RSS 101 Tutorial Part 5
Creating an RSS Feed Manually
Let's manually construct a basic RSS feed. Assume that we want to generate a feed about documentation standards and guidelines suited to the IT industry. Within this feed, we can involve a few topics such as:
- Writing style
- Concern of correct grammar, punctuation, and spellings
- Sentence formation
- Guidelines for writing technical documents, white papers, installations sheets, customer service indication manuals, and user guides
- Sample templates
- Tips for conforming to international standards
- Value of avoiding or embracing colloquialism
- Rules for reviewing and editing
- Charges for writing beginners, knowing, and experts
Each topic identified hereinbefore forms an item for the RSS feed. Our first item can be written as follows
Item Title Writing Style
Item Description
The purpose of a document and its audience define its writing style. A formal display such as a white paper or a management report must have the formal tone. In exchange, a user guide needs to be written in a more friendly tone. Learn more about writing style and create result-oriented documents.
Detailed Article URL www ITdocumentation dot com / WritingStyle.html
Author Writing Guru
Email WritingGuru at ITdocumentation dot com
Broadcasting Date Mon, 27 June 2005, 0900 EST
Gather similar info for all items to be included in the feed. This data forms item data part of the RSS feed.
As for the channel information, define a feed title, Definition, and its URL. In our case these attributes can be:
Feed Title Guidelines for IT Documentation
Feed Description Brilliant collection of writing tips and guidelines for documentation specialists of all experience levels working in the IT field!
Feed URL www dot ITdocumentation dot com
Using the Basic RSS Feed Format
The next course after collecting the feed info is to put in a official format, which the Internet browsers and RSS aggregators can conceive and interpret to show it correctly on your PC. The format for this file is as follows:
Insert feed title
Insert feed URL
Insert feed Construction
en-us
Insert date and time
Insert title of the first item
Insert URL of the detailed article for the first item
Insert Definition of the first item
Insert author's email address (Author's name)
Insert item spreading date
Insert title of the second item
Insert URL of the detailed article for the second item
Insert Differentiation of the second item
Insert author's email address (Author's name)
Insert item broadcasting date
:
:
Notice that there is only one instance of the channel tag, whereas thousand occurrences of the item tag. The number of item tags should be the same as the number of content you want to contain in your RSS feed.
The tags in red bring out the extra newsletter you can contain in an RSS feed. This info is not compelling, but gives the article more credibility and offers the readers an option of communicating with the author.
Let's now look at inserting item information in the above format. The first item in our case when inserted in the hereinbefore format will look as follows:
Guidelines for IT Documentation
http : // www dot domain dot com
Brilliant library of writing tips and guidelines for documentation specialists
of all experience levels working in the IT field!
en-us
Mon, 27 June 2005, 0930 EST
Writing Style
http : // www dot domain dot com / WritingStyle.html
The purpose of a document and its audience define its writing style. A formal announcement such as a white paper or a management report must have the formal tone. In comparison, a
user guide musts to be written in a more friendly tone. Learn more about writing style and generate result-oriented documents.
WritingGuru at ITdocumentation dot com (Writing Guru)
Mon, 27 June 2005, 0900 EST
:
:
Use the before format to add data for other items and your feed is executed!
Assign the feed a name and save it. Considerable RSS resources say that all RSS feeds have the extension .rss or .xml. In reality, however, an RSS feed can have any extension or no file extension. Exceptional RSS feed generating software written in hypertext preprocessor (PHP) use the .php extension for the feeds they generate. It is also for the sake of keeping things simple and filenames indicating their content that everyone might syndicate .rss or .xml extensions to RSS feeds.
You can add as plenty content as you want though try not to exceed beyond 10 content per feed for usability reasons.
In an RSS feed, elements are typically arranged in the reverse chronographic order with the latest item being the first one and the oldest item at the end, just like news headlines.
As well if you are new to Internet, you can simply compose an RSS feed as long as you follow this basic feed format and you have superior content to publish.
Validating the Feed
Use Feed Validator for an automated code validation of the feed. To do this, upload your RSS file of your web site. In the example hereinabove, the file will be uploaded on http : // www dot ITdocumentation dot com / rss / writingstyle.xml.
Next, go to http : // www dot feedvalidator dot organization. This site shows a text box where you essential to enter the place of your RSS file, which in our case is http : // www dot ITdocumentation dot
com / rss / writingstyle.xml.
Click the Validate button for code validation to begin and wait for some time to view message informing you about subsistence or absence of any errors in the file. If the validator reports any errors, fix them, and recheck the code until all errors are fixed.
Adding Digital Media
Adding digital media enclosing images, audio, and video can transport your audience to a different realm. With this capability, your messages become even more personalized and merge that human touch to the process.
Besides actually embracing an audio file, you can embed a upright link in your RSS feed directing the users towards a file which when selected allows the surfers to download it. The subscribers can refer to it repeatedly and when ever they want to.
Moreover, RSS 2.0 supports a new feature named inclusion to enable feed creators enclose digital media content. When an appropriate surrounding reading software comes across such a feed item, it reads the matched link and content type to automatically download it and store it on a media device.
Using Software to Create an RSS Feed
Software offers a certain number advantages over manual:
- No requirement of any technical knowledge enclosing that of XML or HTML.
- Spell check to eliminate spelling mistakes from feeds.
- No neediness to validate your feed.
- Eases the process of updating a feed.
- The option of adding your operation logo thereby giving an identity to the feed.
The next part will be about: "Tips for Creating Charming RSS Feeds"
If you can't wait till the next part release, or you can't discover the first 3 parts please download the extensive report from our web site in the downloads area.
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