OVERVIEW
-- Consider viewing this "RSS
in Plain English" video for a quick overview of what feeds are about.
What's
an RSS news feed?
A
news feed, sometimes called a "channel"
or simply a feed, is an industry-standard
method for publishing information
online, especially suited for communications
involving a series of "articles"
or "news items" over time.
Example:
A real estate agent publishes
a news feed to communicate to
clients new property listings
as they occur so that they get
a time-advantage over other buyers.
By subscribing to the news feed,
clients can choose to get automatic
notification any time a new listing
is posted.
Example:
A restaurant publishes a news
feed to communicate seasonal menu
changes or holiday specials, perhaps
mixed with nutritional suggestions.
As
you can see with the above examples,
"news" doesn't have to
mean breaking events in the world.
News feed messages can be any thing
at all, such as product announcements,
for-fee consultant newsletters,
meeting minutes, stock market reports,
musician gigs, school sports reports,
vacation rental home specials, teacher
homework assignments, and so on.
Maybe we should call them "info
feeds".
How
does a news feed differ from email?
In
several ways...
First,
for email, one must maintain an
email mailing list. Email goes uninvited
into typically spam-cluttered in-boxes.
News feeds, on the other hand, are
files that are published online
and easily available (in several
powerful ways) to anyone who chooses
to receive that information. Email
"pushes"
information to others at the convenience
of the email sender, like
spam, whereas with news feeds, others
"pull"
information at their convenience.
Second,
with email, one uses a series of
emails to send messages spread over
time, whereas with news feeds, one's
latest news item simply gets appended
to the news feed. The viewer of
the feed has access to all published
information, not just the latest.
(Of course, the publisher of the
feed can elect to delete old items
from the feed).
Example:
An art gallery publishes a news
feed to announce special events
(artists' signings, openings,
etc.). Subscribers to the feed
see the full list of such events,
and each time a new announcement
is made, the list will have that
addition.
What
constitutes a news feed?
There
are two parts to a news feed. The
first part (the "channel elements")
describes the overall feed (name
of feed, title of feed, description
of feed, publisher of feed, etc.).
The second part (the "item
elements") is a series of news
items, each news item having a title,
a description, and a link (and optionally
more information). When you first
create a news feed, you specify
the channel elements. And
when you write a news item, you
specify the associated item
elements for that news item.
The structure of a news feed might
be compared to a railroad train
... the channel elements is like
the train engine, and the series
of item elements correspond to the
string of railway cars on the train.
How
does one actually write and publish
a news feed?
There
are several ways, depending on one's
skills. The simplest is to use an
online service like Enfeedia where
you simply fill in an online form
with your information — title,
description (aka article), and link
— and Enfeedia does the rest.
At the other extreme, one could
decide to use an editor to directly
write the cryptic XML file format
for the news feed — but this
method is fraught with peril. In
between those choices, one can find
software programs that simplify
the writing of news feeds but typically
require you to have more technical
knowledge than ought to be necessary.
How
do others see a news feed?
Again,
there are several ways ... and this
is what makes news feeds so powerful.
Details will be provided later in
this tutorial, but for now, suffice
it to say one uses a "news
reader". Latest versions of
web browsers are news readers and
therefore can display news feeds,
just as they display web sites.
Enfeedia
includes news reading capability (called "NewsPages") such that
Enfeedia-hosted news feeds do not require a separate reader. One can simply
click a "button" on a user's website, or in their email signature,
or any online document, causing the news feed to be displayed. Also, with
Enfeedia-hosted news feeds, one can actually display part or all of their
news feed directly on their website (using "NewsOnSite"™)
such that, each time a new item is added to the feed, their website is automatically
updated with that information for all to see, without involving any webmaster
tasks or any website modifications or file uploading.
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