Publisher's Guide to RSS

Prepare Your Feed

A feed is a file on your webserver just like any other webpage except that it contains pointers to recent updates. Instead of ending in .html or .htm, most feed files end in .xml or .rdf. Once this file is in place, most blogging software packages update this file automatically with pointers to your latest content. This file is then fetched by feed-reading software so that when you publish new content on your site, it automatically pushed to your subscribers. Best of all, it's incredibly easy to set up a feed. In fact, you may already have one.

Popular blog-hosting services such as Blogger and Typepad create feeds for you, as does blogging software such as MovableType and Wordpress. And many others offer built-in tools to help you publish and update your feed. Your feed will be one of two types: RSS ("Really Simple Syndication") or Atom. Both do essentially the same thing, and both are supported by Yahoo! (for more details about specific Atom and RSS versions, visit YPN Guide to Syndication FAQ: Supported Feeds).

Here are some tips to locating your feed at some popular hosting services:

Yahoo! 360°

• Once you make your blog public, a feed automatically appears at the bottom of your blog, which you can see by looking at the public view of your 360° page.

• For more information: Yahoo! 360° Help

Blogger "Blogspot"

• If your blog URL is:
  http://[USERNAME].blogspot.com
  Then your feed URL is:
  http://[USERNAME].blogspot.com/atom.xml

• For more information: Syndication FAQ for Blogger

MSN Spaces

• If your blog URL is:
  http://spaces.msn.com/members/[USERNAME]
  Then your feed URL is:
  http://spaces.msn.com/members/[USERNAME]/feed.rss

Typepad

• If your blog URL is:
  http://[USERNAME].typepad.com
  Or:
  http://[USERNAME].blogs.com
  Then your feed URL is one of the following:
  http://[USERNAME].typepad.com/[TITLE]/index.rdf
  Or:
  http://[USERNAME].blogs.com/[TITLE]/index.rdf

• For more information: Syndication FAQ for Typepad

Autodiscover Your Feed

If you're unable to locate your feed through your blog host, another method you can use to discover the presence of a feed on your website or blog is Autodiscovery. To see if your website currently supports Autodiscovery, visit your site using the Yahoo! Toolbar, Internet Explorer 7, or Firefox. If the Yahoo! Toolbar has a blue "plus" sign next to the My Yahoo! button on the toolbar, or the feed icon is illuminated in the IE7 navigation bar, or Firefox has an orange box highlighted in the lower right corner, then your feed has already been detected. For more details, visit YPN Guide to Syndication FAQ: Autodiscovery.

Tips for Getting the Most Out of Your Feed

Select a meaningful title and description for your blog: Feeds that are automatically generated by blog-hosting services typically are given a title based on the name of the blog itself. However, if you have direct access to your website's feed, pay close attention to the title and description you select. A good title can markedly increase the likelihood that your feed will attract new readers. Because you can never predict how users will search for your feed, you should also provide a thoughtful, accurate, and descriptive summary. We recommend the following naming convention: "Provider: Sub-Topic." For example, a digital photography feed from Gizmodo might be titled, "Gizmodo: Digital Cameras." And for the description, try to include key topics as well as commonly known names for your site/publication (for example, both "San Francisco Chronicle" and "SFGATE").

Select a single, stable URL for your feed:
If you're responsible for establishing your own feed, be careful to give it a file name and location that you're happy with for the long term. Changing URLs or filenames later on can result in a frustrating experience for existing subscribers. From their perspective, your feed (and thus your site) will stop updating because their feed reader will be looking for a file that is either no longer there or is "stale" because it is no longer updating. Your subscribers will have to find your new feed and resubscribe to resume coverage. Changing URLs also causes confusion for new subscribers because it creates duplicate entries in the Yahoo! feed database. Note: If your blog-hosting service automatically generates your feed, then this probably isn't going to be a problem.

Another way to address the problem of multiple feeds is to sign up with a feed-management service such as FeedBurner, which assigns your feed a permanent URL. So if the location of your feed ever changes (for example, you move to a new blog-hosting service), you don't have to worry about your subscribers switching to the new address. All you have to do is change your account settings to assign the new feed to the same old static URL.

Validate your feed:
Test to make sure your feed is properly formatted by running it through the Feed Validator.

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