| Introduction to RSS |
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| History of RSS |
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| Really Simple Syndication is a syndication format that was developed by Netscape in1999 and became very popular for aggregating updates to blogs and the news sites. |
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| RSS has also stood for "Rich Site Summary" and "RDF Site Summary." See syndication format for details on the RSS syndication process. |
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| Before RSS, several similar formats already existed for syndication, but none achieved widespread popularity or are still in common use today, as most were envisioned to work only with a single service. |
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| The basic idea of re-structuring metadata information about web sites has been traced back at least as far as 1995, and the work of Ramanathan V. Guha and others at Apple Computer's Advanced Technology Group developing the Meta Content Framework (MCF). |
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| Other early work on XML syndication formats, including RDF, took place at Netscape,Userland Software, and Microsoft. For a more detailed discussion of these early developments, see history of web syndication technology. |
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| RDF Site Summary, the first version of RSS, was created by Ramanathan V. Guha of Netscape in March 1999 for use on the My Netscape portal. This version became known as RSS 0.9. |
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| In July 1999, responding to comments and suggestions, Dan Libby produced a prototype tentatively named RSS 0.91 (RSS standing for Rich Site Summary), that simplified the format and incorporated parts of Dave Winer's Scripting News format. |
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| This they considered an interim measure, with Libby suggesting an RSS 1.0-like format through the so-called Futures Document. |
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| In April 2001, in the midst of AOL's acquisition and subsequent restructuring ofNetscape properties, a re-design of the My Netscape portal removed RSS/XMLsupport. |
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| Effectively, this left the format without an owner, just as it was becoming widely used. |
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| A working group and mailing list, RSS-DEV, was set up by various users and XMLnotables to continue its development. At the same time, Winer unilaterally posted a modified version of the RSS 0.91 specification to the Userland website, since it was already in use in their products. |
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| He claimed the RSS 0.91 specification was the property of his company, UserLand Software. Since neither side had any official claim on the name or the format, arguments raged whenever either side claimed RSS as its own, creating what became known as the RSS fork. |
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| The RSS-DEV group went on to produce RSS 1.0 in December 2000. Like RSS 0.9 (but not 0.91) this was based on the RDF specifications, but was more modular, with many of the terms coming from standard metadata vocabularies such as Dublin Core. |
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| In September 2002, Winer released a final successor to RSS 0.92, known as RSS 2.0and emphasizing "Really Simple Syndication" as the meaning of the three-letter abbreviation. |
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| The RSS 2.0 spec removed the type attribute added in RSS 0.94 and allowed people to add extension elements using XML namespaces. |
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| Several versions of RSS 2.0 were released, but the version number of the document model was not changed. |
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| A brief history |
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| The name "RSS" is an umbrella term for a format that spans several different versions of at least two different (but parallel) formats. |
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| The original RSS, version 0.90, was designed by Netscape as a format for building portals of headlines to mainstream news sites. |
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| It was deemed overly complex for its goals; a simpler version, 0.91, was proposed and subsequently dropped when Netscape lost interest in the portal-making business. |
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| But 0.91 was picked up by another vendor, UserLand Software, which intended to use it as the basis of its weblogging products and other web-based writing software. |
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| In the meantime, a third, non-commercial group split off and designed a new format based on what they perceived as the original guiding principles of RSS 0.90 (before it got simplified into 0.91). |
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| This format, which is based on RDF, is called RSS 1.0. But UserLand was not involved in designing this new format, and, as an advocate of simplifying 0.90, it was not happy when RSS 1.0 was announced. |
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| Introduction to RSS |
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| What is RSS? |
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| RSS (stands for "Really Simple Syndication") is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. |
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| An RSS document, which is called a "feed", "web feed", or "channel", contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. |
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| RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner that's easier than checking them manually. |
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| RSS has become the standard data format for communicating news, updates or any other type of information that a company or individual wants to syndicate to a large audience. |
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| The name is an acronym that stands for Really Simple Syndication, which is an XMLformat that consists of designated elements that are consistent for all RSS feeds and conform to the XML 1.0 specification. These elements need to stay consistent to allow for a standardized data format that RSS aggregators can then consume. |
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| RSS is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites, including major news sites like Wired, news-oriented community sites like Slashdot, and personal weblogs. |
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| But it's not just for news. Pretty much anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS: the "recent changes" page of a wiki, a changelog ofCVS checkins, even the revision history of a book. |
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| Once information about each item is in RSS format, an RSS-aware program can check the feed for changes and react to the changes in an appropriate way. |
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| RSS content can be read using software called a "feed reader" or an "aggregator." 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 reader checks the user's subscribed feeds regularly for new content, downloading any updates that it finds. |
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| RSS-aware programs called news aggregators are popular in the weblogging community. Many weblogs make content available in RSS. A news aggregator can help you keep up with all your favorite weblogs by checking their RSS feeds and displaying new items from each of them. |
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| Basic of RSS |
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| Anatomy of RSS |
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| RSS has become the standard data format for communicating news, updates or any other type of information that a company or individual wants to syndicate to a large audience. |
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| The name is an acronym that stands for Really Simple Syndication, which is an XMLformat that consists of designated elements that are consistent for all RSS feeds and conform to the XML 1.0 specification. |
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| These elements need to stay consistent to allow for a standardized data format that RSSaggregators can then consume. In this article we'll take a look at the elements in this structure. |
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| An RSS feed always starts with an element, which contains an attribute called version, which specifies the version of the RSS feed. Here we focus on the RSS 2.0 format because it's the most commonly used today. |
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<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rss version="2.0">
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| The child of the<rss> element is the<channel> . This element is the containing element for the important data or content within the feed. |
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<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
</channel>
</rss>
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| Simple RSS |
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| Imagine you want to write a program that reads RSS feeds, so that you can publish headlines on your site, build your own portal or homegrown news aggregator, or whatever. |
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| What does an RSS feed look like? That depends on which version of RSS you're talking about. Here's a sample RSS 2.0 feed |
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<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
<title>eBIZ Education RSS Feed </title>
<link>http://education.ebiz.com</link>
<description>RSS Feed from eBIZ.com Pvt Ltd</description>
<language>en-us</language>
<pubDate>Tue, 31 Aug 2007 11:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
<lastBuildDate>Tue, 31 Aug 2007 14:00:00 GMT</lastBuildDate>
<docs>http://education.ebiz.com/feed/rss</docs>
<generator>jNote-iT 2.0</generator>
<managingEditor>ravish.kumar@ebizel.com</managingEditor>
<webMaster>aman@ebizel.com</webMaster>
<item>
<title>Simple RSS Feed Example</title>
<link>http://education.ebiz.com/html/word.php</link>
<description>Simple RSS Feed Example.</description>
<pubDate>Tue, 28 Aug 2007 14:19:21 GMT</pubDate>
<guid>http://education.ebiz.com/html/word.php#link1</guid>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>
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| Basic of RSS |
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| How RSS works? |
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| How does RSS work? |
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| RSS works by having the website author maintain a list of notifications on their website in a standard way. This list of notifications is called an "RSS Feed". |
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| People who are interested in finding out the latest headlines or changes can check this list. Special computer programs called "RSS aggregators" have been developed that automatically access the RSS feeds of websites you care about on your behalf and organize the results for you. |
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| (RSS feeds and aggregators are also sometimes called "RSS Channels" and "RSSReaders".) |
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| Producing an RSS feed is very simple and hundreds of thousands of websites now provide this feature, including major news organizations like the New York Times, theBBC, and Reuters, as well as many weblogs. |
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| RSS is a simple technology designed to distribute (or syndicate) content from Web sites, including major news sites and blogs. First developed in 1999 by Netscape, the RSSacronym has had a number of meanings, but today has come to be aptly defined asReally Simple Syndication. |
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| RSS is based on XML (eXtensible Markup Language), the specialized Web page language that provides structured data to Internet-based applications. |
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| If you looked at an XML file with your browser, it would look like raw code, but when viewed through other programs (like an RSS reader, see below), it provides the basis for a variety of information flows across the Web. |
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| The Mechanism of RSS |
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| There are four steps to publishing and receiving an RSS message. |
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| Step 1: |
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| The publisher creates content and publishes an RSS XML file. This file is called the feed, which is the container into which messages are sent. The XML file has a URL associated with it, just like any other Web page. The publisher can then post that URL on his or her Web site. |
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| Step 2: |
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| The recipient who wants to receive the feed adds that URL into a program called a reader. A reader is just a program located either on the Web or on the recipient's desktop (many RSS readers are add-ons to Microsoft Outlook) that can read and interpret RSS XML files. There are more than 1,000 readers available, most of them free. |
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| RSS is also built into the open-source Web browser Firefox, the Apple Macintosh OSX operating system, and the Web portals AOL, Yahoo!, Google and MSN. |
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| Plus, Microsoft is building RSS into the Internet Explorer browser and incorporating it into the next generation of its Windows operating system. |
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| Readers are not proprietary. Any reader can be used with any feed, and a reader can keep track of any number of feeds simultaneously. |
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| Two examples of common feed readers are My Yahoo! and Google Reader. The process for subscribing to a feed varies from reader to reader, but usually is a matter of only a couple of clicks. |
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| Step 3: |
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| When the publisher wants to send a message to the recipient, he or she simply adds entries to the XML file. Messages have three parts: a title, a summary and a message body. The title and the summary are added directly to the XML file, along with an entry date. The message body is an HTML file that is referenced in the entry. |
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| Step 4: |
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| The function of the reader is to make "virtual visits" to the specified XML Web page at specific intervals (usually once an hour) and check for updates. When the reader finds updates, it makes them available to the recipient. |
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| The form in which the message is delivered depends on the reader. In a Web-based reader, it might appear as an entry under the feed banner (see My Yahoo! below). In an Outlook plug-in reader, it would look like an email message. |
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| Advanced RSS |
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| Publishing Your RSS |
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| Now it's time to get your RSS file up on the web. Here are the steps: |
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| 1. Name your RSS file. Notice that the file must have an .xml extension. |
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| 2. Validate your RSS file (a good validator can be found at http://www.feedvalidator.org). |
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| 3. Upload the RSS file to your web directory on your web server. |
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| 4. Copy the little orange or button to your web directory. |
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| 5. Put the little orange "RSS" or "XML" button on the page where you will offer RSS to the world (e.g. on your home page). Then add a link to the button that links to the RSS file. The code will look something like this: |
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| <a href="http://education.ebizel.com/rss/rss.xml"> < img src=" http://education.ebizel.com/rss.gif" width="36" height="14"> . |
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| 6. Submit your RSS feed to the RSS Feed Directories (you can Google or Yahoo for "RSS Feed Directories"). Note! The URL to your feed is not your home page, it is the URL to your feed, like "http://www.w3schools.com/rss/myfirstrss.xml". Here are some free RSS aggregation services: |
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• Syndic8: Over 300,000 feeds listed.
• Daypop: Over 50,000 feeds.
• Newsisfree: Over 18,000 feeds.
• FeedBurner : http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/home
• RapidFeed http://www.rapidfeeds.com/ |
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| 7. Update your feed - Now you have gotten RSS feed buttons from Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Now you must make sure that you update your content frequently and that your RSS feed is constantly available. |
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| Can I Manage my RSS Feed Myself? |
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| The best way to ensure your RSS feed works the way you want, is to manage it yourself. |
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| However, this can be very time consuming, especially for pages with lot of updates. |
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| An alternative is to use a third-party automated RSS. |
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| Advanced RSS |
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| Subscribing and Reading a Feed |
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| RSS feeds bring automatically updated information straight to your desktop. You can monitor news, blogs, job listings, personals, and classifieds. More and more sites offer feeds, which you can identify by a small button that says either RSS or XML. |
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| However, if you click one of these links, you will most likely get a page full of code in your browser. To properly read the feed, you need an RSS reader. |
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| How to Subscribe? |
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| This is a wonderful question, because it's one I have heard time and again from people. So let's have a stab at this... |
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| RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and it's basically a computer-readable summary of the content of a Web page. This summary might be just the headlines of the articles on the page, the headlines plus a sentence or two excerpt of the articles, or even the headlines plus the entire articles. These are known as "headline only", "headline + excerpt" and "full text" feeds, respectively. |
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| There are, of course, nuances, because RSS is now used for a lot more than just Web pages comprised of a set of articles (e.g., weblogs). For example, the New York Times has a set of RSS feeds that let you subscribe to just the movie reviews or just their business news. |
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| Typically, you recognize an RSS feed because there's a cute little orange or blue button labeled "XML", "RDF" or "RSS", like this: |
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| The differences between them, and the "Atom" flavor of RSS syndication, are something that us mere mortals can ignore: if you see any of these options, or even a text link labeled "syndicate this site", then you're looking at an RSS-enabled Web site and/or a way to tap into the site's RSS feed. |
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Like to subscribe to RSS on this site, click on the RSS icon ,  |
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| With Mozilla Firefox it will ask to you which application to use as RSS reader, if no reader specified otherwise it will add the RSS to the specified application/reader. |
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Click on Subscribe button to subscribe the FEED.
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Tip: The Mozilla Firefox browser has a built-in RSS Reader. If you go to a web site that offers RSS feeds, you will see the Firefox RSS icon in the address bar. Click on the icon
to view a list of the different feeds. Choose the feed you want to read. |
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| RSS Readers |
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| There are a lot of different RSS readers. Some work as web services, and some are limited to windows (or Mac, PDA or UNIX). Here are a few I have tried and liked: |
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| • NewsGator Online - A free online RSS reader. Includes synchronization with Outlook, viewing TV content with Media Center Edition, and publication of blogs and headlines. |
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| • RssReader - A free Windows-based RSS reader. Supports RSS versions 0.9x, 1.0 and 2.0 and Atom 0.1, 0.2 and 0.3. |
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| • FeedDemon - A Windows-based RSS reader. Very easy to use and has a very orderly interface. However, this is not freeware! |
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| • blogbot - An RSS reader plug-in for Outlook or Internet Explorer. The light-version for Internet Explorer is free. |
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| • Google Reader- An online Ajax based RSS reader from google. Check it out at www.google.com/reader . |
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