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I Want To Know what is RSS feed what is rss feeds ?

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RSS stands for really simple syndication and is used to take content from a website and display it in an application called an RSS reader. Most of the time the content is a short summary of an article or post, usually displaying the lastest ten.

For example, the feed from my blog (here) displays the first few lines of the lastest 10 articles I have written. These are then picked up by my visitors so they can see if my site has been updated.

Most of the time the scripts to create RSS feeds are written in PHP and are very similar to the code used to create a news page, except with a few XML tags thrown in. There are loads of PHP scripts available out there to create RSS feeds for you, so I suggest you look at a few of those to get the idea, most of them use a very similar concept and basic code.

The actual XML generated by the PHP script that makes up the RSS feed and is read and interpreted by the feed reader may look something like this:

	<link>http linenums:0'><title>Rob's Blog</title>	<link>http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/;	<description>My life, my universe, but not so much of the everything...</description>	<pubDate>Sat, 23 Dec 2006 18:18:03 +0000</pubDate>	<generator>http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.5</generator>	<language>en</language>			<item>		<title>The BBC Is Wrong</title>		<link>http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/;		<comments>http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/;		<pubDate>Sat, 23 Dec 2006 18:18:03 +0000</pubDate>		<dc:creator>Rob</dc:creator>				<category>Random</category>		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/;		<description><![CDATA[I was shocked to hear, 32 minutes after I published my article, Stephen Fry claim that, each Christmas, we use enough wrapping paper to gift-wrap Guernsey! Well, the BBC has a requirement, as a public service broadcaster, to inform and educate us. No wonder people claim GCSE and A Level standards are dropping when we [...]]]></description>		<wfw:commentRss>http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/;		</item>
The <item> section is repeated over and over for each item you want to appear on the feed, then you end the channel and rss tags and the file is complete.

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Very descriptive but let me add something to that. One common problem run into is that rss is separated into different versions. Each version is different and has different syntax because they were made by different companies in they're own little competitive war. As far as i know there are about 3 different versions. Because they are made with different syntax they are parsed different.Which in turn means some readers don't read some types. I've been told (trust this advice if you will) that to stick with whats called version .91 . because its more common.

Also if you are in need for a free php or asp script to output an rss feed i would suggest http://www.hotscripts.com/ . They have a nice selection of free scripts.

Hope this helped.

Peace

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