10 Comments to “ What is RSS? .” Please leave a comment below, thank you.

1. # 1
   John :
   ( June 29th, 2007 at 5:11 pm )

   Great intro to RSS feeds. I thought you might be interested in a next generation offline feed reader called illumio (www.illumio.com) that actually alerts you to the feed content that matches your interests. It’s a great way to subscribe to a bunch of web feeds and then have illumio intelligently show you only what you care about.



2. # 2
   Bes :
   ( June 29th, 2007 at 6:29 pm )
   

   John, thanks for the comment. I am happy that you find this intro interesting.

   I have added Illumio to the list above, thank you. That is indeed a very nice service for many people.

   I was wondering if it works by searching through keywords in every RSS feed. Have you used it so far? Does it help you track specific websites easily too, in addition to finding out about new feeds? Or does it go through feeds of the sites you specify and then show you only the feeds related to your interest?

   Thanks again John. I really appreciate your comment and the information.



3. # 3
   Jess :
   ( June 30th, 2007 at 12:53 am )

   =) Thanks Bes. This answered some of my questions, and I loved the analogy of watching you doing something odd on the street and on videotape =D Very descriptive indeed, hmmm.

   But what about this, I know this is a little more in detail… if my news/blogs/whatever is not hosted by anything… perhaps if I was smart enough to write my own script, or I simply manually added news onto my site (and it was my own domain), is it still possible to use RSS? Is RSS a piece of coding, or is it an actual software or something. I know Wordpress and other blogging systems have it built in, but if I were to do everything manually… how is RSS ‘installed’?

   Just wondering =) I realise that may be a whole topic of its own… you can just answer simply then. Such as, it’s just a piece of coding or if it is a software or whatnot.



4. # 4
   jerine :
   ( June 30th, 2007 at 5:12 am )

   So long… gave up while half way reading. maybe it bores me because i already know what rss means. but i didnt know its actually really scary squirrel. bwahahahahhaa…. is it because your post are so long, that’s why it takes time for the page to load? i don’t think it does make any sense, but it takes about one minute waiting time for loading.



5. # 5
   valerie :
   ( June 30th, 2007 at 5:28 am )

   As far as hosted WordPress blogs, I think that you can only use the /feed/ URL if the owner has changed settings and setup nicer URLs for permalinks. Otherwise I believe it’s still /wp-rss2.php or /wp-atom.php. At least it used to be that way, not sure about the newer versions, but if the /feed/ doesn’t work, either of those other ones should work since they’re the link to the actual file.



6. # 6
   Anonymous :
   ( June 30th, 2007 at 6:26 pm )

   i was hoping for really scary squirrel

   haha…very informative post, thanks!



7. # 7
   Bes :
   ( June 30th, 2007 at 7:02 pm )
   

   Jerine, heh, sorry that it’s long! Also, yes, RSS = Really Scary Squirrel :D.

   Hmmm, I think the reason the page takes a long time to load is because of some external image loading. When the page was loading, did you see any words like “pub” or “mybloglog” or “yahoo” in the status bar, or maybe the MyBlogLog code on the right hand side was taking some time to load? For me, when my site loads slow, it is usually MyBlogLog, and it happens regularly, unfortunately.

   Valerie, hmmm, thanks for pointing that out! Those 2 files should indeed work most of the time. I will check the different versions later to see what is compatible with which version. I’ll update the article with that info, thank you.

   Layouts, thanks for coming and the comment. More information on the scary squirrel is on its way. What do you think about RSS itself?



8. # 8
   Bes :
   ( June 30th, 2007 at 7:10 pm )
   

   If you receive this comment via e-mail and the code looks weird, please visit the website to view it in proper formatting, or e-mail me and I will send you another version. Thank you.

   Jess, here we go! Thanks for the comment, and for the excellent question! I’m glad this answers some of your questions. About me doing something odd on the street, I’m sure you would pay to watch such a thing, right?

   Yes, if you write your own script, it is still possible to have RSS. RSS is possible on almost any kind of website; RSS itself is a piece of coding. It is a file that has certain commands that can be read by any RSS software on any platform [cell phones, computers, etc]. Those commands, or code, simply take the content of every page or a post and present them in a simplified form, so that they can be read universally by most RSS software.

   In WordPress, RSS is created as a file by WordPress itself, automatically. Thus, WordPress comes with the function of creating RSS automatically, on the go; you do not need to do anything to enable it. This indeed can be a separate article, though I’ll add it here in this comment for now.

   Summary: it is a piece of coding in a file. For example, below is the actual code of my customized RSS file in WordPress that outputs/creates the final RSS coding for this site:

   ****** Actual RSS Code *******

   
<?php
header('Content-type: text/xml; charset=' . get_option('blog_charset'), true);
$more = 1;

   ?>
   <?php echo '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="'.get_option('blog_charset').'"?'.'>'; ?>

   <!-- generator="wordpress/<?php bloginfo_rss('version') ?>" -->
   <rss version="2.0"
   xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
   xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
   xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
   <?php do_action('rss2_ns'); ?>
   >

   <channel>
   <title><?php bloginfo_rss('name'); wp_title_rss(); ?></title>
   <link><?php bloginfo_rss('url') ?></link>
   <description><?php bloginfo_rss("description") ?></description>
   <pubDate><?php echo mysql2date('D, d M Y H:i:s +0000', get_lastpostmodified('GMT'), false); ?></pubDate>
   <generator>http://wordpress.org/?v=<?php bloginfo_rss('version'); ?></generator>
   <language><?php echo get_option('rss_language'); ?></language>
   <?php do_action('rss2_head'); ?>
   <?php while( have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
   <item>
   <title><?php the_title_rss() ?></title>
   <link><?php permalink_single_rss() ?></link>
   <comments><?php comments_link(); ?></comments>
   <pubDate><?php echo mysql2date('D, d M Y H:i:s +0000', get_post_time('Y-m-d H:i:s', true), false); ?></pubDate>
   <dc:creator><?php the_author() ?></dc:creator>
   <?php the_category_rss() ?>

   <guid isPermaLink="false"><?php the_guid(); ?></guid>
<?php if (get_option('rss_use_excerpt')) : ?>
<description><![CDATA[<?php the_content_rss() ?>]]></description>
<?php else : ?>
<description><![CDATA[<?php the_content_rss() ?>]]></description>
<?php if ( strlen( $post->post_content ) > 0 ) : ?>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<?php ;the_content() ?>]]></content:encoded>
<?php else : ?>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<?php the_content_rss() ?>]]></content:encoded>
<?php endif; ?>
<?php endif; ?>
<wfw:commentRss><?php echo comments_rss(); ?></wfw:commentRss>
<?php rss_enclosure(); ?>
<?php do_action(’rss2_item’); ?>
</item>
<?php endwhile; ?>
</channel>
</rss>


   ****** End of Actual RSS Code *******

   and below is a link to the actual file, in text format, with the actual code:

   The Reasoner’s RSS Feed Code in text format

   The above code creates the final RSS file for most of the newer WordPress versions and installations. The different codes above have different functions. Basically, the file is creating an RSS webpage and replacing special commands, like “the_content”, with the actual content, which I have highlighted with the color red above as an example. So the code itself will say “the_content“, but the output will replace that the_content with actual content from my website. WordPress came with this file; I simply customized it a bit to suit my needs. The above code, when viewed in a browser or a Feed Reader, automatically produces the proper RSS feed output.

   How does that sound? Please let me know if you have more questions. Now I am thinking if I should implement this question into my post, or if I should make it a separate post.



9. # 9
   wentworth :
   ( August 8th, 2007 at 3:36 pm )

   I am currently using google reader for my RSS feeds, and am relatively happy with it. Although lately it has started bugging out almost once a week. Do you think I should switch to a different reader?



10. # 10
    Bes :
    ( August 10th, 2007 at 5:28 pm )
    

    wentworth, thanks for the comment. By “bugging out“, do you mean it is crashing or not showing updates? Also, how long has this problem been going on? I know Ronald [another reader here] uses Google Reader a lot every single day, and I think he loves it. I will ask him to see if he is noticing any similar issues or if he has a workaround.

    One of the RSS readers that I have been using for a while is Netvibes, though for a while now I have not logged into it that much.

    Do you have many feeds in Google Reader? The number of feeds can affect the migration from one feed to another, unless Google Reader offers a way to export the feed list and the new service you try allows you to import any exported feed list. I would recommend trying Netvibes or one of the above list services, if you want something online only and not offline like Thunderbird, for a while so you can see if you prefer the new reader or if you would like to keep using Google Reader.

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