know what they are? See my How To Use HTML Tags article). You can write any title and description that you think will describe the page. However, using your page's title and meta description tag certainly makes it easy to copy and paste to build your RSS feed.

In the case of our example page, let's say this is the information we settle on to define it as an item:

Nokia 3650 Combines Phone And Photos
I've been playing with the new Nokia 3650. Finally, someone has got the combination of a cell phone with digital camera capabilities right!

http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/nokia3650.html
Now we have to surround that information with XML tags. These are similar to HTML tags, with the exception that unlike with HTML, there's no set definition of XML tags. Anyone can make up a particular XML tag. Whether it is useful depends on the program that reads the resulting XML file. In the case of RSS feeds, they have their own unique set of XML tags that are defined. Use these correctly, and then anything that reads RSS will understand your information.

Did that make your head spin? If so, don't reread -- just carry on to see how simple it is. First, open a text editor like Notepad. We're going to build our RSS file using it...

(For the rest of this highly useful but somewhat dated piece, please click on the link in the title above this article.)

FeedYes.com gives rss feeds to every page on the web

2009-11-08T12:31:00.000-08:00

"The best and easiest way to get custom made feeds."

FeedYes.com gives rss feeds to every page on the web
Reviewed by Robert Scoble, Dion Hinchcliffe, and Matt Marshall
Click on this blog entry's title to go to the website!

Automatically generated feeds for any page on the web

Just type the url of any page, and FeedYes gives you the feed
» Start now and generate a feed
Or: create a feed for your website manually

You can also use FeedYes to manually create a feed for your website
» Give your website a feed now
Examples for automatically generated feeds MTV News MTV News did not have a feed. So we created one.
eBay search for Ferrari Handy feed when you want to buy a Ferrari... toy.
Palm Springs news We created a feed for MSNBC news from Palm Springs

In depth: what can you do with FeedYes.com?
» Generate feeds for any website or specific page
» Save those feeds: read them with your rss reader or mobile phone.
» Syndicate those feeds: put the headlines on your own website
» Monitor websites realtime: always know the latest news from any webpage

Beginning RSS and Atom Programming

2009-08-18T13:57:00.000-07:00

Danny Ayers, Andrew Watt
ISBN: 978-0-7645-7916-5
Paperback
775 pages
May 2005
Other Available Formats: Adobe E-Book
If you are an instructor, you may request an evaluation copy for this title.

RSS and Atom are specifications that give users the power to subscribe to information they want to receive and give content developers tools to provide continuous subscriptions to willing recipients in a spam-free setting. RSS and Atom are the technical power behind the growing millions of blogs on the Web. Blogs change the Web from a set of static pages or sites requiring programming expertise to update to an ever changing, constantly updated landscape that anyone can contribute to.

RSS and Atom syndication provides users an easy way to track new information on as many Web sites as they want. This book offers you insight to understanding the issues facing the user community so you can meet users' needs by writing software and Web sites using RSS and Atom feeds.

Beginning with an introduction to all the current and coming versions of RSS and Atom, you'll go step by step through the process of producing, aggregating, and storing information feeds. When you're finished, you'll be able to produce client software and Web sites that create, manipulate, aggregate, and display information feeds effectively.

"This book is full of practical advice and tips for consuming, producing, and manipulating information feeds. I only wish I had a book like this when I started writing RSS Bandit." - Dare Obasanjo, RSS Bandit creator: http://www.rssbandit.org/

WebRef and the Future of RSS

2009-07-19T15:08:00.000-07:00

Introduction to RSS:
WebRef and RSS

We've been preaching the gospel of RSS for some time now at Webref, but lately we've got religion. Our Perl expert, Jonathan Eisenzopf, has been active in promoting RSS, even writing a Perl module for easy manipulation of RSS files, XML::RSS. Doc JavaScript has gone daily with his popular JavaScript Tip of the Day channel, and our XML expert, as you can imagine, has his own channel, and has created a Java applet for displaying RSS feeds.

We've adapted News Harvester to accept and output RSS files, and now use a modified version of Jon's channel manager script to update our front page and RSS file simultaneously. Now updating our front page is just a Web form away, and you can do the same for your site. To encourage the spread of RSS we're providing our channel manager script as open source:

http://www.webreference.com/scripts/

The Future of RSS

Thanks to the efforts of the likes of Jonathan Eisenzopf, Dave Winer and Netscape, future versions of RSS will incorporate popular additional fields like news category, time stamps, and more. With thousands of sites now RSS-enabled and more on the way, RSS has become perhaps the most visible XML success story to date. RSS democratizes news distribution by making everyone a potential news provider. It leverages the Web's most valuable asset, content, and makes displaying high-quality relevant news on your site easy. Soon we'll see RSS portals with user-rated channels, cool RSS site of the day, build your own topic-specific portal, and highly relevant search engines. A collective weblog would be another intriguing possibility. May the best content win.

# # #

About the author: Andrew B. King is the founder and former managing editor of WebReference.com and JavaScript.com. He has a BSME and MSME from the University of Michigan, and has worked the Web full time since 1993. He can be reached at aking@internet.com.

Further Reading:

Doc JavaScript's JavaScript Tip of the Day Channel
Exploring XML - Syndication intro, RSS Viewer applet
Meerkat Open Wire Service - O'Reilly's tech-oriented RSS news portal
Mother of Perl - XML::RSS tutorial, RSS tools, and scripts
News Harvester - accepts and outputs RSS, provides news clients for news harvester feeds (see the news topics links for available feeds)
RSS Resources - includes RSS portal list
WebReference.com RSS Channels

5 Hot RSS Tips To Increase MLM Blog Traffic

2009-06-10T13:04:00.000-07:00

By Jon Roussel

What is RSS and how can it help you increase MLM blog traffic?

RSS stands for 'Really Simple Syndication'. RSS lets you directly deliver your content to all interested parties so they do not have to surf to find your content.

It syndicates your content. It helps you send updated headlines and brief summaries to your subscribers. It is a more efficient way to get your content 'out there, so you can increase MLM blog traffic.

RSS feeds provide an effective means to advertise new content on other websites without the hassles and spamming issues of mass email newsletters.

You can create an RSS Feed without coding it yourself by using an easy to use software applications that can format your XML. You can find some excellent RSS feed plug ins at Feedburner, Feedblitz or FeedForAll.

Here are five tips to set up and maximize your own feeds.

1. Set up Your Own RSS Feed

First, set up an RSS Feed for your site.

A blog created with Blogger or Wordpress will provide you with an RSS Feed that you can place on your site. Get a XML or RSS orange button and place it on your site. Link it to your RSS Feed url - this is your atom.xml link if you're using Blogger. You can also get buttons for feeds in various readers by going to Feedburner, Feedblitz or FeedForAll.

2. Place Other RSS Feeds On Your Site

You can place headlines on your site www.feedburner.com and gives you a headline animator. This will display the RSS feed's headlines with links to the content.

You can also put other content from a feed on your site, you can use http://www.feeddigest.com/ for free to automatically update news and feed content on your blog.

3. Place MSN Search Results Directly on your blog.

MSN has a beta program using RSS in their search. You can put RSS search results directly onto your blog. It can enrich your site with daily updated content. Fresh updated content will draw more eyeballs and increase MLM blog traffic.

It is easy to do; just add "&format=rss" at the end of the URL in your MSN search engine query.

4. Put Yahoo Results on your blog

5. Place the correct tags on your blog and in your posts

Tags are essentially keywords for blogs and you should always use them to increase MLM blog traffic.

Tags have recently gained attention because Technorati, which indexes 4.5 million blogs, started sorting blog posts by using tags.

Using the correct tags, creating different feed options and placing other feeds on your site are some simple methods to increase MLM blog traffic.

Jon Roussel is a successful internet marketer in Beverly, MA He helps people succeed with a home based business that will generate a long term reliable leveraged residual income. Learn more at Jon Roussel's Website

Jon Roussel is a successful internet marketer in Beverly, MA He helps people succeed with a home based business that will generate a long term reliable leveraged residual income. Learn more at Jon Roussel's Website

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jon_Roussel

Do You RSS?

2009-05-21T15:46:00.000-07:00

By Joshua Hays

I have recently become acquainted with RSS, or Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication (depending on who you hear it from) and am amazed at how it has been forced on internet users in the most recent years through browser updates and site adaptations. If you have a blog or any other source of information that you want people or customers to regularly be a part of, it's practically 'required' that you offer the RSS option.

So what the heck is RSS? Does anyone even really know? There isn't a clear explanation listed anywhere on the sites that want you to subscribe to so how are new or lite internet users supposed to know what it is?

WhatIsRSS.com says that "RSS is a format for delivering regularly changing web content." In short, if you want to know if a favorite site, news or blog has posted an update, the RSS indicator embedded into almost every browser will highlight. It is an easy way to subscribe to information without having to give away personal information. Make sense?

Probably not. RSS has never really be explained, is it even popular among the people we really want to use it? Marketers and business owners are getting a hang of it but the demographic we are attempting to force it upon doesn't yet have an understanding. It's such a useful tool and very easy to use and explain - it doesn't make sense not have a brief explanation somewhere near the RSS subscribe button on your blog or forum that would help to encourage users to make the 'easy' transition into RSS.

I guess this unnoticeable transition is much easier to stomach than something like what we are doing for the digital television transition, huh?

Joshua Hays is an aggressive marketing consultant with a strong background in design and nearly ten years of broad experience involving both B2B and B2C marketing techniques including print and online campaigns. He has advanced knowledge of both the Microsoft and Adobe software suites and is cross-platform, multi-operating system (MAC & PC) trained. Joshua specializes in product and campaign development. Joshua Hays can be reached at http://www.joshuahays.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Joshua_Hays

Tips to Boost RSS Subscribers

2009-05-14T13:40:00.000-07:00

By Sean Quah

RSS feeds or Real Simple Syndication is a technology that allows users to subscribe to websites, blogs, video blogs and pod casts, basically helping users to keep track of all their favorite sites and blogs without having to go searching each and every site for new updates.

It is a way for publishers and advertisers to get content out and it also helps in running online businesses and people who work from home. It is gaining popularity in recent times but still there is a need to boost RSS subscribers otherwise the benefits of news syndication are lost. There are ways to increase the subscribers to your news feed.

Firstly using a RSS auto tag by which the readers will know that your web page has a provision of using RSS news feeds thus you do not have to push your RSS feed, the browser does it for you for example web browsers like Fire fox now detect RSS automatically and ask the visitor if he or she wants to subscribe your feed.

Secondly by submitting your feed to RSS directories so that when the users are looking for RSS news feeds and go to RSS directory, they find your feed and if interested can subscribe to it. That is why it is important to submit to as many directories as you can and if you are looking to save time with RSS directory submission then Global Syndication can help you to submit your feed to top 45 directories for under $10. You can do it from working from home or at work.

Thirdly by creating an RSS Landing page which will make things simple for the first time users to understand the concept of RSS and to start using your feed and the best way to do it is to create a separate page on the site describing the news feeds you are offering plus the information of RSS in general.

Finally, by creating a branded RSS News Reader which will save the beginners user time and prevent them from the hassle of figuring out how to get a feed reader and subscribe to it. After following the above mentioned tips you will have a boost in your RSS subscribers and in turn you will succeed in driving more traffic to your website and also you can take this work as a part time job and work from home.

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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sean_Quah

How to Submit an RSS Feed the Easy Way

2009-05-04T20:14:00.000-07:00

By Erik Heyl

If you've been online for any length of time, you've probably come across RSS feeds. If not, you might be wondering exactly what they are and why you should care. This is perfectly understandable as the technological world is growing at an immeasurable pace that leaves even so-called "hardcore" nerds panting. But how to define RSS?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is in fact a method of disseminating information quickly without much fuss. Simply put it is not one specific web feed format but many different ones used to publish frequently updated information, be it blogs, video, text, audio, in a standardised method, such as XML. Also called a web feed, the information included can be either full or summarized text as well as miscellaneous information such as publication dates, and authorship.

But how does this benefit the average person? It is great for busy people as RSS feeds give them the option to subscribe to many frequently visited websites and have those updates and news available to them in one place through the use of an RSS reader. And it doesn't really matter what the person uses as it is generic and can be read from anywhere by any reader, from a web browser to an iPhone.

That being said, if you own a website, be it for a physical or digital product or service, you might be wondering how an RSS feed can help your business grow. An RSS feed along with other forms of traffic, from article marketing to pay per click, allows you get "get the word out" about your product or service in quick and efficient manner. This also aids in getting more traffic to your site as well.

Over time, if done correctly, this will also increase the perception that your site and your business are serious and will be there for your customers.

But how can you submit an RSS feed? After all, unless you are in a technology related business, your expertise is most likely not Internet programming, graphics or websites. Your expertise is your business. You may be put off by what you perceive as something requiring a lot of time or technical expertise. In the early days of content syndication, this was true. But, unless you want to learn the ins and outs, it does not have to take a lot of time, nor does it have to be technical.

One method would be to set up a WordPress web log or blog. Any time you post to the blog, it will automatically create and submit your rss feed. The main issue with this method is that it takes time to setup properly and can become quite technical, quite fast and there is not the best documentation available to help you.

Another option is to pay your webmaster to do this or hire a contractor. The downside with this method is that you need to double check the work and you are held hostage to their schedule. And what if they decide to raise their rates?

The final option is to learn to do it yourself. But you need to be able to do so without all the technical jargon that seems to pervade most courses on technical subjects. You need to be able to learn it quickly, and be able to apply what you've learned just as fast. The key here is to get past the fear of learning something new. This way, you have total control over your site and can create and submit an rss feed any time you wish.

To start increasing your exposure through RSS feeds, go to create rss feeds.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Erik_Heyl

What is an RSS Feed, and What Can it Do For You?

2009-04-26T16:58:00.000-07:00

By Samo Yanezic

You might have seen this term bandied about: "RSS feed." What is it, though, and what can it do for you? That's something a lot of us wonder about, and especially if we are Web marketers, it's something we can use to our advantage.

In fact, by using an RSS feed, both you and your services can be a lot more accessible and visible to people who are looking for you. In many cases, creating an RSS feed is as simple as filling out an online form and then submitting it. Take some time to learn about what an RSS feed is and what it can do for you. In fact, it can be extremely valuable to you in making your business both more visible and more accessible.

What does it mean? "RSS" stands for "Really Simple Syndication," or less commonly, "Rich Site Summary." It's probably true that you've seen this before but didn't know it.

RSS is used for a lot of materials that are then syndicated, like blogs. Let's say, for example, that you read the blogs of your friends or of those you follow professionally. For those blogs you follow, take a look and see if you can find a small orange colored icon with two orange lines around it. That little symbol means that that blog or other content is available through an RSS feed.

When a blog or other material is available through an RSS feed, you can have it "delivered" to you every time it updates with something new instead of having to go read it. And as a Web marketer, for you it can mean that you can get product updates, news about services, etc., out to subscribers in a way that's convenient to them so that they know what's going on without having to come and search you out.

With an RSS feed, all of the content you subscribe to can be delivered to you so that you don't have to go to continually check for updates. Therefore, if you offer an RSS feed for your own information, you're also recognizing the fact that your subscribers are busy and are making it that much easier for them to follow you.

It's a simple process to create your own RSS feed so that you can provide this service to your customers, potential customers and subscribers, too. How do you go about that?

One of the best ways to do it is to create your own blog. With a blog, you generally have RSS capability built right in so that it's a simple matter to set up an RSS feed. This makes it much easier for people to follow updates, news, new product information, and any other information you might want to post to your blog and that you want people to know easily. This makes it much easier for the people who do want to know these things to keep abreast of them.

So figure out what information you want to get out there, and make sure you set up a way for people to easily pay attention to and follow you. This is something that some people have difficulty doing, but an RSS feed can solve this problem quite easily.

Samo Yanezic is the Webmaster of Financial Freedom Informant.com - The Net`s Growing Source for Online Home Business and Investments Education. You can visit the site for more free help and advice. See also the Define RSS page.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Samo_Yanezic

The Advantages of RSS (Real Simple Syndication)

2009-04-18T13:36:00.000-07:00

By Clif Ray Posey

RSS is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication or can also be stated as the Rich Site RSS is an acronym for XML is utilized for distributing your news headlines through the Web that is known as Syndication. The real power of RSS is indicated in the term Syndication. You can get information or messages across the web instantly to your websites, your readers and/or subscribe

RSS is a simple technology that helps to distribute your information whether it is Product Reviews, Special Offers, Resource Announcements and Articles by syndicating across the net. The more the readers, subscribers and websites that opt to your RSS feeds the more targeted traffic will be received free from their websites.

Websites That Succeeds provided this article and we do offer a free website builder but in addition to that along with the website you get a free blog. You can get real technical and use XML but you do not have to. With RSS Blog It which is the set p u for the blog you can make it so everything you publish (build) a page you blog is automated with the pages you have built were you approved them to go on your blog as you build it.

If this article seem to complicated and you would rather spend time writing instead of tacking care of the technical aspect of this Site Build It is much easier and more automatic with shortcuts to using RSS. Find our more here.

In order to take advantage of this simple technology, you can start by setting up a blog, as Blog's are RSS ready. The users get all the needed information without having to search much around from one web site to the other for new content and the best advantage is that, the website that distribute content through this way gets easier and more exposure.

The RSS readers or aggregates can be defined in two categories such as the Web-based and the Client Software. The Web-based applications are distributed and it is used from the hosted website remotely and can also be used within a web browser and hence it does not need any other software. The Client Software are aggregates that needs to be downloaded in your computer and are either a stand alone piece of software or a part of large piece of software that can be used for reading the RSS feeds. At present, there are many down loadable software programs available in the market, which are large and very complex in function and design.

You need to use RSS, as it helps you keep yourself updated with the accurate and best information available on the web. Your favorite sites need not be checked manually. As you start subscribing to the RSS feeds that you prefer, it will inform you of the news that occurs and save you valuable time that can be utilized to monitor your important business activities.

The users can very conveniently deliver their Internet content to the publishers to deliver their information to the end-users. It is much better as compared to the alert services of the e-mail content that can send you e-mail messages each time the content that is of your interest is published on the specific web site. It lets you to know that a new article is posted on the Web of your interest. All you need to start with the RSS is a News Reader, software that verifies the feed and allows you to read new articles that are added.

In short, RSS connect people in the real time and you can publish the contents and increase website traffic and also rankings of Search Engines. It assists you to generate new subscribers, get valuable feedback and increase affiliate sales.

About the author: Cliff Posey, owner of CRP Marketing, owns and operates webbusinesstoolsonline.com Cliff has also operated several other successful web businesses including Love Song Cards and Radio Career Consultants. The content in this article was developed from his experience in these businesses and his continual research into further business improvements. This Blog is for discussion about web sites and web site traffic therefore your feedback is welcome.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Clif_Ray_Posey

What is the Best RSS Reader For Windows?

2009-04-13T13:25:00.000-07:00

By Virginia Daley

A windows RSS Feed Reader will allow you to quickly and easily subscribe to your favourite blog feeds and constantly update you with the latest news and updates. Some applications are stand alone while others are web based and you can only access them through your web browser. You can view the content of blog feeds either on the net using a site like yahoo or by downloading a free RSS reader software.

News aggregators and RSS feed readers are primarily the same thing. News aggregators can read any feed but their primary use is to view the latest news. Many mobile devices also support feeds too so they are not only available at your PC.

Free RSS Readers

Google has a free news feed reader which is very easy to use, yet quite comprehensive.

Bloglines also has one that doesn't involve any software installation. However, it is not as comprehensive as Google's in my opinion.

SharpReader is a great organizer with virtual folders included.

Newzcrawler has been specifically designed to keep you up to date with the latest breaking news worldwide.

Pluck is quite a novel application which actually plucks the latest information from your favourite websites online and plucks it then straight to your web browser such as IE.

My personal free version is Awasu. What makes it my number one choice is the fact that it's very easy to enhance it with specific plugins. Its interface is also very user friendly and quite enjoyable to use.

There are so many high quality free versions out there that I don't believe you need to spend any money at all finding the right reader for you.

Go to http://bloginferno.com/freemoneyblog2.html and get instant access to your own FREE money making blog PLUS 30 days free training to make money as a niche blogger.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Virginia_Daley

RSS and Search Engine Optimization‏

2009-04-07T15:26:00.000-07:00

After putting a lot of thought into how to best use RSS feeds on your website and then creating them on your website, the next step is to promote them. As with any kind of marketing, where and how you advertise your website can determine the amount of visitors. The same applies to RSS feeds.

As you create your RSS feeds, keep in mind that the title should contain optimal search keywords. The more keywords contained, the more likely you are to have your feed come up when a particular search string is entered. This is not to say you should cram every possible keyword into the title of the RSS feed. Instead, keep in mind that you can have up to 15 different titles listed for the same link, article, content, etc. when creating the original RSS file.

Use descriptors to attract visitors to your site by tempting them to click on your feed. Think of text that will enhance your content, but not make it appear irrelevant. People are less likely to click on a RSS feed if it doesn't fit their needs and wants. By keeping the descriptors concise, but also tempting, you will drive people to click on your link over someone else's.

In keeping with the keyword search, don't forget that you can now search by theme. Use this to your advantage and group your RSS feeds into themes. When submitting them to search engines, group the feeds into specific themes. This can help bring your feeds up more often when similar themes are searched.

When you add RSS feeds from other companies, you can tell your website how to react when the feed is clicked on. Rather than have visitors transported to the new site, have it come up as a new window. This will help lessen the chance your site visitors will leave your website completely.

People don't use the back button as often, so it increases your chances of the person to continue to peruse your site if the RSS feeds pop up as new browsers.

As you design your RSS feeds, include your company's contact information. This entails your website, any relevant contact information, and if possible, your logo. The more experience a person has with your website, the more frequently he or she will recall it when thinking of your products or services.

Consequently, it also goes to say you need to make sure the experience is a positive one because it goes the same way with a negative experience, except it deters visitors from returning.

Use your feed within your own site. By promoting it within your own website, you can improve its standing on external search engines. Search engines often return results by the most frequently clicked first. If you don't have enough faith in your own RSS feed to include it in your website, why would anyone else want to subscribe to it? At the same time, RSS feed search engines often return results alphabetically.

Typically an English teacher would not count the word 'A' in a title when cataloguing it, but in RSS search engines, it is viewed as the first word of a title. Try to word your titles to begin with 'A' to improve their standing. As they are clicked on more and more, it will increase the feeds' standings in other search engines.

In order to utilize your well written and constructed RSS feeds, remember to subscribe to them yourself. Nothing gives others' faith in their content like seeing it on the originators' website. Use keywords appropriately in titles because you can write multiple titles to fit the same content. You can also use themes to help capture the essence of your RSS feeds. Keep site visitors at your website by 'instructing' external RSS feeds to open in new browser windows.

Lastly, don't forget to include your company's contact information with the website in your feeds. The more often these are put out to the general population, the more exposure you will get.

About the Author: Tim Eisenhauer - RssFeedDirectory.org gives you the maximum exposure for your RSS Feed. We are the premeire RSS Feed Submission service on the internet, helping your website get the extra exposure and traffic you need. Submit your RSS feed to our RSS Feed Directory today.

You Need RSS, Atom and/or ROR Codes on Your Website!

2009-03-28T14:34:00.001-07:00

You Need XML Codes to Promote Your Website

By Karen Cole
Word Count: 1,300

Do you have a website? If so, you need an ROR XMLNS code button which leads to a full ROR/RDF code page for your website. This code tells search engines all about the special details you input into the code about your website. For example, it tells them special details about each particular product (or certain special ones) that you sell on your site or sites, it tells the search engine bots your contact information such as your business address and phone number (without informing the entire universe, as the code is invisible to all but you and the search engine bots examining your website), it gives info on special other links you want the search engine bots to associate with your website, and it gives any other such major info that you want the big search engines to explore and know all about from your website.

That's why you need this latest and greatest in Internet code technology: the ROR/RDF XMLNS code. It's a form of XML that doesn't validate like an RSS or Atom feed does; it validates through the RDF Validation Service. You can look that up on the Net, and you'll see what I mean. Meanwhile, there's the matter of the Really Simple Syndication and the Atom XML codes. These codes DO validate through RSS Validation sites as regular feed codes. These codes, also known as feeds, can be taken by people visiting your website and input into their own RSS and Atom feed readers, such as RSS Reader (which you can download for free off of their website) and other news aggregators and feed readers.

These codes are great for spreading news on your website around. Basically, they each introduce important parts of your website -- or even your whole site in its entirety -- if you choose that you want to spread every page around to the general public through what's normally known as news and blog aggregation readers and services. You can find these services on websites all over the Web, and they're rapidly gaining in use and popularity. A good example of such a service is the NewsIsFree website, a news aggregator. These services usually take news feeds of all kinds and some blogs, plus they're starting to take advertisement feeds. This latter portion is a bit of a worry due to the fact that spyware and adware can thus be passed in a widespread manner all around the WWW.

This is being looked into very seriously by the experts. Most people are concerned that RSS will be used like a tool for this, so please be careful about copying RSS advertisement feeds into your news or blog feeds aggregator. The news and the normal daily or weekly expression blog feeds should be perfectly safe, for now. You should be able to scan RSS and Atom feeds for all types of malware someday in the not too distant future.

The RSS and Atom feeds are attached generally to little tiny orange buttons labeled "XML" and nothing more. Sometimes Atom feeds are attached to little blue buttons labeled "ATOM". The buttons are less than half an inch long and only a few centimeters wide, and would be very hard to see if it weren't for their bright coloration. The type they sport is a bright white, too. Some services are starting to use slightly larger and more visible but similar buttons for their particular XML-related services. The ROR/RDF XMLNS buttons are a little bigger, being an inch long, but are the same thickness as the RSS/Atom buttons and are half orange and half grey. They say "ROR" in the orange portion and "INFO" on the grey side, off-center. They also have a light yellow line around each portion and the margin of the button, plus the type is a light yellow, making them a bit easier to see without being so brightly colored. They're mostly placed visibly on your site in order to boast that you now sport ROR/RDF code on your website.

You can go ahead and even input the code directly into your site without ever bothering to use one of the colorful but dull ROR buttons. Just upload the code in an ror.xml text file into the root directory of the site. You will have to do this whether you show the button or not, anyway, and you also have to do this in the case of the RSS and Atom codes. They upload as feed.xml and atom.xml or something very similar to that in most cases. There is some leeway when assigning the filenames to these special XML codes, but they have to be uploaded as text files into your website's root directory. You might, however, want to display one or more of the ROR buttons on your website, preferably on your site map or home page, as this button is solely there so that search engines can pick up valuable information you want to share with them about your website.

The more such links you have, the more often major search engine bots will pick up on them, you see. So we advise you to proudly display that you have ROR/RDF code on your website. If you would like to know more about these fascinating codes, please contact Rainbow Writing, Inc. at karencole@rainbowriting.com for more information. Also, we can readily build you any or each of these codes for a small fee. We hereby suggest you definitely get at least an ROR code for your website to raise your rankings in the search engines, or to keep them high, and an RSS code for a website feed for your valuable website or websites. Remember that you can hook up more than one website in a single feed or one ROR/RDF file code. This is one thing that makes these special codes so popular and valuable to users.

Rainbow Writing, Inc. (RWI at http://www.rainbowriting.com/ ) charges $25 per hour per code, which usually translates to $25 per each code we generate for you. If you bought one of each code we mentioned from us, that would thus total only $75. If you bought only the two we suggested and left the Atom code alone (it will be awhile before it's widely popular, but it is rapidly gaining in usage lately) that would only cost you $50. For an extremely large website with a lot of information, such as the many hundreds of pages of the JC Penney catalogue website, we would charge you by the hour and it would be somewhat more. We think it's well worth the cost to promote your website in such a cutting-edge and innovative manner, especially as it becomes less so and more popular over time.

You will see these little buttons on several of the websites you are visiting nowadays, especially the major company ones. Probably, you've already seen them, and now you know what they are! Pretty soon nobody will be able to do without these little "pill" buttons to advertise all of the services they have to offer their commercial or even their personal public. Sound like a fair deal?

Write us ASAP at karencole@rainbowriting.com and we'll get cracking on generating perfect, simple, streamlined and fully validatable (that means it completely functions) code for you.

We believe we should do this for you, but if you have the time, there are website tutorials on the Net that show you how to slowly or swiftly learn, depending on your speed, how to write validatable XML code. This can be quite complicated, so we are highly recommending that you use our services. Please write to us today and see exactly what we can do for you in the realm of authoring these somewhat complicated yet streamlined and enormously useful XML codes.

THE END

Executive Director and President of Rainbow Writing, Inc., Karen Cole writes. RWI at http://www.rainbowriting.com is an affordable online professional freelance writing agency working for everyone from low end to celebrity clients, and specializing in the ghost writing, editing, promotions and marketing of books and screenplays.

Simple Solution to RSS Feeds

2009-03-23T16:55:00.000-07:00

By Marietjie Botha

I am quite new to Web developing. I was very proud of myself when I developed my own Website. The next step was to bring traffic to my site. After surfing the web I came across an article that suggested having a RSS Feed on my site to which people can subscribe to and which will keep them informed of all new products added to my site. Again I surfed the web to find out what RSS Feeds were. After many hours of reading Wiki and lots of articles, which confused me a lot, I finally figured out how to do this, and that it was actually really simple. I would now like to share with you 4 simple steps to add your own RSS feed to your Website:

1) Create a XML file with all the articles, product descriptions, your Website headlines or whatever you would like to appear in your feed, if you are not familiar with creating XML files, download a RSS Feed Editor to do this for you, you will find quit a few free editors on the Web. I have used RSSEditor.

2) After creating the XML file, Upload the XML file to your host, you can upload the XML file to any directory in your Website.

3) Add a RSS Feed icon to one or all of your web pages. Add a link to the image pointing to the RSS feed URL, i.e. the XML file which you have uploaded.

4) Now upload the page/pages on which you have added the Feed icon and link to your host and voila you've got a RSS Feed of your Website!

Example XML File: http://www.retaildaddy.com/RetailDaddy.xml
http://www.retaildaddy.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Marietjie_Botha

RSS For Rookies

2009-03-19T12:27:00.000-07:00

By Scott Hendison

What are RSS newsfeeds?

RSS stands for Rich Site Summary, or for Really Simple Syndication. Both mean the same thing, so don't let it confuse you. An RSS is something a website (or a blog) offers to readers provide a "news feed" of their information. It's available for everyone to add to their own "news reader" for free and gets displayed on your desktop or in your web browser.

It works almost like a stock ticker, delivering exactly the information that you have anonymously "subscribed" to, eliminating the need to go out and check your favorite outlets for new information, because they're already delivered to your computer.

Who needs RSS?

Well, everyone need it. It's so much more efficient than going to get it, or getting endless email newsletters. Having the paper delivered to your home makes more sense than driving to the store every day, doesn't it? In the same vein, let's say that you want only the latest news about only certain subjects, and routinely go out and check several websites to see what's new. Using RSS, those individual websites will deliver that news right to your desktop, suitable for reading, clicking, printing, or ignoring.

How can you use RSS?

There seems to be no single definitive answer, because there are so many ways to use it. I'll tell you about the easiest way to get RSS feeds that I know of, but by no means is that the only way. That is; on your homepage of your web browser.

First, you need an RSS newsreader, (a.k.a. "aggregator"). The good news though is that you may already have one. Since millions of people have Yahoo, MSN, Hotmail or Google accounts, I'll walk you through adding a news feed to your MSN home page. Go to http://www.my.msn.com and sign in. If you don't already have a hotmail account, go ahead and create one. If you'd prefer, you can go to http://my.yahoo.com and do the same) It only takes a minute go get a new account.

After signing in to My MSN, you'll see quite an array of news, weather, sports, ads, stock quotes, local information etc. Think of this as your canvas, and you're free to arrange or remove the information how you see fit. Each of these sections you see can me easily moved or deleted. To move them, just click and drag from the top right of each subject area. To remove them, click the minus (-) sign in the top left of the subject area. Feel free to delete them all, since you can always add them back later.

Now go to top left of the screen, right above the "Welcome" area you'll see "Add content" below your name. When you go there, you get four choices (Tabs) for adding content. The default tab that comes up is "Search". and from here you have four options and each is clearly defined. If you know the exact web address (URL) for a company's newsfeed, you can enter it right here. The other three tabs might be worth exploring too, since they let you browse by company names and subjects. Then you just click a box for all you want.

After signing in to My Yahoo, you'll notice that there are already several news feeds from Reuters listed there, with "Top stories", "world News", "Politics" and "Business". Above those stories, you'll see a big yellow box in the center explaining how you can "Add Content". Click the link to "add content" and you'll come up with a search box allowing you to "find content" about a given subject. Type in a search phrase, and you'll be presented with search results that all have an "Add" button next to them. Hit the "Add" button by the ones you want, and then hit the "Finished" button at the top right, and you're done. You just added that RSS news feed to your My Yahoo page. Scroll down at the My Yahoo main page, and you'll see those news headlines you added at the bottom of your list. To rearrange the order of your news feeds, just hit the small "edit" button at the top right of each news section. To remove a news feed, just hit the X like you would to close any window.

Customizing your own news feeds

Now suppose you don't need to "find" a news feed on a subject, because you already know you want to add a particular one. Well that's easy too. Al you have to do is identify what the "RSS feed URL" is for the information you want to add. Most blogs or news organizations show you these now on their websites.

Look for a small orange box on the website that says XML or the words "RSS Feed" or "News feed" and click on it. In the case of large organizations, like CNN for example, you'll be taken to a page with a nice set of instructions, and a whole list of RSS news feed URL's that you can manually copy and paste into your news reader.

Sometimes though, you'll be taken to a page that looks like gibberish code. Don't let that scare you like it did me the first time I saw it! When that happens, you are actually looking right at the feed itself, and all you have to do is copy and paste what's in the address bar of your web browser, right into your news reader. That's called "knowing the specific URL of the feed" on MSN, and ""Add RSS by URL" in Yahoo.

In My Yahoo, to manually add a news feed, go to the "add content" area, and choose the link to the right of the Find button that says "Add RSS by URL". Once you paste your URL in that window and hit "add" the news headlines should show up there. If they don't, then you may have copied the URL wrong, or added a space at the end. Then just hit the "Add to My Yahoo" button and you're done! In MSN, you'll paste the URL of the news feed right into the search box, then check the box when it shows the result.

Delivering exactly what you want and only when you want is how the internet is supposed to work. Things are only getting better.

In researching this article, I notice that My Yahoo seems to be having problems adding certain manual URLs. Oh well. Nothing's perfect.

Scott Hendison is an internet consultant based in Portland Oregon, but working with companies in five countries. He specializes in search engine placement and E-commerce POS solutions. For over 100 other articles he's written please visit his website at http://www.searchcommander.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Scott_Hendison

FOR DUMMIES® is a registered trademark of Wiley Publishing, Inc.

Displaying RSS Feeds on Your Web Page

2009-03-10T20:44:00.000-07:00

By Sanjay Johari

RSS feeds have made it very convenient to syndicate information from various sources. Most of websites and services that publish fresh content, such as ezines, press release, new agencies, blogs make their content available thru RSS feeds. As new content is published the RSS feed gets updated automatically.

Adding RSS feeds to web pages has many advantages. Let us say you have added RSS feeds from a popular ezine on one of your web pages.

• The content of the web page is automatically updated as the ezine makes new content available via RSS feeds. Every time search engine spiders crawl your web page they are likely to find the web page updated.

• The visitors to your web site will also find new content on every visit and they might be tempted to visit your web page more often.

• You do not have to bother about writing fresh content as RSS feeds are updated automatically.

Earlier I had written an article on adding RSS feeds to a web page using java script. While this method makes fresh content available to the readers, the content of the feed cannot be “read” by search engine spiders. Therefore the web page does not get the benefit of changing content from the search engines.

On the other hand php based installation makes it possible for spiders to notice the changing content of the web page. This article is a follow-up of my previous article which outlines simple steps to put RSS feeds on a web page.

For the purpose of this article I have chosen the free version of software available from CaRP. The software can be downloaded from this site:

http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/carp/

The instruction manual which comes with the package gives detailed instructions for installing and running the software. Additional information is available from the site. While there are several options available for using the software, I am showing here the simplest steps to load and run the software:

1. Download the software on your computer. It comes in a zip file. After unzipping save the available folders and files on your computer. These files and folders will be available – carp (folder), img (folder), carpsetup.php, README.html .

2. Upload all the files and folders to the root directory of your website. This can be done by using FTP. If uploading is done file by file, ensure that the names of the files and folders, and location of files in their folders do not change.

3. Create a new mySQL database.

4. Run the setup file carpsetup.php from you web browser.

5. A new page will be displayed. On this page select mySQL database option which is easier of the two options given there.

6. Another new page will open in which you have to fill the details of mySQL database. Click on “Create Database Tables”.

7. The page which opens now will have code which has to be put on the web page where you want to show RSS feed. The code will be displayed in a gray box.

8. Within the code there is “setup code”. This setup code should be pasted into a file called carpconf.php . The file will be available in carp directory. On the html script of this file locate the line “//Add configuration code that applies to all themes here” . Just below this line paste the setup code.

9. Choose a web page where RSS feed has to be displayed. The file name of the page should have .php extension. If your page has .html or .htm extension, you can try replacing only the extension with .php . Normally this should not change the way the page appears in a web browser. If you encounter any problem you could make a new web page with .php extension.

10. At appropriate location of the web page, where you want RSS feed to be displayed, paste the code in the html script of the page. From there you can remove the setup code. It is not required to be added to all pages once it has been added to carpconf.php page in step 8 above.

11. If you now open your web page in the web browser it will start showing the RSS feed which comes along with the package. For changing this to RSS feed of your choice you will need to make changes in the code you have entered in step 10. In the code there is a URL after CarpCasheShow. Change this URL with the URL of RSS feed you wish to display.

Now the web page will display the RSS feed of your choice. You can choose to display more feeds on the same page or have separate pages for RSS feeds for different sources.

You can see this page on my website on which RSS feed has been added using exactly the steps shown here.

http://www.sanjay-j.com/RSSFILE/homebusinesspop.php

I have tried to make the process easy to follow. You can always refer to more detailed instructions which come with the package. Take advantage of the free content available and use them to boost your page positioning and traffic to your website.

Sanjay Johari contributes articles regularly to ezines. Grow your list, make new friends and ensure your success in life: http://www.sanjay-j.com/empowerism.html

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sanjay_Johari

Reading RSS Feeds With An RSS Aggregator

2009-03-02T19:33:00.000-08:00

By Jeremiah Patton

RSS or Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary is the latest information management tool that is gradually earning popularity among web users and website owners. With RSS technology, it is possible to get the latest postings from your favorite websites. But clicking on the RSS or XML button in a homepage is not enough to give you the service you need. An RSS feed or code displayed in the pop-up screen if not on the main page is composed of symbols and words that would only make sense to advanced RSS users and computer programmers and software enthusiasts. Another software tool called an RSS aggregator or reader is needed.

An aggregator works by scanning the worldwide web with latest postings based on the RSS code (containing the website’s URL) provided or added by the user. When it finds a new posting, news, or update, it will publish the RSS feed on your home page containing the title of the posting, which also serves as a clickable link to the website source. This RSS feed may or may not contain the whole article, a summary, and photos, depending on what RSS aggregator you are using.

Aggregators come in two types: the downloadable program or desktop-type and the online or web-based type. The desktop aggregator usually charges a certain amount for its services; this would include regular updating in the form of upgrades or patches to the original version. This type of RSS reader allows more customization of RSS feeds as well as page format or design over its on-line counterparts. But of course, price can be a drawback.

On-line or web-based aggregators are free of charge. All you need to do is register an account with them then you can start enjoying their services. Depending on the “brand” of the aggregator, customization is more limited. Some even do not allow you to customize at all.

Product and service advertisers are realizing the potential of RSS aggregators in internet marketing. In fact, several submit RSS codes to several popular web-based aggregators to reach the growing technophile and internet-based market. My Yahoo has been instrumental in popularizing RSS technology to both users and website owners and advertisers.

At present, there are many aggregators to choose from and newer versions of the same aggregator are constantly developed by its programmers.

Below are some of these desktop and online aggregators:

Desktop Aggregators

1. AmphetaDesk

Advantages:

-free

-supports Linux, Mac, and Windows

-easy addition of RSS feeds

Disadvantages:

-not maximized use of screen display

-few options for customizing

2. FeedDemon

Advantages:

-user friendly

-free trial version

-contains prepared popular feeds

-allows filtering of RSS feeds

-configurable “watch list” to manage junk RSS feeds

-search channel feature that incorporates other RSS services e.g. Feedster

-allows feed storage for future use

-tabbed browsers for channel navigation

-built-in podcast receiver

Disadvantages:

-supports only Internet Explorer (embedded)

-paid software (`$29.95)

Online Aggregators

1. Bloglines

Advantages:

-all major browsers supported (e.g. Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer, Firefox)

-user-friendly especially for beginners

-free, web-based aggregator

-easy registration

-no advertisements

-contains its own directory of RSS feeds of thousands of websites

-personal email account for subscribing to newsletter emails (optional)

-allows privacy adjustments for personal blogs

-allows saved searches

-mobile version available

-10 languages supported

-Additional add-on tools for automated blogrolls and subscription buttons

2. NewsGator

Advantages:

-free (consumer-standard version)

-provides personalized news channel

-allows translation of RSS articles into email format

-synchronization of feeds in several devices possible

-browse and search feed capabilities save time on surfing

-allows keyword filtering

-blog headlines

-button-click automatic subscription to news feeds

Disadvantage:

-Outlook-based thus limited to Windows

3. My Yahoo

Advantages:

-Free web-based aggregator

-user-friendly

-customizable home page design

-button-click subscription to RSS feeds

-built-in directory and search tool for feeds

-wide variety of feeds e.g. news (science, technology, local), weather

-connects to all Yahoo features and services

Disadvantage

-banner advertisements

There are also lightweight RSS aggregator extensions which are actually plug-ins to existing internet browsers. An example of which is Sage aggregator.

Advantages:

-free of charge

-beginner-friendly

-reeds both RSS and Atom feeds

-allows feed discovery

-can be assimilated to Firefox bookmark (storage and live)

-allows OPML feed lists imports and exports

-customizable style sheets

-supports a wide range of locales e.g. Catalan, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Korean, Polish, Slovenian, etc.

-easy installation

Disadvantages:

-good for about 12 RSS feeds

-limited use to Mozilla-Firefox and Mozilla-Firefox supported browsers

RSS developers promise better features in future versions of their aggregators. Microsoft is planning to include a built-in aggregator in their next Windows version. These developments are definitely something to look forward to by all internet aficionados.

Jeremiah Patton is a current user of rss. Jeremiah Patton uses rss for his legitimate work from home business opportunities website at http://www.2ndincome4u.com to keep visitors updated on current events and news.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jeremiah_Patton

rss feeds - reading the news, or anything!

2009-03-02T19:22:00.000-08:00

What is RSS?

RSS is a software standard for publishing frequently updated web-based content, like news, blogs, timetables, sports scores. Using RSS feeds is an easy way to keep up to date (automatically, if you wish) with websites that interest you...(click on the link above to view the rest.)

Sitemap Submission Made Simple

2009-02-13T18:46:00.000-08:00

Thursday, December 18, 2008 at 7:58 AM

Submitting a Sitemap to Google just became even easier. No longer do you have to specify the Sitemap file type—we'll determine the type of data you're submitting automatically. Let's take a quick look at the kinds of Sitemap files we support as well as the ways they can be submitted to us.

Sitemap file formats supported by Google
Part of what makes the web so interesting is that there are so many different kinds of content out there. Do you use videos on your website? If so, send us a Video Sitemap file so that we can send you visitors to those videos! Do you host source-code samples? Submit a Code Search Sitemap! Here are the various kinds of Sitemap files that Google supports at the moment:

XML Sitemap files for web pages - Use these files to submit all of your web pages (this is the preferred format for web pages). While not all search engines may support the Sitemap types listed below, the XML Sitemap for web pages is supported by all search engines of sitemaps.org.

RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0 feeds for web pages - Many blogs create these automatically.

Text files with web page URLs - If you can't automatically create one of the above formats, you can create a text file with your URLs in it.

XML Sitemap files for Video Search - Videos on your website can be indexed and made available for Google Video Search.

Media-RSS feeds for Video Search - mRSS feeds are used by various other systems, we can use these for Google Video Search as well.

XML Sitemap files for Google Code Search - If you make programming samples or code available to your users, you can submit these for Google Code Search.

XML Sitemap files for mobile web pages - Using this kind of format allows us to recognize content that has been optimized for mobile devices (please note that there was recently a small change in the format).

XML Sitemap files for geo-data - If you have geographic data on your website in the form of KML or GeoRSS files, please let us know about these files.

XML Sitemap files for News - News websites can submit their news content in this special Sitemap format (please note that you must first register with Google News before these files are processed).

If you have multiple Sitemap files that you wish to submit to Google, you can include up to 1,000 of these in an XML Sitemap Index file. If you have more than 1,000 Sitemap files, you can just submit multiple Sitemap Index files - we'd love to take them all!

Submitting your Sitemap files to Google
Once you have your Sitemap files ready and available on your server, all that's left is making sure that the search engines can find them. Google supports three simple ways to submit Sitemap files:

Using Google Webmaster Tools
Submitting your Sitemap files through Google Webmaster Tools is the preferred way of letting us know about them. The main advantage of doing it this way is that you'll always have direct feedback about how your Sitemap files were downloaded (were we able to reach your server?), how they were recognized (were they in the right format?) and what happened to the web pages listed in them (how many were indexed?). To submit your Sitemap files, make sure that your website is verified in Webmaster Tools, then go to "Sitemaps" in Webmaster Tools and enter the file name of your Sitemap(s).

Sometimes it makes sense to keep your Sitemap file on a different server / domain name. To submit Sitemap files like that, you must verify ownership of both sites in Webmaster Tools and submit the Sitemap on the appropriate site. For instance, if your Sitemap file for http://www.example.com is kept on http://sitemap-files.example.com/ then you need to verify ownership of both sites and then submit the Sitemap file under http://sitemap-files.example.com (even though the URLs listed in it are for http://www.example.com). For more information, please see our Help Center topic on submitting Sitemap files for multiple sites.

Listing Sitemap files in the robots.txt file
Another way of submitting a Sitemap file is to specify the URL in your robots.txt file. If you use this method of submitting a Sitemap file, it will be found by all search engines that support the Sitemaps protocol (although not all of them support the extensions listed above). Since you can specify the full URL of your Sitemap file in the robots.txt file, this method also allows you to store your Sitemap file on a different domain. Keep in mind that while Sitemap files submitted this way are processed on our side, they will not be automatically listed in your Webmaster Tools account. In order to receive feedback on your files, we recommend adding them manually to your account as well.

Using an HTTP "ping"
If your Sitemap files are generated automatically, a convenient way to submit (and re-submit) them is to access the "ping" URL for Google Sitemaps. This URL includes the URL of your Sitemap file. For more information on the "ping" URL for your website, please see the Help Center article on Updating a Sitemap. Feel free to "ping" this URL whenever you update your Sitemap file - we'll know to pick it up and process it again. If you also have your Sitemap file registered in Webmaster Tools, we'll update the status there as well. This method is also valid if your Sitemap file is kept on a different server, but you must still verify both sites in Webmaster Tools as previously mentioned.

Search engines that are a members of sitemaps.org support a similar way of submitting general web Sitemap files.

We hope these simplifications make it even easier for you to send us your Sitemap files!

Posted by John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst, Google Zürich

Using ASP to Code an RSS Feed

2009-02-10T13:12:00.000-08:00

Guest Author - Lisa Shea

RSS feeds let you easily syndicate your content to an end user or another website. ASP can help you easily create your own RSS feed for your website. I know what I'm about to describe will sound complicated at first :). The best way to learn this system is simply to give it a try, and things will make sense when you see them in action.

First off, what IS an RSS feed? Think of it as a news alert. If you have an RSS reader, it actively polls a website to see if anything new is added. It typically runs as a taskbar icon on your desktop. Let's say you are polling this ASP site. Every time I add a new article, the RSS feed will update for my site. Your reader will see that new article and put a little alert on your desktop. You click on your reader, see a brief description of my article, and can read it if you want.

To get a reader, go to RSSReader.com. It's free and easy. Now you can test how RSS works.

So now that you have a reader, you need to point the reader at an RSS feed, so it gets the updates of what is going on at the site. In essence, you point the reader at a XXXXXXX.RSS file. The format of the RSS feed is XML. XML is a tag language, just like HTML. Instead of having commands like HTML and BODY, in the RSS file you end up with tags such as COPYRIGHT and PUBDATE. The tags in the RSS file help the RSS reader describe each "news flash" it is displaying.

Go into your RSS reader and create a new feed, using this RSS feed source:

http://www.bellaonline.com/site.rss?id=272

That is the feed for this ASP site. See how your RSS reader now shows the latest 3 articles from this site? Whenever I add a new article to this ASP site, the reader will alert you and let you see what it's about. This is a GREAT way to stay in touch with your website visitors and to let them know what is fresh and new.

So now that you understand what RSS is all about, and how it works, it's time to look into how to code a RSS file for your own website, to alert your visitors to changes you've made.

Blogs,RSS News feeders, and ATOM [ Part One ]

2009-02-08T18:25:00.000-08:00

Introduction
In this article you will be shown RSS standard, history and versions, also you will get familiar with the new next generation standard which is ATOM. Also you will get a brief history of Blogs, News Readers and its evolution, and the strong relationship between blogs and RSS. Most, if not all, of the news sites and agencies support a news feed link to the latest news or breaking news. Actually I consider the website that's not showing the news feed magic icon a poor one, you will find in CodeProject a feed for the latest articles and site news, so everybody should be familiar with the concept of news feeds, both developers and novice users!

Background
Each and every morning, I visit BBC website and check the latest added news, then I move to MSDN just published articles, then I jump to CodeProject and check the latest articles, so ain't you find this process so tedious? Actually I suffer from this sometimes, I get blue, I guess you do the same, so what if you have some way to get all the latest content of one website or thousands of websites using some utility, then you can go offline but you have all the cream of one site or more! I think it would be a great utility. This tool is as important to web site content as Outlook Express to mail server, you grab all your mails and then go offline, you can check them out anytime.

What is to be shown ?
This article is divided into two parts; the first one shows you the history and evolution of RSS standard and the next standard that emerged from RSS which is ATOM, and what a news reader is. The first part will be clear for everybody, even for non-developers. Second part shows you how to make your own news feed and how to consume the others' feeds and show the cream or the latest contents of one site into your own website.

Weblogs and bloggers
Blog is a shortcut for WebBlog. It’s the process of "logging" into a website. Blog is a medium in which an author writes a journal-style web site and the readers can respond to the material or topics provided. Bloggers are the individuals who are authoring or responding to topics provided in a blog. Blogs serve a wide spectrum of interests ranging from politics to chemical issues!. You can check out some blogs at MSDN.

Get your blog now free
Actually, nobody now has no blog, you can now have your blog and register and record your thoughts, upload your weekend pictures, write your technical notes, write quotes you like, just get your blog and have a corner to express your own thoughts. Today, you have many free blog engines. You can check out Blogger, Blogging. You can view my blog here.

.NET Most Known Blogging Engines
dasBlog : das blog stores data inside XML files.
.Text : stores data using SQL Server. It's open source project so that you can download it and view code. You can install and configure it. You can view the workspace of .Text on gotdotnet website. .Text is the most powerful blogging engine as it is the driver of ASP.NET blogs.

What is RSS ?
Imagine that you post an entry to a blog of some type and you wait for a response to the entry you have been posted, you may get response after 1 min, or 1 hour, if even worse after 1 or 3 days; so you are asked to visit the blog again and more again to check if you’ve got some answer to your question!! So how Poor and Boring!!? What do you think of some type of technology to provide you with all the content of some weblog or any other website in a standard, agreed on, well-known format. It’s RSS, it’s the Buzzword! You can get the cream of one site or blog using a program which falls under the umbrella of News Aggregator applications. Websites including weblogs provide a feed to its content (or top useful content) by providing a dynamically generated RSS document available at a URL, RSS document is nothing but an XML file ( WoW !!, XML again). It seems that each new technology or standard is based heavily on XML.

RSS document can contain any of the following contents and more:

Weather Conditions
Stock Market
Latest Post in Forums
Publishers’ Books
Online Bidding
Articles List
Latest News
Suppliers’ Products
Blogs Entries
Technology Related Issues
RSS Aggregators and News Readers

RSS Aggregator is the same as News Reader, so what is the News Reader? It's an application that reads RSS documents, and lists items of the document in a readable polished view. You can subscribe in an RSS feed by simply entering the URL of the output RSS document into your RSS Aggregator and you’re done now .. ! You have the most valuable contents of that site into your fingertips, you can filter content, read brief about some launched software programs or products, if you like the brief, you can go directly to the full content. Moreover You can search old items. There are many RSS Aggregators in the market as NewzCrawler, SharpReader, SlashDot. SharpReader is free but NewzCrawler is much more stronger and usable than SharpReader, but it is not for free. Furthermore, you can get an online News Aggregator, it’s nice when you need to check out your feeds from anywhere, but the downside is that you need to login to check your feeds, you don't have the offline reading feature of desktop news reader. You can check out NewsGator. You can view a list of almost all the available news aggregators here, all these aggregators support RSS 2.0 ( more about versions later ).

RSS Readers Common Features
Most RSS Aggregators Applications make you feel that you are just reading your e-mail, just as you use MS Outlook, or any other Mail Program, most of them has a tree on the left listing all the feeds (Channels) and to the right the items of the channel.

RSS Aggregator has an embedded browser, so you follow the full story right from the same application; no need to copy and paste the URL and open it in an external window, it uses IE infrastructure behind the scenes.

Now I can read all the technical articles I need right from my desktop, organized and just to the point, no trivial issues, all you need to do is to get the URL of the RSS document and just add new channel to my RSS aggregator application and I am done.

Most Sites provide or syndicate content using RSS, for example, News agencies such as Wired, Cnet, Yahoo, NPR News, Reuters, CNN, BBC, BBCArabic. You can read all these content right from your desktop, you just need to pick them all at once, then disconnect and you have all that great content of those giant sites. How Great and How Amazing ?! It saves a great deal of time and tedious revisiting of your most visited sites.

You need to check out syndic8 or blogdigger to get more RSS Links.

RSS Search Engines
Feedster is the most known Search Engine to search RSS documents. Feedster Spiders all RSS documents and blogs and returns you with a full list including all the search results returned, you will be amazed when you find its interface is so similar to Google! You can also view Blogdigger, it's one of the best weblogs search engine.

What RSS stands for ?!! , It’s not an Easy Question !!
Netscape created the original format of RSS 0.90. It was the first version and it stands for “RDF Site Summary” or “Rich Site Summary”, NetScape provided RSS 0.90 for use in their portal activities, but others saw more effective uses. Userland Software adopted the idea and was the first company to use RSS commercially in Weblog products.

RSS 0.90 was based on RDF “Resource Description Framework” provided by W3C, RDF is pretty complex, so a new version was launched by Userland and they called it RSS 0.91. It was RDF-Free. Userland launched many new versions including 0.92, 0.93, and 0.94, and to prove their trend of simplicity, they made RSS stands for “ Really Simple Syndication “

A group of developers appeared and re-adopted RDF version (RSS 0.90), because they saw that it’s more flexible than RSS Userland versions, After some hard work they published RSS 1.0 which stands for “RDF Site Summary”, and back to versions and shortcuts MESS !!

Userland saw that RSS 1.0 was about to displace RSS 0.94 so they published a new version RSS 2.0 which stands for “Really Simple Syndication” as well. That is where we stand today !

So we have two threads; one that’s RDF based and the other of Userland which is not based on RDF. So you have two different technologies sharing the same name with different version numbers. I was first confused because I believed that RSS 2.0 is the sequel of RSS 1.0. What a mess !!

ATOM , a new syndication age
A new group of developers didn’t like that mess so they are working in a project called Atom. It’s a new syndication technology . Atom solves almost all the RSS problems including versions mess, extensible by anybody ( just like XML is ), Atom technology is similar to both RSS 1.0 and RSS 2.0, it promises to provide a standard Archiving format, and some APIs which is called ( Atom API ). Some websites are now emitting their syndications in Atom format. Most RSS Aggregators support all RSS versions, there are a few ones supporting Atom.

BlogRoll , OPML Language
What do you think of the importance of Playlist to Multimedia files (items), ain’t it great? BlogRoll is simply a collection of blog feeds gathered together, most bloggers provide blogrolls for their visitors. This provides a great deal of links to the visitor who’s interested in a specific topic. I see it as a playlist. Outline Processor Markup Language is an XML ( again ) based language to write blogRolls. Most of Aggregators today can read BlogRolls and extracts the contained feeds easily. How great!

Conclusion
As you have seen RSS and Blogs are state of art, every website should provide a link to RSS or ATOM feed. You should get a news reader, install it, add channels to your news reader, be updated. In part two of this article I will show you have to consume the others' feeds and show items in your website, and you will be able to create your own site feed, we will also analyze the schema of RSS versions and Atom.

License
This article has no explicit license attached to it but may contain usage terms in the article text or the download files themselves.

About the Author: Kareem Shaker

Kareem Shaker is a .NET Architect , He's been working with VC++ and VB since version 4.0 ; Kareem has been working on design and development of many business applications , And he's now spending most of his time working with .NET Framework 1.x and 2.0 using both VB.NET and C# , Kareem has been giving some technical sessions targeted to .NET technologies, One of the technolgoies that I have passion to is EAI, I spend most of my times working on BizTalk Server 2006, I like to share knowledge and to interact with geeks around, Blogging is one of my hobbies, my blog is http://CairoCafe.Blogspot.com

Occupation: Architect
Location: United Arab Emirates

Google News gets RSS and Atom feeds

2009-02-06T16:36:00.000-08:00

By Graeme Wearden
Special to CNET News.com

Google has introduced RSS and Atom feeds for its popular Google News aggregation service.

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, and Atom are XML-based document formats that alert Internet users to the latest articles or postings on their favorite Web sites via a single feed reader, which can be integrated into an e-mail application or Web browser.

Google News users can now subscribe to get an RSS or Atom feed from any of seven key subject areas designated by Google. They can also create customized RSS news feeds or see the results of any Google News alerts they have set up.

Google News, which aggregates links to the latest news stories on thousands of Web sites, is available in 22 versions for different audiences around the world. The RSS and Atom feeds are being initially offered on just six versions--U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, U.K. and India.

"We've launched this service because we've had a lot of requests from Google users to support RSS and Atom," a Google UK spokeswoman explained.

In April 2004, U.K. programmer Julian Bond said he received a cease-and-desist notice from Google after creating his own feed that scraped headlines off Google News. These headlines were then displayed on another Web site, called Ecademy.

Google UK declined to comment on this matter. (Google representatives in the U.S. have instituted a policy of not talking with CNET News.com reporters until July 2006 in response to privacy issues raised by a previous story.)

But Bond said Tuesday that the company took action because the results of his RSS feed from Google were being fed into online RSS aggregators and then republished on the Web.

"I was really irritated about Google not offering RSS feeds from (Google) News search. So I wrote a scraper that did the search and generated an RSS feed from it," explained Bond, who added that he welcomed the news that Google was now offering RSS and Atom feeds.

"It will mean that I can retire my scraper and stop having to maintain it every time Google changes their page layout," Bond said.

Graeme Wearden of ZDNet UK reported from London.

ABC News on Rss

2009-01-30T17:02:00.000-08:00

What Is RSS?

Depending on who you ask, RSS stands for either "Rich Site Summary" or "Really Simple Syndication." But no matter what it's called, RSS is a new way to publish information online.

At the heart of the technology is special Web coding, called XML, that has been widely developed by the global online community over the past few years.

The XML code for RSS describes a new type of Web information called a "news feed." Essentially, the feeds can contain a summary and links of the new content on a Web site or anything else a creator desires to share. A company may publish an RSS feed that contains news of its latest products, for example.

Anyone — an online surfer or another Web site — can pick up the RSS codes and with the appropriate Web software display the information automatically.

The concept is similar to how a newswire service operates: Information published by one news organization can be "syndicated" — picked up and displayed — by any other news organization.

What Does RSS Mean for Site Publishers?

Through syndication, online content creators have a much easier way to get their information published and seen. For instance, a Web surfer who sees an RSS feed — say a ticker of top news stories — on one site might click on the content, which in turn drives more traffic back to the original Web site.

RSS can also be a way for Web sites to retain "loyalty" among visitors. By supplying the RSS code on the Web site, visitors can "subscribe" to the feed and automatically receive updates on their personal computers of new content on the site.

Such an RSS feed will free content creators from creating and sending e-mail reminders — many of which may be stopped by anti-spam filters.

Why Would Ordinary Web Users Like RSS?

For Web surfers, the advantages of RSS are quite simple: They save time and bandwidth.

Instead of remembering to visit a favorite Web site, the news comes directly into your computer daily or at whatever interval you want.

What's more, most RSS feeds contain just links, headlines, or brief synopsis of new information only. That means the small amount of Web data can be sent to any XML-compatible device — a cell phone, pager, or handheld computer — without a lengthy download process.

More importantly, RSS gives you control over receiving information you want without revealing information about yourself. Unlike subscribing to an e-mail newsletter, you never have to give out your e-mail address with an RSS feed. That avoids the possibility of receiving spam or unwanted junk e-mail from the Web site.

Which Online Sites Use RSS?

Almost all technology-oriented Web sites offer RSS feeds to satisfy the crowds of computer savvy users online.

You'll also find some Weblogs — or online diaries — also offer RSS feeds.

You can view ABCNews.com's RSS headlines by clicking the appropriate links at the top of this page.

What Do I Need to Receive RSS Feeds?

First, you need a feed reader. Performing a search for "RSS Feed Readers" in any major online search engine such as Google or Yahoo! will produce a bundle of software options — many of which are free or at little cost.

Once you've obtained a feed reader, subscribing to an RSS feed is as simple as looking for the appropriate feed link. Most Web sites that publish an RSS feed will display a tiny orange box or button labeled "RSS" or "XML."

Click the feed link you are interested in and your Web browser typically goes to a page of cryptic XML code. No worries, just copy the Web "address" or URL of that page and plug it into your feed reader. The software will then automatically retrieve and display that site's latest information.

Yahoo! Pipes a Dream Come True for RSS Marketers ... and a Huge Threat

2009-01-18T15:33:00.000-08:00

Posted by Rok Hrastnik in RSS Latest News

A Marketer's Dream Come True

Robin Good must be licking his fingers right now. In an interview we did back in February 2005 we discussed RSS NewsMastering, the act of ...

taking multiple RSS feeds, search engine results and other content sources,
mixing and aggregating them together,
filtering the results with the keywords pertaining to your interests,
and creating a highly relevant and automatically updated content resource on a specific topic, pulling content from dozens, hundreds or thousands of content sources around the globe.
This was a dream come true for marketers, enabling them to ...

enrich the visitor experience on their websites to increase visitor loyalty and visit frequency, by automatically providing visitors access to the latest and most relevant focused content in your industry, without having to actually write the content yourself;
make your website more relevant to the search engines for your top keywords;
become a prime access point for key influencers looking for latest and most relevant news in your industry;
conduct business intelligence easier and quicker than before, constantly knowing what the market is saying about you, about your competitors, what your competitors are doing and so on.
The only problem back then was that applications offering NewsMastering capabilities were few and far between. Things started improving with FeedDigest, mySyndicaat, Feed Rinse, Ning and others, but with farily limited functionalities.

Yahoo! Pipes Offering NewsMastering on Steroids

But today Yahoo! changed everything with its launch of Yahoo! Pipes.

The general idea behind Yahoo! Pipes is to allow its users to "easily" connect various internet data sources, mix them together in various ways, add additional functionality to them and create a new single output, pertaining directly to your settings.

In simpler words ...

Select various online content sources, RSS feeds or others
Define your own rules on how you want to use these different content sources
Create an output that matches your needs
While this may sound alot like the standard RSS aggregation & filtering tools we mentioned above, it actually goes much further than anything on the market in enabling you to manipulate outside sources and come up with a new content output, all of this in a visual programming environment.

The "old services" simply allowed you to combine various RSS feeds, set some basic rules on how you want to get content from them, such as limiting the output to only the content items that match your keywords and removing duplicates, and get a new single RSS feed from them. You could then subscribe to this RSS feed in your RSS Reader (for business intelligence purposes) or use it to display its contents on your website.

But Yahoo! Pipes goes much further.

[BTW - in the Yahoo! Pipes glossary, a pipe is an output you create from mixing and manipulating various content sources]

Aggregate and Filter any XML Feed

Aggregate any kind of XML feed, not just RSS, which means that if your application provides an XML data output, you can now aggregate that data feed with other different feeds you might be interested in, and create a single RSS feed that you can subscribe to in your RSS Reader. Just as an example, imagine having an RSS feed that brings you various data from your organization in a single output, such as the latest sales data from your webstore, latest account of company expenses, notifications of new employees, important team communications, your website visitor counts and so on. It even lets you combine other pipes into a new single pipe.

Content Manipulation

Apply various filters, such as a keyword content filter to give you only the content you're interested in, sort, count, truncate, join or even create your own filters. It even lets you add your own input fields. For example, you could create a pipe that aggregates all the RSS feeds from top online retailers, and include an input field that allows you to enter the name of the product you want the latest deals on, and then creates an on-the-fly output with the latest deals for this product. Essentially, it allows you to add simple or advanced search functionalities to filter out only the content you're really interested in ... from hundreds or even thousands of content sources.

Social Applications

Browse through pipes created by other users to either use them as an end-user, or use their pipes to create your own new pipes. It of course also allows you to make your own pipes public and even provide them as a service to end-users.
There are really almost countless opportunities of what you can do with Yahoo! Pipes, and various new applications will surface when the service gets some milage.

The best part is, you can either create your own application that you use when the need arises from the Web, or an RSS feed that you subscribe to in your RSS Reader, to constantly deliver to you the content that you want. Or you can use the RSS feed to display that content on your website.

All of this is done through a visual interface, which might be daunting for the average user, but shouldn't present a problem to marketers that either have the time to learn the ropes or pay a little something to a person that already has.

How Marketers Will Profit from Yahoo! Pipes

If you're thinking of how you can profit from Yahoo! Pipes as a marketer, there really are countless opportunities.

Provide highly relevant streams of content on your website to enrich the visitor experience.
Become a preferred access point to relevant and latest content in your industry.
Build applications that allow your visitors to easily access the content they're interested in.
Take your business intelligence activities to the next level.
And much much more ...

With all the capabilities available through Yahoo! Pipes, countless new opportunities will certainly arise quickly.

The best part is, you can now more easily take advantage of them.

Threats for Marketers

But while Yahoo! Pipes makes the NewsMastering process increadibly easy, it also comes with as many threats for marketers.

Mass Syndication of Your Content

RSS by itself already made syndication of your RSS content easy.
While you may (and should) be happy about easily spreading your content to help you generate more credibility, brand recognition and traffic from other sources, Yahoo! Pipes will bring these syndication levels to a whole new level. It will make it easy for anyone to access just individual content items from your RSS feeds through countless applications, putting your content entirely out of your content context and brand context.

Your website and your own stream of content as a whole will start mattering less and less, since individual pieces of your content will start being increasingly syndicated more than your content as a whole.

There is now immediately more potential for just a single piece of your content to get more readership and reach than all of your content combined together. In many cases this may be good, but it also means that this decreases the number of total touch-points you will have with your audiences.

It might mean more exposure for a single piece of content, but much less exposure to the entire universe of your content, making audience loyalty and conversion even more difficult to achieve.

Mass Manipulation of Your Content

But it's not just about syndication. Yahoo! Pipes actually allows users to further manipulate your content items, for example removing your links, calls to action, advertising or mixing your content with other content sources. While you may want to syndicate your content as widely as possible, you will now need to invest special care to also protect your content more.

Easy Access

And finally, Yahoo! Pipes will provide easy access to NewsMastering and other capabilities to practically everyone. It hasn't been that difficult before, but with the success Yahoo! Pipes is likely to achieve, these capabilities will now be in the hands of many many more people.

On one side this means that if you were counting on NewsMastering to enrich your visitor experience, the power of this approach will be greatly reduced since so many other companies and even end-users will be able to provide the same or do the same for themselves. It means losing your unique position. It also means that influencers that would otherwise perhaps come to your website for their daily dose of latest content will now be able to create the same functionalities by themselves.

But it also creates an even easier way for abusers to abuse your content. It's now even easier to steal your content and display it on a different website for various purposes.

Am I overexaturating?

Certainly, the possibilities are here, but it remains to be seen how much penetration this service will achieve and who is going to use it.

Additional News, Comments and Resources

Yahoo! Pipes really is the most talked about online subject right now.

Here are some additional selections to get more information and different views:

TechMeme - Access all the latest conversations and blog posts about Yahoo! Pipes
O'Reilly Radar - An extended discussion on how Yahoo! Pipes is the most revolutionary internet development as of late
ZDNet Photo Galleries - Yahoo! Pipes screenshots
flashpoint - Good examples of possible Yahoo! Pipes applications
Anil Dash - An excellent look at Yahoo! Pipes
Niall Kennedy - Yahoo! Pipes threats for publishers, and more

RSS Top 10

2009-01-11T14:13:00.000-08:00

Top Ten RSS Resources

RSS Specifications
rss blog, general information and rss articles

FeedForAll
tutorials, free rss2html script and free button generator

RSS Compedium
list of resources

FeedBurner
free hosting services

Harvard Law
specifications and RSS version history

Marketing Studies
educational blog and RSS articles

Lockergnome RSS Resource
long established blog

MNot RSS Tutorial
features and benefits tutorial

Userland
articles and history

Make RSS Feeds
instructional site

RSS Tools
collection of RSS tools and an instructional site

What Is This RSS, XML, RDF, and Atom Business? And how they impact the newsletter biz

2009-01-09T20:10:00.000-08:00

It's been a long day at work and you're in no mood to cook dinner or go out. Time to count on the reliable pizza delivery guy. The order is called in and he promptly arrives with smokin' hot pizza within 30 minutes as promised. If it were only that easy with a picky family where no one can agree on the same restaurant for dinner. One wants Mexican, another wants Chinese, and another wants a burger and Mexican. Instead of running to three different places, you call a delivery service that goes to all of them and brings it to you. What could be easier in getting a meal without cooking it or fetching it?

RSS, XML, RDF, and Atom are the food delivery guy of the Internet. The content they deliver is mixed and cooked elsewhere on the Internet just like the meal isn't made on your door step and the acronym fellows bring the content to you via software or an online application. Instead of trying to remember all the places where you like to go to get the latest news, it all comes to you once you order your food.

What to Do with the Funky Code

Click on any of those orange or blue RSS, XML, or RDF buttons and you see unreadable text. Some of it is readable, but reading between the is slow and difficult. In this case, you've got the raw ingredients of the content known as a feed. To make it easily readable, download a feed reader that can interpret (aggregate) the ingredients or sign up for an online service that can do the same.

When the software or application is ready to go, click on the orange or blue button (or "Syndicate This Page," or whatever is along these lines) and copy the resulting URL from the address box. Paste it into the application to cook the ingredients where it's delivered to you ready for your enjoyment. Lockergnome offers step-by-step instructions to making this happen.

Syndication Isn't Just for Blogs

Syndication is a not a new concept on the Internet, but it's growing in popularity as more Web sites and newsletters are churning content to turn it into syndicated files, which are fed into an aggregator. Think of it as the content that's ready to travel anywhere it needs to go. Grab the feed and feed it to the aggregator, another way of bookmarking (or creating a favorite) a site because you wish to come back again another time. But how often did you go back to the site through your bookmarks / favorites?

I don't use bookmarks often, but I regularly use the aggregator. Instead of schlepping from site to site in search of information, I have it all in front of me via the aggregator. The feeds are sorted in folders by topic for easy finding. If I'm writing about the latest virus or worm, then I open the security folder with the security-related feeds and scan them. Scanning content through aggregators is easier than on a Web site because it's in one folder with headlines and maybe a short summary. On a Web site, you're only getting the benefit of that site's news and no where else. The folder has news from over ten resources including blogs, news sites, and newsletters.

Any content can be syndicated. It's a matter of having the backend process in place, which is dependent on the application used for managing the content. If a site doesn't have such resources, then there is software for entering content to create a file with the feed for posting on the site.

Most aggregators have exporting capabilities so the feed can be shared with others interested in the same topic. If you're interested in my security feeds, I can export them into, in most cases, an OPML file and you can import it into your aggregator.

So What Does This Have to Do with Newsletters?

Spam filters are preventing readers from getting newsletters or they get lost in the spam pool. Offering a feed for the newsletter is a compromise. Readers can get the content, only instead of it coming to the email box, it comes through the aggregator. It's a way around spam. Like everything else, it has its advantages and disadvantages:

Advantages:

* Filters can't stop the newsletter from reaching its destination.

* The recipient will get it - if the server is down, it'll download next time and email can get lost.

* The feed can be syndicated providing more exposure for your content.

Disadvantages:

* Rely on readers to open aggregators like they open email client, but some aggregators are built-in with an email client like NewsGator and there are online aggregators like Bloglines, which can be your home page.

* Metrics won't be as complete, but it's still there through the links (this is changing as we get more tools).

* Not as pretty as HTML-based newsletters.

If the feed is automatically created, what have you got to lose? You're providing another way for your readers to get your content just like you can get pizza in different ways: go to the restaurant, have it delivered, or make it at home. More applications are adding syndication capabilities, which make the process effortless. Some have said they won't read something unless it has a feed.

As for looks, already I've seen an example of a feed getting styled and that capability will be available for everyone soon enough.

Syndication works better than bookmarks. With bookmarks, you click on a site that might have the security information and arrive there to find it doesn't. So, back to the bookmarks to click on another site. Lather, rinse, repeat. With aggregators, there is no jumping from site to site. Scan the headlines right there until you find what you need.

There was a time when we didn't have the option to have pizza delivered to our doorstep. When we're too tired, we know we can rely on the delivery guy. In term of content, expect to see it show up at your doorstep more often than the pizza guy plus it's cheaper with the cost only coming from the software though there are many free options available. Syndication is here to stay and should be added to a company's communication toolbox rather than as a replacement. Witness it by watching for RSS, XML, RDF, and Atom out there

RSS Main Page

2009-01-07T17:42:00.000-08:00

From GPO Access

What is RSS?

RSS, which is an acronym that stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary, allows users to keep updated on frequently changing content. RSS employs an XML-based structure that includes a title, date, brief description, and a link to the full text of content. RSS can be used to automatically deliver lists, or feeds, of noteworthy content and descriptive information to users who subscribe to a feed. Feeds can be read through a program called a news reader or aggregator, which can be found through the following DMOZ Open Directory Project.

How can I receive RSS feeds from GPO?

To begin receiving RSS feeds from GPO, you must first download and install a news reader or news aggregator that translates RSS code into a format that is easily under stood by users. Most browsers do not render RSS, instead they display the RSS code. Links to numerous news readers are available from the DMOZ Open Directory Project.

How do I subscribe to a feed?

Once you have downloaded and installed your news reader, the next step is to subscribe to a feed. Different news aggregators provide varying methods for subscribing to feeds, but the following instructions typically work for most readers.

A small "XML" button will be used to indicate the presence of a feed. Click on this button, or the accompanying link. Most browsers will display the XML source code. The URL of the feed will be displayed in your browser's address bar. Copy the URL and then copy it again into the "Add New Feed" portion of your news reader. The feed should now show up in your news reader. Your news reader is now configured to automatically display new updates to the feed.

What feeds are available from GPO?

GPO Access: What's New: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/rss/whatsnew.xml.

History of RSS

2009-01-03T18:21:00.000-08:00

RSS was first invented by Netscape. They wanted to use an XML format to distribute news, stories and information. Netscape refined the version of rss and then dropped it. Userland Software to control of the specficiation and continued to develop it releasing a newer version. A non-commercial group picked up RSS at the same time and based on their interpretation of the Netscape's original concept of RSS they too released a new version. UserLand was not happy with the non-commercial version and continued development of their own version of RSS (Really Simple Syndication), eventually UserLand released RSS v2.

Another View of the History of RSS
What is the history of RSS?

The history of RSS can be traced back to 1997, and the creation of Resource Description Framework. Resource Description Framework is also known as RDF. RDF was created by a man named, Ramanathan V. Guha. RDF is similar to RSS.

The mark up language RDF, was used to store metadata. Metadata is basically information about information, for example if there is an article or a news report, the metadata would be the author, the language, the copyright and all of the information related to the article or news report. In 1999 Netscape created a standard named RSS version 0.90. This was the beginning of RSS as we know it today. Dan Libby, an employee of Netscape improved version 0.90 and released RSS version 0.91. Dave Winer, an employee at Userland also created a new version of RSS. He too named it, RSS version 0.91, creating confusion, because the two versions of RSS were named the same but the specifications were slightly different. Unfortunately this was the beginning of a trend.

Netscape's RSS team abandoned RSS development, because it was dubbed too complicated for what they were trying to accomplish. Meanwhile Rael Dornfest at O'Reily released RSS version 1.0. The new specification by O'Reily was based on the RDF standard rather than the previous versions of RSS. RSS 1.0 was incompatible with previous RSS versions. The specification caused significant marketplace confusion because though RSS 1.0 had the same purpose as the 0.90 series, the specifications were very different. In an attempt to minimize further confusion Userland named their next release RSS version 2.0. RSS 2.0 is very similar to the 0.9 series and is generally considered compatible, while RSS Version 1.0 remains very different.

Harvard Law accepted responsibility for the RSS 2.0 specification because Dave Winer of Userland, found that competitors were leary of using the standard he had a hand in creating. In order for the specification to be endorsed by all it was donated to a non-commercial third party, Harvard Law school. Harvard Law is now responsible for the future development of the RSS 2.0 specification. What is XML? XML or eXtensible Markup Language is a mark up language.

RSS History

There are a lot of folk legends about the evolution of RSS.

Here's the scoop, the sequence of events in the life of RSS, as told by the designer of most of the formats.

scriptingNews format, designed by DW at UserLand. 12/27/97.

RSS 0.90, designed by Netscape, for use with my.netscape.com, which also supported scriptingNews format. The only thing about it that was RDF was the header, otherwise it was plain garden-variety XML. 3/15/99.

scriptingNews 2.0b1, designed by DW at UserLand, enhanced to include all the features in RSS 0.90. Privately DW urged Netscape to adopt the features in this format that weren't present in RSS 0.90. 6/15/99.

RSS 0.91, designed by Netscape, spec written by Dan Libby, includes most features from scriptingNews 2.0b1. "We're trying to move towards a more standard format, and to this end we have included several tags from the popular format." The RDF header is gone. 7/10/99.

UserLand adopts RSS 0.91, deprecates scriptingNews formats. 7/28/99.

The RSS team at Netscape evaporates.

UserLand's RSS 0.91 specification. 6/4/00.

RSS 1.0 published as a proposal, worked on in private by a group led by Rael Dornfest at O'Reilly. Based on RDF and uses namespaces. Most elements of previous formats moved into modules. Like 0.90 it has an RDF header, but otherwise is a brand-new format, not related to any previous format. 8/14/00.

RSS 0.92, which is 0.91 with optional elements, designed by DW at UserLand. 12/25/00.

RSS 0.93 discussed but never deployed. 4/20/01.

MetaWeblog API merges RSS 0.92 with XML-RPC to provide a powerful blogging API. 3/14/02.

RSS 2.0, which is 0.92 with optional elements, designed by DW, after leaving UserLand. MetaWeblog API updated for RSS 2.0. While in development, this format was called 0.94. 9/18/02.

RSS 2.0 spec released through Harvard under a Creative Commons license. 7/15/03.

On July 15, 2003, UserLand Software transferred ownership of its RSS 2.0 specification to the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.

serLand is a leading developer of tools that produce and consume RSS, and originator of the RSS 2.0 specification. The specification, which was previously copyrighted, is now licensed under terms that allow it to be customized, excerpted and republished, using the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike license.

The UserLand disclaimer and copyright is archived on the Harvard website; however it now no longer applies to the RSS 2.0 specification. Since UserLand specifically disclaimed ownership of the format that the specification describes, no transfer took place on the format itself.

An independent advisory board has been formed to broaden the public understanding of the uses and benefits of RSS, and to guide developers who create RSS applications. The initial members of the board are Dave Winer, Berkman fellow and author of the RSS 2.0 spec; Jon Udell, lead analyst for InfoWorld and columnist for the O'Reilly Network; and Brent Simmons of Ranchero Software, author of NetNewsWire, a leading RSS-based application.

Other versions of the history of RSS

Web RSS History - History of the RSS Fork for a political history, and RSS Links for the evolution of some of the specific technical features.

RSS History

2009-01-03T18:18:00.000-08:00

RSS 2.0 at Harvard Law
Internet technology hosted by Berkman Center
RSS History

Tuesday, April 6, 2004

There are a lot of folk legends about the evolution of RSS. Here's the scoop, the sequence of events in the life of RSS, as told by the designer of most of the formats.

scriptingNews format, designed by DW at UserLand. 12/27/97.

RSS 0.90, designed by Netscape, for use with my.netscape.com, which also supported scriptingNews format. The only thing about it that was RDF was the header, otherwise it was plain garden-variety XML. 3/15/99.

scriptingNews 2.0b1, designed by DW at UserLand, enhanced to include all the features in RSS 0.90. Privately DW urged Netscape to adopt the features in this format that weren't present in RSS 0.90. 6/15/99.

RSS 0.91, designed by Netscape, spec written by Dan Libby, includes most features from scriptingNews 2.0b1. "We're trying to move towards a more standard format, and to this end we have included several tags from the popular format." The RDF header is gone. 7/10/99.

UserLand adopts RSS 0.91, deprecates scriptingNews formats. 7/28/99.

The RSS team at Netscape evaporates.

UserLand's RSS 0.91 specification. 6/4/00.

RSS 1.0 published as a proposal, worked on in private by a group led by Rael Dornfest at O'Reilly. Based on RDF and uses namespaces. Most elements of previous formats moved into modules. Like 0.90 it has an RDF header, but otherwise is a brand-new format, not related to any previous format. 8/14/00.

RSS 0.92, which is 0.91 with optional elements, designed by DW at UserLand. 12/25/00.

RSS 0.93 discussed but never deployed. 4/20/01.

MetaWeblog API merges RSS 0.92 with XML-RPC to provide a powerful blogging API. 3/14/02.

RSS 2.0, which is 0.92 with optional elements, designed by DW, after leaving UserLand. MetaWeblog API updated for RSS 2.0. While in development, this format was called 0.94. 9/18/02.

RSS 2.0 spec released through Harvard under a Creative Commons license. 7/15/03.

Create an RSS Feed

2008-12-27T14:44:00.000-08:00

RSS feeds are created in XML. Feeds can be created using tags that are enclosed in brackets <> very similar to HTML.

Software to Create Feeds
If you are not as confident and would like software to create the feed we strongly recommend FeedForAll an extremely easy to use feed creation tool that allows webmasters to create, edit and publish rss feeds.

If you want to create an RSS feed using a text editor a step by step walk-through at Make RSS Feeds will help.

Online Feed Creation Tools
If you just wish to create a single feed and do not need to edit or update the feed you can use an online feed creation tool.

GoArticles - Syndicate articles appearing on GoArticles a large article repository.

BlogStreet - online feed creation tool, only works for blogs hosted on BlogStreet

Online RSS Feeds - Online feed creation tool

Blog Harbor - online java script blog generator

Create RSS - resource for creating RSS feeds

We recommend FeedForAll for RSS feed creation

What is RSS?

2008-12-27T14:41:00.000-08:00

RSS is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication and Rich Site Summary. RSS is an XML-based format for content distribution. Webmasters create an RSS file containing headlines and descriptions of specific information. While the majority of RSS feeds currently contain news headlines or breaking information the long term uses of RSS are broad.

RSS is a defined standard based on XML with the specific purpose of delivering updates to web-based content. Using this standard, webmasters provide headlines and fresh content in a succinct manner. Meanwhile, consumers use RSS readers and news aggregators to collect and monitor their favorite feeds in one centralized program or location. Content viewed in the RSS reader or news aggregator is place known as an RSS feed.

RSS is becoming increasing popular. The reason is fairly simple. RSS is a free and easy way to promote a site and its content without the need to advertise or create complicated content sharing partnerships.

Definitions of RSS

RSS (n) RSS is a Web content syndication format. Its name is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication. RSS is a dialect of XML. (source Harvard)

RSS (n) RSS is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites, including major news sites like Wired, news-oriented community sites like Slashdot, and personal weblogs. (source XML.com)

RSS (n) Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a lightweight XML format designed for sharing headlines and other Web content. (source WebReference)

RSS (n) Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is an XML-based format for content distribution (source CNET)

RSS (n) RSS is an XML-based format for syndicated content. (source IBM)

RSS (n) RSS is an acronym for Rich Site Summary, an XML format for distributing news headlines on the Web, also known as syndication. First started by Netscape as part of the My Netscape site, it expanded through Dave Winer and Userland. RSS started off in an RDF format. (source newsmonster)

Worst SEO Mistakes

2008-12-24T16:13:00.000-08:00

Worst SEO Mistakes

By: Ivan Strouchliak

In this article we cover some of the worst SEO mistakes. Some of these will cause the search engines to ignore you; others will cause potential visitors to ignore you; still others may make your site disappear from the search engine results pages entirely. We'll go over each practice and explain why you shouldn't do it. We'll even tell you what you should be doing.
Flash

If you're making a new website and thinking of using Flash - stop. Though Adobe made Flash crawlable and shared technology with Google and Yahoo (leaving out Microsoft), Flash is still a bad choice.

If you don't show much content to the search engines, you will have to invest more in links. Not only does a Flash site cost more to make, but you'll need more money to optimize it. If there is no real reason to use Flash, don't. If you want cool movies and features, consider embedding Flash videos and using cool CSS styles.

No Use of Title Tags

"The most powerful HTML tag you have at your disposal" - Ross Jones, Search Engine Ranking Factors. Put keywords you target the page for into the tag. This is the part that shows up in search results as a big blue link, so make it count.

Another mistake webmasters make is to put something like "Welcome To...." in the title tag. Aaron Wall calls this "Welcome to low rankings."

Title Tag Duplication

Many designers create a site design without much regard for SEO, using one title tag for an entire website. Make sure to vary the title tags on your pages.

Messed up Robots.txt

It's a good idea to have a file to keep your error log clean of robot.txt requests, but if you can mess up a lot if you use it incorrectly. Here's how it looks, assuming you don't want to block ANY pages:

Not Using Keywords in Internal Links and Navigation

Your internal onsite links have as much SEO weight as some outside links. If your home page has link authority, then links from your home page to internal pages pass pagerank in the same manner as outside sites pass pagerank to your home page.

By linking from your most powerful pages to internal pages with keyword-rich links, you're doing exactly the same thing as getting keyword-rich inbound links from high PR pages.

To make the most use of link power, make sure that your navigation consists of keyword-rich, targeted descriptions. Do the same with keywords scattered within content. Don't worry about your footer; Google doesn't put much weight on those.

Aggressive Search Engine Optimization Firms

Aggressive may mean effective. All effective SEO firms buy links, meaning that most good SEOs are official black hats. Are you okay with the risks? Many effective firms actively use spam and other black hat methods to promote their clients. Greedy ones get burned. Those who are smart watch carefully and know when to pull back -- because there is no safety net.

You should know if your SEO firm does black hat up front. Rewards are great, but so are the risks.

Automated Content Generation

Automated content generation involves a bot scraping the net, mixing articles and producing low value pages camouflaged as a web site. It's often part of the link farm an AdSense site.

Duplicate content detection has improved to the point that search engines will know in no time if you're spamming.

Frames

This is not spam, but a bad mistake, like building a Flash-based web site. Frames are hard to crawl for spiders; they have no unique URLs to link to and are horrible from a usability perspective. Sites that use frames lose on all fronts.

Cloaking

Cloaking still works if done correctly. Some good SEOs still use cloaking, but if you're new, stay away from it. Cloaking presents a normal page to visitors but a super-optimized page to search engine spiders.

Hidden Text

Hidden text involves stuffing keywords onto a page and making keywords the same color as the background. This is an absolutely pointless technique since search engines discount pages if they see keyword stuffing.

If you put legitimate text or an optimized article on your site as hidden text, just to make page look shorter, it still doesn't make sense. There are CSS "hide/show" tricks that can conceal text while being search engine friendly.

Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing involves putting a bunch of keywords on a page simply to get higher rankings. It's pointless. Search engines can tell when you're using too many keywords for natural content, and your visitors will find keyword-stuffed content to be difficult to read.

Doorway Pages

Doorway pages are one-page websites optimized for a specific keyword and made with one purpose - to rank in the search results. All links on the "doorway" page lead to the real website, essentially acting as an entrance, hence the name "doorway page." Search engine do not like doorway pages, but they still work.

Alt Tag Stuffing

ALT tags are designed for blind people. Alt tags should describe images, buttons, navigation and other site elements to make browsing easier for those who can't see. Some people stuff their keywords into ALT tags, in hopes of ranking better in search results. This doesn't work. If spotted, you'll be punished.

On top of being ineffective, it's a real hassle for blind people who have to listen to the BS webmasters stuff into these tags to manipulate search engines. Use alt tags for image descriptions, and don't worry about the keywords.

Comment Spam

There are several types of comment spam.

One type uses robots to put in generic BS comments and links back to their owner's site in hopes of getting more valuable inbound links. Google discovered this and doesn't count comment links anymore. Bloggers also use the nofollow tag, so it doesn't matter if there are links in comments.

Another way to spam comments is to leave generic comments like "I did an article about this too, come check it out" in hopes of driving traffic and subscriptions.

Blog comments are designed for discussion, so saying something useful without intent to get something back plays a lot better in the long term. You get respect and eventually the blogger becomes more interested in you. Then you get your link.

Forum Spam

Forum spam involves leaving forum messages disguised as editorials, but are nothing more than ads for a website.

This type of spam looks really nasty and irritates all forum users. Don't do it. If you want to drive visitors from forums, participate in discussions, offer advice and help everyone. You will gain respect and people will visit your site from the signature. This time however, instead of saying "who the hell is that guy?!" they will land on the home page wit the thought of "that guy is good, let's see what he's built here."

Reliance on Meta Tags

Meta tag's days are over. Keyword meta tags do not work. I wouldn't bother spending more than few minutes on keyword meta tags. The description meta tag, on the other hand, is very useful. It is the description that shows in search results, so make sure there are clear calls to action.

Submission to a Bunch of Social Media Sites

You've probably seen those one-vote articles sitting in no-man's-land with headlines like "New marketing methods" and "Super interactive website www.spamsite.com" Those are attempts by marketers to get diggs, reddits and other types of votes. Social media marketing is a craft of its own, and a link to a generic site doesn't do it. You can learn a great deal about social media marketing over at Sphinn.

Long and Dynamic URLs

Some content management systems produce long URLs that search engine spiders do not like. Keep URLs short and sweet. There are plenty of content management systems that make search friendly URL stings. They include Joomla, WordPress, Drupal and more.

Some content management systems also produce dynamic URLs, which have different strings, but lead to the same place. Those are not friendly it terms of page rank, so make use of SEO-friendly CMSes (above).

JavaScript Links

Search engines have a hard time following JavaScript. Make your links classic (a href= ....) Though Google crawls JavaScript, it's better to be on the safe side.

Free for All Reciprocals

Link exchanges in general are not effective. Exchanging with a quality site is never bad, but getting 100 random reciprocals can get sites punished.

Free links exchanges are very easy for search engines to spot. Once detected, all participants can get banned. If you trade a lot of low quality links, your link profile may raise red flags.

Randomly Changing File Names

If you change a filename, you lose all the power from previous links. There's no point to doing this. If you feel like there's a need to make some changes, then leave the ranking pages as they are. It's hard to get links, and it's even harder to get quality links from good sites that have aged.

No Site map

A site map is a page that has links to all other pages of your site. It can guide search engines to pages which spiders would otherwise not discover. Make sure that your site features a site map; there are a number of guides available on the Internet that explain how to build one.

Creating Link Networks or Link Farms

Depending on how you do it, this can still work. Google places more value on authority, so creating link networks is not as effective as it used to be. If you do create a link farm, make sure that:

Sites are on different servers, preferably in different countries.

Sites have different WHOIS data and ownership.

Sites have many outside links apart from those within the network.

Include several older domains, since a network of new domains looks very spam-like.

Given how much work is involved to hide the nature of the link network or link farm, you have to seriously question whether it's worth it, even if it does fly under the search engines' radar.

Duplicate Content

Duplicate content involves use of the same content on more than one page or plagiarizing from other sites. Search engines are very good at detecting this, so once spotted, expect to be banned. You can also use CopyScape to find out if anyone stole your articles.

What is RSS? from Writers Weeekly.com

2008-10-04T21:57:00.000-07:00

What is RSS?

Page for Feed Validation: http://feedvalidator.org/

RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. In essence, it is format for a special file on a Web site that has all the latest updates to the site in it. The URL to that file is know as an RSS Feed.

By using a special piece of software called a Feed Reader, you can monitor this file and get notified instantly when a new information gets added to the site.

You may be thinking, "You already send me an email every Wednesday with all your new stuff. Why would I want to use an RSS feed?" Well, we are advocating that you unsubscribe from the newsletter and switch to the RSS feed. There are three good reasons to do this:

1.) The Rise of Spam and Spam Filters - There is so much spam out there now that everyone is using spam filters to try and curb to tide of junk mail. These filters are basically a set of complex rules against which computers compare each incoming email. Because it is ultimately a computerized system, and spammers are devising more and more sophisticated ways to beat these systems, lots of legitimate email gets caught. WritersWeekly.com went from literally zero complaints a few years ago to about 50 complaints a week now from subscribers to our newsletter who can no longer receive it. And when we traced the problem back, 100% of the time is it because our newsletter is getting mislabeled as spam. There seems to be no solution to the spam filter problem other than to communicate with these subscribers in a way that doesn't involve email.

2.) RSS is Instant - Your Feed Reader software monitors the RSS feeds you specify silently in the background. When we update the site, the RSS feed is instantaneously updated as well. That means your Feed Reader software knows about it instantly too and can alert you. No more having to check your email or the Web site for the latest information.

3.) Information in RSS Format is Compact - Since we only send a link and summary of each piece of new information through the RSS feed, you can just access just the information you are interested in. It is a lot faster than opening your Web browser or email program and wading through all the extraneous stuff.

4.) Unsubscribe With Ease - Don't want to subscribe anymore? Or want to stop things temporarily? Delete the feed from your Feed Reader and it is gone. No messages piling up while you are on vacation. No more complicated email commands to get off a list.

How Do I Get a Feed Reader?

There are lots of different Feed Readers, most of them free. Here are some we recommend:

For Windows - FeedReader

For Mac - NetNewsWireLite (scroll to bottom to get the free version)

For Linux - Liferea

Web-based Reader - Bloglines (This is a Web site that you register with to read the feeds. Works with any operating system. Registration is free.)

You can also read feeds through MyYahoo. Log in, then click on "add content" at the bottom of the page, then click on "Add RSS by URL" next to the "find" button. Then enter this URL: http://www.writersweekly.com/index.xml

If you like to explore new software, here is a comprehensive list of Feed Readers for Windows and Mac.

Where Can I Get RSS Feeds from Other Sites?

We're developing a comprehesive list of feeds, but for now we recommend these places to find new feeds:

http://www.rootblog.com/

http://www.2rss.com/

http://www.feedster.com/

http://www.technorati.com/

How to get RSS right

2008-10-03T22:56:00.000-07:00

RSS is an essential part of growing a blog's audience, and most get the fundamentals right. Some, however, don't exactly embrace RSS as a medium - and occasionally those who do offer some limited, broken feed that simply isn't worth subscribing to. Here are some pointers to keep your syndication on track.

Offer full feeds

If you're not fully au fait with RSS yourself, you might not appreciate this one - but trust me, there's nothing more annoying than reading an article in your aggregator then have it suddenly come to a halt. Full feeds are better, and will help encourage readers to subscribe. If you're worried about lost ad revenue, don't be - services such as FeedBurner and Feedvertising can be used to keep the money rolling in, whilst you keep your loyal subscribers happy.

Avoid amendments to feed items once they're posted

Some RSS aggregators will show a feed item as new for every spelling correction, alteration or amendment to a post - particularly so if you have full feeds. Whilst I abhor bad spelling, try to minimise the corrections you make (proof reading before publishing can do wonders!), and you'll avoid losing subscribers when the same post comes up 12 times in a row with indiscernible differences. If you do update a post, it's best done clearly marked with an 'UPDATE:' at the bottom.

google_ad_client = "pub-1728235489150363"; google_ad_width = 200; google_ad_height = 200; google_ad_format = "200x200_as"; google_ad_type = "text_image"; google_ad_channel = "7340008063"; google_color_border = "FFFFFF"; google_color_bg = "FFFFFF"; google_color_link = "783853"; google_color_text = "000000"; google_color_url = "aaaaaa";
window.google_render_ad();

Don't hide the link to your feeds

If your feed isn't linked via a tag in your header, most web browsers won't pick up on your feeds - and if you hide the link to your feeds away at the bottom of the page, or partway down some obscure column, there's a good chance a potential subscriber won't find your feed at all. Make sure it's obvious - but bigger isn't necessarily better.

Don't post too often

Never posting any new content is bad enough, but posting too much? Even worse. If subscribers can't keep up, they'll unsubscribe very quickly indeed. Split your feeds up if you find this is the case, or simply relax the rate at which you post. Anything more than 20 a day is excessive, and most folk would probably prefer a lot less from most blogs.

Give your readers a good reason to subscribe

I'd hate to labour a point, but it's worth reiterating. You can get everything spot on (technically) with your RSS feeds and still drive away potential subscribers, while other sites with terribly implemented feeds can attract thousands. The real secret to getting a strong RSS readership is to write great content - get the technical details right, though, and you can help keep your subscribers happy.

What is RSS?

2008-10-03T22:44:00.000-07:00

What is RSS?

If you’re new to RSS and need an introduction to help you get started, then this tutorial is a good place to learn some basics. You will also learn how to subscribe to the feeds on loadaverageZero so you can find out what’s new around here without having to keep coming back to the site until you want to. That, in a nutshell, is what RSS feeds are all about: Let the information come to you instead of actively searching for it.

Contents

What is RSS?
What are those strange little orange buttons?
What is a News Reader?
What is a News Aggregator Site?
Can I access RSS feeds from my Browser?
What is Auto Discovery?
What is Atom?
RSS Feeds on loadaverageZero
Conclusion and Additional Resources
What is RSS?RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site

In summary, and like a magazine or newspaper, it’s a way to supply you with a list of current news items in a brief format so you can scan headlines and choose the items that interest you most. All without visiting the Web sites that publish them. That is, until you want to read the entire article. To do this you just click on the headline like any normal link on a Web site.

Since news headlines come to you instead of the other way around, RSS is referred to as content distribution or syndication.

What are those strange little orange buttons?You will often see that a site has RSS content, or a feed (sometimes called a channel), when you notice a small button (usually an orange color) with the acronym XML or RSS on it. Like this: . The reason you see these XML buttons is because that is the file format that RSS is delivered in, much like Web pages are written in HTML.

The orange buttons (or chicklets) are becoming less common however, often times RSS feeds appear as an option on a menu, and some browsers will have a special way of indicating that the site you are visiting has RSS feeds.

However, many browsers are not equipped to handle RSS feeds in this raw XML format. You may have already run across this if you ever clicked on an RSS link and were surprised by a bunch of computer source code instead of a Web page. Or the browser might even have asked you to download the page because it didn’t know what else to do with it. What you really need is a way of rendering that code into a readable form.

What is a News Reader?

There are many ways to read news feeds. There are dedicated programs called News Readers, many of them free, that are designed to do this. Have a look at these Reviews if you’d like to learn more about downloading and installing one. Note that many people use the terms news Reader and news Aggregator interchangeably. To avoid any confusion, in my view a reader is a program that runs on your computer (sometimes called desktop software), and an aggregator is an online service. The results are pretty much the same—once you’ve subscribed to some feeds, you can browse a list of the latest stories and select the ones you like. Notice I said latest Items in a feed are always displayed with the most recent ones listed first.

What is a News Aggregator Site?

Another approach is to use an online service, called an News Aggregator, which are also free for the most part. This list of Online Aggregators will help you get started. If you are a member of Yahoo! or MSN, you can also subscribe to and access RSS feeds right from your personal page. More information about popular aggregator services can be found further down on this page.

Can I access RSS feeds from my Browser?Some browsers, such as Firefox, have plugin programs that allow you to read RSS feeds from right inside the browser. Sage is one such extension, and it is so simple to install and use, that if you’re just getting started with RSS consider giving it a try. This screenshot will show you what Sage looks like running inside Firefox.

Another handy extension for Firefox is Feedview, which allows you to preview almost any RSS feed without having to subscribe to it first. All you have to do is click on one of those RSS links. Other browsers, such as Safari for Mac, and Opera (which runs on many platforms), have support for reading news feeds already built in, so there’s no need to install anything.
What is Auto Discovery?Many sites, including this one, contain special links to news feeds embedded in the source code of the Web site. This is how a browser is able to determine that a site has feeds, and will usually indicate this through an icon appearing on the browser when you visit such a page. Firefox, for instance, displays a a special icon on the status bar located at the very bottom of the browser:

Note: It is quite possible that the icon will not look exactly like this with your copy of Firefox, depending on what operating system you are using, any theme (or skin) you may have installed, the browser version, and so forth. The easiest way to find out what these things do is to simply hover your mouse cursor over them.

Note: The Microsoft RSS development team recently announced that IE version 7 (due out in 2006) will use this same icon to represent RSS feeds. This is good news for all users, since it represents the beginnings of a consistent method of indicating news feeds—making it quicker and easier to determine if a site has RSS content regardless of which browser you use! Soon afterwards, Opera followed suit.

Many news readers and aggregators can also take advantage of auto-discovery. If you want to subscribe to a feed for a particular site and don’t know the address to the feed resource itself, often you can simply enter the address of the Web page and the program will automatically find the feed (or feeds) for you. Just copy the address of the site and paste it into the reader’s input box.

What is Atom?

You may have heard about something called Atom and wondered what it is and how it relates to RSS. Atom is just a newer feed format, one that is becoming more popular. As a subscriber this isn’t something you need to worry about. Most modern software can cope with the different versions of RSS as well as Atom. The results are basically the same.

RSS Feeds on loadaverageZeroThere are a number of RSS feeds on loadaverageZero. There is one for new posts to my blog, aptly named blogZero, another for Recent Additions to my list of Web resources called drx, and a third for News and Announcements relating to this Web site. If you look in the left menu area, just below the last menu item (which is highlighted because you are visiting this page), there are three pairs of small buttons. Just as in the example status bar icon, the first of these in each row is a link to the raw XML RSS feed, which you can use to import directy into you feed reader or aggregator. The second, larger, button is a link to the same feed via FeedBurner which allows you to both preview the feed in your browser and/or subscribe to it with your preferred RSS reader/aggregator. Notice that these buttons are designed to be easy to spot, as they are miniature versions of the logos that correspond to each of the features of this Web site that have distributed content. Yet another method of previewing headlines from these feeds to visit the dnews interface where you can simply pick them out from the Channel Selector.

Opposite the loadaverageZero feed buttons, in the right margin, is a vertical list of icons that you can also use to access my feeds. I have placed a red border around them temporarily so you can find them easily. The first one is just another way of accessing Recent Additions to drx, and the rest are pre-configured links to feed aggregator sites starting with FeedBurner (note that selecting this link will give you a nice preview of the feed), followed by NewsGator, NewsIsFree, Bloglines, Pluck and Rojo. The next one in the list is another preview via Kinja, and it will display a combination of all of my feeds (hence the term “aggregator”). After this is an icon that will work if you are using a Mac (notice it looks like the Mac logo), followed by a subscription link designed for My Yahoo! and another for MSN. For either of the last two icon subscription links to work, you need to have an account already created. If you don’t, it’s easy, and free, to do so.

Feed Icons

Here are those feed icons and aggregator links again so you don’t have keep jumping all over the page:

Recent Additions

FeedBurner: drx Recent Additions (with preview)
FeedBurner: loadaverageZero (with preview)
FeedBurner: blogZero (with preview)
NewsGator
NewsIsFree
Bloglines
Pluck
Rojo
Kinja
Mac
Yahoo!
MSN

Conclusion

There are many other RSS feed aggregator sites. The ones I created links to are popular, and also well designed and easy to use. In fact, I have accounts on all of them. I did this in order to make sure they provide quality services.

I understand that when you first get started using RSS, it may seem to be a bit of a mystery. Or, you may be thinking “How will using RSS improve my overall Web experience?” I think that once you get over the hurdle of using RSS feeds this will become readily apparent. If you still have questions about the RSS feeds on loadaverageZero (and in general), feel free to Contact Me. You can also visit the loadaverageZero Discussion Forums where there are 4 Comments on this article.

Additional Resources

For more advanced users, developers and programmers, drx contains a large list of RSS Resources. Of particular note are Michael Fagan’s All About RSS (which includes a glossary of terms) and Mark Nottingham’s excellent RSS Tutorial. For further details on RSS and related topics, Wikipedia is an outstanding source of information:

Aggregator
Atom
OPML
RSS
XML

Enjoy reading your RSS News feeds!

—Douglas Clifton
Last updated: Sunday, March 19th, 2006 @ 12:26 AM EST [2006-03-19T05:26:37Z]

The Basics of RSS

2008-01-02T14:49:00.000-08:00

By Werner Schamberger (c) 2007

What is RSS?

You probably have seen this three-letter acronym in the course of your internet surfing. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary; syndicating means republishing an article that comes from another source such as a website. A RSS feed is a means of publicizing updates about websites. It may or may not include a summary and photos of the latest posting. But those that provide summaries (thus Rich Site Summary) allow users to skim through the article so that they can decide later on if they want to access the website source. The RSS feed usually contains the title of the update originating from the website. It is also usually the link to the website source.

What are the Benefits of RSS?

RSS provides benefits to both readers (users) and web publishers.

1. It gives you the latest updates. Whether it is about the weather, new music, software upgrade, local news, or a new posting from a rarely-updated site, you can learn about the latest as soon as it comes out.

2. It saves on surfing time. Since an RSS feed provides a summary of the related article, it saves the user's time by helping s/he decide on which items to prioritize when reading or browsing the net.

3. It gives the power of subscription to the user. Users are given a free-hand on which websites to subscribe to in their RSS aggregators which they can change at any time they decide differently.

4. It lessens the clutter in your inbox. Although your email address will be required to enjoy the services of online RSS aggregators, RSS does not use your email address to send the updates.

5. It is sp@m free. Unlike email subscriptions, RSS does not make use of your email address to send updates thus your privacy is kept safe from sp@m mails.

6. Unsubscribing is hassle-free. Unlike email subscriptions where the user is asked questions on why s/he is unsubscribing and then the user is asked to confirm unsubscribing, all you have to do is to delete the RSS feed from your aggregator.

7. It can be used as an advertising or marketing tool. Users who subscribe to or syndicate product websites receive the latest news on products and services without the website sending sp@m mail. This is advantageous to both the web user and the website owner since advertising becomes targeted; those who are actually interested in their products are kept posted.

What are the Drawbacks of RSS?

The disadvantages of RSS stem from user-preference concerns and the fact that it is a new technology.

1. Some users prefer receiving email updates over an RSS feed.

2. Graphics and photos do not appear in all RSS feeds. For conciseness and ease of publication, RSS feeds do not display the photos from the original site in announcing the update except for some web-based aggregators.

3. The identity of the source website can be confusing. Since RSS feeds do not display the actual URL or name of the website, it can sometimes get confusing on what feed a user is actually reading.

4. Publishers cannot determine how many users are subscribed to their feed and the frequency of their visits. Moreover, they do not know the reasons why users unsubscribe which could be important in improving their advertising.

5. RSS feeds create higher traffic and demands on the server. Most readers still prefer the whole update over a brief summary of the entry, thus they still access the site.

6. Since it is a new technology, many sites still do not support RSS.

How Do I Start Using RSS?

There are two things needed: an RSS feed and an RSS aggregator or reader. The RSS feed comes from an RSS-supported website. There are also websites that provide a directory of RSS feeds from different websites. An RSS aggregator is used to read the RSS feed from the source website. It scans and collects data on the latest RSS feeds from the worldwide web.

An aggregator comes in two forms: a downloadable program, also known as a desktop aggregator, and an online or web-based aggregator. Downloadable aggregators may require payment before they can be acquired, while internet-based aggregators are usually free. All you need to do is to register an account and you are ready to use their services. Both versions allow you to customize, or choose, which RSS feeds to enter. Paid aggregators are usually chosen by more experienced users and they usually allow more freedom in customizing feeds.

Editor's Note: A selection of top RSS Desktop Aggregators can be found at:

About.com
or
RSS-Specifications.com

1. Choose an RSS aggregator to use. For beginners, web-based aggregators are recommended since they are usually user-friendly.

2. Scan the homepage of your target website for the RSS or XML button. It contains the RSS code you need to enter in the aggregator. Copy this code. Syndic8 provides a directory of websites that support RSS.

3. Paste the code (which contains the URL of the website) in your aggregator. There is a space provided for pasting the code.

After you have done these three easy steps, you can start reading the RSS feeds coming from the website. New postings appear as they are published in real time at the source website.

RSS and Internet Marketing

The original idea of RSS came from Netscape, where the intention was to provide a means for users to customize their personal homepages with links to websites that were of interest to them, similar to bookmarking websites.

The application of RSS to internet marketing was an unforeseen development to RSS technology developers. Since users are given the freedom to add RSS feeds to their aggregators, those who are interested in particular products and services available on the internet can now be notified real time. Marketing becomes more specific to interested people and not a hit-and-miss operation.

Medium to big-scale companies who intend to use RSS for marketing their products and services should consider linking up with email account providers, (e.g. Yahoo, MSN, Google mail); networking websites (e.g. Friendster, Multiply, My Space, Hi5); websites of newspapers and television network websites (e.g. New York Times, CNN). Smaller companies can also look at networking websites as well as personal blog websites (e.g. Blogspot) and websites of clubs and organizations that would probably make use of their products or services e.g. a fishing supplies store can look for the website of their local fishing club for possible RSS marketing.

Clearly, RSS is an innovation in worldwide web information management as well as online marketíng. We can expect better RSS technology in the not-so-distant future as its popularity increases among users and website owners alike.

About The Author

Werner Schamberger is CEO of Homework Online and Best Articles Online. He is an entrepreneur and author.

All That You Need to Know about RSS

2007-11-13T15:06:00.000-08:00

All That You Need to Know about RSS

By Jo Han Mok (c) 2007

You probably have seen this three-letter acronym called RSS in the course of your internet surfing. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary; syndicating means republishing an article that comes from another source such as a website.

An RSS is a means of publicizing updates about websites. It may or may not include a summary and photos of the latest posting. But those that provide summaries (thus Rich Site Summary) allow users to skim through the article so that they can decide later on if they want to access the website source. The RSS feed usually contains the title of the update originating from the website. It is also usually the link to the website source.

What are the benefits of RSS? RSS has benefits for both readers (users) and web publishers.

1. It gives you the latest updates.
Whether it is about the weather, new music, software upgrade, local news, or a new posting from a rarely-updated site you learn about the latest as soon as it comes out.

2. It saves on surfing time.
Since a RSS feed provides a summary of the related article, it saves the user's time by helping s/he decide on which items to prioritize when reading or browsing the net.

3. It gives the power of subscription to the user.
Users are given a free-hand on which websites to subscribe in their RSS aggregators which they can change at any time they decide differently.

4. It lessens the clutter in your inbox.
Although your email address will be required to enjoy the services of online RSS aggregators, RSS does not use your email address to send the updates.

5. It is sp@m free.
Unlike email subscriptions, RSS does not make use of your email address to send updates, thus your privacy is kept safe from sp@m mails.

6. Unsubscribing is hassle-free.
Unlike email subscriptions where the user is asked questíons on why s/he is unsubscribing and then the user is asked to confirm unsubscribing, all you have to do is to delete the RSS feed from your aggregator.

7. It can be used as an advertising or marketing tool.
Users who subscribe or syndicate product websites receive the latest news on products and services without the website sending sp@m mail. This is advantageous to both the web user and the website owner since advertising becomes targeted; those who are actually interested in their products are kept posted.

What are the drawbacks of RSS? The disadvantages of RSS use are brought about by its being a new technology and some user-preference concerns.

1. Some users prefer receiving email updates over an RSS feed.

2. Graphics and photos do not appear in all RSS feeds. For conciseness and ease of publication, RSS feeds do not display the photos from the original site in announcing the update except for some web-based aggregators.

3. The identity of the source website can be confusing. Since RSS feeds do not display the actual URL or name of the website, it can sometimes get confusing on what feed a user is actually reading.

4. Publishers cannot determine how many users are subscribed to their feed and the frequency of their visits. Moreover, they would not know the reasons why users unsubscribe which could be important in improving their advertising.

5. RSS feeds create higher traffíc and demands on a server. Most readers still prefer the whole update over a brief summary of the entry, thus they still access the site.

6. Since it is a new technology, many sites still do not support RSS.

How do I start using RSS?

There are two things needed: an RSS feed and an RSS aggregator or reader. The RSS feed comes from an RSS-supported website. There are also websites that provide a líst of RSS feeds of different websites. An RSS aggregator is used to read the RSS feed from the source website. It scans and collects data on the latest RSS feeds from the worldwide web.

An aggregator comes in two forms: a downloadable program also known as desktop aggregator and an online or web-based aggregator. Downloadable aggregators may require payment before they can be acquired, while internet-based aggregators are usually free of charge. All you need to do is to register an account then you are ready to use their services. Both versions allow you to customize or choose which RSS feeds to enter. Paid aggregators are usually chosen by more experienced users and they usually allow more freedom in customizing feeds.

1. Choose an RSS aggregator to use. For beginners, web-based aggregators are recommended since they are usually user-friendly.

Editor's Note: A good directory of both web-based and desktop aggregators for Windows, Mac and Linux platforms can be found at NewsOnFeeds.com .

2. Scan the homepage of your target website for the RSS or XML button. It contains the RSS code you need to enter in the aggregator. Copy this code. Syndic8 provides a directory of websites that support RSS.

3. Paste the code (which contains the URL of the website) in your aggregator. There is a space provided for pasting the code.

After you have done these three easy steps, you can start reading the RSS feeds coming from the website. New postings appear as they are published real time at the source website.

RSS and Internet Marketing

The original idea of RSS came from Netscape, where their intention was to provide a means for users to customize their personal homepage to contain links to websites that interest them, similar to bookmarking websites.

The application of RSS to internet marketing was an unforeseen development to RSS technology developers. Since users are given the freedom to add RSS feeds to their aggregators, those who are interested in particular products and services available on the internet can now be notified real time. Marketing becomes more specific to interested people and not a hit-and-miss operation.

Medium to big-scale companies who intend to use RSS for marketing their products and services should consider linking up with email account providers, (e.g. Yahoo, MSN, Google mail); networking websites (e.g. Friendster, Multiply, My Space, Hi5); and newspaper and television network websites (e.g. New York Times, CNN). Smaller businesses can also look at networking websites as well as personal blog websites (e.g. Blogspot) and websites of clubs and organizations that would probably make use of their products or services e.g. - a fishing supplies store could look for the website of their local fishing club for possible RSS marketing.

Clearly, RSS is an innovation in information management on the worldwide web as well as online marketing. We can expect better RSS technology in the not-so-distant future as its popularity increases among users and website owners alike.

About The Author

Jo Han Mok is the author of the Number 1 international business bestseller, The E-Code. He shares his amazing blueprint for creating million dollar internet businesses at: InternetMillionaireBlueprints

You Need RSS, Atom, ROR codes and Google Sitemaps!

2007-10-29T10:46:00.000-07:00

SEO - Reindexing

2007-10-29T10:45:00.001-07:00

Search Engine Optimization: Reindexing

By Karen Cole Peralta
Word count: 1,800

Reindexing is almost a lost art form. But what you can do is keep doing it, because the spiders see and understand the changes. They go for it, keeping it up on a regular basis, and cause people to see your website.

What can you do to get your website up to the top of the URL (Universal Resource Locator) lists, so that when people type a search term into a search engine, such as “cheap ghost writer,” they will get to see your business name somewhere on the first page results? Well, mainly it’s a problem related to the search engine “bots” (robots) and “spiders” or “crawlers” going over your site repeatedly, noticing changes in it, and reindexing your website.

To reindex your site means that the search engines are sending out their little machines to go over your site and notice any changes in it. They are generally looking for major changes, such as fresh content, major rearrangements to your site, and brand new pages.

If you add new pages to your website, Google Sitemaps may be a program which could provide you with some help when it comes to reindexing at least the sitemap for your site. Currently only a beta program being tested by Google, it could start a new trend in site reindexing. When you make a Google sitemap, you lay out several details about the content of your web pages, and you can get Google to download the changes as reflected by your sitemap on a regular basis; constantly, if the pages are continuously changing, daily, weekly, or even monthly. Please look into this potentially worthwhile program for all of the details on how to properly make a sitemap for your site.

If you submit your site to many search engines, preferably the greatest amount possible, you will get massive exposure for your site when it climbs up to the higher rankings as listed on each of these engines. It’s not enough to only submit your site to search engines, but it’s the only way to start when it comes to your site eventually climbing its way up each of the search engine’s rankings for your site. And if you submit your site to as many search engines as possible at least twice per month, you will get maximum results from this. It is only the first major step, but it is the only way you will be seen by visitors who use search engines to find your site. Then as you resubmit your site twice per month, it will most likely be reindexed, or recrawled by the search engines, and each change you make will be updated by the major search engines and probably also by many of the minor ones as well.

To really maximize exposure, blog about your site’s contents with links pointing to your site, then submit your blog or blogs to search engines twice monthly. Also submit your site to directories, which you often only need to do once. You can also submit your blogs to the hundreds of blog directories available on the Internet. This will increase the number of inbound links coming in to your site, which is still helpful when it comes to your site making it up to the first page level of SERPs (search engine results pages).

Increasing the amount of incoming links pointing to your site is always helpful. Use every method you can find to cause sites relevant to the services and products offered on your business site to place a link to your site on their sites. This can be through directly offering to trade reciprocal links with relevant sites, joining link exchange services and using them to help you find sites which are willing to trade links with your site, and starting your own links exchange program, which generally involves free exchange of links. You will want to only trade relevant links, because Google, the major search engine presently on the face of the planet, now punishes sites for trading links which are not relevant, i.e., “any old link” will not do. You must make sure the links are organic and relevant, which means they must relate to the topics of your own site. Make sure your keywords are arranged so that when you send out your links, the links contain your most important keywords in the title text and the description of the site as well. The title text is the one that links directly to your site, and the description immediately follows it.

Also, make sure that you have proper title tags, keyword tags and meta tags for your site. You can go to Submit Express for help with this and for help with submitting your site to multiple search engines, both through their free and paid programs. You will also want several other types of tags or codes in your website that will help you optimize your pages for search engines and get your site onto the first page of search engine results.

You will need to make your site HTML (hyper text markup language) compliant, that is, it will have to pass the various kinds of “checkers” on the Web today that make sure your site’s HTML coding is correct and compliant with modern standards. Some WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) and other site editors and programs do not run code that is compliant with some of the stricter standards for HTML compliance. Microsoft Front Page is especially non-compliant when it comes to a complicated, not text-only website, as it rewrites its own code and is often found to be not compliant with modern standards.

There are all of these steps, and many more that you will discover by looking around and by subscribing to free newsletters such as Web Pro News and Site Pro News. These will help you put together a website that will gradually climb to the top of the charts. You will find that by adding fresh, keyword-rich content to your site every day, by writing your own articles involving the keywords in each page of your site, by varying the keywords so that each page has content containing the keywords for that page, and by constantly updating your Google sitemap – not to mention many other such “tricks” and daily “trendy” activities – you will find yourself slowly but surely search engine optimizing your website. And your site will be reindexed on a regular basis by the search engines.

Don’t worry too much about fancy Google “algorhythms” and whether or not you can keep up with all of the Joneses, especially if you don’t have a lot of money to spend. Work, work, work on your website. Set aside an amount of time every day to thoroughly find and employ methods for optimization that will cause the indexing of your site on a regular basis. Resubmit twice a month, change your site’s content daily, make sure you have plenty of incoming links from sites relevant to yours pointing to your site, subscribe to Internet newsletters so that you can get the most recent information about how to optimize your site for search engines – do everything you can make the time to do.

And use the latest in xml code technologies, such as making pages for your site in rss, atom and ror rdf information code. It is easy to find the formats for these codes and information on how to employ them by researching this on the Web. Submit information about content relevant to your business and website to Wikipedia, the Web’s new major encyclopedia. Post to blogs, wikis and message boards, using your website’s URL as often as you can. This creates more incoming links pointing to your website, which you need. Submitting to thousands of FFA (free for all) pages may help increase your incoming link count, which does matter to search engines. However, Google is frowning lately on irrelevant links coming in to websites, and it may count FFA links as being “irrelevant,” so you will want to consider that. Also, one-way links count for more than links exchanges, apparently, so you will want to consider that carefully as well.

Remember: the most important things are fresh daily content and getting the search engines to reindex your site, as often as humanly possible, more often than daily if needed. Some search engines will only reindex your site on a weekly or monthly basis. Some will do it on a daily basis. But we are fast moving toward an era where the search engines will be continuously crawling your website, looking for any changes, for the bad or for the good, at all whatsoever. So the more often you make major changes, especially to the keyword-related content of your site, the more often your site will be reindexed.

Pay the price to list your site with Yahoo. It’s worthwhile. Pay the price to list with multiple directories, if need be. And set up with as many beta testing programs through Google, Yahoo and MSN as your site qualifies for. This will get your site reindexed and crawled repeatedly by these three major search engines. And look into programs being set up by the other major and minor search engines as well.

Whatever you do, don’t despair. On your way in the climb up the SERPs, you will probably find many other advertising methods, such as simply being listed for free with services related to your site, visitors coming in from your relevant links, and organizations such as WebRing, where you can list your site by joining webrings for free and advertise your site for a low amount of money. There are also PPC (pay per click) services where you can avoid the entire organic optimization process by simply getting listed above the general search engine results -- by paying for it directly. The two major PPC services are Google’s AdWords program and Overture’s PPC program, which covers Yahoo and almost all of the other major search engines.

But remember: whatever methods you use, you will want to see your site get reindexed on a regular basis by the search engines. This is if you offer a business or service where you want to be included under you own niche keyword search terms on the first page of results under such keywords. And you will want to see your business name displayed in a forthright manner so that you can attract visitors who type your carefully chosen search terms into the major and minor search engines. So get ready, get started: optimize!

Blogarama, the Blog Directory

2005-09-25T20:22:00.000-07:00

BLOG UNIVERSE

Link2Blogs.com Tower

2005-09-25T17:52:00.000-07:00

Technorati Link

2005-09-25T00:16:00.000-07:00

Technorati Profile

Blogfuse's Blog Directory

Full Directory Listings Feed

Blogfuse's Blog Directory

Google Sitemaps Explained: How to Get Your Site Indexed with Google Sitemaps

2005-09-24T18:50:00.000-07:00

Three Ways to Index Your Site with Google Sitemaps (Difficult, Hard, and Easy)

Google has recently implemented a program where any webmaster can create a Sitemap of their Site and submit it for indexing by Google. It is a quick and easy way for you to keep your site constantly indexed and updated in Google.

The program is appropriately called Google Sitemaps.

In order for you to best use Sitemaps, you must have an XML generated file on your site that will transmit or send any updates, changes, and data to Google. XML (Extensible Markup Language) is everywhere these days, you have probably seen the orange XML logo on many web sites and it's often associated with Blogging because Blogs use XML/RSS feeds to syndicate their content.

Today RSS is known mostly as 'Really Simple Syndication' but its original acronym stood for 'Rich Site Summary'. XML is only simple code like HTML and it is used to syndicate your content to all interested parties.

And the interested party in this case is Google. By creating Sitemaps, Google is really asking webmasters to take charge of the indexing and updating of their sites. Basically, doing the Googlebot's job!

This is a 'Good' thing! With the steady influx of new web sites growing rapidly, indexing all this material will become a challenge, even with the resources of Google. With Sitemaps, webmasters can take charge and make sure their site is crawled and indexed.

Please note, indexing your site with Sitemaps won't improve your rankings in Google. You will still be competing with the other sites in Google for top positions. But with Sitemaps you can make sure all your pages are crawled and indexed quickly by Google.

There are some other big advantages of using Google's Sitemaps - mainly you have control over a few key variables, attributes or tags. To explain this as simply as possible, your XML powered sitemap file will have this simple code for each page of your site:

http://www.yoursite.com/
1.0
2005-07-03T16:18:09+00:00
daily

Along with 'urlset' tags at the beginning and end of your code, and an XML version indication - that's basically your XML file! File size will depend on the number of webpages you have.

Taking a closer look at this XML file:

location - http://www.yoursite.com - name of your webpage

priority - you set the priority you want Google to place on that page in your site. You can prioritize your pages: 0.0 being the least, 1.0 being the highest, 0.5 is in the middle. This is only relative to your site. It will not affect your rankings. Why is this important? You have certain pages on your site that are more important than others, (home page, high profit page, opt-in page, etc.) by placing high priority on these pages, you will increase their importance in Google.

last modified - when you last modified that page, this timestamp allows crawlers to avoid recrawling pages that haven't changed.

change frequency - you can tell Google how often you change that particular page. Never, weekly, daily, hourly, and so on - if you frequently update your page this could be extremely important.

Why do I need an XML Generator?

In order for this XML sitemap file on your site to be constantly updated, you need a Generator that will spider your site, list all the urls and automatically feed them to Google. Thus constantly updating your site in Google's massive index or database. Keep in mind, Google also gives you the option of submitting a simple text file with all your URLs.

There is already a flood of these generators popping up! Different ways of generating your XML powered sitemap file. More are probably appearing as you read this. But lets look at Three ways to generate your XML file.

Difficult - Google's Python Generator

That's a relative term; if you know your server like the back of your hand and installing scripts doesn't scare the bejesus out of you, you're probably smiling at the word "difficult." Google supplies a link to a generator (Google XML Generator) which you can download and set up on your server. It will cough up your sitemap XML file and automatically feed it to Google.

In order for this Generator to work, Python version 2.2 must be installed on your web server - many servers don't have this. If you know what you're doing, this will probably be a good choice.

You don't need a Google account to use Sitemaps, but it's encouraged because you can track your sitemap's progress and view diagnostic information. If you already have another Google Account, gmail, Google Alerts, etc. just use that one to sign in and follow directions from there.

To submit your Sitemap using an HTTP request, issue your request to the following URL:

www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=sitemap_url

Hard - A PHP Code Generator

This is a PHP Generator that you can place on your server. This generator will spider your site, and produce a XML sitemap file. Download the phpSitemapNG and upload it your server. Run the generator to get your XML sitemap file and send it to Google.

Again, this is only hard to do if you don't know your way around PHP files or scripts.

Easy - Free Online Generator

These Generators are popping up everywhere, and Google keeps a list of these 'third party suppliers' of generators on their site. Find them at: Google's List of Third Party Generators

One of the easiest to use is www.xm-sitemaps.com, and you can index up to 500 pages with this online Generator very quickly and it will give you the sitemap XML file Google needs to index your site. It will go into your site, spider it and index all your pages into an XML sitemap of your site. You can download this file, Compressed or Non-Compressed, and make minor changes such as setting the priority, changing frequency, etc.

Then upload this file to your site as sitemap.xml to the root directory of your server i.e. where you have your homepage. Then notify Google Sitemaps of your XML file and you're in business.

Of course, the only drawback, if you constantly add pages to your site, you will need to also add these pages to your XML sitemap file. This won't be much of a problem unless you're daily adding pages to your site - then you will need something like the PHP or Python generator to do all this for you automatically.

Google is still the major search engine on the web so getting your pages indexed and updated quickly is the major reason to use Google Sitemaps. If you want your site to remain competitive it's probably the wisest route to take.

About The Author

To learn more about the different services and programs offered by Google,

click here: Google Adsense & Google Adwords.

Copyright (c) 2005 Titus Hoskins of bizwaremagic.com. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

Google Sitemaps and You

2005-09-24T18:45:00.000-07:00

Google Sitemaps and You

By Trevor Bauknight

Awhile ago, we looked ( http://www.cafeid.com/art-rss.shtml ) at the recent news that Microsoft had decided to embrace RSS in a big way in its upcoming releases of Internet Explorer and Windows "Longhorn" and determined that this was a Good Thing. This time, we're taking a look at implementing Google Sitemaps, a similar technology developed by Google in order to help you define your site more effectively to the search-engine behemoth.

This is not a ticket to a higher Google ranking (at least not that we know about); but it is a useful tool that lets you apply RSS-like control to your website's interactions with the Googlebot.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is the current heavyweight of so-called "disruptive technologies" (loosely defined as those that have the effect, if not developed with the intention, of changing the way we use technology in general) and its use is skyrocketing among content providers looking for a way to get their content in front of more eyes and ears. But RSS originally stood for Rich Site Summary, a standard way of cataloging your site's content for third-party aggregators.

Google Sitemaps have a similar function, in that they are an XML-based way to describe website content in a standard, predictable way; but they differ in that Sitemaps are intended for the Googlebot's eyes only, rather than for any third-party. Think of them as an automated way to make sure Google knows about your site's content (please note, however, that Google does not guarantee inclusion of your content based solely on the presence of a Sitemap file).

This sounds like a very specific undertaking, but the importance of Google to getting your site's content noticed can simply not be overstated. And with Google's expanding reach into more and more areas of Web content presentation, chances are that you can be assured that the information your Sitemap provides will eventually find some use you haven't yet thought about. That's what disruptive technology is all about, and Google has become one of the more innovative champions of such technological advances.

Where To Start:

The first thing you should do as a website developer is create a Google Account for yourself or your company. This will allow you to do other things besides access the Sitemaps infrastructure; but we'll leave that for another day. Create the account ( https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount ) and then proceed to the Sitemaps area at ( https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login ).
Once you've logged in, you'll see the sparse Sitemaps interface. Don't be fooled, however, because like the simple interface to its search engine, this one hides quite a bit of information regarding the creation and use of Sitemaps, presenting it in digestible bites as you walk through the process.

There's probably more there than you need to know at this point, provided you don't have a huge site with a need for multiple Sitemaps and so on. But if you do have such a site, the information is there for creating truly complex Sitemaps and Sitemap Indices referencing many Sitemaps and you can familiarize yourself with that as needed. For now, we'll concentrate on what's required to establish a Sitemap for our site at Cafe ID (http://www.cafeid.com).

Like creating RSS feeds, creating a Google Sitemap is as simple as putting together an XML file at the root level of your site that describes the site according to the instructions that Google has laid out. You can use any text editor for this purpose, but some editors do a better job of helping you create properly formatted XML files. We heartily recommend two that cost money, BBEdit on Mac OS X ( http://www.barebones.com ) and Macromedia's Homesite on Windows ( http://www.macromedia.com/software/homesite/ ), but there are excellent free alternatives out there and when it comes to text editors, personal preferences take on an almost religious importance, so we won't proselytize about that here.

The Googlebot recognizes several Sitemap formats, ranging from a simple list of URLs to Sitemaps already created using something called the "Open Archive Initiative protocol for metadata harvesting", a format apparently popular with library collections. The OAI protocol is an advanced XML specification that you don't need to worry about if you don't already understand. An intermediate XML format is what we recommend, over the simple URL list, because of the additional information you can associate with each constituent URL of your site.

If you do want to just get started quickly, simply create a text file that looks like this:

http://www.example.com/catalog?item=1
http://www.example.com/catalog?item=11

making sure that the file in question does not include embedded newline characters and uses the UTF-8 text encoding (check your text editor settings). Also, your sitemap may not contain more than 50,000 URLs and all URLs must me fully-formed since they will be used directly during the Googlebot's crawl.

Getting Fancy:

The more advanced format isn't much more difficult to create and lets you specify additional information about each URL. The protocol is described fully here (https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/protocol.html) and is too detailed to explain here. Your finished file will look something like this, except (hopefully) with more URLs specified:

http://www.cafeid.com/
2005-01-01
monthly
0.8

http://www.cafeid.com/art-over.shtml
weekly

Your Sitemap's location dictates what URLs can be included in it. A Sitemap placed at the root level of your site can specify any URLs on that site, while a Sitemap placed at www.yoursite.com/images can not include URLs under www.yoursite.com/banners, for example.

You can take as full or as little advantage of the availability of the various additional XML tags available in this format. Each needs to include at least the specification, but need not include the other three, and all URLs in a Sitemap file must be encapsulated within the tag. We recommend using at least the tag and the flag to let the Googlebot know how often it should check your site for updated content. Be sure to change the date, and maybe even the time, specified in the tag any time you actually update your site.

One more caveat is that your URL specifications must be XML-encoded, similarly to the way they're encoded under RSS. What this means is spelled out in detail here (http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/appendix/notes.html), but essentially, what you're doing is converting a URL like http://www.yoursite.com/view?widget=3&count>2 to look like this: http://www.test.org/view?widget=3&count>2 (Note the substitution for the HTML entities & and > for the "&" and ">" symbols.)

Done. Now What Do I Do With It?:

You're almost home. Upload the Sitemap file you create to your server and then add the URL to the file itself using your Google Sitemaps account. You don't need to use the account, but doing so will allow you to keep track of what you've uploaded.
You're welcome to compress your Sitemap file using gzip, found typically on Mac OS X, Linux and BSD (normal PC zipping won't work, although you can certainly find a third-party gzip program for your Windows box). Click the "Add Your First Sitemap" link on the main Sitemaps page after you've logged into your Google Sitemaps account, and that's all there is to it!

You can use your Sitemaps account to keep track of and receive diagnostic information about your Sitemap submissions. You don't need to create a Sitemaps account, however, and if you already have a Google account for receiving Alerts, for accessing the Web Developer APIs and so on, your existing account will work as a Sitemaps account automatically.

Google has already played a significant role in shifting the paradigm of discovering the Web from doing so by following links to doing so by searching, and the company shows no signs of slowing down. Subscribing may well be the next paradigm, based on the flexibility of the protocols that put content syndication in the hands of mere mortals, and getting your content cataloged in these formats should be among your first priorities. The web browser and operating system is adjusting quickly to this new paradigm, and you should be too.

THE END

Executive Director and President of Rainbow Writing, Inc., Karen Cole Peralta writes. RWI at www.bookauthorswriters.com and www.rainbowriting.com is a world renowned inexpensive professional freelance book authors, ghost writers, copy editors, proof readers, coauthors, manuscript rewriters, graphics and CAD, publishing helpers, and website developers international service corporation. And Four Seasons CDROM Store sells inexpensive cds: fun arcade games, business and e-book software and computer learning tutorials, all state of the art, at www.cdrommarket.com .

List of Important Websites

2005-09-24T18:09:00.000-07:00

Rainbow Writing, Inc. Main Website

Rainbow Writing, Inc. Original Website

RWI Webrings Homepage

Peralta Cover Letters and Resumes

Arnold Schwarzenegger: Golden Guy or Neo Nobody?