RSS Feed Publishers

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Featured Feeds 

We're always looking for more cool feeds to list in our Index.  If your a media publisher with a newsfeed, or want to start a feed - we'll gladly help you spread it around! Or if you run a website that automatically generates rss/xml output, and your content is related to our community interests - we want your feed too!  Just email us your feed URL for consideration.  If all this rss/xml stuff is new territory for your web skills but your interested in publishing your own feed, the following info on this page should help point you in the right direction.  If you need additional help getting your feed started, feel free to contact the web mistress for assistance.

Understanding RSS 

 The following sources provide a good overview of everything you'll need to know to start publishing your own feed.

  • For background information on what RSS Publishing is all about skim over this primer: www.eevl.ac.uk/rss_primer/

  • For the sexy marketing spiel of why RSS is of so much value these days, click here and scroll past the naked babe w/ newspaper and read info on the lower half of the page.

  • · For an overview of RSS Readers (what tools subscribers use our feed with) see here.

Generating RSS Feeds

If you run a software package on your website to provide services such as a blog, forums, classifieds, group messages, or even a content management system for an information portal - chances are your software already does generate RSS feeds.  In which case, your just need to figure out how to turn it on, what version of RSS it generates, and where the output xml file is located at (feed URL) once enabled.

Knowing the version of RSS is important for compatibility purposes.  RSS has been around a long time, and comes in several versions or flavors, the most widely supported being RSS2.0.  Once you have a feed automatically generated, you can overcome compatibility issues and spruce up what your feed can do by hosting your feed with a "feed burning" service. A good feed burning service (like FeedBurner or SimpleFeed) will dish up your feed in any format or platform that requests it, give your feed browser friendly viewing, optional password protection, and other handy cosmetic  perks to optimize both the content and your subscriber experience.  The FeedBurner  services are truly great AND free, the web mistress can't recommend 'em enough! However, SimpleFeed has the extra advantage of providing some basic RSS Editor capabilities.

If you don't have a website that automatically generates a feed for you, keep reading below - you'll need to get an RSS Editor tool in order to publish your own custom RSS/XML file.

Publishing RSS Feeds

To publish your own custom content or media from somewhere other than website software,  you'll need to get a tool called an RSS Editor to produce your online feed.  These tools fairly simple and can either be a desktop application that runs on your PC or an online services that your sign up for and use over the web.  The preferred tool by far is FeedForAll, with Tristana Writer a close runner-up. For more information on these and other Popular RSS Editors, see the list below.  

Once you have an RSS Editor, you just use that tool to fill in the blanks and list headings, links, descriptions, etc. Then generate your RSS feed as an xml file.  This file then needs uploaded to your website or submitted to your feed burning service provider.  Whenever you have updates to your feed, you just edit the xml file, save a new version, and upload again! Batta bing - your syndicated content is broadcasted on the web :)

Popular RSS Editors

RSS Editor Description Cost
FeedForAll Desktop software, one-time purchase with a free trial. $39.95
Tristana Writer Desktop software, one-time purchase with free trial. $25.00
HitRSS Web-based service, FREE version w/advertising inserted and PRO version available for cost listed. Includes extra search submission / feed broadcasting services. $47 annual fee currently on sale
($97 full price)
FeedSpring Freebie Desktop Software that gets the job done FREE
LinkRSS Freebie web service, beta version - no info available on features FREE
RapidFeeds Freebie web service that's does all the basics and includes handy feed burning features. FREE
RSS Edit Freebie Desktop Software that does all the basic features fairly well. FREE
IceRocket Freebie web service but no info listed on features FREE

Spreading Your Feed Around

Search engines love feeds because their straight up content. Plus, a whole new generation of newsfeed only search engines are growing in popularity. So the first thing you need to do is advertise your feed on your website and place one of the commonly found orange buttons that says "RSS" or "XML" (or the new standardized icon) that links to the feed URL.  Then you need  to register your feed with various RSS indexes (major ones all listed on the  lower right corner or our Feeds Index). You'll also want to look into getting listed with Yahoo News service, the new Google News service supposedly coming soon, and use My MSN "add content" mechanism to get your feed to show up in their time-delayed listings.  Then finally look for RSS indexes on other related sites (such as ours) and see if they also take requests to list external feeds in their index.

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What are some common uses for RSS Feeds?

Publishing online content such as news, articles, and  headlines.

Publishing sales and marketing announcements for improved search engine listings.

Publishing product inventories and price lists to reach a wider audience.

Replacing emailed newsletters and mailing lists with a fat-free,  spam-free flexible medium. 

What's an RSS Channel?

A 'channel' is just a buzzword for an RSS/XML file that's publicly available on the web and updated regularly.

Can my feed do images & photos?

Yes. A feed can have a logo image, plus pictures can be embedded in an item description or attached with item enclosures. 

Can I include multimedia in my feed?

Yes. You can link audio, video, & images to each item in a feed by using "enclosures".  Enclosures are references to external files, supported in RSS2.0 and later, and must also be published to a web address.

What's a Pod Cast?

An RSS Feed that includes an image and a audio file you can listen too. First made popular for use with an "iPod" but can actually be used on lots of different handheld devices.