RSS XML Test
Background: You may have noticed recently that many of websites now contain little graphical buttons with the word RSS XML on them. For Exampl:
(Look for this link on the upper right side of the Home Page)
When you click on the button, all you see is some jumbled text and computer code (unless you have a newer web browser or an aggregator). What's this all about? It's an RSS feed, and it's changing the way people access the Internet.
RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a technical format that allows online publishers to share and distribute their content to other websites or individual Internet users. It's commonly used for distributing headlines on news web sites. Bloggers use it to distribute summaries of their blog entries as well. RSS is written in the internet coding language known as XML, which is why you see RSS buttons labeled that way.
If a website publishes an RSS page, commonly known as an RSS "feed," this feed will contain summaries of all the recent articles posted on that site. For example, Yahoo News publishes news related to world headlines, national news, sports, etc, which you can read by going to the Yahoo website. They also publish RSS feeds for each of these subjects. Each RSS feed contains a summary of the most recent news stories posted.
RSS allows you to see updated content in news aggregators or web browsers (new ones have integrated this feature). It solves the What's New problem for web sites by allowing content consumers to subscribe to content that they find relevant. That means its a great way to communicate with a market that has already defined itself as interested in your content by having taken the first step of subscribing to the feed. It also solves the SPAM problem, because your market has already agreed to be targeted. Its permission marketing done right, and with no SPAM filter headaches.
RSS also solves another problem by allowing content to be syndicated (or republished) on other websites. This is how tools like Yahoo or Google News work. They collect RSS feeds from across the internet and then publish the relevant ones on their site. Imagine the traffic you would generate by getting a story published on one of those news portals. So... this opens up an entire new way to drive traffic to your site.
RSS is probably the most powerful marketing tool emerging in internet publishing today. I love technology... There is always a better mousetrap right around the corner.
Objective: Investigate and impliment and maintain an RSS XML Newsfeed service from the web site.
- Identify how and inpliment an RSS XML Newsfeed.
- Identify and install any helper applications.
- Configure and test the application.
- Publish an RSS XML feed from the web site.
- The the hardest part.... getting someone else to subscribe!
There is a bit of work to get the content into the format for a feed. Ter are two differnet primary sets of web content that get converted to feeds... single pages and directories. Single pages are HTML files that contain multiple stories, each of which is treated as a unique entry to be linked to by the RSS feed. Directories contain multiple HTML files, each of which contains a single story and links to each must be entered in the RSS feed. Ahhh... Whish is best for what? I'm going with the single HTML file first.
What happens when I subscribe? This the key for this feed. I have no intention of syndicating the feed to third party aggregators... I suppose some outside folks might be interested. But this web site is designed for Mineola HS folks so I need you guys to SUBSCRIBE if your browsers have news aggregators built in. Everytime I publish the feed it it will be in your news feed folder!