RSS Tutorial
By Mark Nottingham2007-12-23
Telling People About Your Feed
|
|
An important step after publishing a feed is letting your viewers know that it exists; there are a lot of feeds available on the Web now, but it’s hard to find them, making it difficult for viewers to utilize them.
Pages that have an associated RSS feed should clearly indicate this to viewers by using a link containing like ‘RSS feed’. For example,
<a type="application/rss+xml" href="feed.rss">RSS feed for this page</a>
where ‘feed.rss’ is the URL for the feed. the ‘type’ attribute tells browsers that this is a link to an RSS feed in a way that they understand.
Additionally, some programs look for a link in the <head> section of your HTML. To support this, include a <link> tag;
<head>
<title>My Page</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"
href="feed.rss" title="RSS feed for My Page">
</head>
These links should be placed on the Web page that is most similar to the feed content; this enables people to find them as they browse.
Note that Atom feeds should use application/atom+xml rather than
application/rss+xml in both styles of use.
Finally, there are a number of guides and registries for RSS feeds that people can search and browse through, much like the Yahoo directory for Web sites; it’s a good idea to register your feed; see More Information.
Tutorial Pages:
» Introducing RSS
» Choosing Content for Your Feeds
» Publishing Your Feed
» Telling People About Your Feed
» Format Versions and Modules
» Which Format Should I Choose?
» Tips for Generating Good Feeds
» Feed Tools
» More Information
