Feeds
Where Can I Get a Feed For My Site?
If you are using a blogging platform to build your web site, feeds are built into your site and automatically generated therefor. But when if you are using html pages for your site, you will have to generate an RSS fee yourself, using an online generator or desktop software and add it to your site.
RSS Feed Generators
1. Free RSS/XML Feed Generator – FREE! – this is a free service where you can fill in all the information you want included in your feed. It will then generate the proper code, that you can save as an xml file, upload to your site’s file manager, the publish. Remember to add an RSS Button to your page linking to your feed.
Upside: For my HTML sites, I like making the feeds manually so that the URL address (that http:www.example.com) can be my own (i.e. http://www.gobaguio.com/gobaguio-rssfeed.xml) instead of using an “obviously free service” like the other free online rss feed generators.
Downside: Completely manual. There are no automatic updates so you will have to create an rss feed everytime you add a page to your site.
2. Ponyfish – FREE! – provides an online generator that will ’scrape’ your page and get all the relevant links to add to your feed.
Upside: No need to sign up to create a feed, although there are advantages to free and paid membership. Automatic generation, really easy to use — just a few clicks and you’re done.
Downside: To get added features you have to upgrade to a free account (for auto updates) or a paid account (additional cool features), plus they host your feed and assign the URL for it, so you cannot modify it yourself or upload it to your site (but you can link up your rss button to the assigned URL, of course).
3. Feedyes – FREE! – provides an online generator that will ’scrape’ your page and get all the relevant links to add to your feed.
Upside: You can choose between an automatic option or manual creation. .
Downside: The links they scrape automatically contain the title to your page, which is the same as the link title, instead of the meta tag description, although you can also create your feed manually and put the correct descriptions.
What are Feeds?
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works – such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video – in a standardized format. An RSS document (which is called a “feed”, “web feed,” or “channel”) includes full or summarized text, plus other data such as publishing dates and authorship.
Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content quickly and automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place.
RSS feeds can be read using software called an “RSS reader”, “feed reader”, or :aggregator,” which can be web-based or desktop-based. A standardized XML file format allows the information to be published once and viewed by many different programs. The user subscribes to a feed by entering the feed’s link into the reader or by clicking an RSS icon in a browser that initiates the subscription process. The RSS reader checks the user’s subscribed feeds regularly for new work, downloads any updates that it finds, and provides a user to monitor and read the feeds.
Why Are RSS Feeds Important?
1. To generate more traffic to your web site
A great promotional tool, RSS Feeds alert your subscribers to your latest site updates. This causes them to visit your site again. As we all know, repeat visitors are fantastic for web traffic, because it costs you less effort to get them back compared to attracting new visitors.
2. As an additional monetization channel
Google Adsense has an Adsense for Feeds feature where you can earn money from the ads that they include in your RSS Feed. Goodle has just also acquired FeedBurner and you will be asked to signed up with them when you are ready to monetize your rss feeds.
For Additional Tips on RSS Feeds For Normal Web Sites
List Garden, which gives you free rss feed software for download, also has this wonderful article to help youplan which pages in your site require inclusion in your rss feed.
