What is RSS?

RSS is a Way to Keep Yourself (or Your Readers) Up-to-date

As a Web surfer, you use "RSS feeds" to keep yourself updated with the latest posts or pages of your favored websites. How you do this is outlined first.

As a webmaster, you use RSS feeds to keep your readers updated about new or changed pages of your website. How you do this is explained next. As a business website owner, RSS can be invaluable for you to keep in touch with your readers.

RSS: What and How

Before RSS, if you came across a website that you found particularly interesting, you bookmarked it in your browser. You might then use the bookmark to go back to that site and see what is new. This meant that the entire burden of keeping yourself up-to-date was on you. And when you do go back to the site, you might have to wade through a lot of material to find what is new.

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Nowadays, if you came across an interesting site, you can simply subscribe to their RSS feed. On the site, you will typically find a button indicating RSS feed availability. With today's browsers, clicking the RSS button will most likely bring up a page that includes a subscribe button. You click the button and become a subscriber.

With earlier browsers and RSS buttons, you have to Right Click the RSS button and copy the associated Link URL [In Firefox browser, click 'Copy Link Location' in the box that pops up when you Right Click. In Internet Explorer, the relevant link is labeled 'Copy Shortcut'.] You have now copied the URL to the system clipboard.

You then get a Feed Reader (that can even be an online reader like http://www.google.com/reader/). Feed readers have a box to paste the copied feed URLs. You paste the URL into this box and submit it. The feed reader would then access the RSS feeds as the site is updated, and keep them ready for you to read when you have the time.

That's RSS at the user end. Now, if you can make your website content sufficiently interesting, you can get subscribers to your website by using an RSS feed on the site. How do you do it?

How Do You Put an RSS Feed at Your Site?

First you need an XML file at your site that conforms to RSS protocol. This file would contain details of pages that are updated - Title, brief Description of content and Link to the page. It would look as below:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rss version="2.0">

   <channel>
        <title>Start a Small Business</title>
        <description>How do you go about developing your business idea?</description>
        <link>http://www.smallbusiness-start.com/
index.html</link>

        <item>
        <title>Business in the USA</title>
        <description>Reviews the economic scenario of US
 - the largest economy in the world now (and also the world's 
largest market).</description>
        <link>http://www.smallbusiness-start.com/
business-usa.html</link>
        </item>
        ...
        ...
        ...

   </channel>
</rss>

The page details - title, description and link - will be enclosed within <item>...</item> tags. We have shown only one item in the illustration above. You add items as each page is updated. All the items would be enclosed within <channel>...</channel> tags (channel tag will also have its own title, description and link), and <rss version="??">...</rss> tags. At the very top, there would be an <?xml version="??"> tag.

Next, you would provide a link to the RSS file at your site, typically by using a standard RSS graphic button like the one shown right. [Feel free to copy the image if you want.] The link would be created in the standard manner using the anchor tag

  <a href="[the xml file]"><img src="[button image]"></a>

Note: Replace the items in square brackets with the actual URLs of your xml file and button image respectively.

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